Fort Myers' newest arts center: The MACC keeps growing with concerts, musicals and more
What was it like opening a new performing arts center in the middle of a pandemic?
Andrew Kurtz answers with a smile: “It was really, really, really weird.”
Yet that’s exactly what he did, opening Fort Myers’ Music & Arts Community Center — aka The MACC — for its first shows in January 2021.
Everyone wore face masks. Audiences spread out with lots of open seats and empty aisles for social distancing. And a “full house?” That was about 60 people.
“During the pandemic, if there were 30 people there, we were like, ‘Wooo!’” Kurtz says and laughs. “‘Half sold out!’”
Thankfully, things have changed at The MACC. Some shows get more than 200 people in the 300-seat venue — an active church sanctuary that transforms into a theater for concerts and musicals. And Kurtz thinks this will be the season when they have their first true sellout.
Maybe it’ll happen with popular Canadian singer-songwriter Laila Biali in February. Or perhaps the Gulf Coast Jazz Collective’s March concert fusing jazz with African sounds, drums and dancing.
But he's says he’s sure it’ll happen soon.
Previously: Gulf Coast Symphony to open own music and arts venue. And it’s not just classical music.
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“I think our first sell-out will be this year,” says Kurtz, who is president, CEO and music director of Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra Inc., the nonprofit that runs The MACC and more. “I’m pretty confident on that.”
The biggest reason? They’re doing high-quality work that people are starting to notice, he says.
The in-house Gulf Coast Jazz Collective draws people from as far away as Punta Gorda and Naples for its jazz concerts. The Gulf Coast Chamber Orchestra is like nothing else in the area. And the musical-theater program brings lesser-known musicals, bigger-name shows and even an occasional original to The MACC stage.
On top of that, the acoustics in the place are amazing, says artistic operations manager Julie Bearden Carver, a Broadway veteran who’s also music director for The MACC’s theater program. And the quality of the performances is just as good − and getting better all the time.
That’s why the theater program − now in its second season − is starting to get unsolicited resumes from actors and theater professionals all over the country.
“The reputation is out there,” Carver says. “And it’s a good reputation – solid.”
It’s all part of Kurtz’s longtime dream to build a permanent home for Gulf Coast Symphony orchestra, the semi-professional orchestra he founded and still leads for performances at Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall. The MACC is also the artistic home for the nonprofit Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra Inc., the umbrella organization that oversees both orchestras, the jazz collective and all the other activities at The MACC.
Kurtz wants The MACC to be the go-to place for people who love music — all kinds of music, including classical, jazz, musical-theater and sometimes even rock ‘n’ roll and doo wop.
“We want this place to be for everybody,” he says. “Not just the people who are into symphonic arts. This needs to be a place for anybody.”
A church transformed: The MACC takes shape
During the day, The MACC doesn’t look much like a performing-arts center. It’s more like a church with its padded wooden pews, floor-to-ceiling windows and flaming-chalice icons on the walls.
And that’s exactly what it is: The church sanctuary for Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fort Myers, which shares its campus with The MACC and still uses the sanctuary for Sunday services.
There’s not much to alert people that this is a performing-arts center, other than a sign at the entrance to the 12.5-acre campus (located on Shire Lane near Interstate 75, just off Daniels Parkway). No box office. No other signage. And in the sanctuary lobby, only a few TV monitors promoting upcoming shows.
But that changes at night when The MACC comes to life. Sandwich-board signs pop up. A mobile box office rolls out. And people start showing up with tickets in hand.
They come for jazz and classical concerts. For musicals. For touring acts. For kids’ music classes and summer camps. And more.
“The idea is to activate the space and make it, well, a music and arts community center — a true space that people can come to all year round and there’s something going on,” Kurtz says. “During the season, it’s pretty much five days a week there’s something happening here.”
It took a lot of work to get to this point, though.
Kurtz says Gulf Coast Symphony Inc. has spent about $250,000 upgrading the church sanctuary into theater space. That includes new theatrical lighting and audio equipment, black curtains over the floor-to-ceiling windows, a wireless microphone system, a video-recording suite and robotic cameras for livestreaming or recording concerts.
That doesn’t include all the toil and sweat that goes into operating The MACC on a daily basis. Kurtz, himself, leads both Gulf Coast Symphony orchestras, directs occasional plays, produces musical theater and does whatever else needs doing.
That can mean some punishingly long work days, he says.
“Right now, I feel like I’m doing three jobs, and I’m a little stressed,” Kurtz said on a particularly busy week at The MACC. “Because this is also a chamber-orchestra week, so I’ve been dealing with the chamber orchestra AND doing staging rehearsals AND running the organization.
