Alex Theatre

The Alex Theatre logged a 22% jump in income during the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2011, when the historic venue was coming out of a summer of intrusive renovations. Still, city officials this week said the surge is nothing to sneeze at. When comparing the first quarter results to the same period over the last four years, the theater saw 8% higher than average total income, according to a city report released Tuesday. Plus, while other first quarters had 10 to 15 days of activity, this most recent quarter had 29. “It's another step forward for the Alex Theatre,” said Philip Lanzafame, Glendale's officer for economic development and asset management.

The curtain rose on a new partnership Tuesday as the operators of the Alex Theatre announced they were teaming up with Glendale Community College in an effort to better market campus performances and generate additional revenue for the theater organization. Glendale Arts, the nonprofit that operates the Alex, has opened a ticket outlet on the college campus and will now market the school's performances on its website, which gets about 60,000 hits a month, said interim Chief Executive Elissa Glickman.

The City Council on Tuesday moved to change zoning boundaries in such a way that would prevent the historic Alex Theatre from being turned into a church, recreation center or even a banquet hall should the venue fall into the state's hands and be sold off. The theater has been in limbo since a state mandate forced cities like Glendale to dissolve their redevelopment agencies and send billions in property tax revenues to Sacramento to fill a...

Josh Kleinbaum When Ardashes Kassakhian discusses Armenian music, one name quickly emerges from the conversation -- Aram Khachaturian. "In the United States, we know his work best through vaudeville acts," said Kassakhian, referring to Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance," a vaudeville mainstay. "You think of people spinning plates and Johnny Carson when you hear it, but it's one of most beautiful, jazzy pieces of music. He was insanely popular in the Soviet Union, like the [George]

The nonprofit that manages the Alex Theatre plans to form a task force in the coming months to deal with the impending loss of more than $400,000 a year from the city of Glendale - the result of the state slashing redevelopment powers and possibly taking ownership of the historic venue. The task force will be made up of Glendale Arts board members, staff members and local residents, said Elissa Glickman, who after serving as interim chief executive of the nonprofit that runs the Alex Theatre, was recently given the permanent job. At the first-ever “State of the Alex” presentation to board members on Tuesday, Glickman said the task force will study three areas - fundraising potential, income opportunities, such as rental rates, and operations, including staff costs - and then make recommendations, Glickman said.

Karen S. Kim The older The Alex Theatre gets, the more it seems to look the way it did when its doors first opened in 1925. At least that's what contractors who are restoring the glass poster cases on the exterior of The Alex are hoping. Crews have been removing 25 to 30 coats of paint from the scalloped frames of the poster cases over the past week, trying to reveal the theater's original look. What the crews found was a stainless steel frame below the thick coats of paint applied over the past 77 years.

Media City Ballet (MCB), Natasha Middleton-Kettebekov, artistic director, will present a full-length classical storybook version of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's perennial favorite holiday ballet, The Nutcracker , choreographed and directed by Askar Kettebekov, featuring a large cast of professional dancers, accompanied for the first time by The San Fernando Valley Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of conductor James Domine, with The Taft High...

When things are sounding good for the Alex Theatre, they sound good for the city of Glendale. Their successes go hand-in-hand, which is why the city should celebrate a project that aims to upgrade the theater's sound system. With the Redevelopment Agency's approval Tuesday of $75,000 for an initial phase of upgrading the city-owned theater's 13-year-old sound system, the city has taken an encouraging step forward for the arts in Glendale and the region. Not only will the 80-year-old theater's system be replaced by state-of-the-art technology, but with the upgrade Glendale's arts culture will get a boost.

Gretchen Hoffman It has been a busy nine months at the Alex Theatre. In March, managers of the downtown Glendale landmark reported The Alex was facing an operating deficit of nearly $230,000 and asked the City Council for $200,000 to keep its doors open through the end of the year. By June 30 -- the end of the fiscal year -- they'd eliminated the deficit, and Executive Director Barry McComb reports that The Alex has exceeded its rental- income goal by 26% for the year to date.

No need for sitting alone in your room, come to The Alex Theatre Cabaret Series. The new entertainment concept is going to change the seating area and allow beverage consumption inside the historic theater, Executive Director Barry McComb said. "We'll provide a more intimate performance environment by extending the existing stage out over the first 10 rows of the audience, creating a terrace effect similar to an amphitheater bowl," he said.