The Monmouth Conservatory of Music’s new home, at 65 Chestnut Street, features a giant mural on the facade. Below, violin teacher Bettina Forbes in the new building. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Having completed its absorption of the Monmouth Conservatory of Music, the Count Basie Center for the Arts gave the classical-music school its own home in Red Bank Monday.
The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank kicked off a $20 million expansion project Friday morning with the demolition of an adjoining building that in recent months housed its Performing Arts Academy, at the corner of Momnmouth and Pearl streets.
Vladislav Kovalsky, below, plans to fold the Monmouth Conservatory of Music, which he’s headed since 1998, into the Count Basie Theatre.
In a move that further cements its place at the heart of the Greater Red Bank Green’s cultural life, the Count Basie Theatre plans to merge the borough-based Monmouth Conservatory of Music into its existing suite of musical training and performance programs.
In a statement released Wednesday, the theater’s board of directors detailed a plan to assume operations of the 53-year-old MCM as a component of the Basie’s slate of specialized instruction programs in jazz, classic rock and Broadway-style performing arts.
Red Bank Regional sophomore Shea Grant (second from left) is pictured with Yvonne Scudiery of the Count Basie Theatre, co-finalist Danyal Malik, and Poetry Out Loud program coordinator Kay Potucek during the recent Poetry Out Loud competition at the Basie.
Press release from Red Bank Regional High School
Shea Grant of Little Silver , a sophomore at Red Bank Regional High School, was one of two finalists in the regional Poetry Out Loud competition, held on February 7 at the Count Basie Theatre.
A drama major in RBR’s Visual and Performing Arts Academy, Shea performed three poems for the competition: “Personal” by Tony Hoagland, “Larkinesque” by Michael Ryan, and “Friendship after Love” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.