WARREN, Ohio – In the year that it has been open, Downbeat Musical Arts Centre has helped several local artists launch a path into the music industry.
The nonprofit company is now seeking to spread the word – and raise funds – with a special concert next month.
Downbeat, 1171 E. Market St. in Warren, is a rarity for the region. It’s a space where budding artists work with seasoned pros who want to help them succeed.
Mariano Longo, a Warren-area native who spent most of his career in Las Vegas, launched Downbeat as a post-retirement project. He uses what he learned as a professional orchestra leader, arranger and pianist to help those who want a similar career.
Downbeat is not a school, a music store or a recording studio, Longo says. It’s a rehearsal studio with state-of-the-art audio equipment and gear. After booking time there, artists need only bring their guitars and their voices.
The staff includes Marty Cohen, vice president; and Gary Del Vecchio, program director.
The fundraising concert will take place from 3-8 p.m. March 1 at St. Demetrios Community Center, 3223 Atlantic St., Warren. Admission is $15 and includes free finger foods by the Saratoga Restaurant and Catering. It will be set up cabaret-style with large tables and standing room. There will also be a bar and a silent auction.
Five bands – most of them with a member who rehearses at Downbeat – will perform.
“Guests will see a wide variety of local talent playing live music in a classy event,” Longo says. “You can have something to eat, enjoy the music, support local talent and help us keep our mission going.”
Each band – Kevin Mazey’s Dimension (uptempo jazz), Bekah’s Groove (jazz pop), Brass Express (a tribute to Chicago and other horn-based artists), Mortisha’s Secret (rock), and the Full Moon All Stars (classic rock, R&B, Motown) – will perform a 40-minute set.
“It’s going to be big and showy and get people’s attention,” Longo says. “[It might help] people understand what we actually do here.”
Bekah’s Groove
Rebekah Mancino of Warren is the artist behind Bekah’s Groove.
The trumpeter started going to Downbeat shortly after it opened. It’s quite different from the classical music world that she had been part of, she says.
Mancino was born and reared in England and attended the Royal Academy of Music in London.
With the help of Longo, Don Yallech of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and others, she is now expanding into her own style that leans into pop, jazz and funk.
Downbeat is the place where it’s taking shape and she’s pleased with how it’s been going.
“The biggest thing that I have found has been the supportive, nonjudgmental, nonsnobbish environment,” she says. “The classical music world can be incredibly snobbish, at least in my experience. Nothing against them. It’s a very different style of playing, a different discipline. But it’s just a completely different world.”
Mancino was born to American parents in England and has both American and English citizenship for that reason.
She and her husband, who is British, moved to Warren in 2006. The couple had no relatives in the Mahoning Valley; they simply knew another American-Brit who was also moving to the Youngstown area at the time, and found the place attractive.
“Mariano was very receptive to my thoughts, my passion, and has just been an awesome, supportive and guiding force in trying to make this vision a reality,” she says. “It’s still very much a work in progress.”
She loosely categorizes her playing style as jazz – but only to an extent. “There are a lot of purists out there that would roll their eyes at me for even using that word,” she says.
It’s upbeat and cheerful, with pop leanings, she says.
“We’ve done a lot of working through it, and I’m so grateful for Mariano’s skills in the arranging department, taking the charts and turning them into something that we can make our own,” she says. “He said, ‘How can we do this? How can we make it more relevant to people around us, and in particular to the younger generation who are not familiar with older charts?’ That’s when we came up with the [musical] time frame that we’ve been working in.”
Yallech, she says, is also propelling the experiment. “He has been wonderful because of his ability to pull up grooves and styles just right, left and center,” she says.
Joining Bekah’s Groove as vocalist for the upcoming concert at St. Demetrios will be Aaron Parker of Warren, who also performs as a solo artist under the moniker Aaairo.
A Standout Career
Longo’s music career started as part of a local rock band when he was in high school.
He would later move to Las Vegas, where he worked with the highest level of performing artists, including The Buckinghams, Gary Puckett, Leslie Gore, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Bobby Rydell, Air Supply and others.
He continues to work as an arranger for orchestras that perform with rock bands, and also as the touring pianist with Las Vegas legend Wayne Newton.
After becoming semiretired a few years ago, he and his wife returned to the Mahoning Valley.
Downbeat, he says, is a launchpad for aspiring professional musicians. It develops a program to help each artist that includes mentoring by other professional musicians.
Work was started this month on the construction of a second sound studio in the building that will be large enough for a small orchestra.
Downbeat’s goal is to turn its artists into full-time professional musicians. Longo and the staff recently began working with two young artists that appear to have what it takes.
“You can just spot them, just like you can spot a kid in high school who you know is going to play college ball, or one that’s in college you know will go pro,” Longo says. “Once we identify them, we ask ‘what can we do to assist them?’”
One of these aspiring artists is Garrett Fry, a Greenville, Pa., resident who plays guitar for Brass Express.
“I met him when he was 14 years old, and he was a phenomenon then,” says Cohen. “I was so excited for him to meet Mariano, because I knew he could help him out.”
Longo first wanted to understand Fry’s career goals.
“I said to him, ‘we’re at a crossroads. Do you want to learn to read music and be able to start making money doing this?’ And once he said Yes, I said now we can come up with an action plan to make that happen. So, I actually hired him, if you will, on a little stipend program to be the guitar player in pro situations. He’ll have to read music just to be in the room with them, because nobody’s going to stop and say, ‘Well, do you know your part?’”
Pictured at top: Downbeat Musical Arts Centre staff members Gary Del Vecchio, Marty Cohen, Beth Glancy and founder Mariano Longo stand in the hall of fame area inside the building. Photos and memorabilia of musical artists from the Valley who achieved fame are mounted on the walls behind them.
