Philly’s Mann Center Celebrates 50 Years, $70M Renovation With Help From Willie Nelson & Neil Young

Neil Young and Willie Nelson’s last-minute addition to the Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts TD Pavilion on Sept. 24 was the sweet icing on the cake for the warm-weather concert facility’s 50^th anniversary “reimagining” and celebration.

“This is a great place,” Young marveled from a stage lined with well-maintained cedar – as is the iconic amphitheater’s walls and roof – for enhanced acoustics. Likely he was also taking in the view of the indoor/outdoor amphitheater’s lushly green and woodsy hillside setting in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. “All the wood,” Young hummed. “You’re lucky folks.”

“One of just two warm-up dates for Farm Aid, after Young’s long stretch in health-related hibernation, his agent and Willie’s agent reached out to book the Mann (as most still call it). “Both artists and agents have a long history of the venue, and the timing was perfect with the Mann’s 50th,” noted VP of Programming and Chief Innovation Officer Toby Blumenthal.

Numerous artist- and patron-friendly upgrades to the non-profit arts center might also have caught Young and Nelson’s attention, making them extra happy to be back in the house. Most tangible are a greatly enlarged and enhanced welcoming plaza for guests and the equally poshed-up backstage accommodations for talent and crew.  Superior speaker arrays and a sharper, brighter LED screen now enhance the show for lawn patrons. And a major upgrade has also been done to the arts center’s separate, second Skyline outdoor-only stage. The latter has become an essential stop for buzz acts like Role Model and MUNA, whose own sold-out shows bookended the reasonably satisfying Nelson/Young visit. (Neil was somewhat tentative; Willie was in good form. They’d switch outcomes at Farm Aid: Young rallied; Nelson – looking ill – barely played and sang half-heartedly.)  

What’s It All About?

The Mann’s 50^th anniversary upgrades were done with a mission: “To advance us into the 21^st century and secure our stature as the East Coast’s premier boutique amphitheater for summer music,“ said the Performing Arts Center’s chief advocate and CEO Catherine (Cathy) Cahill during a pre-show tour of the reimagined venue. “You only turn 50 once,” she mused. “So why not seize the moment?”

“We had a legacy and a story to tell, a need to improve on the artists’ experience and the audience’s expectations,” she continued. And having that big anniversary year in sync with the Philly-centric America250 celebration made the Highmark Mann Performing Arts Center team doubly ambitious.

Besides the plant upgrades, Cahill’s crew commissioned everything from a coffee table book chronicling the facility and its predecessor Robin Hood Dell (Jack McCarthy’s “A Century of Music Under the Stars”), to art installations from Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Project and several special performance works synced to debut this same season.

“We started planning during the COVID-19 Pandemic” (which shut the facility down in 2020) “with a campaign goal of $50 million,” Cahill said. “Then miraculously, it grew to $70 million.”

The actual facility upgrading was spread over the past three years’ “off-cycles” – which have shrunk to just six months annually “as our climate has warmed and we’ve been able to expand our operating season.”

The Grand Tour

Rolling out the red carpet for Pollstar, this chronicler’s pre-show visit began – as would Neil and Willie’s – at a new artist terrace/stage door entrance zone (beautifully floral-ed up by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society), greeted by Blumenthal and VP/General Manager Evan Rogers. We then ventured into a newly transformed backstage environment that used to resemble a “dusty church basement,” Rogers half-joked. Now it feels more like a premium hotel conference facility with comfortable dressing rooms and rehearsal spaces (complete with a grand piano), round-the-clock dining, multiple washers/dryers for laundry needs, and a line of private mini offices with hardwired internet access for tour coordinators to take care of business.  

Backstage wall art traces the local history of music in the park. It stretches back to a still active sister property, the aforementioned Robin Hood Dell (now Dell Music Center), which first opened in Depression-era 1930 (do we sense another celebration looming?) and long thrived on city- and donor-sponsored, free admission Philadelphia Orchestra concerts (though management did let a gangly young Frank Sinatra once croon there, too).

Same was the case for the Mann in its early operating years, with just a handful of soft pop dates (think James Taylor, Barry Manilow) allowed in the mix by major benefactor Fredric R. Mann.

