Spring arts preview
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We’ve gone over what’s coming up through the end of March to make our put-it-on-the-calendar list. We’re sharing it with you.
- Kathleen Allen Arizona Daily Star
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Artistically speaking, the first month of 2017 explodes.
There’s the Tucson Fringe Theater Festival, which will present 19 shows Jan. 13-15. If you haven’t taken in a fringe fest, you are missing out. It’s a gluttony of theater, some thrilling, some not so much, but all new and daring and gutsy.
And the Tucson Desert Song Festival, which begins Jan. 18 and continues through Feb. 5, coordinates with local dance and music organizations to bring in world-class performers. Find more information on that festival Sunday, Jan. 15, in the Star’s Home + Life section.
The Tucson Jazz Festival, Jan. 12-22, will have the town hopping with world-class talent that includes performances presented by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and UA Presents.
That’s just the beginning to the next three months, which is full to overflowing with amazing performing arts.
Sure, it’s impossible to buy tickets to everything. That’s where we come in. We’ve gone over what’s coming up through the end of March to make our put-it-on-the-calendar list. We’re sharing it with you — but be forewarned: Some of these happen on the same dates. Oh, what a quandary ...
The Tucson Fringe Theater Festival is six years old.
And it’s showing its age.
The annual theaterpalooza, which unfolds here Jan. 13-15, just keeps getting bigger.
Fringe festivals — there are about 70 around the world, all independent and unique — present plays written by tested and untested playwrights.
Among the signs of the Tucson Fringe’s growth:
- In 2011, there were 12 entries. This year, there were 40.
- In that inaugural year, six plays were presented over a weekend, all by Tucsonans. There are 19 this year, and the majority of playwrights are from other states — that’s an indication of the local event’s growing attraction and prestige.
- About 400 attended the festival in that first year. Last year, attendance was at 800, says Maryann Green, the president of the Tucson Fringe board.
“It’s really exciting,” says Green about the festival. “We’re bringing something to Tucson that no one else is bringing.”
Here’s how fringe festivals work: A playwright submits an entry, it’s thrown into a hat and participants are randomly picked. For an artist, it means the chance to expand and experiment.
“We give them a place to take an artistic risk,” says Green.
For an audience, it means unfiltered, uncensored, brand new theater at an affordable price. The plays run the gamut: comedies, dramas, musicals, even magic. Some pieces may soar, some may not; that’s part of the thrill of a fringe fest.
The Tucson festival’s growth is a good sign: It has the potential to become a major arts event that draws playwrights, actors and, especially, tourists. And that means a hefty economic boost for Tucson.
Don’t scoff.
The granddaddy of all Fringe Fests, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, features artists and audiences from around the world. A study found that the 2015 festival had a $347 million impact on Edinburgh, Scotland, and attendance topped 1 million, the majority of those visitors to the city.
Granted, Edinburgh’s fest is 70 years old, takes place over three weeks and last year the massive event had 50,266 performances of 3,269 shows in 294 venues.
But hey, who’s to say Tucson’s festival can’t grow like that?
Economic impact is important, but fringe festivals offer something much more important than money: art.
“Art is a nation’s most precious heritage,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said when he created the National Endowment for the Arts.
“For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.”
It’s a glut of theater with the Fringe Fest, but Green says with a good spread sheet and careful planning, you can see them all.
Green is a veteran Fringe Fester — she first got hooked on them when she attended the Edinburgh festival years ago. Her best advice for catching plays: Pick the three or four you definitely want to see and build your schedule around them.
Picking three or four might be tough. The offerings sound enticing. Among them:
- “Meet Your Realtor” is about an aging real estate agent who battles the market and sabotaging competitors to try make a living selling homes. The comedy is by Sherrie Martin from Spokane, Washington, and she knows what she’s talking about: she’s a Realtor who hustles for the next sale.
- “Vaudeville” comes from the imagination of Salt Lake City-based Elias “Lefty” Caress, who incorporates magic, comedy and all sorts of mysterious elements into his show.
- Shamed Olympic ice skater Tonya Harding and her quest for redemption after her involvement with an attack on a fellow skater are at the center of,“The Love Song of Tonya Harding.” It’s written and performed by New York playwright Clara Elser.
- Lion Fludd hails from Las Vegas, where he works his magic for a living. In his piece, “The Hustle,” which he also performs, he tells about his journey “from the streets to the strip,” according to press materials.
If you go
The 2017 Tucson Fringe Theater Festival will be staged at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St., Zuzi, 738 N. 5th Ave.; The Flycatcher, 360 E. 6th St., and The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St. Tickets are $10 each; passes are also available at various prices. For a full schedule and descriptions of the plays, go to tucsonfringe.org
Did you know
The Tucson Fringe Theater Festival was founded by long-time friends and University High School graduates Sara Habib and Yasmine Jahanmir. Habib manages a travel company in Tucson and Jahanmir is working on her Ph.D. in theater at University of California Santa Barbara. Both continue to be deeply involved in the non-profit festival.
Rubén C. González is old. He’s young. He’s a man, a woman. Hopeless and optimistic. A cop, a criminal.
González is all those and more in his solo show, “La Esquinita, USA,” opening in previews Saturday, Jan. 14 at Arizona Theatre Company.
“La Esquinita” — it means “little corner” — is about 11 people living in once-thriving town that collapsed after the factory that had lured them there with jobs closed. Lencho, the narrator, has watched as the dreams of the townspeople were destroyed by an economy that afforded them no breaks, and by a soulless business that saw bigger bottom lines with a move to China.
The play premiered in 2010, but González had started writing it years before that, inspired by a class of troubled high schoolers he taught in L.A.
“I first started to write it in 2007, right before the housing bubble burst,” he says in a phone interview from San Antonio, where he, his wife and children recently moved.
“You could feel this change happening and then, post-pop, people were losing their homes. So what I was writing was reinvigorated.”
And it seems as though little has changed since then, says González.
“We are still suffering from the lack of jobs. … The jobs in the big factories are gone and they aren’t coming back.”
That kind of environment breeds crime, resentment, despair.
“In this play, it’s about how it affects a community,” he says.
Through Lencho we meet such characters as Daniel, the 19-year-old meth addict at the center of the story; a Vietnam vet who lost his legs in the war; an elderly palsied woman who has known sorrow but chooses joy; a couple of policemen, and a young black man trying to outrun them.
Directed by Kinan Valdez, “La Esquinita” premiered at a small L.A. theater in 2010. Then it opened in Oakland, California. It has since traveled across the country and back again.
While all the characters are black or Latino, González has found that it speaks to audiences of all colors. “I did it in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and the audience was all white,” he recalls. “They stuck around for the questions and answers. An older woman came up to me and said, ‘You blew our minds — in a very good way.’”
He has found that the play resonates for all age groups, as well.
“It’s a very universal piece, and it speaks with a voice that youth don’t generally get to see. And when parents see it, they go ‘oh, that’s what my kid’s going through.’”
Ultimately, he said, that’s what theater, and this play can do: help us realize what it takes “to understand somebody else for you to become a better human being.”
The poetic writing, combined with González’s acting chops — he’s been in movies, trained at the London Academy of the Arts, and in plays across the country — has won high praise for the production.
This, from the Des Moines Register, is typical:
“González fully inhabited his characters, at once frantic, touching and achingly familiar in a narrative of corporate heartlessness, marginal lives, and eventual redemption.”
If you go
What: Arizona Theatre Company's "La Esquinita."
Playwright and performed by: Rubén C. González.
When: Previews are 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14; 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday Jan. 17 through Thursday, Jan. 19. Opening is 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29. continues through Feb. 4.
Where: Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.
Tickets: $30-$75.
