Apollo HTX: Showcases the city’s undiscovered talent

For decades, one of the Houston area’s largest predominantly Black communities has drawn little attention from local arts coverage. 

This summer, the Anderson Center for the Arts set out to change that, launching Apollo HTX, a live talent showcase modeled after the Apollo Theater’s legendary Amateur Night in Harlem.

The inaugural event brought open auditions, a live competition, and cash prizes to a part of Houston that Michelle Bonton, founder and executive director of the Anderson Center for the Arts, says has long lacked cultural infrastructure.

“Being able to have a show like the Apollo, and to have the Anderson Center for the Arts in this particular community, is very, very huge,” Bonton said.

Bonton grew up watching Amateur Night at the Apollo and said the idea for a Houston version had been years in the making. The original, launched in 1934, helped introduce the world to Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Luther Vandross, and Lauryn Hill. Bonton wanted that same spirit of discovery rooted in East Harris County, where she has lived and worked most of her adult life.

“A lot of my firsts happened right here in this community,” she said. “So it’s home for me, and I always think about how I can give back.”

The Anderson Center for the Arts is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to expand arts access in underserved communities and preserve Black history and culture. Bonton previously led the organization when it operated as the Harris County Cultural Arts Council, incorporated in 2018 as the first arts organization based in East Harris County.

Choosing East Harris County over established arts corridors like Third Ward or Midtown was intentional. The center wanted something distinctly Houston while honoring the Harlem original, reflected in the name.

Houston’s nonprofit arts and culture sector generates more than $1.3 billion in annual economic activity and supports more than 21,000 jobs, according to the most recent Arts & Economic Prosperity study by Americans for the Arts & Economic Prosperity study. Spending, Bonton said, has rarely reached this stretch of unincorporated Harris County.

“Houston’s got talent,” Bonton said. “How do we showcase that in a way that aligns with our mission, that pays homage and gives respect to the actual Apollo in New York, but that is also very much Houston? And that’s where the [Apollo] HTX comes in.”

Apollo HTX held three open audition rounds with no entry fee, a deliberate choice to remove cost as a barrier for performers. A selection panel narrowed the field before finalists competed live in adult and youth categories. The Anderson Center partnered with LoKatt Management to bring the concept to life. Winners received cash prizes: $1,500 for the adult category and $500 for the youth category, intended to introduce young performers to the business side of their craft.

Houston singer Troy Mason, who works at FedEx, performs at weddings and other events on the side, won the adult competition singing Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come. He said the decision to compete came after his wife pushed him to stop sitting on his talent.

“I was overwhelmed, really, to tell you the truth,” Mason said of the moment he was announced as the winner. “So many people came out [whom] I invited, they were cheering for me.”

Mason began singing at the age of four, performing in front of neighbors and family, which carried a different weight than past shows. He described a backstage atmosphere of camaraderie among competitors, including impromptu Soul Train lines before they went on.

“The response that I got when I was singing, from the first note, was amazing,” Mason said.  “Everybody was screaming and standing up.” Since winning, Mason said he has booked new studio sessions and an upcoming performance with author Pharrell Phelps.

In the youth category, seventh-grader Logan Gilbert, a student at Rhodes School for the Performing Arts, won for singing Beyoncé’s “Listen.” 

“ELA, reading, choir, and theater, they really helped me to enunciate and pronounce my words better,” he said. “My favorite thing about it is that I get to go up on stage and showcase my talents to the whole entire world.”

Growing up in a supportive church family and a family of singers also helped nurture his talent. His biggest career goal is to one day perform on Broadway. 

“It kind of felt like I was performing at my church,” Gilbert said. “Because all of my church family was here, my missionaries, my grandma, everybody.”

Apollo HTX will return in 2027 as an annual event, with plans to expand the VIP experience. The Anderson Center also plans to build an affordable on-site recording studio as it works to become, as Bonton called it, “the home for Black creative practice” in Houston.