“So I’m doing these 16-18 hour days. It’s a little stressful.”
But it’s getting better. The MACC now has 10 full-time employees (up from four in 2021), plus nine part-time employees and also all the professional musicians and actors paid on a per-show basis.
It’s a work in progress, Kurtz says. Gulf Coast Symphony Inc. has a budget of $2.5 million — up from $1.5 million just three years ago. And that’ll likely continue to grow.
“We’ve added almost a million dollars to our budget,” he says. “And we still have a ways to go.”
What’s happening at The MACC
The MACC has changed a lot since opening to “sold out” houses of just 30 people, Kurtz says. The venue is admittedly hard to discover — they haven’t been able to put up a sign yet on busy Daniels Parkway — but people are still managing to show up for concerts and musicals.
Here are some of the things they're coming to see and do at Southwest Florida’s newest performing arts hall:
Gulf Coast Jazz Collective: This jazz ensemble has been going strong since 2020, and it’s proven to be one of the biggest draws at The MACC.
“They’re amazing,” Kurtz says. “There’s nothing else like it. … People who are really into jazz, they’re just digging what’s going on in there.”
The collective is led by Tampa jazz drummer and composer Paul Gavin, who performs with a core of two other regular musicians and a revolving cast of guest artists.
Gavin says he keeps pushing the boundaries of what they perform onstage — including original music written by him and others — and encouraging audiences to come along for the ride.
“When we started off, we started with very, very traditional names, because those are the names that sell tickets the best,” Gavin says. “Louis Armstrong, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock — the kind of names that you would expect anyone who likes jazz to know.
“But we’re doing much less of that since the second season. … This year, I’m pushing it.”
Take, for example, the upcoming March 23 concert “Jazz Influenced By Africa.” The show features songs inspired by African culture, plus two drummers and two dancers from Tampa’s Kuumba Drummers and Dancers.
“That’s my pick for the year,” Gavin says and grins. “That thing’s gonna be wild!”
Musical theater: The MACC boasts the newest professional theater program in Southwest Florida. Audiences can watch well-known musicals, lesser-known works like this month’s “The Thing About Men” and even originals like last December’s “Snowbird Follies: A Holiday Musical” (written by Kurtz and stage director D.J. Salisbury).
The shows boast actors from Broadway and all over the country. They mostly audition in Fort Myers, but music director Carver says The MACC may eventually start doing auditions in New York City, too.
“We have to,” Carver says. “That’s where the talent is.”
This isn’t a troupe, though. It’s a production company. So they hire actors on a per-show basis with no seasonal cast, Carver says.
Another big difference between The MACC and many theaters: They always use the required number of live musicians for each musical, Carver says, instead of either a recorded track or a reduced number of musicians.
So if a musical calls for a five-piece band, they use a five-piece band. Or if it calls for a full orchestra, they’ll do that — including the major musicals the full-sized Gulf Coast Symphony orchestra stages at Mann Hall.
The result: People hear the musical as it was intended to sound, Carver says.
Gulf Coast Chamber Orchestra: This smaller-scale, professional orchestra features about 40 to 50 members who perform classical, pops and other music at The MACC and elsewhere.
“That’s what fits comfortably in this space,” Kurtz says. “We have a very robust, professional, classical orchestra.”
Kurtz leads the chamber orchestra. Violinist Reiko Niiya, former concertmaster for Southwest Florida Symphony, is now the chamber orchestra's concertmaster.
New Horizons Band: This new community band is aimed at amateur or retired musicians who aren’t looking for an intense rehearsal and performance schedule. They just want to hang out and play music.
“Even though it’s technically for all ages, it’s really a place for retired people who either haven’t played instruments in years or always wanted to learn to play trumpet," Kurtz says. “It’s a social club to come and play music together, collectively, have some coffee and snacks and socialize for two hours.”
New Horizons Band meets Monday mornings at The MACC.
Education programs: The MACC offers arts and music programs for kids, including a youth jazz program, a youth orchestra, an after-school string program called MusicWorks! and summer camps (expanding from two weeks to at least six weeks this year, Kurtz says).
More: The MACC also presents cabaret and Broadway music concerts, chamber concerts and touring musical acts. And it runs a fellowship program for young, professional musicians who plan full-time careers as symphony musicians.
− The Music & Arts Community Center is at 13411 Shire Lane in south Fort Myers. For more information about The MACC and its upcoming shows, visit gcsarts.org.
Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Email him at crunnells@gannett.com or connect on Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), Twitter (@charlesrunnells) and Instagram (@crunnells1). You can also call at 239-335-0368.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Fort Myers' Music & Arts Community Center: Musicals, concerts and more