Reservations/information: 622-2823 or arizonatheatre.org
Running time: About 75 minutes, with no intermission.
- By Chuck Graham Special to the Arizona Daily Star
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Jazz will flow in a broad river of diverse flavors during the 11-day HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival opening Jan. 12 at the Rialto Theater with the barrier-busting difference-maker saxophonist Kamasi Washington accompanied by seven musicians from his own Los Angeles collective, the West Coast Get Down.
The young festival already has a national presence, featuring a dozen headline acts that include jazz masters George Benson and Dee Dee Bridgewater, diverse viewpoints stretching from Storm Large (formerly of Pink Martini) and her band Le Bonheur to fabled Israeli clarinetist Anat Cohen working with the Hollywood-connected Howard Alden on guitar —plus a 12-hour downtown showcase of Tucson’s hottest players on Martin Luther King Day.
“Ticket sales are way ahead of last year,” said festival director Yvonne Ervin, who loves to make friends on every social media platform she can find. “Last year we had 5,000 friends on Facebook. This year it’s almost 9,000.”
From the TJF’s first days, Ervin has emphasized booking many different kinds of jazz. Just to prove it, this year she added funky jazzy Tower of Power to the mix. That show sold out a couple of weeks ago.
Bringing in names from jazz’s future is also an Ervin specialty. Washington is this year’s defiant headline grabber, following rule-breakers Robert Glasper and Snarky Puppy from festivals past.
Washington exploded on the scene last year following his release of the eponymous three-disc 172-minute recording, “The Epic.”
“The spirit of jazz is very much connected to human nature,” Washington said on the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “There is lots more to jazz than chords and rhythm. There is an openness to this spirit, and once people feel that openness, they always want it.”
Asked which artist Ervin would recommend if a person could only see one show, she quickly said “Dee Dee Bridgewater, because she has such a deep history in jazz, and she’s so versatile... singing everything from Ella Fitzgerald to Billie Holiday.”
Another artist deeply rooted in family tradition, earning respect for “reinvigorating the Great American Songbook” is John Pizzarelli, son of guitar legend Bucky Pizzarelli. John is down for two shows with his classic cool combo accompanied by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Jan. 13 and 14, in the Tucson Music Hall.
The festival’s instantly popular day of free jazz featuring the city’s hottest players, always held on Martin Luther King Day, is now called the Downtown Jazz Fiesta with Rio Nuevo as its sponsor. The main outdoor stage will showcase all the Old Pueblo’s Latin jazz groups.
Tucson impresario and trumpet player Tony Frank will enhance this free spirit by leading a jam for local and national musicians who happen by at a different venue each night of the festival. The schedules for the downtown fiesta and Frank’s jams are listed on tucsonjazzfestival.org
If you go
What: Tucson Jazz Festival.
When: Jan. 12-22.
Where: Various venues.
Tickets: $15-$99.
Details and ticket purchase: tucsonjazzfestival.org
The fifth annual Tucson Desert Song Festival kicks off Wednesday, Jan. 18, for its nearly three-week run that crisscrosses Tucson and involves everyone from Ballet Tucson to the Arizona Early Music Society.
Over those 19 days, fans of art songs and classically-trained voices can experience 11 distinctive vocal events — several of them performed more than once — with leading vocalists whose stars continue to rise on regional, national and international stages.
The 2017 lineup also includes veteran Broadway-Hollywood actress Bernadette Peters, a Drama Desk, Golden Globe and Tony Award winner who will have a 10-piece band backing her when she comes to Centennial Hall with UA Presents on Jan. 21.
Arizona Opera is mounting Puccini’s much-loved “Madama Butterfly” (Jan. 28-29), while True Concord Voices & Orchestra is taking on Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah,” with Grammy-award winning dramatic baritone Richard Paul Fink (three performances Jan. 27, 28 and 29). This will, quite possibly, be the first fully professional performance of the work in Tucson. The piece has been done a number of times over the years by the University of Arizona using students and a community choir.
The Tucson Symphony Orchestra is mounting the biggest work in Brahms’ repertoire, “A German Requiem,” and the TSO premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s “A Survivor From Warsaw,” a work for men’s chorus and orchestra (Jan. 20 and 22).
As a complement to the concert, TSO is teaming up with the Tucson International Jewish Film Festival to present the documentary “Drawing Against Oblivion” on Sunday, Jan. 15, at the Jewish Community Center, The film traces artist Manfred Bockelmann’s series of charcoal works of childhood Holocaust victims. The film has won numerous awards .
After the screening, TSO principal trombonist Michael Becker and pianist Russell Ronnebaum will perform Maurice Ravel’s “Kaddisch,” followed by a conversation with operations and orchestra manager Ben Nisbet, the music director of St. Andrew’s Bach Society, and Olivia Miller, exhibitions curator at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Sunday’s event begins at 7 p.m. at the JCC, 3800 E. River Road. Admission is $9 through tucsonjcc.org
The festival closes with Ballet Tucson’s “Love and Other Dances,” featuring baritone Bernardo Bermudez and soprano Victoria Robertson. You have five chances to see the show between Feb. 3 and 5.
See more festival stories in next week’s Caliente and the Jan. 15 Home + Life section.
5th annual Tucson Desert Song Festival
• 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18: Opening lecture-recital, Crowder Hall at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music, North Park Avenue and East Speedway; free.
• 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19: Tucson Guitar Society recital with mezzo-soprano Angela Brower and French guitarist Judicaël Perroy, UA Holsclaw Hall; $25, $10 for students at tucsonguitarsociety.org
• Friday, Jan. 20: Tenor Rufus Müller masterclass, 11 a.m. at UA Holsclaw Hall; free. Tucson Symphony Orchestra Brahms German Requium, 7:30 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., $30-$86 at tucsonsymphony.org Concert repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22.
• Jan. 21: Soprano Heidi Stober masterclass, 2 p.m. at Tucson Symphony Center, 2175 N. Sixth Ave.; free. Bernadette Peters with UA Presents, 8 p.m. at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. on the University of Arizona campus; $35-$100 through ticketmaster.com
• Jan. 22: Tenor Rufus Müller and lutenist Daniel Swenberg with Arizona Early Music Society, 3 p.m. at Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St. TSO Brahms German Requiem, 2 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall.
• Jan. 26: Kristin Dauphinais hosts “New Directions in Art Song” lecture/recital, noon, Holsclaw Hall; free. Soprano Heidi Stober accompanied by pianist Alan Pierello with Arizona Opera, 7 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; $25, $15 students through azopera.org
• Jan. 27: True Concord Voices & Orchestra with baritone Richard Paul Fink in “Elijah,” 7:30 p.m. at Catalina Foothills High School Auditorium, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive; $25-$40 through trueconcord.org Concert repeats 7 p.m. Jan. 28 at Valley Presbyterian Church, 2800 S. Camino del Sol, Green Valley; and 3 p.m. Jan. 29 at Catalina United Methodist Church, 2700 E. Speedway.
• Jan. 28: Tucson Desert Song Festival K-12 Songwriting Competition Finalist Showcase, 2:30 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; free. Arizona Opera’s “Madama Butterfly,” 7:30 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall; $30-$125 through tickets.azopera.org Performance repeats at 2 p.m. Jan. 29. True Concord “Elijah,” 7 p.m. in Green Valley.
• Jan. 29: Arizona Opera “Madama Butterfly,” 2 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall. True Concord “Elijah,” 3 p.m. at Catalina United Methodist Church.
