By CAROLYN BROWN
Staff Writer
At an upcoming new concert series at a recently opened venue in Holyoke, guests can listen to live music while they eat themed meals and help local students build career skills.
Kyle Homstead, back middle, founder of Laudable Productions and director of the Technical Arts Institute at LightHouse Holyoke, with Production Academy faculty member Ailey Verdelle, to his right, and LightHouse students at the new De La Luz Soundstage. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS
The series, Feast & Harmony, will debut next week at De La Luz Soundstage in Holyoke, part of the former Gateway City Arts space. For each show, local chefs have created menus that students in professional training programs at LightHouse Holyoke will help to prepare and serve.
“We’re really, really excited about bringing a new musical landscape to Hampden County and making sure that people have the freedom to explore music and community through the venues,” said Kyle Homstead, the founder of Laudable Productions, which produces the shows. Laudable also produces several local festivals, including Millpond.Live, Barbès in the Woods, and Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival, and has programmed an extensive list of shows at numerous venues in the Valley.
Naturally, every concert’s menu is themed to that night’s artist. The menu for the Sunday, Dec. 15 performance by Irish musicians John Doyle and Mick McAuley included spiced mulled cider, Irish cheddar boxty (potato pancakes with sour cream and apple butter), and Guinness hand pies; the menu for New Orleans trombonist Glen David Andrews’ show on Friday, March 7, features Cajun classics like red beans and rice, gumbo, shrimp po’ boys, and king cake.
Not only is this event series new, but so is its venue — sort of.
LightHouse Holyoke purchased the former Gateway City Arts complex in July, giving its students a home more than four times larger than the 8,000-square-foot space the school had been leasing. With it came two performance spaces, which became the De La Luz Soundstage and the smaller Divine Theater, named for one of the founders of Gateway City Arts. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS
De La Luz Soundstage (whose name means “of the light” in Spanish) is a 500-person-capacity venue and part of what used to be Gateway City Arts, a three-building complex in Holyoke. Earlier this year, the alternative secondary school LightHouse Holyoke purchased the complex for $3 million, giving its students a home more than four times larger than the 8,000-square-foot space the school had been leasing. With it came two performance spaces, which became the De La Luz Soundstage and the smaller Divine Theater, named for one of the founders of Gateway City Arts.
Over the last few months, the Soundstage has undergone a number of renovations: Laudable, which leases the venue from the school, installed new curtains and a poured concrete bar, painted the ceiling, polished the floor, and built a new green room for artists.
The acquisition also allowed LightHouse to partner with Laudable Productions, with whom they co-created the Technical Arts Institute, which began as a pilot program in July, paid through stipends funded by MassHire. Through the Institute’s Production Academy, students can learn event production skills in two different tracks: one, “Stagecraft,” teaches skills like lighting design and sound engineering; the other, “Producers,” teaches budgeting, marketing, and the like. Students in both tracks participate in shows at the De La Luz Soundstage in what Homstead calls a “live lab” that allows them to use their skills in a real-world setting.
“Some of our students have been to concerts before, but some of them haven’t. To have that in-house and to get them to meet the [artists], that’s all really exciting,” said Catherine Gobron, executive director of LightHouse. “It’s a really shiny thing to come to school for.”
Those students, as well as students in the Institute’s culinary track, will work for class credit alongside adults in a variety of roles at Feast & Harmony shows, in the kitchen, front-of-house, and backstage. This career training, Homstead said, is “really a scaffolding that allows kids to explore things that they might be interested in and ultimately experience them hands-on. It leads to internships and, ultimately, jobs.” (Gobron also noted that Homstead himself was a valuable resource because he’s passionate about helping kids. A lot of people would love to run a concert venue like the Soundstage, she said, but not as many would love to do so while working with teenagers.)
In fact, the Feast & Harmony shows will kick off the reopening of Gateway City Arts’ cafe, which will be open to the public and will serve breakfast and lunch daily starting in January 2025.
With all of the new renovations (and a workforce bolstered by motivated students), the De La Luz Soundstage will be equipped to support a broad range of performers at Feast & Harmony shows and beyond.
“What you can expect, really, is an incredibly diverse array of programming that really reflects the broader western Mass community,” Homstead said. “This is just the beginning of it.”
Tickets are $25 to $45, depending on the show, at the door or online at laudable.productions/events.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.
