Music
Live From the Empire Theatre By Adam Gray
Mark
Rashotte
knows firsthand the catastrophic effect of COVID-19 on the arts community. Rashotte is the owner and operator of the Empire Theatre, whose doors, until recently, have been closed to the public since mid March. A huge slate of concerts, movies, and events, including Summer Music Fest (formerly Rock Fest) were all canceled or postponed. “We decided to shut it down even before the province told us to. We just had to put the safety of our staff, the artists and the public first,” says Rashotte.
While the world ground to a halt, Rashotte continued to go to the theatre everyday. The upstairs recording studio became his office, the 700 seat state-of-the-art theatre became his living room: “Like everyone else, I was on Zoom calls 8-10 hrs a day.” At first, shows were postponed and shuffled from spring to the summer, then fall and eventually into 2021. The livelihood of musicians, crews, technicians and venue staff around the world was turned off overnight. “Normally something just happens to you and you have to react to it; but in the entertainment world, it happened to everybody.
Umbrella, Fall / Winter, 2020 - 14
Everybody is having the same conversation, and the conversation is, ‘Now what are we going to do?’” Within a week, Rashotte and his team at the Empire were spread out across the lobby, figuring out how to answer that question. They decided to refund tickets for anyone that wanted, and they all started throwing out ideas about how to move forward. It didn’t take long before the idea of Live From The Empire, Rashotte’s version of Austin City Limits (the longest running music series in TV history) started to take shape. If the people couldn’t come to the Empire, the Empire would come to the people via live-streamed virtual concerts.