• Jan. 31: Tenor Rene Barbera recital presented by Arizona Opera, 7 p.m. at UA’s Holsclaw Hall, University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music; $25, $15 students at tickets.azopera.org
• Feb. 1: Soprano Tony Arnold joins Enso Quartet with Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, 7:30 p.m. at Leo Rich Theater, 260 S. Church Ave. $30, $10 students at arizonachambermusic.org/tickets
• Feb. 2: Master class with pianist Kevin Murphy, vocal program director at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, with UA Fred Fox School of Music. 3 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; free.
• Feb. 3: “Love is Here to Stay” with Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute vocalists, with UA Fred Fox School of Music. 7 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; free.
• Feb. 3-5: Ballet Tucson’s “Love and Other Dances” featuring baritone Bernardo Bermudez and soprano Victoria Robertson, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 4 and 1 and 5 p.m. Feb. 5 at Stevie Eller Dance Theatre on the UA campus; $45 at ballettucson.org
Special guests and their hosts
Tucson Desert Song Festival features 22 guest artists — Angela Brower, Bernadette Peters Cheryl Lindquist, Daniel Montenegro, Bernardo Bermudez, Elizabeth Futral, Judicaël Perroy, Marco Cammarota, Heidi Stober, Kristin Dauphinais, Heather Phillips, Kevin Murphy, Rena Harms, Rebecca Ringle, Nathaniel Olson, René Barbera, Sandra Lopez, Trey Smagur, Tony Arnold, Refus Müller, Richard Paul Fink and Victoria Robertson — performing with 10 organizations — Ravinia Steans Music Institute of Illinois; Arizona Early Music Society, Arizona Opera, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, Ballet Tucson, Tucson Guitar Society, University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, True Concord Voices & Orchestra and UA Presents — over 19 days. The festival runs Jan. 18-Feb. 5.
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The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music plans the Saxophone Artist Series. On Jan. 18, saxophonist Jonathan Hulting-Cohen and harpist Jennifer R. Ellis will perform at the school. That one’s free, as is the Timothy McAllister/Liz Ames recital on Jan. 24 at Crowder Hall. He plays sax, she piano. Then, Jan. 22 it’s Clarinet Day. The afternoon will be full of performances (players are invited to join the “Clarinet Choir”). That one’s free, too.
More classical music:
• Classical guitarist Carlos Bonell has advised Paul McCartney, recorded more than 20 albums and performed around the world. On Jan. 14, he joins equally-impressive classical guitarist Brad Richter for a concert at the Vail Theatre of the Arts.
• The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music celebrates individual instruments with a series of events. The school teams with up with UA Presents for the Tucson Cello Congress. Cello players — more than 100 of them — from around the Southwest will participate. It will culminate in a recital at Crowder Hall on Jan. 14, featuring soloist Matt Haimovitz.
• And on Jan. 15, the school hosts the Tucson Bass Jam with clinics all day. That evening there’s a free performance of a bass orchestra piece. It’s in Room 170 of the music school.
• The school is also giving us a chance to hear Joseph Alessi. He’s the principal trombonist for the New York Philharmonic and a trombone professor at Juilliard — and a visiting prof at the UA’s music school this semester. He’ll be playing with pianist Martha Locker at Crowder Hall on Jan. 19. It’s free.
• The Arizona Friends of Chamber Music will totally indulge us Jan. 18 with the St. Lawrence Quartet, which will perform works by Beethoven, Haydn and John Adams at the Leo Rich Theatre.
• Here’s a chance for a euphoric experience: The Tucson Symphony Orchestra performs Brahms Requiem Jan. 20-22 as part of the Song Festival. Soprano Heidi Stober, baritone Andrew Craig Brown and the TSO Chorus all help to make for what will surely be a soaring event.
• Lute lovers will be in heaven Jan. 22 with “A Musical Banquet” at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. It features a program of lute songs performed by tenor Rufus Müller and Daniel Swenberg on Renaissance guitar and lute. It’s part of the Desert Song Fest and an Arizona Early Music Society concert.
• True Concord Voices & Orchestra has a massive project coming up, and we are the better for it: The group teams up with the Tucson Desert Song Fest to perform Mendelssohn’s epic “Elijah” Jan. 27-29. It features a 50-piece orchestra, 70 vocalists and 13 soloists — including Grammy-winning baritone Richard Paul Fink. It’s at Catalina Foothills High School Jan. 27; Green Valley’s Valley Presbyterian Church Jan. 28; and Catalina United Methodist Church Jan. 29.
• Arizona Friends of Chamber Music’s annual Winter Chamber Music Festival is March 12-19 at the Leo Rich Theatre. Choosing is impossible: Poulenc, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven are on the programs. And there will be a world premiere of a piece by Pierre Jalbert. And, of course, some of the finest musicians from around the world will perform. I guess we’ll just have to do it all.
• Making life even more delectable: UA Presents brings the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields to Centennial Hall on March 28. They’ll be performing Haydn’s Symphony No. 26 D minor “Lamentatione,” and a few pieces by Shostakovich.
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Arizona Opera has performed Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” eight times since its inaugural 1972-73 season. There’s a reason Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” is so popular — it is beautiful. The company presents the opera for the ninth time Jan. 28-29 at Tucson Music Hall, also as part of the Song Festival. It’s about a geisha in love with an American navy officer who turns out to be quite the cad. It all leads to tragedy, of course.
More opera:
Zane Grey’s novels were once the thing to read. Now, his “Riders of the Purple Sage” could be the thing to see. This will be the first world premiere produced by Arizona Opera. It’s set in Zane’s wild west and adapted by composer Craig Bohmler. It’s Feb. 25-26 at Tucson Music Hall.
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• Ballet Tucson‘s Winter Concert is a collaboration with the Tucson Desert Song Festival. Opera stars Bernardo Bermudez and Victoria Robertson will sing as the dancers perform. It’s at the Stevie Eller Dance Theatre Feb. 3-5. Miss that and you can catch the company’s Spring Concert, also at the Stevie Eller, March 18-19.
• The UA School of Dance is considered one of the best. See why: The UA Dance Ensemble and the Arizona Choir perform Stravinsky’s ballet-cantata, “Les Noces” Feb. 15-19 at the Stevie Eller.
• The gorgeous Dance Theatre of Harlem performs at Centennial Hall Feb. 17 courtesy of UA Presents. This is a don’t-miss for dance lovers.
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Bernadette Peters is kind of legendary on Broadway. And we’ll get a chance to hear her sing with her distinctive voice on Jan. 21 at Centennial Hall as part of the Tucson Desert Song Festival. Thank UA Presents for the gift.
More Music:
• The Tucson Jazz Festival launches Jan. 12 with sax player Kamasi Washington at the Rialto. Among the highlights of this year’s event: Tucson Symphony Orchestra and jazz great John Pizzarelli, Jan. 14-15 at Tucson Music Hall; crooner Storm Lodge Jan. 13 at the Fox Tucson Theatre; George Benson at the Fox on Jan. 19; and Grammy-winning vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater joins the Tucson Jazz Institute’s Ellington Band on Jan. 20 at the Fox. The fest continues through Jan. 22. This is another of those events that’s impossible to cherry pick — we want to see it all.
• Any chance we get to hear mezzo soprano Korby Myrick sing, we take it. And if it’s Gershwin she’s crooning, we really can’t resist. Jan. 21, she joins Alexander Tentser for a performance of Gershwin tunes at Rincon Congregational Church.
• The Scottish band Daimh brings its fiddle, bagpipes and gorgeous voices to St. Francis in the Foothills Church on Feb. 4, courtesy of In Concert! Tucson.
• Blues and funk lovers will swoon Feb. 8 when Bettye Lavette — she’s called “The Godmother of Soul” — performs at the Fox Feb. 8. It’s a UA Presents event.
