The Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities has been host to arts in various forms for decades. As the home of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, it’s natural to equate the written arts with the organization, but despite holding a chamber music series the venue wasn’t regularly utilized for music events. When Executive Director Katie Wyatt took the helm, she saw an opportunity.

“I grew up going to amazing outdoor concerts at venues like Wolf Trap,” she said. “I loved going to Koka Booth (Amphitheatre) in the summertimes. I loved going to the North Carolina Museum of Art. All gorgeous spaces and gardens with really active concert series.

“Weymouth as a center for the arts and humanities really spans a broad spectrum of all kinds of arts, but we didn’t have anything in jazz. And we didn’t have anything that was a regular outdoor concert series before the jazz series.”

That is the Come Sunday Jazz series, created in partnership with jazz professor from UNC Pembroke, Aaron Vandermeer. Because Southern Pines is a “foodie town,” Wyatt said, the series began as a Sunday brunch event, but they found that it wasn’t as successful as they hoped.

“ We didn’t have great success keeping the eggs hot,” she quipped.

They’re contemplating food offerings again, though lighter fare through local business partners specializing in things like charcuterie boards. But Wyatt said the initial shift away from food allowed the event to be about the music.

“It’s beautiful Jazz music with serious musicians,” she said. “They are either North Carolina top performing acts in jazz or our amazing international and national touring acts that we pick up as they’re touring from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta or on their way to Charleston.”

Wyatt also said she’s proud to bring lesser-known artists who have a lot of potential. A prime example of that is Sara Hanahan, the leader of the Sara Hanahan Quartet, which is playing at the upcoming Come Sunday Jazz event.

Hanahan’s debut album, “Among Giants,” was awarded five stars in Downbeat Magazine and included in their Best Albums of the Year list for 2024. She was also included in NPR Jazz Night in America’s first Youngblood class, which spotlighted five up-and-coming young jazz artists making significant impacts in the jazz world.

In its 2023-24 season, the series also presented Lucy Yeghiazaryan, an Armenian vocalist in the New York City jazz scene called a “leading voice in straight-ahead jazz” by Jazz Arts Charlotte. Wyatt also said the series will see Vanisha Gould this fall during its upcoming season.

“She has such richness and soul in her voice,  that old Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, deep sound,” she said. “An amazing young artist coming in the 25, 26 season.
“I feel like each season now we’ve caught one young female musician at the beginning of their meteoric rise.”

 Originally, they also invited the artists to visit elementary schools, which Wyatt said was a great experience for those children, and they wanted to take it further.

“Now also we’re adding a new program called Opening Acts,” she said. “We’re having local young jazz musicians, high school students and college students at Sandhills Community College, come and perform before the concert as an opener.”

What began with audiences reaching 50 or 60 attendees, has grown to see between 150 and 175 on a regular basis. That success led Weymouth to ask what more they could bring to the venue, and now the Come Sunday Jazz series is only one of the events that the organization has added in recent years. They have re-examined the chamber music events and expanded into a larger classical music series. Wyatt said guests will still find instrumental music from small ensembles in the “classical world,” but more world music and new or modern compositions. The main offering is an evening series called Live from the Great Room, where the artists could range from classical to jazz to rock to folk.

“We just had a Brazilian Guitarist come and perform — she was fantastic, Grace McNally — on that Live in the Great Room series,” said Wyatt. “We’ve had tabla and cello. We’ve had flugelhorn and accordion. We’ve had Venezuelan harp and bass and a singer. So it’s been a really experimental music series.”

Paralleling Wyatt’s hope for more events on the grounds, they also have an occasional Sounds on the Grounds series and started their first annual Peach Grass Festival during the area’s Peach Week last year. This summer, the featured artist will be the Red Clay Ramblers, a North-Carolina based band that has released more than a dozen albums.

Bringing in more music isn’t the only expansion on the horizon for the 46-year-old organization. The staff has grown to 12, creating a need for more office space. The Boyd House has a capacity of around 70 to 80 people. That is a challenge when trying to attract larger acts and for other events that could bring the larger community. Wyatt said that they’re still performing a feasibility study that could eventually lead to a new space for the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

“We need a space that can allow all people to physically access the space,” she said. “This beautiful historic home is very inaccessible, so we are looking to make a new home for the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame even more technologically advanced, interactive and a lot more interesting.”

That echoes one of the principle missions of the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in modern times: inclusivity. It is evident in the expanded music events, but also new programming and outreach efforts to discover even more opportunities to grow and create spaces for the community to gather and participate in shared cultural experiences.

“One of the things I think I’m most proud of as executive director is that we’re sticking with our mission,” said Wyatt. “We’re going to be a place of inclusivity that brings people together through the arts and humanities in the advancement of society.

“We’re a welcome place.”