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Monday, December 14, 2015

The Heard

Timucua White House needs you to sign their petition to keep Orlando's loveliest indie venue alive

Posted By Ashley Belanger on Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:11 PM

click to enlarge

The Thing at Timucua White House - PHOTO BY JEN CRAY

Photo by Jen Cray
The Thing at Timucua White House

If you've ever been to Timucua White House, you know that most of the concerts hosted there are generously offered free to the attending public - despite the fact that the musicians hosted there are frequently world-renowned pioneers, sometimes even debuting new music in the intimate venue as a world premiere.

It's a special place (which is part of why the Civic Minded 5 host many of their shows there), designed by special, invested music fans, and when you wind your way up the staircase, you understand that the stage is more than just a stage, it's a warm hearth for musicians who immediately feel at home upon it. That's mostly due to the hospitable mastermind behind it all, proprietor Benoit Glazer (who you may know as Cirque du Soleil conductor), who built the intimate venue in his actual home and extends that welcoming nature to any soul who wanders in to catch the music.

Although the venue has operated for years without city interference, the City of Orlando recently contacted the Glazer family to apply for a conditional use permit to continue acting as an arts and music venue. What they need is for people who live within a couple miles of the White House (2000 S. Summerlin Blvd.) to fill out the survey below and return it to the White House or the law office of Doty Solik (121 S. Orange Ave, suite 1500, ask for Mary Solik if necessary):

PDF TAFI_Wadeview_Survey_solik_clean.pdf

If you don't live in the immediate neighborhood of the White House, you can also help by visiting timucua.com and following the instructions on the homepage. Glazer is scheduled to meet with the city on Dec. 22, so signatures must be collected within the next week.

People really looking to give back can be the most helpful by volunteering to go door-to-door in the neighborhood to collect signatures of support from Timucua's nearest neighbors. Here's the message directly from the Glazers on the survey:

Hello neighbor,

We, the Glazer family, have been presenting free concerts, open to the public, for over 15 years.
In 2007, we moved into our newly built, self designed home in Wadeview Park so that we could offer a better experience for our guests as well as for our performers, who come from all over the world. The room has 125 seats, over three levels, and has become a great incubator of new art and music, with well over 2000 world premieres, music of all genres, plays, independent films, poetry, and more.
We went to great lengths to build a space that is warm and welcoming, has great acoustics and equipment, and is very well soundproofed. Hopefully, you have to be inside the house to hear anything at all when we have a concert. We hold our events at 7:30pm, and most are over by 9:30pm.
In the near future, we would love to build a new lobby and green room, so that our guests could spend more time inside (as opposed to chatting in the backyard), and thus minimizing even more the impact of our events on our neighbors. The lobby would house the artwork, and would be open to everyone, as are all our concerts.

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