• Tucson Symphony’s SuperPops goes country Feb. 11-12 with music by the likes of Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton and a host of others. It’s at the Tucson Music Hall.
• The Branford Marsalis Quartet and vocalist Kurt Elling will jazz it up at the Fox on Feb. 14. Now that’s how to spend Valentine’s Day. Also stopping in at the theater: Michael Feinstein (Feb. 23), whose musical interpretation of tunes from the Great American Songbook has won him wild praise, and the incomparable Rosanne Cash on March 5.
• Get ready for St. Paddy’s day with a concert by the Irish band Goitse, which is bringing along step dancers for the gig. In Concert! Tucson brings the group to the Berger Performing Arts Center March 8.
• Trumpet great Terell Stafford blows his horn better than most. Hear for yourself: He’s at Crowder Hall March 10, thanks to UA Presents.
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Broadway in Tucson brings in “Dirty Dancing” (Jan. 24-29), the musical version of the movie of the same name; “Motown” (Feb. 21-26), which uses the story of Motown founder Berry Gordy to sing some of the finest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever recorded; and the Grammy- and Tony-winning “Kinky Boots” (March 14-19). Packed with songs by Cyndi Lauper and loaded with a big heart, “Kinky Boots” is the one we are most excited about seeing. All productions are at Centennial Hall.
More theater:
• The powerful Tony-winning drama “Proof,” by David Auburn, is on stage at the Tornabene Theatre Feb. 5-26, courtesy of Arizona Repertory Theatre. The gripping play is about the daughter of a brilliant mathematician who struggles with the possibility that she has inherited his madness. Arizona Rep also stages Shakespeare’s comedy “Twelfth Night” March 6-April 1.
• Something Something Theatre Company goes back to 1914 and a Catholic reformatory school to make a point about women’s rights in Monica Byrne’s ”What Every School Girl Should Know.” You can’t get much more timely than a play about women’s rights. It’s Feb. 9-26 at the Community Playhouse.
• Irish playwrights are among the best (George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, to name a few). The list includes Martin McDonagh, who wrote “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” which Live Theatre Workshop stages Feb. 16-March 25. The dark comedy (do the Irish do any other kind?) is about a young man who sees a chance to escape the oppressive life in his small Irish town when a Hollywood film crew shows up to shoot a documentary about Inishmaan.
• Digna Theater is a new company that aims to stage works that address human rights issues. And its first play, “Digna,” by Patricia Davis, does just that: It’s about the Mexican lawyer Digna Ochoa who was assassinated as a result of her civil rights activities. It’s Feb. 23-March 5 at the YWCA of Southern Arizona.
• Betcha can’t stop yourself from singing along: Arizona Theatre Company stages “Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash” at the Temple of Music and Art March 4-25.
• Another astounding Irish playwright — Enda Walsh — is represented in The Rogue Theatre’s production of the tragicomedy, “Penelope,”
• March 2-19. It’s his take on a piece of Homer’s “Odyssey.” Penelope is Odysseus’s wife, who waits patiently for her husband to return from the long, dangerous trip he’s on. Walsh imagines that, while Odysseus is away, four men vie for Penelope’s attention. The action takes place in an empty swimming pool. There are many compelling reasons to see this, not the least is which how the Rogue will give us that pool in their cozy theater.
• Invisible Theatre takes on Israel Horovitz’s powerful drama, “Lebensraum,” Feb. 7-19. The play takes place in modern-day Germany. Six million Jews have been invited to return home, where jobs and benefits await them. Some cheer, others don’t.
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The Peking Acrobats defy gravity and, seemingly, anatomy, with their twists and turns and leaps. You can catch their performance at Centennial Hall on Feb. 12. Thank UA Presents for that gift.
More for the younger set:
• The TSO teams up with Tucson Regional Ballet for the symphony’s “Aladdin and Other Tales” Jan. 28 at the Leo Rich Theatre. Classic fairy tales are told to the music of Ravel, Prokofiev and others. And TSO’s Feb. 25 Just for Kids tells the story of Tonya the Tortoise with the symphony’s Wind Quintet. That’s at the Tucson Symphony Center.
• The Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance, which does some of the coolest arts events in our neck of the woods, joins different groups for its “Musical Magic for Kids,” happening the first Saturday of every month. Feb. 4, the Civic Orchestra of Tucson brings its music and its instruments to the Oro Valley Children’s Museum. And March 4, the Music and Dance Academy leads the storytelling and music at the Oro Valley Council Chambers.
• There’s little to envy about Phoenix, but here’s one thing: Childsplay Theatre Co. The troupe stages pristine productions for children. It is bringing its version of “The Cat in the Hat” to the Fox for one performance only, Feb. 21.
• When it comes to keeping children entertained, Live Theatre Workshop’s Family Theatre is tops. “Cat-Man and Kid Sparrow, The Fantastic Crime-Fighting Duo” plays through March 12. It’s by Stephen Frankenfield, LTW’s assistant director of Family Theatre, and the music is by Tucsonan David Ragland.
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Presenting organizations
Arizona Early Music Society, 721-0846, azearlymusic.org
Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, 577-3769, arizonachambermusic.org
Arizona Friends of Early Music, 721-0846, azearlymusic.org.
Arizona Opera, 293-4336, azopera.org,
Arizona Repertory Theatre, 621-1162, theatre.arizona.edu
Arizona Theatre Company, 622-2823, arizonatheatre.org
Ballet Tucson, 903-1445, ballettucson.org
Broadway in Tucson, 1-800-745-3000, broadwayintucson.com
Childsplay Theatre Co., 1-480-921-5700, Childsplayaz.org
Digna Theater, 245-6879, on Facebook.
Fox Tucson, 547-3040, foxtucson.com.
Fred Fox School of Music, 621-1655, music.arizona.edu
In Concert! Tucson, 981-1475, inconcerttucson.com.
Invisible Theare, 882-9721,invisibletheatre.com
Live Theatre Workshop, 327-4242, livetheatreworkshop.org
Rincon Congregational Church, 745-6237, rinconucc.org.
The Rogue Theatre, 551-2053, theroguetheatre.org
Something Something Theatre Company, 468-6111, somethingsomethingtheatre.com
Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance, 797-3959, saaca.org.
True Concord Voices & Orchestra, 401-2651, trueconcord.org
Tucson Jazz Festival, 428-4853, tucsonjazzfestival.org
Tucson Symphony Orchestra, 882-8585, tucsonsymphony.org
University of Arizona School of Dance, 621-1162, dance.arizona.edu
UA Presents, 621-3341, uapresents.org,
Vail Theatre of the Arts, 879-3925, vtota.vail.k12.az.us
- Updated
Valley Presbyterian Church, 2800 S. Camino del Sol, Green Valley.
Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway.
Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive.
Catalina United Methodist Church, 2700 E. Speedway.
Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. on UA campus.
Community Playhouse, 1881 N. Oracle Road.
Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.
Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St.
Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Ave.
Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway.
Oro Valley Children's Museum ,11015 N. Oracle Road.
Oro Valley Council Chambers, 11000 N La Canada Drive.
Rialto Theatre, 318 E Congress St.
Rincon Congregational Church, 122 N. Craycroft Road.
The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Blvd.
St. Francis in the Foothills, 4625 E. River Road.
Stevie Eller Dance Theatre, 1737 E. University Blvd.
Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.
Tucson Convention Center, including the Leo Rich Theatre and the Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
Tucson Symphony Center, 2175 N 6th Ave.
University of Arizona Fine Arts Complex, which includes the Tornabene Theatre, the Marroney Theatre, and Crowder Hall in the Fred Fox School of Music, North Park Avenue and East Speedway.
Vail Theatre of the Arts, 10701 E Mary Ann Cleveland Way.
