news-record.com

GREENSBORO — "Presenting Arts, Preserving History" is the slogan for the Carolina Theatre.

The historic downtown theater will do both with an April 19 fundraising gala featuring a performance by Grammy Award-winning singer and North Carolina native Roberta Flack.

Keith Holliday, theater president and CEO, and board chairman Steve Freyaldenhoven announced the event at a press conference this morning at the theater, 310 S. Greene St.

Called Command Performance 2012, the event will be an annual gala that raises money for the 84-year-old nonprofit theater and showcases downtown Greensboro, they said.

For the April 19 event, the theater will erect a temporary heated pavilion in the parking lot on the Washington Street side of the building where it will host a dinner for 400 guests. It also will host a pre-concert cocktail party for 300 people in the theater mezzanine.

Tickets for the dinner and concert will cost $250 each or $2,500 for a table of 10. Tickets for the cocktail party and concert will be $125.

Tickets to the concert alone will be $95 and $75 each.

Holliday said he hopes the gala will raise $90,000 to $100,000 in operating funds for the theater, which now operates on a $1.2 million budget.

Now in her 70s, Flack was born in Black Mountain and grew up in Arlington, Va. She is best known for the songs "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," "Killing Me Softly Qith His Song," and "Feel Like Makin' Love," as well as duets with Donny Hathaway, including "Where is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You." She was won four Grammy Awards.

In February, she will release an interpretive album of Beatles' classics, and she has several tour dates scheduled in 2012, according to her website.

Tickets will go on sale at noon Friday at the theater box office, 333-2605 and www.carolinatheatre.com.