Gala Opening Night

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CFCC to open new fine arts center on Oct. 3 featuring performance by North Carolina Symphony along with special guest.

WILMINGTON – Cape Fear Community College is pleased to announce that the North Carolina Symphony will perform as part of the opening gala event for the college’s Humanities and Fine Arts Center in early October.

The performance is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 3 and will also feature a guest performer who will be announced later this year when tickets go on sale.

The opening gala will kick off a week-long schedule of events to introduce the new venue to the public.

CFCC Director of the Humanities and Fine Arts Center Shane Fernando says that he is pleased to welcome the state symphony to Wilmington to help open the center to the public.

“We are thrilled to have the North Carolina Symphony to help showcase this new facility. So many people are working hard to make the center the very best it can be both for our students and the community.”

Fernando added that there are many more announcements to come regarding performances planned for the center’s opening season.

“Stay tuned for more details to come about the opening week. It’s going to be very exciting,” Fernando explained.

“As North Carolina’s largest performing arts organization, traveling the state presenting education and public performances, the North Carolina Symphony is honored to join the celebration to mark the opening of CFCC’s beautiful Humanities and Fine Arts Center,” said Symphony President & CEO Sandi Macdonald.  “The North Carolina Symphony has a 50 year-plus history of bringing great music to audiences young and old alike in Wilmington and New Hanover County.”

Currently under construction located on Third Street in downtown Wilmington, CFCC’s Humanities and Fine Arts Center is a 159,000 sq. ft. education facility and entertainment venue. When completed, the facility will house a 1,500-1,600 seat performance venue to host Broadway touring productions, concerts, symphonic performances, recitals, symposiums, and other events.

While the center will be the home of the largest performance space in North Carolina’s southeastern region, a primary focus of the facility will be on student learning and academic growth.  The Humanities & Fine Arts Department will find a new home in this modern facility. This new laboratory for student learning will feature 25 formal classrooms, studios, and laboratories for the visual arts, music, drama, film, communications, philosophy and religion, and foreign languages.  In addition to the main performance hall, students will be able to utilize a central outdoor courtyard, black box theatre, and studios designed for a variety of student performances.

In addition to the traditional classroom experience, students will have the opportunity to work behind the scenes with the major performances brought to the venue.  Functioning as a laboratory for student learning, the Center will involve students in the technical operations of the facility, marketing, ticketing, event planning, guest services, entertainment production and logistics, and artist services. This will provide the students with applied learning experiences to help in workforce development for after graduation.

Additionally, the Humanities & Fine Arts Center has also been formally designated by UNC Wilmington as a site where their students may gain academic credit hours from their work with the center.

For those interested in learning more about the center, please join the mailing list at cfcc.edu/hfac-signup.

For more information and to stay up-to-date on everything happening with the Humanities & Fine Arts Center, be sure to like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/capefeararts.

About the North Carolina Symphony

The North Carolina Symphony is the first state-supported symphony in the country – a vital and honored component of the state’s cultural life. Devoted to bringing music to North Carolina, the North Carolina Symphony can be heard on WUNC 91.5 FM or through its seven CD releases, including two celebrated titles on the BIS label: American Spectrum with saxophonist Branford Marsalis and a 2010 release of concertos by Rachmaninoff and Medtner with pianist Yevgeny Sudbin. Top soloists from the classical and pops worlds—including Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Lang Lang, Joshua Bell, Yuja Wang, Lynn Harrell, Pink Martini, Ben Folds, Randy Newman and Idina Menzel—have joined the orchestra and taken advantage of two of the country’s finest performance venues, the spectacular Meymandi Concert Hall at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh and Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary. The orchestra has also appeared twice at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Orchestra Hall in Chicago.

For more details, visit: http://www.ncsymphony.org/