YWCA of Southern Arizona, 525 Bonita Avenue.
- Kathleen Allen Arizona Daily Star
Artistically speaking, the first month of 2017 explodes.
There’s the Tucson Fringe Theater Festival, which will present 19 shows Jan. 13-15. If you haven’t taken in a fringe fest, you are missing out. It’s a gluttony of theater, some thrilling, some not so much, but all new and daring and gutsy.
And the Tucson Desert Song Festival, which begins Jan. 18 and continues through Feb. 5, coordinates with local dance and music organizations to bring in world-class performers. Find more information on that festival Sunday, Jan. 15, in the Star’s Home + Life section.
The Tucson Jazz Festival, Jan. 12-22, will have the town hopping with world-class talent that includes performances presented by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and UA Presents.
That’s just the beginning to the next three months, which is full to overflowing with amazing performing arts.
Sure, it’s impossible to buy tickets to everything. That’s where we come in. We’ve gone over what’s coming up through the end of March to make our put-it-on-the-calendar list. We’re sharing it with you — but be forewarned: Some of these happen on the same dates. Oh, what a quandary ...
The Tucson Fringe Theater Festival is six years old.
And it’s showing its age.
The annual theaterpalooza, which unfolds here Jan. 13-15, just keeps getting bigger.
Fringe festivals — there are about 70 around the world, all independent and unique — present plays written by tested and untested playwrights.
Among the signs of the Tucson Fringe’s growth:
- In 2011, there were 12 entries. This year, there were 40.
- In that inaugural year, six plays were presented over a weekend, all by Tucsonans. There are 19 this year, and the majority of playwrights are from other states — that’s an indication of the local event’s growing attraction and prestige.
- About 400 attended the festival in that first year. Last year, attendance was at 800, says Maryann Green, the president of the Tucson Fringe board.
“It’s really exciting,” says Green about the festival. “We’re bringing something to Tucson that no one else is bringing.”
Here’s how fringe festivals work: A playwright submits an entry, it’s thrown into a hat and participants are randomly picked. For an artist, it means the chance to expand and experiment.
“We give them a place to take an artistic risk,” says Green.
For an audience, it means unfiltered, uncensored, brand new theater at an affordable price. The plays run the gamut: comedies, dramas, musicals, even magic. Some pieces may soar, some may not; that’s part of the thrill of a fringe fest.
The Tucson festival’s growth is a good sign: It has the potential to become a major arts event that draws playwrights, actors and, especially, tourists. And that means a hefty economic boost for Tucson.
Don’t scoff.
The granddaddy of all Fringe Fests, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, features artists and audiences from around the world. A study found that the 2015 festival had a $347 million impact on Edinburgh, Scotland, and attendance topped 1 million, the majority of those visitors to the city.
Granted, Edinburgh’s fest is 70 years old, takes place over three weeks and last year the massive event had 50,266 performances of 3,269 shows in 294 venues.
But hey, who’s to say Tucson’s festival can’t grow like that?
Economic impact is important, but fringe festivals offer something much more important than money: art.
“Art is a nation’s most precious heritage,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said when he created the National Endowment for the Arts.
“For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.”
It’s a glut of theater with the Fringe Fest, but Green says with a good spread sheet and careful planning, you can see them all.
Green is a veteran Fringe Fester — she first got hooked on them when she attended the Edinburgh festival years ago. Her best advice for catching plays: Pick the three or four you definitely want to see and build your schedule around them.
Picking three or four might be tough. The offerings sound enticing. Among them:
- “Meet Your Realtor” is about an aging real estate agent who battles the market and sabotaging competitors to try make a living selling homes. The comedy is by Sherrie Martin from Spokane, Washington, and she knows what she’s talking about: she’s a Realtor who hustles for the next sale.
- “Vaudeville” comes from the imagination of Salt Lake City-based Elias “Lefty” Caress, who incorporates magic, comedy and all sorts of mysterious elements into his show.
- Shamed Olympic ice skater Tonya Harding and her quest for redemption after her involvement with an attack on a fellow skater are at the center of,“The Love Song of Tonya Harding.” It’s written and performed by New York playwright Clara Elser.
- Lion Fludd hails from Las Vegas, where he works his magic for a living. In his piece, “The Hustle,” which he also performs, he tells about his journey “from the streets to the strip,” according to press materials.
If you go
The 2017 Tucson Fringe Theater Festival will be staged at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St., Zuzi, 738 N. 5th Ave.; The Flycatcher, 360 E. 6th St., and The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St. Tickets are $10 each; passes are also available at various prices. For a full schedule and descriptions of the plays, go to tucsonfringe.org
Did you know
The Tucson Fringe Theater Festival was founded by long-time friends and University High School graduates Sara Habib and Yasmine Jahanmir. Habib manages a travel company in Tucson and Jahanmir is working on her Ph.D. in theater at University of California Santa Barbara. Both continue to be deeply involved in the non-profit festival.
Rubén C. González is old. He’s young. He’s a man, a woman. Hopeless and optimistic. A cop, a criminal.
González is all those and more in his solo show, “La Esquinita, USA,” opening in previews Saturday, Jan. 14 at Arizona Theatre Company.
“La Esquinita” — it means “little corner” — is about 11 people living in once-thriving town that collapsed after the factory that had lured them there with jobs closed. Lencho, the narrator, has watched as the dreams of the townspeople were destroyed by an economy that afforded them no breaks, and by a soulless business that saw bigger bottom lines with a move to China.
The play premiered in 2010, but González had started writing it years before that, inspired by a class of troubled high schoolers he taught in L.A.
“I first started to write it in 2007, right before the housing bubble burst,” he says in a phone interview from San Antonio, where he, his wife and children recently moved.
“You could feel this change happening and then, post-pop, people were losing their homes. So what I was writing was reinvigorated.”
And it seems as though little has changed since then, says González.
“We are still suffering from the lack of jobs. … The jobs in the big factories are gone and they aren’t coming back.”
That kind of environment breeds crime, resentment, despair.
“In this play, it’s about how it affects a community,” he says.
Through Lencho we meet such characters as Daniel, the 19-year-old meth addict at the center of the story; a Vietnam vet who lost his legs in the war; an elderly palsied woman who has known sorrow but chooses joy; a couple of policemen, and a young black man trying to outrun them.
Directed by Kinan Valdez, “La Esquinita” premiered at a small L.A. theater in 2010. Then it opened in Oakland, California. It has since traveled across the country and back again.
While all the characters are black or Latino, González has found that it speaks to audiences of all colors. “I did it in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and the audience was all white,” he recalls. “They stuck around for the questions and answers. An older woman came up to me and said, ‘You blew our minds — in a very good way.’”
He has found that the play resonates for all age groups, as well.
“It’s a very universal piece, and it speaks with a voice that youth don’t generally get to see. And when parents see it, they go ‘oh, that’s what my kid’s going through.’”
Ultimately, he said, that’s what theater, and this play can do: help us realize what it takes “to understand somebody else for you to become a better human being.”
The poetic writing, combined with González’s acting chops — he’s been in movies, trained at the London Academy of the Arts, and in plays across the country — has won high praise for the production.
This, from the Des Moines Register, is typical:
“González fully inhabited his characters, at once frantic, touching and achingly familiar in a narrative of corporate heartlessness, marginal lives, and eventual redemption.”
If you go
What: Arizona Theatre Company's "La Esquinita."
Playwright and performed by: Rubén C. González.
When: Previews are 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14; 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday Jan. 17 through Thursday, Jan. 19. Opening is 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29. continues through Feb. 4.
Where: Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.
Tickets: $30-$75.
