A new weekly lunchtime concert series launched Thursday at the Civic Space and will continue for 14 weeks.
The program, Lunch Unplugged, will have a local musician play at the Civic Space every Thursday through April 29 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to give the downtown Phoenix community a place to take a break from work or school and enjoy a free musical performance with their lunch, the series coordinator said.
Laci Lester, the community liaison and events director for Karuna Village Fair Trade, a nonprofit organization, developed the idea from her love of music and from her insight of parks in other cities, like Bryant Park in New York City and Millennium Park in Chicago, she said.
“Those are kind of my inspiration of urban parks, and they really utilize a lot of their community to bring programming into the park,” Lester said.
Lester began planning the concert series in mid-September and enlisted the help of Radio Phoenix, a nonprofit radio service, and the Downtown Phoenix Partnership.
“It was a challenge to make sure that I was talking to the right people and making sure that I was aligning with the right missions, but once we got the right people to the table, the process was pretty smooth,” she said.
Clinton Switzer, who partnered with Lester to plan the series and is the event coordinator for Radio Phoenix, opened the concert series playing the acoustic guitar and harmonica. Booking musicians for the 14-week series was not difficult, Switzer said, since many artists went out of their way to contact either him or Lester about participating.
“The other musicians in Phoenix who are doing this for 14 weeks, they are definitely going to have people there watching them, and that’s always an awesome feeling,” he said.
Downtown Phoenix’s music population is excited about the venue at the Civic Space, Lester said.
“They’re really excited to have a space that is innovative,” Lester said. “It’s not your typical venue to play at, so we had a lot of musician interest.”
Since the event is available free to the Phoenix community, the Downtown Phoenix Partnership financed the program, said Jim Flynn, director of marketing for the Downtown Phoenix Partnership.
“It’s a very, very inexpensive investment to get real folks doing real music in a real park,” Jim Flynn said. “So we got excited about it, and we’re more than willing to participate.”
Flynn said he doesn’t expect the series to attract many people initially, but the quality and location of the program will help establish it.
“It’ll gain its own attrition and pretty soon we’ll be an ongoing part of the scene in downtown Phoenix everyday,” he said.
Tony Sziklay, a biology junior who attended the concert, and said he is happy to see local musicians have a place where they can play since there is so much concentrated talent in Phoenix.
“I’ve been to all the bigger cities ¾ Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, New York,” Sziklay said. “Here artists seem to be more genuine and dedicated to their craft.”
Thursday’s concert attracted several passer-bys and a crowd of around 20, but Sziklay said he expects to see more people in the future.
“It’s such a great location that I can’t see how it wouldn’t attract more people to come out each week,” he said.
Lester said depending on the community response, the concert series may be extended to May and possibly started up again in the fall.
“We want to make sure that we’re not over-programming the park, but we also want to make sure that people know that there are things to do,” she said.
Contact the reporter at slsnyder@asu.edu
