Tag Archives: music

Legacy of a Central District musical giant will live on at Garfield High School’s Quincy Jones Performance Center — UPDATE

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The Quincy Jones mural at Garfield High School

The Quincy Jones Performance Center (Image: Lewis Crutcher Lewis)

A musical giant and embodiment of Garfield High School’s and the Central District’s place in the cultural history of Seattle, composer and producer Quincy Jones has died. Jones was 91.

The Quincy Jones Performance Center opened in 2008 as part of a $107.4 million renovation of the 23rd Ave campus attended by public high school students from across the Central District and Capitol Hill areas and honors the entertainment icon’s legacy — and hard work to rise to the top of the industry.

“I can’t believe it’s been 70 years since I walked these halls as a student…as a young kid who wasn’t sure how life would turn out, or even if I would ever know of a life outside the gangs,” Jones wrote in 2017. “Moving to Seattle forever changed me for the better…and finding music here showed me that I could be more than a statistic. My hope and prayer is that these kids know they can too…the only time success comes before work is in the dictionary, and that’s the TRUTH!…I’ve lived it!” Continue reading →

Seattle’s new Music Venue Zone restrictions will take a needed bite out of Pike/Pine parking

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The Pike/Pine crunch for street parking will soon have a strict new player. The neighborhood’s music and nightlife venues are celebrating.

The city is getting ready to put new “Music Venue Zone” restricted parking areas in place across Pike/Pine and Seattle’s nightlife districts after years of efforts searching for a solution to help make it easier for the people who drive the city’s live music industry.

The Seattle City Council passed legislation last month that will open the way for venues to apply to add the new zone to their curb spaces and do away with the cumbersome mess of temporary parking permits and space saving that has been part of band life. Continue reading →

With First Hill home finally set for demolition and redevelopment, Seattle arts nomad Love City Love in search of new start

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(Image: Love City Love)

Nomadic Seattle arts venue Love City Love is searching for its next home as the end of August brings the end of its stay in a former First Hill dental office on land set to host a mass timber apartment building.

“Love City Love emerged as a blank canvas for the creative community to convene,” the LCL mantra goes. “We believe continuing to craft this alternative is not only possible but crucial to keep art and culture alive and thriving in our city.”

CHS reported here in early 2023 as Love City Love founder Lucien Pellegrin was making preparations for the Seneca dental office building to host the next run of the venue that has grown around its ability to make new gathering spaces in buildings slated for demolition or redevelopment. Continue reading →

Vice Seattle’s ‘next level of nightlife’ ready for red carpet debut below Capitol Hill’s Melrose Market

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(Images: Vice Seattle)

Seattle’s “next level of nightlife” has arrived below Capitol Hill’s Melrose Market. New dance club Vice Seattle will celebrate its grand opening this weekend.

$20 “red carpet” tickets are on sale for the new Minor Ave club’s opening night as event producer White Rabbit Group begins its ongoing Friday residency in the premier of the new venue “with its world class custom sound system and visual display, built to bring party back to the Hill.”

“With breathtaking sound and light production, the world’s hottest touring artists and painstaking attention to detail, this is the nightlife experience that Seattle has been waiting for,” the venues backers say. Vice Seattle will debut with a custom sound system featuring “award-winning Fulcrum Acoustic sound providing crystal-clear sound quality, and the jaw-dropping arrangement of LED visuals and smart lighting design.” Rules include no vaping, of course, and no nudity. “This is the nightlife you deserve,” the promo concludes.

CHS broke the news in January on plans for the club project as part of a new wave of activity around the Melrose Market development after the market’s 2019 purchase by Regency Centers, the same real estate investment trust that owns the Broadway Market shopping center. New food and drink options from Harry’s Good Times plus Cantina Sauvage and Cafe Suliman are also part of the mix. Around the block, San Francisco-based real estate company Prado Group’s purchase of the market’s neighboring property has also brought a host of changes including the new Cheese Room in the old Machiavelli space and the opening soon, first Seattle expansion of Voodoo Doughnuts.

Vice Seattle is the latest creation from Noah Garroutte, Raj Tubati, and Roger RoRo Eng. The nightlife entrepreneurs are also behind Forum Social House, an activities and club space in Bellevue’s Lincoln Square mall. Continue reading →

Now in its third summer, Volunteer Park’s upgraded amphitheater still celebrating as summer concert series begins this week

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This is the third summer we’ve been able to enjoy Volunteer Park’s new amphitheater. Once again, the community group dedicated to keeping the park a vibrant and active neighborhood center is hosting a series of Thursday night concerts to celebrate the $2.7 million amphitheater project.