Reservations/information: 622-2823 or arizonatheatre.org
Running time: About 75 minutes, with no intermission.
- By Chuck Graham Special to the Arizona Daily Star
Jazz will flow in a broad river of diverse flavors during the 11-day HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival opening Jan. 12 at the Rialto Theater with the barrier-busting difference-maker saxophonist Kamasi Washington accompanied by seven musicians from his own Los Angeles collective, the West Coast Get Down.
The young festival already has a national presence, featuring a dozen headline acts that include jazz masters George Benson and Dee Dee Bridgewater, diverse viewpoints stretching from Storm Large (formerly of Pink Martini) and her band Le Bonheur to fabled Israeli clarinetist Anat Cohen working with the Hollywood-connected Howard Alden on guitar —plus a 12-hour downtown showcase of Tucson’s hottest players on Martin Luther King Day.
“Ticket sales are way ahead of last year,” said festival director Yvonne Ervin, who loves to make friends on every social media platform she can find. “Last year we had 5,000 friends on Facebook. This year it’s almost 9,000.”
From the TJF’s first days, Ervin has emphasized booking many different kinds of jazz. Just to prove it, this year she added funky jazzy Tower of Power to the mix. That show sold out a couple of weeks ago.
Bringing in names from jazz’s future is also an Ervin specialty. Washington is this year’s defiant headline grabber, following rule-breakers Robert Glasper and Snarky Puppy from festivals past.
Washington exploded on the scene last year following his release of the eponymous three-disc 172-minute recording, “The Epic.”
“The spirit of jazz is very much connected to human nature,” Washington said on the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “There is lots more to jazz than chords and rhythm. There is an openness to this spirit, and once people feel that openness, they always want it.”
Asked which artist Ervin would recommend if a person could only see one show, she quickly said “Dee Dee Bridgewater, because she has such a deep history in jazz, and she’s so versatile... singing everything from Ella Fitzgerald to Billie Holiday.”
Another artist deeply rooted in family tradition, earning respect for “reinvigorating the Great American Songbook” is John Pizzarelli, son of guitar legend Bucky Pizzarelli. John is down for two shows with his classic cool combo accompanied by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Jan. 13 and 14, in the Tucson Music Hall.
The festival’s instantly popular day of free jazz featuring the city’s hottest players, always held on Martin Luther King Day, is now called the Downtown Jazz Fiesta with Rio Nuevo as its sponsor. The main outdoor stage will showcase all the Old Pueblo’s Latin jazz groups.
Tucson impresario and trumpet player Tony Frank will enhance this free spirit by leading a jam for local and national musicians who happen by at a different venue each night of the festival. The schedules for the downtown fiesta and Frank’s jams are listed on tucsonjazzfestival.org
If you go
What: Tucson Jazz Festival.
When: Jan. 12-22.
Where: Various venues.
Tickets: $15-$99.
Details and ticket purchase: tucsonjazzfestival.org
The fifth annual Tucson Desert Song Festival kicks off Wednesday, Jan. 18, for its nearly three-week run that crisscrosses Tucson and involves everyone from Ballet Tucson to the Arizona Early Music Society.
Over those 19 days, fans of art songs and classically-trained voices can experience 11 distinctive vocal events — several of them performed more than once — with leading vocalists whose stars continue to rise on regional, national and international stages.
The 2017 lineup also includes veteran Broadway-Hollywood actress Bernadette Peters, a Drama Desk, Golden Globe and Tony Award winner who will have a 10-piece band backing her when she comes to Centennial Hall with UA Presents on Jan. 21.
Arizona Opera is mounting Puccini’s much-loved “Madama Butterfly” (Jan. 28-29), while True Concord Voices & Orchestra is taking on Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah,” with Grammy-award winning dramatic baritone Richard Paul Fink (three performances Jan. 27, 28 and 29). This will, quite possibly, be the first fully professional performance of the work in Tucson. The piece has been done a number of times over the years by the University of Arizona using students and a community choir.
The Tucson Symphony Orchestra is mounting the biggest work in Brahms’ repertoire, “A German Requiem,” and the TSO premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s “A Survivor From Warsaw,” a work for men’s chorus and orchestra (Jan. 20 and 22).
As a complement to the concert, TSO is teaming up with the Tucson International Jewish Film Festival to present the documentary “Drawing Against Oblivion” on Sunday, Jan. 15, at the Jewish Community Center, The film traces artist Manfred Bockelmann’s series of charcoal works of childhood Holocaust victims. The film has won numerous awards .
After the screening, TSO principal trombonist Michael Becker and pianist Russell Ronnebaum will perform Maurice Ravel’s “Kaddisch,” followed by a conversation with operations and orchestra manager Ben Nisbet, the music director of St. Andrew’s Bach Society, and Olivia Miller, exhibitions curator at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Sunday’s event begins at 7 p.m. at the JCC, 3800 E. River Road. Admission is $9 through tucsonjcc.org
The festival closes with Ballet Tucson’s “Love and Other Dances,” featuring baritone Bernardo Bermudez and soprano Victoria Robertson. You have five chances to see the show between Feb. 3 and 5.
See more festival stories in next week’s Caliente and the Jan. 15 Home + Life section.
5th annual Tucson Desert Song Festival
• 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18: Opening lecture-recital, Crowder Hall at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music, North Park Avenue and East Speedway; free.
• 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19: Tucson Guitar Society recital with mezzo-soprano Angela Brower and French guitarist Judicaël Perroy, UA Holsclaw Hall; $25, $10 for students at tucsonguitarsociety.org
• Friday, Jan. 20: Tenor Rufus Müller masterclass, 11 a.m. at UA Holsclaw Hall; free. Tucson Symphony Orchestra Brahms German Requium, 7:30 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., $30-$86 at tucsonsymphony.org Concert repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22.
• Jan. 21: Soprano Heidi Stober masterclass, 2 p.m. at Tucson Symphony Center, 2175 N. Sixth Ave.; free. Bernadette Peters with UA Presents, 8 p.m. at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. on the University of Arizona campus; $35-$100 through ticketmaster.com
• Jan. 22: Tenor Rufus Müller and lutenist Daniel Swenberg with Arizona Early Music Society, 3 p.m. at Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St. TSO Brahms German Requiem, 2 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall.
• Jan. 26: Kristin Dauphinais hosts “New Directions in Art Song” lecture/recital, noon, Holsclaw Hall; free. Soprano Heidi Stober accompanied by pianist Alan Pierello with Arizona Opera, 7 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; $25, $15 students through azopera.org
• Jan. 27: True Concord Voices & Orchestra with baritone Richard Paul Fink in “Elijah,” 7:30 p.m. at Catalina Foothills High School Auditorium, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive; $25-$40 through trueconcord.org Concert repeats 7 p.m. Jan. 28 at Valley Presbyterian Church, 2800 S. Camino del Sol, Green Valley; and 3 p.m. Jan. 29 at Catalina United Methodist Church, 2700 E. Speedway.
• Jan. 28: Tucson Desert Song Festival K-12 Songwriting Competition Finalist Showcase, 2:30 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; free. Arizona Opera’s “Madama Butterfly,” 7:30 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall; $30-$125 through tickets.azopera.org Performance repeats at 2 p.m. Jan. 29. True Concord “Elijah,” 7 p.m. in Green Valley.
• Jan. 29: Arizona Opera “Madama Butterfly,” 2 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall. True Concord “Elijah,” 3 p.m. at Catalina United Methodist Church.
