Music & Dance Intelligence
Infinity Music Hall Debuts in Norfolk
Live music and good booze are a great combo, but you don’t always get to enjoy them at the same time when you attend a concert. At the just-opened Infinity Music Hall, an intimate yet grand 300-seat club in a restored 1883 building in Norfolk, CT, you can drink and dance to the music. “This is not going to be a stuffy place. I’m not worried about people spilling beer on the floor,” says Infinity Hall president Dan Hincks. “The building’s been around for 125 years. It can handle it.”
Hinks (left) purchased the former Greenwoods Theater at a foreclosure sale last year, and he has painstakingly restored the upstairs theater with its stained glass windows and dark, patinaed fir wainscoting. He refurbished the original cast-iron-and-wood chairs and added plush seats. “We did not have to worry about any landmarks rules, but we did our best to maintain the historic character.” Although it’s only one week old, the club has a sense of having a pop-music heritage thanks to a series of striking black-and-white photographs in the downstairs lounge and hallway. “They were taken by a local photographer, who worked used to work for Rolling Stone,” says Hincks, pointing to Michael Dobo‘s nostalgic images of the astonishingly young Jackson Browne, Jerry Garcia, Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Raiit.
Hincks plans to showcase popular music of all genres—folk, jazz, blues, rock and classical—and he has already booked Melissa Manchester (November 7) , Spyro Gyra (December 12) and Richie Havens (December 19). “We want this to be such a unique place to play that bigger acts would want to play here because of the space.”
“I toured the whole country for a year, visiting similar places to see what I could emulate and improve upon, says Hincks, who is new to the entertainment business but has a great deal of experience with management as the CEO of Data Management in Farmington, CT. “I know how to organize and motivate people,” he says.” Hincks was thrilled that last Saturday’s opening night with Kenny Rankin sold out, and he is looking forward to opening a separate bistro downstairs sometime this winter. “They’ll be live music there too, and you’ll be able to order a burger or a filet mignon,” he says.
How did he come up with the name for the venue which was most recently known as the Greenwoods Theater. “Infinity is a great concept,” he says, “it means to me infinite possibilities.”
Infinity Music Hall
20 Greenwoods Road/Route 44, Norfolk, CT; 866-666-6306
