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Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. Photo provided.
The Hylton Performing Arts Center will host a virtual 10th anniversary celebration on Saturday, July 18, with live performances and a home-delivered catered meal complete with a bottle of wine, for those who reserved their tickets early. The featured performers will include husband and wife duo Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., original members of The 5th Dimension, and jazz vocalist Darden Purcell, director of jazz studies at George Mason University.
The event, originally scheduled for April 17 at the Hylton Center, celebrates 10 years of providing the Northern Virginia community with high-quality diverse performances and programs. The center’s mission is to stimulate and transform the cultural and economic vitality of the region.
The festivities begin at 6:30 p.m. Tickets including a three-course meal and wine have sold out. However, $50 view-only tickets are still available, which include access to the live broadcast and “Raise Your Paddle” fundraiser for the center’s Education Initiative.
“This year we are holding a one-of-a-kind event,” said Rick Davis, executive director of the Hylton Center and dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. “Through this special event, we are connecting all our donors and friends online in a different, but no less vital, kind of community. We like to say that the arts create community, and that’s perhaps even more true now than ever before, when people can feel so isolated due to the social distancing requirements.”
Davis added that “philanthropic support is so important because it enables us to prepare and plan for the time when our doors are once again open.”
The Hylton Performing Arts Center, part of Mason’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, is located on Mason’s Science and Technology Campus. The facility, along with all Mason performing arts spaces, has been closed since March 13 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
McCoo and Davis have been named the first couple of pop and soul by Billboard. After leaving The 5th Dimension, they recorded “You Don’t Have to be a Star (to Be in My Show),” which won them a Grammy. Purcell is a Washington, D.C.-based jazz vocalist and featured soloist.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit hylton.calendar.gmu.edu/hylton-center-10th-anniversary-virtual-celebration.