BOOKER's BALLAD: Larry Farber became the life of the party by connecting musicians to festive occasions.

AuthorPerlmutt, David

Since his boyhood in Charlotte, Larry Farber has savored the art of breathing life into a great idea. Usually he's got 20 rolling around. They mostly involve music or entertainment, the source of his ravenous passion--and livelihood--since he was 12 playing piano in his first band, The Nightcaps.

Over the years, Farber has performed in many dance bands, even brokering basement gigs for his Nightcaps to make a few bucks. At UNC Chapel Hill in 1972, Farber sold enough $73 round-trip tickets (a discount he wheel-and-dealed with a United Airlines agent) to fill two planes with students to fly to Los Angeles and cheer on the Tar Heels playing in the Final Four that year.

He's owned a popular Charlotte beach music club, and as president of a Charlotte synagogue, he created a ball that ultimately raised more than $1 million for two synagogues and the Jewish Community Center.

But it's Farber's virtuosity of pairing entertainers with audiences that has carved him a musical legacy. In 1986, he opened the Charlotte office of EastCoast Entertainment, and now at 67, he's a senior partner of the rebranded Charlotte-based ECE Entertainment, the country's largest regional entertainment agency. The agency books 10,000 acts a year, from bar mitzvahs and high-end weddings or anniversaries, to festivals and corporate and college events --even the opening of a luxury Ethiopian hotel.

Bookings aren't limited to regional bands, but global stars, too, such as John Legend, Gladys Knight, Jon Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Justin Timberlake, Steely Dan and The B-52s.

In addition to bands, DJs, performance artists and celebrities, ECE recently added comedians in a serious way, acquiring Charlotte-based Comedy Zone Worldwide--another idea that Farber helped nurture. He and Comedy Zone's Brian "Heff' Heffron had talked for years about merging. The marriage took place in January, with the 60 franchised Comedy Zones continuing to operate under that name but falling under ECE Comedy, a new division that Heffron leads.

Now at year's end, after 46 years in the entertainment-booking business, Farber plans to sell his shares back to the company and retire from ECE. But not to dawdle. Instead, he'll pursue more ideas that've had to wait.

"I'm always challenged by creating ideas," Farber says. "When I go to bed, I'm creating. When I wake up, I create. If I'm not doing something different, a little bit of me is dying. It keeps me from suffocating."

For starters, he and son Adam Farber, his oldest of three, have begun upfitting an uptown Charlotte space for a jazz club--Farber's dream for a dozen years. Middle C Jazz is scheduled to open in August.

And much of Farber's newfound time will be devoted to expanding an old idea, perhaps his best--and clearly his favorite.

Country club for music lovers

It spilled onto a table in October 2006 as Farber ate lunch with longtime friend Jeff Davis, a Charlotte lawyer. Thirty years earlier, he had suggested Farber promote concerts at a then-newish concert hall in Charlotte's downtown Spirit Square. Davis had just seen "American Pie" songsmith Eton McLean and was charmed by the theater's acoustics and intimacy. "First thing Larry told me: 'I'm not a promoter,"' Davis recalls. "And then he said he didn't think Charlotte was ready for [such events]."

At that 2006 lunch, Farber declared Charlotte ready. But he still wasn't a promoter.

He offered an idea that had been percolating for years: What if the two recruited friends and friends of friends--mostly deep-pocketed baby boomers--to pony up money for three private concerts a year? They'd hire the biggest music legends they could afford and serve up cocktails and heavy hors d'oeuvres, before and post-concert. Their pitch: a real VIP experience for music lovers whose days of going to concerts...

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