Leadership / 12.15.23
Harmonies and Home Runs: INTIX Members Reveal Their Most Unforgettable Live Entertainment Moments
Christine Payne
We know there are Swifties out there in INTIX land! Over the years, some of our members have mentioned Taylor Swift when we asked about their favorite artist or live event of all time. Indeed, those we interviewed for our “Getting to Know You” series all have someone or somewhere that stands out as being their “best of the best” in live entertainment. Their most memorable in-person experiences are a mix of musical artists, sporting events and personalities in stadiums, arenas and other venue types around the world.
Julio Alvarado did get a chance to see Taylor Swift long before she became the phenom she is today. But she was not the main reason for attending what he recalls as the best live event he has ever seen.
“It was iHeart 2014,” he says. “I went on Friday the 19th and was sitting second row from the stage, right by the catwalk. [We had] all the artists walking right by [us]. Usher, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj being five feet from you, it was an incredible show. Taylor Swift was there, too. For me and my family to experience all these artists doing all their top songs on one stage on one night was something to remember.”
It didn’t hurt that the event was staged in Julio’s favorite venue.
“T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas gives you pretty much everything you need,” he says. “It has great suites, great loge boxes and great hospitality if you want something like that. It gives you great club seats with your own lounge. When it comes to an arena, it has everything anyone could be looking for.”
Julio with his wife and best friend, Mayumi, and children.
London is home to Lucille Pickering’s favorite venue, or at least the one for which she has the fondest memories.
“I love theatre in London,” Lucille says. “One of my fondest memories was when I was about 14 years old, my mum and I got the train down to London, and we went to Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap,’ which is the longest-running theatre performance in the world. It has been going for about 70 years [as a tour and for almost 50] out of St. Martin’s Theatre. The theater is just like a pretty normal London theater. It is quite small … I remember looking at it and thinking it was so ‘rinky dink,’ but it was an enthralling performance. It is not an elevated story; it's a whodunit, but I remember that venue, that production and that day well.”
With that said, Lucille’s most memorable live event of all time was a performance by Muse at Wembley Stadium over a decade ago.
“The feeling of the music, being at Wembley, and they had all these amazing visuals being presented, like a huge robot on the stage. They had acrobats on what looked like giant balloons. It was just such a performance … I love Muse, but probably my favorite band ever is a band called Rüfüs Du Sol, which is an Australian band. I went to see them live [in August] in Indiana with my cousin. We had a really good time.”
Lucille in Dubai.
Many people who work in ticketing enjoy a wide range of entertainers across multiple genres. As Kaleb Claypool says, “One current artist who I am really looking into right now and really enjoying is Mon Rovia. He is an up-and-coming Afro-Appalachian folk artist. I also can't ever say no to Lizzo or Maddie Zahm or P!nk or Tim McGraw or Sam Smith. There are so many [artists I love], and they are all over the place.”
When it comes to live events, Kaleb’s favorite of all time was Moulin Rouge at the Eccles Theater in downtown Salt Lake City, a venue that he now considers his favorite for a very special reason.
“Although I work with hundreds of venues all over the world, the Eccles Theater is definitely my favorite because that is where I proposed to my fiancé last November 2022.”
One of Kaleb’s most memorable live entertainment experiences involved his own appearance on stage with Tony Award-winning actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth.
“It was really an incredible experience,” Kaleb says. “It was for the 100th anniversary of the Colonial Theater in Idaho Falls, the centennial anniversary … It was a choir [and] we were backing her up for three songs of the concert. While we were waiting for her to come in, her pianist, Michael Orland, who has also been on American Idol as a vocal coach for years, said, ‘Well, let's just have fun.’ We started singing ‘Seasons of Love’ from ‘Rent.’ We were just singing it, having a good time. There are a few solo parts and I just started singing them with everything I had. Kristin walked in and heard it. She looked at the group and she said, ‘OK, that is going in the concert tonight. I got to perform a little solo blurb from that song with her [during the concert]. She swooned as I sang it, and I thought I was going to die. It was incredible.”
Kaleb was part of a hand-selected choir that performed with Kristin Chenoweth and Michael Orland.
Barrett Newman seemed destined for a career on the stage himself when he began taking piano lessons as a child with the last surviving member of John Philip Sousa’s original band — which was on a par with Taylor Swift in the early years of the 20th century. But Barrett’s talents in entertainment were destined not for the stage but for ticketing, where he is a long-time star performer.
“I was never in a band and never reached an advanced level,” he says. “I hit a threshold, but I like doing it. It is a fun thing to do just personally … It is rare that I know a song from start to finish, so it is just kind of noodling around, having fun, chord progressions, arpeggios, and just tinkering, playing a mix of the Beatles or some show tunes. That is why it is only personal, only for me, but I do derive joy from it.”
