On Sunday, Jan. 27, the Camp Verde community was treated to a performance by Ensemble One of the Northern Arizona University Jazz Studies Program, in the Phillip England Center for the Performing Arts. Over a hundred residents were treated to music from the top students at the school, providing big band classics from the likes of Count Basie and Duke Ellington to adaptations of modern pop hits that strayed outside of the jazz genre.
The concert was only the latest one presented by the Phillip England Center for the Performing Arts Foundation, which was founded in June with the intention of taking advantage of the 424-seat theater on the Camp Verde Unified School District campus for increased performances and cultural events.
“We think that Camp Verde could actually become kind of an entertainment hub that would be an economic benefit to the restaurants, a benefit to the hotels, a benefit to the basic sales tax base of the town. It could be a pretty decent economic engine for not only the citizens but also for bringing in people to use the services,” Ken Zoll, a founder of the Phillip England Center foundation, said in June.
According to Zoll, the foundation has been successful in its early goals of bringing in more acts in the past few months, though he said he hopes that it can grow its activity in the near future. Zoll pointed to recent performances on Labor Day and New Year’s Eve as successes, and said he hopes to use them as templates for future events; the big band performers from Labor Day are expected to come back for Valentine’s Day.
At the New Year’s Eve concert, the foundation surveyed attendees to find out what kind of performances they wanted to see more of and were surprised by the results. The most popular request was blues
and jazz, followed by classic rock and then classical music. Zoll said he is interested in finding more classical events, which the performance space has not hosted much of so far.
“The biggest hassle is that there are people of Camp Verde who don’t even know that that place exists, so they’re not even looking for entertainment,” Zoll said. “And so the biggest issue is advertising and getting the word out that some- thing is there. Attendance has been decent.”
With the audiences for events remaining low, so far the foundation has not been able to build up any funds, using ticket sales to just pay for the expenses of the performers. The foundation is considering selling
seats, allowing donors to have their name inscribed on a seat in the auditorium, as well as fundraising drives for certain improvements to the facilities, such as the sound system or improved video capabilities.
Zoll said he hopes that with improvements to the video technology, the Phillip England Center could be used as well for film screenings on Fridays starting in the summer. The plan would be for a rotating style of films throughout each month: Family films, classic cinema, independent films and new releases. The foundation has also discussed getting food trucks and other vendors at the film screenings,
such as hot dogs and ice cream for family films.
The foundation has also sought to strengthen its relationship with the school district. The metal gates entering the center required some maintenance, which was provided by the school’s staff. In addition, the metal shop crafted musical notes and symbols to decorate the gates, bringing the spirit of performance to the decor.
“The vision is to keep going and make the improvements that are needed,” Zoll said.
Jon Hecht can be reached at 282-7795 or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
