Aretha Franklin.
Will New Haven get to show the Queen of Soul some R‑E-S-P-E-C‑T on her farewell tour?
Mayor Toni Harp suggested as much when she recently announced her campaign for reelection, when she touted public events her administration has brought and plans to bring to New Haven.
“Special events like the food truck festival, dragon boat races, Operaloosa on the Green, and the New Haven Grand Prix compliment the city’s signature events of International Festival of Arts and Ideas, Shakespeare in the Park, Friday Night Flicks and the Connecticut Open Women’s Tournament and you know hopefully all of you have heard of Aretha Franklin,” Mayor Toni Harp told the hundreds gathered the event last month at the Sound School. “She’s doing her last concert and hopefully we’re going to bring her here. So keep your fingers crossed.”
Fast forward to this week, when the Board of Alders voted to grant approval for a planned concert at the Connecticut Tennis Center stadium in Westville this coming Sept. 16. Officials are keeping mum about who the “major act” is who will headline the concert, leading to one of the more active guessing games in town.
Could it be … the same Aretha Franklin show Harp announced her team is seeking to bring here?
The behind-the-scene buzz this week is that she is indeed the headliner.
Mayor Harp this week declined to confirm any more information about those plans. A spokesman said the city is still trying to bring Franklin to New Haven at some point.
“We can’t confirm who the artist is yet. We’re close,” said Greg Nobile of Seaview Productions, who is promoting the Sept. 16 concert.
The official website for Franklin — whose hit song “Respect” hit number one on the pop charts 50 years ago this month — does not list any upcoming concerts beyond Aug. 26. She has declared that 2017 marks her last year performing live concerts.
Whoever the headliner, the Sept. 16 Westville concert would mark the return of concerts to the 5,000 – 8,000-seat venue after decades without them. The state-funded stadium hosts the CT Tennis Open tournament each August. And then stands unused the rest of the year. Concerts by national touring acts like Moody Blues and Marc Cohn drew crowds there in the stadium’s early years 1990s; some Westville neighbors complained about the traffic, but many others flocked to the shows.
“This is an intriguing idea,” Westville Alder Adam Marchand said of the Sept. 16 concert. “We definitely need to find more revenue streams for the ]tennis] foundation. We need to make more use of that Tennis Center. It’s great to make use of that one concert to see how it goes.”
Markeshia Ricks contributed to this story.