A spiritual experience awaits Phoenix music lovers willing to make the 90-mile journey to Arizona’s newest concert space.
The big picture: La Rosa, inside a restored Benedictine Monastery Chapel, is a 750-person live performance venue in Tucson’s Sam Hughes neighborhood.
- It’s the latest project from Charlie Levy — the concert promoter behind downtown Phoenix’s Crescent Ballroom, The Van Buren and Valley Bar — and longtime Hotel Congress entertainment director David Slutes.
State of play: The chapel was rechristened in October when Tucson indie-mambo band Orkesta Mendoza took the stage.
- The venue has hosted rock bands, orchestral sets, folk acts and a sold-out show for Arizona bands-gone-big The Format and The Gin Blossoms.
Flashback: Levy, who sold his interest in The Van Buren to LiveNation in 2021, told Axios he didn’t intend to open another venue but agreed to help Slutes scout a Tucson location.
- Yes, but: When he saw the church, he threw “caution to the wind,” Levy said.
- The “head nun’s” quarters would make a perfect dressing room. The balcony where she’d keep an eye on mass could be converted to a viewing suite for performers’ families. And the chapel’s domed ceilings and cathedral columns provided an obvious placement for the stage.
What they’re saying: “I said, ‘This is too perfect. We have to do it,'” Levy recalls. “It really has the bones to be one of the greatest performance spaces in the Southwest.”…