This Thursday, the Volunteer Park Trust welcomes you to the first night of its Summer Series at the Amphitheater 2024 run of free community concerts featuring Seattle’s own Clinton Fearon.


Continue reading →

Struggling Cafe Racer will close on 11th Ave, exit Capitol Hill

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Veta Vitali on the tables (Image: Cafe Racer)

The rebooted Cafe Racer has reached the finish line on 11th Ave. The club and bar will close its Capitol Hill venue later this month with plans to continue on as “a nonprofit community driven arts organization” and continue its online efforts focused on Washington-based music.

“CafĂ© Racer has always been a safe home space for a lot of people and marginalized communities,” Racer’s Jeff Ramsey said in the announcement. “Though we won’t have a physical space now we will, for the foreseeable future, remain an important part of Seattle’s arts and culture.”

Cafe Racer announced it will close its 11th Ave space for good on Sunday, June 30th as the street celebrates with neighboring Queer/Bar’s day-long Queer/Pride Festival. Continue reading →

Producers sued over deadly shooting during Broadway/Pike street racing outside Capitol Hill Block Party’s fences

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The street racing was caught on the SDOT traffic camera at the intersection

The family of Essence Greene, the 20-year-old shot and killed last July as late night crowds formed around street racers outside the fences of the Capitol Hill Block Party at Broadway and Pike, is suing the music festival’s producers.

KOMO is reporting on the lawsuit it says blames organizers “for failing to disperse the crowd so people could safely leave the event.”

KOMO reports the lawsuit, which does not appear yet in King County Superior Court filings, blames producers Independent Event Solutions for failing “disperse the crowd from the event or move barriers so the crowd could disperse more easily.”

The annual Capitol HIll Block Party is a three-day festival that is unique as one of the few music events of its scale in the country to be operated as a ticketed event on city streets.

Greene was one of four people shot when gunfire rang out as large nightlife crowds were dissipating after the street racing takeover of the intersection after the 2023 Capitol Hill Block Party’s second day had ended for the night. Continue reading →

It’s a record: Capitol Hill’s Revolver and Life on Mars celebrate milestone birthdays

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(Image: John Richards)

(Image: Revolver)

Two Capitol Hill vinyl bars keep spinning right round. On E Pike, Life on Mars is celebrating five years of business. Down on E Olive Way, Revolver Bar marked a decade of good tunes and stiff drinks. Both host incredible record collections — and lots of good times.

Revolver held a big bash earlier this month to mark its double album worth of years on Capitol Hill. Continue reading →

SPD says rare cello part of heist in $250K Central District burglary

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(Image: SPD)

Seattle Police are asking for help tracking down a rare and very expensive musical instrument ripped off in a weekend 24th Ave burglary.

SPD says the rare 1890 Enrico Marchetti cello was discovered stolen along with bows and a blue and black carbon fiber case in a $250,000 burglary reported Sunday evening around 5 PM at a home in the 1600 block of 24th Ave near Pine.

“The homeowners found the residence had been broken into with the front door open and a window shattered,” SPD reports. “The cello was last seen on May 4.” Continue reading →

Save Kerry Hall? Students stage sit-in, call for arts, music, and dance to be preserved as buyers eye historic property for housing and development

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Monday, Cornish College of the Arts students gathered along E Roy on Capitol Hill for a sit-in at Kerry Hall. Their hope is to save the historic building — and keep the 103-year-old studio and performance hall as a center for arts and learning on Capitol Hill.

There is also a Save Kerry Hall group formed with hopes of asking Cornish to reconsider the decision — or help shape the old building’s future by finding a buyer dedicated to continuing its role in the city’s arts scene.

“Most of us feel that the Cornish school should not be sold and it could be part of a vision of Cornish in other ways on Capitol Hill, so [there’s] this sort of long standing threat and feeling of insecurity for many of us as far as the future of Kerry Hall,” Elizabeth Jane Darrow, a former Cornish faculty member who has been helping organize efforts to save the building, tells CHS.

CHS reported here as Kerry Hall hit the Capitol Hill real estate market in April. At the time of Cornish’s announcement that it was finally preparing to sever its final ties to its birth neighborhood and fully move its campus to South Lake Union, the arts school did not include a price for the E Roy property and three-story building just off Broadway within the Harvard-Belmont Landmark District. Its broker is now awaiting offers.

Cornish students staged the sit-in at Kerry Hall on Monday to raise awareness about the pending sale. The sit-in plan included improvisational dances by Cornish graduate Sylvia Schatz-Allison and an opportunity for students past and present to write goodbye letters to the building.

“The decision to divest from Kerry Hall is a strategic one, so that we can focus on our energies on teaching and learning,” James Falzone, academic dean and professor of music at Cornish told CHS about the planned sale. Continue reading →