• Jan. 31: Tenor Rene Barbera recital presented by Arizona Opera, 7 p.m. at UA’s Holsclaw Hall, University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music; $25, $15 students at tickets.azopera.org
• Feb. 1: Soprano Tony Arnold joins Enso Quartet with Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, 7:30 p.m. at Leo Rich Theater, 260 S. Church Ave. $30, $10 students at arizonachambermusic.org/tickets
• Feb. 2: Master class with pianist Kevin Murphy, vocal program director at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, with UA Fred Fox School of Music. 3 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; free.
• Feb. 3: “Love is Here to Stay” with Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute vocalists, with UA Fred Fox School of Music. 7 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall; free.
• Feb. 3-5: Ballet Tucson’s “Love and Other Dances” featuring baritone Bernardo Bermudez and soprano Victoria Robertson, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 4 and 1 and 5 p.m. Feb. 5 at Stevie Eller Dance Theatre on the UA campus; $45 at ballettucson.org
Special guests and their hosts
Tucson Desert Song Festival features 22 guest artists — Angela Brower, Bernadette Peters Cheryl Lindquist, Daniel Montenegro, Bernardo Bermudez, Elizabeth Futral, Judicaël Perroy, Marco Cammarota, Heidi Stober, Kristin Dauphinais, Heather Phillips, Kevin Murphy, Rena Harms, Rebecca Ringle, Nathaniel Olson, René Barbera, Sandra Lopez, Trey Smagur, Tony Arnold, Refus Müller, Richard Paul Fink and Victoria Robertson — performing with 10 organizations — Ravinia Steans Music Institute of Illinois; Arizona Early Music Society, Arizona Opera, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, Ballet Tucson, Tucson Guitar Society, University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, True Concord Voices & Orchestra and UA Presents — over 19 days. The festival runs Jan. 18-Feb. 5.
The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music plans the Saxophone Artist Series. On Jan. 18, saxophonist Jonathan Hulting-Cohen and harpist Jennifer R. Ellis will perform at the school. That one’s free, as is the Timothy McAllister/Liz Ames recital on Jan. 24 at Crowder Hall. He plays sax, she piano. Then, Jan. 22 it’s Clarinet Day. The afternoon will be full of performances (players are invited to join the “Clarinet Choir”). That one’s free, too.
More classical music:
• Classical guitarist Carlos Bonell has advised Paul McCartney, recorded more than 20 albums and performed around the world. On Jan. 14, he joins equally-impressive classical guitarist Brad Richter for a concert at the Vail Theatre of the Arts.
• The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music celebrates individual instruments with a series of events. The school teams with up with UA Presents for the Tucson Cello Congress. Cello players — more than 100 of them — from around the Southwest will participate. It will culminate in a recital at Crowder Hall on Jan. 14, featuring soloist Matt Haimovitz.
• And on Jan. 15, the school hosts the Tucson Bass Jam with clinics all day. That evening there’s a free performance of a bass orchestra piece. It’s in Room 170 of the music school.
• The school is also giving us a chance to hear Joseph Alessi. He’s the principal trombonist for the New York Philharmonic and a trombone professor at Juilliard — and a visiting prof at the UA’s music school this semester. He’ll be playing with pianist Martha Locker at Crowder Hall on Jan. 19. It’s free.
• The Arizona Friends of Chamber Music will totally indulge us Jan. 18 with the St. Lawrence Quartet, which will perform works by Beethoven, Haydn and John Adams at the Leo Rich Theatre.
• Here’s a chance for a euphoric experience: The Tucson Symphony Orchestra performs Brahms Requiem Jan. 20-22 as part of the Song Festival. Soprano Heidi Stober, baritone Andrew Craig Brown and the TSO Chorus all help to make for what will surely be a soaring event.
• Lute lovers will be in heaven Jan. 22 with “A Musical Banquet” at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. It features a program of lute songs performed by tenor Rufus Müller and Daniel Swenberg on Renaissance guitar and lute. It’s part of the Desert Song Fest and an Arizona Early Music Society concert.
• True Concord Voices & Orchestra has a massive project coming up, and we are the better for it: The group teams up with the Tucson Desert Song Fest to perform Mendelssohn’s epic “Elijah” Jan. 27-29. It features a 50-piece orchestra, 70 vocalists and 13 soloists — including Grammy-winning baritone Richard Paul Fink. It’s at Catalina Foothills High School Jan. 27; Green Valley’s Valley Presbyterian Church Jan. 28; and Catalina United Methodist Church Jan. 29.
• Arizona Friends of Chamber Music’s annual Winter Chamber Music Festival is March 12-19 at the Leo Rich Theatre. Choosing is impossible: Poulenc, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven are on the programs. And there will be a world premiere of a piece by Pierre Jalbert. And, of course, some of the finest musicians from around the world will perform. I guess we’ll just have to do it all.
• Making life even more delectable: UA Presents brings the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields to Centennial Hall on March 28. They’ll be performing Haydn’s Symphony No. 26 D minor “Lamentatione,” and a few pieces by Shostakovich.
Arizona Opera has performed Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” eight times since its inaugural 1972-73 season. There’s a reason Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” is so popular — it is beautiful. The company presents the opera for the ninth time Jan. 28-29 at Tucson Music Hall, also as part of the Song Festival. It’s about a geisha in love with an American navy officer who turns out to be quite the cad. It all leads to tragedy, of course.
More opera:
Zane Grey’s novels were once the thing to read. Now, his “Riders of the Purple Sage” could be the thing to see. This will be the first world premiere produced by Arizona Opera. It’s set in Zane’s wild west and adapted by composer Craig Bohmler. It’s Feb. 25-26 at Tucson Music Hall.
• Ballet Tucson‘s Winter Concert is a collaboration with the Tucson Desert Song Festival. Opera stars Bernardo Bermudez and Victoria Robertson will sing as the dancers perform. It’s at the Stevie Eller Dance Theatre Feb. 3-5. Miss that and you can catch the company’s Spring Concert, also at the Stevie Eller, March 18-19.
• The UA School of Dance is considered one of the best. See why: The UA Dance Ensemble and the Arizona Choir perform Stravinsky’s ballet-cantata, “Les Noces” Feb. 15-19 at the Stevie Eller.
• The gorgeous Dance Theatre of Harlem performs at Centennial Hall Feb. 17 courtesy of UA Presents. This is a don’t-miss for dance lovers.
Bernadette Peters is kind of legendary on Broadway. And we’ll get a chance to hear her sing with her distinctive voice on Jan. 21 at Centennial Hall as part of the Tucson Desert Song Festival. Thank UA Presents for the gift.
More Music:
• The Tucson Jazz Festival launches Jan. 12 with sax player Kamasi Washington at the Rialto. Among the highlights of this year’s event: Tucson Symphony Orchestra and jazz great John Pizzarelli, Jan. 14-15 at Tucson Music Hall; crooner Storm Lodge Jan. 13 at the Fox Tucson Theatre; George Benson at the Fox on Jan. 19; and Grammy-winning vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater joins the Tucson Jazz Institute’s Ellington Band on Jan. 20 at the Fox. The fest continues through Jan. 22. This is another of those events that’s impossible to cherry pick — we want to see it all.
• Any chance we get to hear mezzo soprano Korby Myrick sing, we take it. And if it’s Gershwin she’s crooning, we really can’t resist. Jan. 21, she joins Alexander Tentser for a performance of Gershwin tunes at Rincon Congregational Church.
• The Scottish band Daimh brings its fiddle, bagpipes and gorgeous voices to St. Francis in the Foothills Church on Feb. 4, courtesy of In Concert! Tucson.
• Blues and funk lovers will swoon Feb. 8 when Bettye Lavette — she’s called “The Godmother of Soul” — performs at the Fox Feb. 8. It’s a UA Presents event.
• Tucson Symphony’s SuperPops goes country Feb. 11-12 with music by the likes of Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton and a host of others. It’s at the Tucson Music Hall.
