The new Compass Music and Arts Center aims to bring music as well as literary, performing and visual arts to Brandon, with programming and events to begin in April 2013
Steven Sutton, owner of Brandon Music, sits outside of the multi-purpose venue on a recent evening during a jazz performance. Brandon Music features a recording label (Divine Records), jazz concerts and a new arts/music center in Brandon. / EMILY McMANAMY/Free Press
I moved to Vermont in 2009 to set up a branch of my classical music record label, Divine Art Recordings, and my wife Edna and I were very lucky (or fated?) to come across the vacated Warren Kimble studio and gallery in Brandon at a time when we had just sold my business in England. We have known and loved Vermont for over 14 years and have admired and enjoyed the rich culture of arts so evident in the state. We were then able to expand the business and open an English Tearoom (now a full daytime restaurant) in which customers could hear our large selection of CDs and also browse our gift shop; we also opened a small gallery featuring the paintings of highly talented local artists, and began to host live music. We now hold the only regular weekly jazz concerts in the state featuring the best of New York and Boston talent, which are attracting appreciative audiences from far and near.
In 2011 we were avidly searching for a shopfront or storage facility around Brandon and purely by chance (or fate again?) came across “Building K” at the former Brandon Training School — long vacant, stripped and derelict, but with much evidence of its former use as an infirmary and special school.
The building seemed far too big and unsuitable for us of course, but Edna and I walked around separately and both of us immediately saw an enormous potential, that — with a lot of work, commitment and finance — could be realized. So the concept of the Compass Music and Arts Center (CMAC) was born.
Read more: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20120909/ARTS/309090003/Heart-Art-cultural-compass-Brandon
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