BASIE LOOKING FOR CURVEBALLS
Count Basie Theatre CEO Numa Saisselin
As chief executive officer, Numa Saisselin not only oversees the day-to-day operations of the Count Basie Theatre; he also personally handles all the booking of acts, finagling every Frampton, bagging every B-52, and shanghai-ing every symphony that lands on the stage of the venerable Red Bank showcase.
With an eye toward tonight’s reopening after a four-month, $8 million blast of Botox, oRBit popped in on Saisselin for a quick interview recently in his office behind the theater’s marquee.
Anything lined up that’s different this year?
Well, this fall, we tried to line up a series of artists who have done well in this venue and that we like to work with: David Byrne, Tony Bennett, Spyro Gyra, the Rippingtons, Bobby Bandiera and the Jersey Shore Rock ‘n Soul Revue, Capitol Steps…
All these people like being here year after year, we like having them here, and they all target different constituencies. So we wanted to have, when we reopened, a special set of events that would bring all those constituencies back.
Are you concerned, with the repeat performers, that people might think you’re on a treadmill?
As long as people keep buying tickets, and attending the shows, I don’t care if it’s a treadmill. If people want to come see it, we’re fine.
We do make an attempt every year to refresh ourselves. There are definitely performers you can’t bring back every year; some people just don’t work out and you don’t bring them back. Some people are not every year, but every two year people. And each year we try to stretch ourselves so we don’t turn into the little-old-blue-haired-lady-playhouse.
In that vein, do you specifically look for what might be something of a curveball act — something your audience might not be used to seeing but that you hope might shake up the lineup?
Absolutely.
Any examples come to mind?
Well, we try to do a fully-staged opera at least once a year; nobody else will. We have a major dance company at least once a year, because nobody else around here will do that. And then we’ve had each year a set of more popular entertainers who have never been here before.
Coming up in our lineup: Rufus Wainwright, who’s never been here. I don’t think the B-52s have ever been here, though I could actually call them ‘new’ performers. Patton Oswalt, the comedian; Kathleen Madigan; and we’re always booking, always adding shows to the schedule. Before June, which is the end of our fiscal year, we’ll probably add another hundred shows.
So that’ll bring the total shows to what?
About 200.
And the attendance last year was how many?
One-ninety-four (thousand) and change.
What’s the capacity over 200 shows?
Two hundred times 1,543. I can’t do the math that fast. [308,600] We’re at about 70 percent capacity, which is an outstanding number. Outstanding.
You know, we could probably have a higher percentage of our capacity filled if we were just doing cheesy entertainment shows all the time. But those curveballs — those nights when we say, ‘We’re going to do this because we should, because nobody else will’ — those are the nights you never really know about. Some of those will do well, some of them won’t
How about hard rock acts? Anything lined up?
What qualifies as hard rock in your book?
Something a little to the left of Spyro Gyra, for starters.
(Laughs) Well, that’s about 80 percent of the musical world. (Looks at calendar) Well, for some people, Dion would qualify — for some people. Johnny Mathis would not qualify.
You know, there’s just not a lot of rock and roll on the calendar right now.
That’s not an anti-rock bias, is it?
No. Because if you look back over the last several years, you’ve got Peter Frampton, Styx, Train, Pink Floyd Experience — they’re coming back — there’s been a lot of rock on the schedule. It’s just that we don’t book a static season and then announce it. That’s the traditional performing arts center model — you book your season from September to May, and you put it on sale all at once. We add shows all the time. So if you look at the calendar at any one point in time, you may not see some things.
I had a woman call me a couple of weeks ago and complain that there wasn’t enough jazz on the calendar. And I explained to her that our season is not static, so if you look at it right now, you’re not going to see anything. But that’s just a fluke of where we’re at today. Next week, we could have added three jazz shows. And if you look back over the last five, six years, you’ll see a lot of jazz — you’ll see Herbie Hancock, James Moody and a whole bunch of people. So you can see we have that track record.
What do you have to do to get Bruce Springsteen back on your stage? Work on a particular foundation board member who’s got an in with him?
You know, I’d like to think Bruce and Patti have supported the theater because we’ve just done good work. So we’re just going to continue to do good work.
Posted
October 30, 2008
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[...] Project, we put out a call for singers through the Basie. We got almost 200 submissions, and me and Numa (Saisselin, Count Basie Theatre CEO) listened to all of them and whittled it down to ten [...]
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[...] Hathaway, Tom Doremus, Stew Goldstein, John Ekdahl, Joyce Strange, Alfred Weiss, Matthew Borowski, Numa Saisselin (who really should know), the Colmorgen Kids, Neil Spencer, Mario Cirillo, Cathi Swett, Tom Labetti [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 10:10 am