The Great Neck Park District Board of Commissioners last week agreed to pay more than $10,000 to provide the musical accompaniment for six of its shows this summer.
Park district acting Superintendent Peter Renick said the commissioners’ approval of the $10,060.50 contract with Pennsylvania-based Clair Backline during their meeting last Thursday, was instrumental toward ensuring the success of the remainder of the park district’s free summer concert series.
“It’s … one of the parts of having these shows,” Renick said. “You can’t perform without the instruments. We’re lucky to have some of the (area’s) better quality shows and that’s what we need to do to get them here.”
The contract will go toward providing the “back line” musical instruments for most of the remaining shows in the park district’s 2012 Steppingstone Waterside Theatre, Renick said.
“‘Back line’ is the instruments that the performers use,” the acting superintendent said. “Most of the bands, they travel around the country and unless they have their own tour bus, they don’t bring their own instruments.”
Those instruments can range from a drum set or guitar amplifiers to a baby grand piano, Renick said.
“Normally, the higher quality performers you get, that’s when you need back line,” he said.
The performances commissioners agreed to purchase the “back line” instruments for are an Aug. 4 show by Poco, an Aug. 11 tribute to Frankie Valli by Let’s Hang On, an Aug. 26 performance by Howard Leshaw and the Golden Land Orchestra, Neil Berg’s 100 Years of Broadway on Sept. 1 and a performance by Brian Howe, the former lead singer of Bad Company, on Sept. 2.
An Aug. 12 Persian Concert starring Faramarz Assef will also be provided with Great Neck Park District funded back line instruments.
That show has been produced through a partnership with the Town of North Hempstead and will be held at North Hempstead Park at 175 West Shore Road in Port Washington.
All other shows in the free summer concert series are held at Steppingstone Park in the Village of Kings Point.
In other business, park district commissioners purchased a new skid loader for $61,383.
“This is an emergency purchase,” Renick said. “We talked at the last work session, we’ve been talking (about this) actually the last three or four work sessions.”
Renick said the park district’s existing skid loader was damaged last year.
“It was going to cost a fortune to have repaired,” he said. “We had money budgeted in this year’s budget for replacement, or partial, so we’re getting a credit of $5,000 for a machine that nobody can use right now.”
The new skid loader was purchased through a state contract, Great Neck Park District Commissioner Robert Lincoln Jr. said.
“If you had snowfall, without this we’d have really big trouble,” Renick said of the new skid loader. “If you had any storm damage … you’d need it tomorrow.”
Commissioners also approved an $11,320 contract for maintenance of the ice-making machine at the Parkwood Sports Complex’s Andrew Stergiopolous Ice Rink.
“That’s the electric ice chiller,” Renick said. “That’s our annual service agreement. If you don’t have (the contract), you aren’t going to be able to run your rink.”
