Meet Guild Corridor Performing Arts Director Nick Schwartz-Corridor
Together with its main renovation and capital enchancment challenge, leading to a facility-wide improve, Guild Corridor is placing some proficient new hires in place forward of their deliberate reopening. Amongst them is new Director of Performing Arts Nick Schwartz-Corridor who brings greater than three a long time of expertise creating reveals at world-class venues and dealing with acclaimed artists.
Set to start his tenure at Guild Corridor in April, Schwartz-Corridor was chosen via a year-long, complete nationwide search. He final labored as Senior Producer at The Music Heart, Los Angeles, the place he championed intercultural relations, and developed applications such because the Summer season SoundWaves outside live performance sequence that includes Latin and African diaspora artists, Max Richter’s SLEEP in Grand Park, and Joni 75, a birthday celebration of the music of Joni Mitchell.
Schwartz-Corridor additionally established the Music Heart’s producing division and oversaw the annual Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance season.
He involves Guild Corridor with restricted expertise of the East Finish, however Schwartz-Corridor has an open thoughts and already seems to know the burden of the establishment’s highly effective heritage and what it means to the group after greater than 90 years supporting the humanities regionally.
A Chat with Guild Corridor Performing Arts Director Nick Schwartz-Corridor
“I used to be contacted when the search was launched for the Guild Corridor place, and I wasn’t actually seeking to transfer or something, however it’s simply such a singular and memorable alternative to work throughout all areas of the performing arts in a stupendous location with an awesome legacy. Lots of people and artists I work with, they informed me simply the loveliest issues about it,” Schwartz-Corridor says, talking on the telephone from Los Angeles, including, “Mainly, in a nutshell, it was simply too good a possibility to move up on.”
The brand new director factors out that he spent 10 years on the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) earlier than shifting to L.A., and so they did a good quantity of labor with Robert Wilson in Water Mill throughout his time there. He additionally went fishing off Montauk each summer time, so the realm isn’t fully new to him.
“I’ve paid two visits to East Hampton and I’ve seen what the theater goes to appear like when it’s completed, and I feel it’s thrilling,” Schwartz-Corridor says. “It’s beneath renovations so it’s somewhat onerous to say, however it’s an excellent attention-grabbing mixture of the historic structure and an entire fashionable improve when it comes to sound and constructing in positions for cameras — I feel it’s sort of the perfect of each,” he continues noting that issues just like the John Drew’s circus-tent ceiling design will stay in place.
“I don’t know the historical past, however I can see and really feel how vital the area is to the group in East Hampton, and my sense is that (Guild Corridor Govt Director) Andrea Grover and the management, and the architects and the technical aspect have actually tried to be very cautious and respectful about sustaining what it’s that feels particular about that area, on the similar time making an attempt to place upgrades in, when it comes to how comfy the seating shall be and the acoustics,” he says. “I’m excited to see what it is going to be like once we lastly get in there subsequent 12 months.”
Schwartz-Corridor has an intensive background in theater and music, however he remained cagey about his imaginative and prescient for precisely what individuals ought to count on on the Guild Corridor stage. “I’ve had not less than 4 completely different variations of a imaginative and prescient to this point. To not be coy, however I’ve actually simply began the conversations with Andrea, and I’m not the sort of programmer who’s identical to, ‘It’s all about what I see as vital and everyone else simply reveals up for it,’” he explains, describing a want to really get to know the group and be “each revolutionary and responsive.”
He has a love for modern dance, intimate theater productions, spoken phrase and storytelling, and he shares pleasure about podcasts, together with reveals like The Moth on Nationwide Public Radio and even stand-up comedy. “I’m actually conscious and intrigued that Spalding Gray was a part of the group there when he was nonetheless alive and lively,” he says. “I feel that area may very well be a incredible place for monologue and new work like that.”
“Nick is a uncommon discover with an astounding breadth {of professional} accomplishments and flexibility in genres,” Grover says of Schwartz-Corridor. “However what Nick and the search committee most related on was a deep love for artists and a perception that artwork helps us turn out to be higher neighbors and world residents. As Nick says, ‘The humanities present us with methods to talk with one another about our frequent humanity, share values and views, and uphold creativity and innovation in our communities. And, to get pleasure from ourselves collectively.’”
And he’s labored with a number of the greatest and brightest — equivalent to Laurie Anderson, Ina Garten, Philip Glass, Ira Glass, Ethan Hawke, Kronos Quartet, Tom Stoppard, Twyla Tharp and plenty of, many others — so there’s little doubt Schwartz-Corridor has the abilities to ship on the highest potential stage.
“I’m very grateful to hitch such an completed workforce and supportive board in a spot with a exceptional legacy of creativity and deep and significant relationships with the encompassing group. I’ve been struck repeatedly by how individuals talk about Guild Corridor’s significance and affect on their lives… Now with the prospect of reopening our historic and newly renovated venue, with galleries, a state-of-the-art theater, and areas for studying and gathering, we have now the artistic alternative and problem of opening our doorways as broadly as potential.”
Go to guildhall.org to maintain up with the Guild Corridor renovation and what’s coming when it reopens.
