by Susan Elliott | Musical America

Talk about seizing the moment. With the current administration having kidnapped the nation’s 250th anniversary to its own, political ends, home-grown celebrations by the performing arts sector have been relatively few and far between.

With one exception.

Under the intrepid leadership and fund-raising prowess (“People see me coming and they cross the street”) of CEO Catherine Cahill, the formerly Mann, now Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts has brought together three historic milestones to mark its first major campus-wide upgrade and expansion in 50 years. It’s been a half-century since what began as the Robin Hood Dell concerts, launched in 1930, moved to the current location in Fairmount Park under the guidance of local business man/board chair Frederic R. Mann, took on his name, and became a key summertime venue for the Philly Orchestra and mostly pop presenters.

Coincidentally, and in the category of “who knew?,” it’s been 150 years since the Centennial Exhibition of 1876—aka the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine—took place from May 10 to November 10, 1876 in Fairmount Park the center of what was then the nation’s capitol.

“It’s America’s best-kept secret,” quipped Cahill about the 450- acre, 200-building exposition the U.S.A. hosted on its Centennial.

Attended by an estimated 10 million visitors (25% of the U.S. population), the Exhibition was mounted a decade after the Civil War, and, while not yet fully recovered, the nation wanted to strut its stuff—from Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone to the 650-ton Corliss Steam engine—to show the world America was no longer a swaddling colony of the Wild West. The idea behind the expedition, largely supported by the women’s suffrage movement, was also to bring back together a divided nation.

The 250th anniversary finds the country similarly divided, making Cahill’s idea to commission a new work to honor that centennial exhibition all the more timely. A Hundred Years On, a quasi oratorio with music by Peter Boyer and libretto by Mark Campbell, had its world premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Anthony Parnther on June 17 on the Pavilion’s vast stage (the largest in the region, boasts Cahill) of the newly named Highmark Mann Center.

The nation’s 250th, of course, also coincides conveniently with the completion of the Highmark Mann Center’s Grand Renovation, the stats of which are by now well publicized: Armed with $70 million raised by Cahill and her development flanks, the Center has grown to fill 21 acres in Fairmount Park, its new saplings and other arboriculture planted and tended to by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. There’s a new 62,000-square-foot main entrance, representing a threefold expansion, newly renovated seats—4,500 under the pavilion roof, 2,000 just behind it, with lawn seating said to accommodate up to 6,000—copious new dining facilities and food concessions, more restrooms than the eye can see, new lighting, sound, and fly systems, vastly expanded backstage areas that include their own café, and a Welcome Center with a digital touchscreen “jukebox” where you can look up footage and facts from specific years and events, from Eugene Ormandy conducting the fabulous Philadelphians in 1938 to the Beach Boys in 1981 to the Roots in 2023.

And, following a trend launched by Frank Gehry’s New World Symphony WallCasts--the 7,000-square- foot projection wall on the exterior of the Symphony Center in Miami—Highmark Mann Pavillion’s east outer wall is adorned with a 4,900-square-foot screen on which can be projected assorted videos, from current to digitized historic. Named for its donor, Ed Satell and his family foundation have written into their largesse that the wall contain no commercial advertising. No Jumbotrons allowed, thank goodness.

Looking back

For all its bells and whistles, the renovated center has paid laudable attention to its historic past, what with the aforementioned jukebox and the short film playing on the Satell Centennial Wall East—Proving Ground: The First 250 Years of the American Experiment. There’s also an illustrated timeline stenciled onto the Green Room walls backstage. (One of the dressing rooms is wallpapered with pictures of Benjamin Franklin blowing bubble gum bubbles.)

The Center has hosted all the greats, from Yo-Yo Ma to Baryshnikov to Bernstein to Simon & Garfunkel (the former returns this summer, in solo guise; so does Bob Dylan who first played here in 1988). James Taylor holds the record, of 22 appearances since his 1976 debut, all documented on the Green Room wall. “Artists are on tour, away from their homes and their families,” says Cahill. “They walk in here and see their names and dates and think, ‘Oh! They remembered me! I matter here.” “The sense of belonging, of being part of an historical enterprise, is palpable here. Cahill remembers with special fondness the first public performance after the pandemic: Opera Philadelphia’s 90-minute version of Tosca. "it was the first concert here for the public when we were allowed to open after Covid. For non-opera people it was a fabulous introduction; it was such an emotional moment people were in tears—it was their first public gathering in 18 months.

"Those are the kind of magical moments that happen here.”

Part II, about the Center’s community initiatives and Boyer’s A Hundred Years On, will be posted later in the week.