For a public television station that didn’t even show “Austin City Limits” for years, Connecticut Public Television has become among the biggest producers of music performance on public TV.
Five years of the nationally distributed “Infinity Hall Live,” produced at the popular music clubs in Norfolk and Hartford, are now being joined by a quirkier series filmed entirely in Old Saybrook.
“The Kate,” which premieres on CPTV on Friday, Jan. 22, and will hit the rest of the nation this spring, features several performers captured at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center working in cabaret, pop, blues, jazz and Broadway as well as rock.
Performers from the first season range from Rickie Lee Jones to Ann Wilson of Heart, says producer Jennifer Boyd.
“What we look for are bold performers with something to say,” Boyd says, “artists who are doing something different than their day job. They may be a Broadway star, they may be an actress, they may be a rock ‘n’ roller. And they are looking at doing different work; work that might not make it on commercial television, but that public television audiences might find interesting.”
Ann Wilson, for example, said she had no interest in leaving Heart, but still wanted to explore a project on her own that she calls “The Ann Wilson Thing.”
Jarrod Spector, who has starred in Broadway shows from “Beautiful” to “Jersey Boys,” does a set of cabaret music that swings from Enrico Caruso to Freddie Mercury with some McCartney and U2 thrown in. The actress Rita Wilson steps up to do songs from an upcoming album of original songs that will be released about the time of her season-ending March 25 performance. And Ana Gasteyer, best known for her years making people laugh on “Saturday Night Live” and a series of TV sitcoms, reignited a night club act for the show.
“It’s a very beautiful space,” says Gasteyer, whose episode kicks off the CPTV preview of the series Friday. “It’s a very intimate space, a bit of a throwback vibe.”
And a throwback vibe particularly well suits her material. A 2014 release called “I’m Hip” includes chestnuts like “One Mint Julep” and “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” and an unexpected cover of Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats.”
“Nobody’s dropping a beat to it, there’s no remix,” says Gasteyer of her old-fashioned musical approach that has a gusto borrowed from Betty Hutton while affecting a look she calls “this breezy, throwback mint julep-swilling cool.”
And the stylish historic setting, with some sparse Art Deco designs from the CPTV team, helps deliver that authentic feel.
The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center was built in 1910 as the old Town Hall and Theater. The celebrated Oscar-winning actress and Hartford native lived in the seaside town for 65 years until her death in 2003 at 96.
Six years later, the Colonial Revival town hall that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 opened as a modest, 250-seat performing arts center under her name.
There’s been a series of performances and events listed there since then.
But when board members at The Kate saw the success of CPTV’s homegrown “Infinity Hall Live,” distributed by American Public Television, they were very much interested in getting the same kind of television spotlight, Boyd says.
“We went down and looked at it and we realized there’s a real strong community that supports that cultural arts center that would love to see a national series happen. And we loved the idea of Katharine Hepburn, the association which she represents, all that great stuff.”
Funders came forward — especially Sonny Whelen and Whelen Engineering — and enough was raised to fund the first three years of the series.
And there is grass-roots support as well, Boyd says. “This is a community really thrilled to support this project. What’s unique is that they have 150-plus volunteers who really care about it, those are the folks who come in at a moment’s notice and are so enthused for the next concert, they rush to help out, including making the crew cookies.”
With Season 1 finished and ready to show, work has begun on looking for acts for Season 2, Boyd says. Through it all, she adds, “We use the Hepburnian philosophy: ‘If you obey all the rules, you miss all of the fun.'”
The six one-hour episodes of the inaugural season of “The Kate” will build on the success of “Infinity Hall Live,” which has broadcast 35 shows to date in its four seasons, and will present eight more when Season 5 starts in July.
“Infinity” is seen in 89 percent of the country, Boyd says, and 100 percent of the Top 25 TV markets, with 2.1 million on air and another 1 million tuning in online. That makes it “the most distributed series by CPTV by far,” Boyd says. “There was the ‘Barney’ era,” she says, referring to the kid’s show with the purple dinosaur that had the CPTV stamp. “But we only distributed those shows,” she says. “All of these shows originate in Connecticut, which is huge for us.”
Accordingly, they’ve developed a skilled team — “a whole workforce who are experts in shooting this kind of program. Performance production is unique, with unique problems that took us awhile to learn how to create an efficient, cost-effective model.”
And the performers don’t have to be female, although five of the first season’s six at “The Kate” are. “It’s so much of a coincidence. I keep joking about it, since the majority of our shooting unit is also female,” Boyd says. “Trust me, it’s not intentional.”
Still, it seems the kind of detail that would have made Hepburn herself chuckle.
“THE KATE” premieres Friday, Jan. 22, at 10 p.m. on CPTV and runs Friday nights through March 25. It will be broadcast nationally on public television stations and stream online at thekate.tv in spring.