Barrett also gets joy from attending concerts and Broadway shows, and he considers each one he sees to be the best live event ever “for that day.” The list of bands he has seen is a long one. “There are six that I have seen more than three dozen times apiece: Aerosmith, Cracker, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, Widespread Panic and Zebra … [As for which is my favorite artist], with over a dozen bands that I have seen over 20 times each, it is impossible to nail down one of them. It is whatever is on stage right then and there.”
As for venues, Barrett told us he fell in love with the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., as soon as he sat down for a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar.
“I was sitting in row H, seat 121,” he says without hesitation.
It was not the performance that left such a lasting impression, but the theater where he had just been offered his first full-time job in ticketing management.
“I looked around, looked at the chandelier and said, ‘I have to be here,” Barrett says.
Barrett, bottom left, with Warner Theatre box office staff circa 1994. INTIX members will recognize another familiar face, Bernie Berry (right), in this photo.
Jon Secunda is another INTIX member who has seen his share of elaborate chandeliers over the years, especially when he worked for Lyric Opera of Chicago. But it was in a very different venue when he sat in the audience for what he describes as one of the best live events of his life.
“[The Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago] is a small venue,” he says. “I was standing at a table [in the late ‘90s] and got last-minute tickets. The reason it was cool is because I am a big John Fogerty fan, and it was one of the first shows that he started playing his Creedence Clearwater Revival songs again. He had been embroiled in a big lawsuit for years and years and years and refused to play them. And that night, he played everything. His wife was in the audience. He sang a love song. It was fabulous.”
Jon says, “I do not really have a favorite song … My favorite songwriter and performer is John Fogerty. The Rolling Stones have now moved into a tie with The Beatles [as my favorite band] as I find out more about how Keith Richards constructed his songs.”
As for his favorite venue, that was an easy choice for Jon as it is in his own backyard, and he was involved on the ground floor.
“I was very blessed to be part of the Holland Performing Arts Center,” he says. “That's why I came to Omaha. It is an acoustically perfect performing arts hall, and I have seen so many great events there. I am just so proud to have been involved with building the manifest and the ticketing infrastructures for that venue. Now it's in tremendous hands with Ashley Voorhees, a very dear friend of mine and INTIX board member, who has been there for years now.”
Jon and his wife, Peg, at DePaul University in Chicago for family weekend with their daughter, Sydney.
Garrett Nolan would much rather spend his time watching sports. And, he has had some memorable experiences throughout his life, including attending the Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement in his home state of Massachusetts.
“This was one of the best events [for me] because, for the first time that I can remember in Springfield, there was an event that everybody was talking about,” he says. “It was going to be on national TV. ESPN was covering the enshrinement. I was the coolest person in my social circle for weeks leading up to this because [I was] going to be working this event. And then, of course, everybody tries to ask if you can get tickets. That is just a byproduct of working in this particular industry. It was sold out. A very small number of tickets went on sale to the general public because most of them were sold internally through the Basketball Hall of Fame. Having this nationally televised event was such a big deal in my small neck of the woods.”
Garrett Nolan
Garrett has other fond memories from his days back home, including when the Boston Red Sox broke an 86-year-old drought and won the World Series in 2004. As he told the story, you could still hear the excitement in his voice almost 20 years later.
“In the American League Championship series, the Red Sox were down three games to zero to the Yankees in a best of seven, meaning they would have to win the next four games to advance [to the World Series]. They did. And they did it in unbelievable fashion, including blowing them out in the last game. So, not only did the Red Sox win the World Series, but we also vanquished our rivals in the process. Being in Massachusetts at that time, the amount of camaraderie between people, even people you never thought were baseball fans or sports fans [was incredible],” Garrett says. “I don't think I will ever experience anything like that again with the whole region. All of New England was unified and together. The euphoria when they won was unbelievable.”
When it comes to Garrett’s most memorable career moment, he quickly switches from baseball to football.
“The serious answer for that is being able to work the Super Bowl,” he says. “I have worked two Super Bowls. In terms of being at the actual game itself, that was this past February in Phoenix. The Super Bowl is probably the largest one-day sporting event, certainly in North America, possibly even the world. It is something that anybody playing football or playing sports probably dreams of participating in one day. The reality for me to be able to play professional sports went out the window by the time I was a teenager, but being able to work in live events, I still think that Super Bowl is a goal up there for most people. It was tremendous.”
Editor’s Note: Learn more about your INTIX peers in our “Getting to Know You” series.
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Tags: Leadership , GTKY