• The Branford Marsalis Quartet and vocalist Kurt Elling will jazz it up at the Fox on Feb. 14. Now that’s how to spend Valentine’s Day. Also stopping in at the theater: Michael Feinstein (Feb. 23), whose musical interpretation of tunes from the Great American Songbook has won him wild praise, and the incomparable Rosanne Cash on March 5.
• Get ready for St. Paddy’s day with a concert by the Irish band Goitse, which is bringing along step dancers for the gig. In Concert! Tucson brings the group to the Berger Performing Arts Center March 8.
• Trumpet great Terell Stafford blows his horn better than most. Hear for yourself: He’s at Crowder Hall March 10, thanks to UA Presents.
Broadway in Tucson brings in “Dirty Dancing” (Jan. 24-29), the musical version of the movie of the same name; “Motown” (Feb. 21-26), which uses the story of Motown founder Berry Gordy to sing some of the finest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever recorded; and the Grammy- and Tony-winning “Kinky Boots” (March 14-19). Packed with songs by Cyndi Lauper and loaded with a big heart, “Kinky Boots” is the one we are most excited about seeing. All productions are at Centennial Hall.
More theater:
• The powerful Tony-winning drama “Proof,” by David Auburn, is on stage at the Tornabene Theatre Feb. 5-26, courtesy of Arizona Repertory Theatre. The gripping play is about the daughter of a brilliant mathematician who struggles with the possibility that she has inherited his madness. Arizona Rep also stages Shakespeare’s comedy “Twelfth Night” March 6-April 1.
• Something Something Theatre Company goes back to 1914 and a Catholic reformatory school to make a point about women’s rights in Monica Byrne’s ”What Every School Girl Should Know.” You can’t get much more timely than a play about women’s rights. It’s Feb. 9-26 at the Community Playhouse.
• Irish playwrights are among the best (George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, to name a few). The list includes Martin McDonagh, who wrote “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” which Live Theatre Workshop stages Feb. 16-March 25. The dark comedy (do the Irish do any other kind?) is about a young man who sees a chance to escape the oppressive life in his small Irish town when a Hollywood film crew shows up to shoot a documentary about Inishmaan.
• Digna Theater is a new company that aims to stage works that address human rights issues. And its first play, “Digna,” by Patricia Davis, does just that: It’s about the Mexican lawyer Digna Ochoa who was assassinated as a result of her civil rights activities. It’s Feb. 23-March 5 at the YWCA of Southern Arizona.
• Betcha can’t stop yourself from singing along: Arizona Theatre Company stages “Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash” at the Temple of Music and Art March 4-25.
• Another astounding Irish playwright — Enda Walsh — is represented in The Rogue Theatre’s production of the tragicomedy, “Penelope,”
• March 2-19. It’s his take on a piece of Homer’s “Odyssey.” Penelope is Odysseus’s wife, who waits patiently for her husband to return from the long, dangerous trip he’s on. Walsh imagines that, while Odysseus is away, four men vie for Penelope’s attention. The action takes place in an empty swimming pool. There are many compelling reasons to see this, not the least is which how the Rogue will give us that pool in their cozy theater.
• Invisible Theatre takes on Israel Horovitz’s powerful drama, “Lebensraum,” Feb. 7-19. The play takes place in modern-day Germany. Six million Jews have been invited to return home, where jobs and benefits await them. Some cheer, others don’t.
The Peking Acrobats defy gravity and, seemingly, anatomy, with their twists and turns and leaps. You can catch their performance at Centennial Hall on Feb. 12. Thank UA Presents for that gift.
More for the younger set:
• The TSO teams up with Tucson Regional Ballet for the symphony’s “Aladdin and Other Tales” Jan. 28 at the Leo Rich Theatre. Classic fairy tales are told to the music of Ravel, Prokofiev and others. And TSO’s Feb. 25 Just for Kids tells the story of Tonya the Tortoise with the symphony’s Wind Quintet. That’s at the Tucson Symphony Center.
• The Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance, which does some of the coolest arts events in our neck of the woods, joins different groups for its “Musical Magic for Kids,” happening the first Saturday of every month. Feb. 4, the Civic Orchestra of Tucson brings its music and its instruments to the Oro Valley Children’s Museum. And March 4, the Music and Dance Academy leads the storytelling and music at the Oro Valley Council Chambers.
• There’s little to envy about Phoenix, but here’s one thing: Childsplay Theatre Co. The troupe stages pristine productions for children. It is bringing its version of “The Cat in the Hat” to the Fox for one performance only, Feb. 21.
• When it comes to keeping children entertained, Live Theatre Workshop’s Family Theatre is tops. “Cat-Man and Kid Sparrow, The Fantastic Crime-Fighting Duo” plays through March 12. It’s by Stephen Frankenfield, LTW’s assistant director of Family Theatre, and the music is by Tucsonan David Ragland.
Presenting organizations
Arizona Early Music Society, 721-0846, azearlymusic.org
Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, 577-3769, arizonachambermusic.org
Arizona Friends of Early Music, 721-0846, azearlymusic.org.
Arizona Opera, 293-4336, azopera.org,
Arizona Repertory Theatre, 621-1162, theatre.arizona.edu
Arizona Theatre Company, 622-2823, arizonatheatre.org
Ballet Tucson, 903-1445, ballettucson.org
Broadway in Tucson, 1-800-745-3000, broadwayintucson.com
Childsplay Theatre Co., 1-480-921-5700, Childsplayaz.org
Digna Theater, 245-6879, on Facebook.
Fox Tucson, 547-3040, foxtucson.com.
Fred Fox School of Music, 621-1655, music.arizona.edu
In Concert! Tucson, 981-1475, inconcerttucson.com.
Invisible Theare, 882-9721,invisibletheatre.com
Live Theatre Workshop, 327-4242, livetheatreworkshop.org
Rincon Congregational Church, 745-6237, rinconucc.org.
The Rogue Theatre, 551-2053, theroguetheatre.org
Something Something Theatre Company, 468-6111, somethingsomethingtheatre.com
Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance, 797-3959, saaca.org.
True Concord Voices & Orchestra, 401-2651, trueconcord.org
Tucson Jazz Festival, 428-4853, tucsonjazzfestival.org
Tucson Symphony Orchestra, 882-8585, tucsonsymphony.org
University of Arizona School of Dance, 621-1162, dance.arizona.edu
UA Presents, 621-3341, uapresents.org,
Vail Theatre of the Arts, 879-3925, vtota.vail.k12.az.us
Valley Presbyterian Church, 2800 S. Camino del Sol, Green Valley.
Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway.
Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive.
Catalina United Methodist Church, 2700 E. Speedway.
Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. on UA campus.
Community Playhouse, 1881 N. Oracle Road.
Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.
Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St.
Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Ave.
Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway.
Oro Valley Children's Museum ,11015 N. Oracle Road.
Oro Valley Council Chambers, 11000 N La Canada Drive.
Rialto Theatre, 318 E Congress St.
Rincon Congregational Church, 122 N. Craycroft Road.
The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Blvd.
St. Francis in the Foothills, 4625 E. River Road.
Stevie Eller Dance Theatre, 1737 E. University Blvd.
Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave.
Tucson Convention Center, including the Leo Rich Theatre and the Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
Tucson Symphony Center, 2175 N 6th Ave.
University of Arizona Fine Arts Complex, which includes the Tornabene Theatre, the Marroney Theatre, and Crowder Hall in the Fred Fox School of Music, North Park Avenue and East Speedway.
Vail Theatre of the Arts, 10701 E Mary Ann Cleveland Way.
YWCA of Southern Arizona, 525 Bonita Avenue.
More information
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