Point Park Concert series in review
With school back in session and football season in full swing, Downtown PKB finished its 2017 Point Park Concert Series on Sept. 1 with the music of The Purple Xperience – The Prince Tribute Band. The Purple Xperience embodied the spirit and sounds of Prince, with front-man Marshall Charloff channeling the vocals and moves from the icon himself.m the icon himself. This concert, held at the historic Smoot Theatre, wrapped up our Point Park Concert Series, which delivered to its audience the tribute music of classic groups such as the Piano Man, Aerosmith, and Rod Stewart.
The Point Park Concert Series is a free-admission concert series located at Point Park in Downtown Parkersburg, West Virginia. Although the concert series is free for our community, planning and funding them started at the beginning of the year by Downtown PKB’s Concert Committee. The concerts wouldn’t be possible without financial support from one of our donors, The Ross Foundation, who has graciously provided funding to Downtown PKB to provide tribute band concerts to the community. We were also fortunate this summer to obtain a title sponsor, Aspire Salon, located in downtown Parkersburg. Downtown PKB would like to thank Pam Creel and her staff for supporting our concert series and investing in downtown.
Downtown PKB’s 2017 Concert Series also had support, both in-kind and monetarily, from several businesses: Chapman Printing, the Blennerhassett Hotel, the City of Parkersburg, WesBanco, Mountain State College, CAS Cable, Peoples Bank, Memorial Health System, United Bank and Jan Dil’s Attorney at Law.
This summer also saw the return of our popular reserved seating. In an effort to offset the expenses of the concert series, Downtown PKB has been selling reserved seating on a first come, first serve basis to concert fans through our online program on our website. This concert season, our reserved seating sold out in a day. As our committee begins planning for the 2018 concert series, we will look at this opportunity once again and communicate through our website and Facebook page when seats will go on sale. The reserved seats sold for $80, which guaranteed your seat at our four concerts. At the end of the concert series, those purchased seats went home with the individuals that bought them. Chairs for the 2018 Point Park Concert Series will go on sale again in April through our website.
Downtown PKB experienced a first this summer with the relocation of three concerts due to inclement weather. Parkersburg High School Principle, Kenneth DeMoss, and custodial staff assisted our committee with the use of the PHS Fieldhouse to hold our July concert Draw the Line: Aerosmith Tribute and our August concert Tonight’s the Night, a Rod Stewart Tribute band. The historic Smoot Theatre, Felice Jorgeson and volunteers, hosted us for the September concert, The Purple Xperience. Although the venue was different, the performances were spectacular.
Finally, many thanks to the Parkersburg Catholic High School girl’s basketball team and coaches for their assistance with our concert’s set up and tear down.
If you or your organization would like to be a sponsor of our 2018 concert series, contact Wendy Shriver at wendy@downtownpkb.com and don’t forget to like our Facebook page.
For more information about how you can get involved, contact me at courtney@downtownpkb.com.
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Courtney Hendershot is the Event and Marketing Coordinator for the Downtown PKB.