“Our footing in Fairmount Park is unique, makes us far more accessible,” Cahill underscored when we met up. “We’re the only heritage Summer concert facility that’s based in a major city, not an hour or two away like Wolf Trap and Saratoga (both designed by the same architectural firm as the Mann). “And yes, with the 100^th anniversary coming up for the Dell, we’re going to have another reason to celebrate in four years.”

The On-Stage View

The facility tour then took us onto the enormous “Presser Foundation” Mann stage, spec’d out initially as the Philadelphia Orchestra’s full-time summer hangout, albeit with a few opportunities also for drop-ins by the Metropolitan Opera, leading dance companies (with celebrity stars like Mikhail Baryshnikov) and the occasional Broadway musical.

Nowadays the talent stomping the stage is totally diverse, spreading from jam bands to country stars, pop to hip hop.  But the fab Philadelphia Orchestra still returns for two weeks/six shows annually, this special year including a symphonized tribute to hometown jazz legend John Coltrane (“Coltrane 100: Legacy”) with special guest Ravi Coltrane and a stirring, large ensemble, Mann-commissioned oratorio “A Hundred Years On,” contemplating a day at the 1876 Centennial Exposition – which populated the same Fairmount Park zone as the Mann. Regrettably, this well-wrought multimedia production wasn’t captured on video, though a 2027 recording session for the Peter Boyer/Mark Campbell score has been booked at Abbey Road Studios in London.

The Philly Pops (a separate orchestral troupe) also had some interesting nights at the Mann this Summer, backing homies Boyz II Men, lushing up singer/songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov and jamming with the touring Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration band. (Yes, Garcia himself played the Mann more than once, ditto bandmate Bob Weir, but never the complete Grateful Dead.)

Big crowds also turned out this summer for the likes of Jack Johnson, Bob Dylan with Jimmy Vaughn, Death Cab for Cutie (with Philly-based Japanese Breakfast opening), Hilary Duff and the Zac Brown Band with special guest Grace Potter.

Points of Pride

One major differentiator from the newer, larger capacity “cookie cutter” sheds, Blumenthal noted with pride, is the superior sound in his house, carefully nurtured and preserved. “We may be the only legacy facility still maintaining a shell for orchestras.” And even when the shell isn’t in use, “musicians rave about the acoustics,” he added. (Phish frontman) “Trey Anastasio is on record, saying ‘It’s one of the best sounding sheds we’ve ever played.’ “And Trey’s also marveled that bandmates “can hear each other perfectly while playing” – without the need for ear monitors, that is.

Intimacy is another selling point. “Our stage is just three feet off the ground, and we have chairs right up to the lip,” noted Evan Rogers. While this can sometimes make things stressful for the security team, artists like Brandi Carlile have said they love it and that they’re back playing in a nightclub.  A club that seats 4,500 under cover, plus another 8,000 outdoors – on a carefully graded hillside with good sightlines to the stage. 

(And on occasion, the expansive Mann stage becomes a nightclub unto itself – dubbed Downstage at the Mann – seating 200-300. This week it’s being transformed for a jazz cabaret night with Kirk Whalum and the Mann’s resident jazz advisor Gerald Veasley.

More stage insights: While other legacy sheds have let their old school stage rigging rust and rot, “we’ve just redone our counterweight pulley system – alone a million-dollar undertaking,” noted Evan Rogers. A major EDM duo, Odesza, hung “thousands of pounds” of show enhancements on the overhead trusses. Tame Impala took advantage, too. And this Summer the rigging served the scenery flying needs of the Mann’s resident dance company partners Ballet X, premiering yet another special anniversary Mann commission, “The Four Seasons Reimagined.”

The facility clearly embraces the diverse, “Performing Arts Center” component of its name. Music education and community-engagement projects are also part of the mission.

Welcome Home Zone

Next stop on our tour was the brand new, public plaza entry zone for the Highmark Mann. More than quadrupled in size from prior years, what used to be a narrowly confining pathway that pushed arrivals reluctantly towards their seats is now a far more welcoming “town square” where people can congregate, sup and sip. Bathrooms have been redone, greatly enlarged. Bar zones too, though food stations are limited to three, unless you climb up to the more varied food truck circle at the top of the 22-acre campus.

