The sound of music, gone for more than a decade, may return to a venerable midtown Santa Fe music venue.
The Paolo Soleri Amphitheater — named after the late Italian architect who designed it — may someday spring to life again thanks to a $3 million allotment within Senate Bill 212, the capital outlay fund.
But it’s unlikely the Paolo Soleri, built more than a half-century ago and a popular concert stop well into the 21st century, will once again play host to nationally known music artists.
Rather, said Santa Fe Indian School superintendent Christie Abeyta, the plan is to use the space as a training ground and showcase for the school’s performing arts students, as well as a venue for other local schools with arts programs.
“We need that space for those students to bring back to life our spoken word arts — to be able to sing and dance and act and do all those things that they are doing on Tik Tok and Facebook,” she said. “But we want to give them a live platform which may lead to a career path here in New Mexico with the film industry.
“There’s an image attached to Paolo Soleri as a concert venue,” Abeyta added. “We want to reimagine it for others.”
However, Kimball Sekaquaptewa, spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Indian School, said in an email the venue will be “open to community events.”
SB 212 sponsor Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, said representatives from Santa Fe Indian School reached out to both her and the Governor’s Office during this year’s 30-day legislative session. She said the initiative to provide $3 million in funding came primarily from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
The bill calls for the money to be used “to plan, design and reconstruct the Paolo Soleri amphitheater at the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe.”
Abeyta said the process to secure the $3 million moved rapidly in the last days of the session, which ended Thursday. She said the money will be used to assess structural and engineering needs to renovate the amphitheater, which has about 2,900 seats. She said she thinks it could cost up to at least $15 million to update the structure.
She said once the initial $3 million assessment is complete, the school will work on raising more funds to upgrade the amphitheater.
When the school shut down the venue in 2010, music lovers and promoters alike were devastated. Gone was access to a historic stage that had hosted some of the best-known and beloved names in music.
Longtime music critic and writer Steve Terrell said artists who played the Paolo Soleri included B.B. King, Carlos Santana, John Prine, David Byrne, Pete Seeger, Jackson Browne, Roger Miller and Arlo Guthrie.
“It was large enough that it had a lot of energy but small enough that it was kind of intimate at the same time,” said Terrell, a retired New Mexican reporter who hosts a music show on KSFR-FM. “Even if you were in the nosebleed section, you had a good view of the performers on stage. It seemed so Santa Fe.”
Local music producer Jamie Lenfestey mounted concerts there from the early 1990s up until the last one, featuring Lyle Lovett, in the summer of 2010.
He wrote in an email Monday the amphitheater “was the go-to for outdoor concerts in New Mexico and hosted legendary shows by legendary artists, all of whom remembered the singular experience of playing in such an extraordinary venue.”
The amphitheater’s structure has been likened to a stage within a cave.
Soleri began designing the earth-formed concrete theater bowl for the Institute of American Indian Arts performing arts program in 1965. From 1970, when it officially opened, until 2010, the facility was used for both on-campus educational and academic events and public music concerts.
Though the venue remained popular with audiences, rumors Santa Fe Indian School would close it began popping up around 2008, when school administrators approved the razing of some 15 old buildings and the cutting of dozens of mature trees.
School officials gave little information about those moves and claimed sovereignty over the property meant they did not have to abide by city, county or state regulations.
When the school finally closed the amphitheater in 2010, it gave little reason for its decision. Rumors of demolition mobilized those who clamored for its survival. Some initiated a “Citizens for the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater” Facebook page to put pressure on school officials to let the venue stand.
Lenfestey wrote, “Ever since Paolo has closed Santa Fe has lost ground as the concert epicenter of New Mexico.”
Abeyta said she understands people associate the venue with public concerts but said it’s time to bring it “back to life” with student-focused programming.
“I would entertain a number of ideas, but a concert is not what we envision for the new performing arts center,” she said.
She said a number of casinos around the area now have performing arts venues capable of hosting musical artists.
She said ideally the school can have the venue up and running within three years.
“As soon as we have some time to come back together, we are going to start moving this forward — the evaluation, assessment and engineering pieces — to figure out what we need to fund it and how long it is going to take to get it going,” she said.