A new stand-alone structure (one of several) on the plaza combines a gift shop and a Highmark Mann “Hall of Fame” boasting fun, interactive touch screen exhibits. Besides that new Mann history book, special anniversary year “take me home” offerings include a build-it-yourself brick kit miniature of the facility and maybe (in the near future) a super customized, Mann-themed Fender Telecaster guitar that they’re showing/teasing with a prototype. “It’s celebrating the Telecaster’s 75^th anniversary as well as our 50^th,” said Rogers. “We’re gauging interest and talking with Fender about making a bunch.”  

The piece-de-resistance of the plaza is a huge (4,600 square foot), trapezoid-shaped digital video wall displaying specially commissioned (of course) kinetic art – and never anything commercial. As the Mann is built on parkland leased from the city, civic values must be maintained. And a good thing too – as this signature landmark “is visible from center city Philadelphia high rises and the 30^th Street train station, noted Rogers, “just as easily as we see center city from our glorious hillside vantage point.”

For patrons enjoying the outside seated (2,000) and lawn (4,000) locations, the big news is a brand-new L-Acoustics speaker system which synchronizes in “perfect time-delayed fashion with the most popular (indoor) sound rigs that artists carry these days,” said Rogers. When this attendee stepped from inside to outside amphitheater zones during the (unofficial) Farm Aid warm-up show, the sonic transition was seamless. And the outside sound was terrific, even superior to the inside house mix, honestly, for opening act Ty Myers – whose less experienced sound engineer laid on too much artificial vocal reverb for the insiders at this naturally resonant concert hall. Willie and Neil’s board mixers, both familiar with the room, then righted the ship.

View from the Top

Last stop on our guided tour was the adjacent, top-of-the-hill Skyline Stage, a totally open-air GA venue with a capacity of 7,500 and a magical “Emerald City”-like view of center city Philly. First opened with a temporary scaffolding stage in 2012 when two other similarly sized outdoor venues were active in town on the Delaware waterfront, the Skyline is now the city’s sole survivor in the category, primarily showcasing the “rising star” artist contingent. And it’s now dug in for the long run with a new, permanent stage house “large enough to host the biggest productions,” said Rogers. “Tate McRae brought her full show here, just before she made the jump to arenas.”

Acts that started at the Skyline then graduated to the TD Pavilion include Sigur Rós (the first Skyline show ever), Vampire Weekend, Maggie Rogers, Philly-rooted Mt. Joy and Dr. Dog, Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Cage the Elephant and Leon Bridges, Blumenthal rattled off. (Yeah, Philadelphia’s always been regarded as a super supportive, nurturing zone for new artists.)  The Skyline also enables alternating stage festivals at the Mann, most notably the annual, two-day Roots Picnic.

 How Has the Season Performed?

One might now expect the Mann to be reporting an especially banner season, given all the local interest in its upgrades and special homegrown performance projects, plus the upped tourist numbers generated by the America250 Birthday.

And it’s certainly gotten a decent scheduling shake from “exclusive booking partner” (since 2020) Live Nation, which also controls the doubly large (25,000 capacity) Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in nearby Camden, N.J. as a more lucrative though far less aesthetically pleasing shed option for artists and patrons.

(A hyperactive but “discerning” concert-going buddy, Jonathan Shapiro, shared that he’s been “three times to the Mann this Summer” but “can’t remember” the last time he crossed the bridge to Camden for a shed show.)

“Still, this summer has been challenging,” allowed Blumenthal. “With all the FIFA World Cup events and the MLB All-Star Game also happening here, some artists decided to skip the Philadelphia market this summer. Sensed too much competition for consumer dollars. Last year we had 75 public campus events. This year, 67.”

 “It’s a constant battle,” added Evan Rogers. “We compete against a variety of venues, whether it’s the Xfinity Mobile Arena in South Philly, the Camden Amphitheater, or markets within the region like Hershey and Atlantic City. But artists continue to come back here because of what this venue means to them and to Philadelphia. This place has soul, history, magic. And all the improvements have only made it better.”

Jonathan Takiff is a veteran music and consumer tech writer with a 45+ year career as a staffer for the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has also circulated on the Knight-Ridder/Tribune Newswire, in numerous national magazines and websites.