The List: From solo soprano to a play about DACA, some promising picks for the weekend
Welcome to The List, a curated offering of promising events for the weekend. Why stay home with Netflix when there’s a whole world of local stuff to enjoy and support?
1. Julie Carter in the Pacific Artist Series
Carter is music director of Soli Deo Gloria, Fresno’s esteemed women’s choral ensemble, so she’s usually conducting other musicians and not singing herself. But for this concert in Fresno Pacific University’s Pacific Artist Series, she gets to “Show Off” as the noted soprano soloist that she is. (And that’s meant literally: One of her songs is the Broadway tune “Show Off” from the charming musical “The Drowsy Chaperone.”) Repertoire will include music by Verdi, Puccini, Debussy, Handel, and Spanish composer Fernando Obradors, and music from Broadway (“Art is Calling for Me,” “The Tale of the Oyster,” “My Cup Runneth Over” and “The Lonely Goatherd/”).
Pictured above: Julie Carter performs at the Pacific Artist Series.
Carter will be joined by collaborative pianist Matthew Dean. Guest artist is Max Hembd on trumpet. There’s also a treat for Soli Deo Gloria fans: The voices will join in on several songs.
You can read more about the Pacific Artist Series here.
If you go: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26, Willow Avenue Mennonite Church, 2529 Willow Ave., Clovis. Tickets are $15 general, $10 seniors, $5 FPU community
2. ‘A Little Night Music’ featuring New Wrinkles
You might think of New Wrinkles as a May-and-June kind of thing. But director David Bonetto has been expanding performance opportunities for Fresno’s acclaimed senior performing group. In “A Little Night Music,” the ensemble will shift from the Fresno City College Theatre to the beautiful Old Administration Building Auditorium.
I checked in with Bonetto, and he told me this is the first time that New Wrinkles is doing a concert like this. Usually the group puts all its energies into its one big musical-revue show each year.
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“We’re calling it cabaret style,” he says of the Saturday concert. There are no costumes or sets — just lots of wonderful music. The program features “new songs, familiar songs, and more – all for one night only.”
There will be even more New Wrinkles in 2018. The group will perform at a Fresno City College choral program on Dec. 7 and 8.
If you go: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27, Fresno City College Old Administration Building Auditorium. Tickets are $10.
3. ‘Storytelling for Change’
Local writers and performance artists Nikiko Masumoto and Brynn Saito return with a follow-up presentation to last year’s sold-out storytelling show “Hold This Stone.” In “Storytelling for Change,” the program features guest artists offering personal truth-telling stories: narratives of power that serve to “shape our lives and communities, inspire action, bring nuance to memory and history, and help the listener envision a future world of hope and understanding.”
Masumoto is a writer, storyteller and performance artist. Saito is a published poet and faculty member at Fresno State. Their inspiration and successful collaboration, the Yonsei Memory Project, is now extended to teaching new and experienced writers, artists, activists, organizers, educators, students and local individuals in the art of meaningful storytelling.
I’ll be posting an interview with Saito about the performance shortly.
If you go: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27; 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 3; and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4. Fresno Soap Co., 1470 N. Van Ness Ave. Tickets are $25 adults, $10-$12 students.
4. A timely play at Fresno State
Director Gina Sandi-Diaz brings Karen Zacarías’s play based on Helen Thorpe’s bestselling book to Fresno State. A description:
This documentary-style play follows four Latina teenage girls in Denver—two of whom are documented and two who are not—through young adulthood. Their close-knit friendships begin to unravel when immigration status dictates the girls’ opportunities, or
lack thereof. When a political firestorm arises, each girl’s future becomes increasingly complicated. “Just Like Us” poses difficult, yet essential questions about what makes us American.
If you go: Opens 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26, Fresno State Woods Theatre. Continues through Nov. 3. Tickets are $17 general, $10 students.
5. Festival of music
This sounds like a wonderful afternoon: The Fresno Master Chorale, an ensemble of the Fresno Community Chorus, presents a Festival of Music for Choir, Brass, and Organ featuring Ēriks Ešenvalds’s “Trinity Te Deum.”
If you go: 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, Hope Lutheran Church, 364 E. Barstow Ave., Fresno. Free.
6. And don’t forget …
I’ve already filled you in on “The Prince of Teeth” at the Tower Theatre. Buy your kids some floss and get down to the theater!
If you go: Opens 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27, at the Tower Theatre, 815 E. Olive Ave., Fresno. Tickets are $15-$17.50 adults, $12.50-$15 students and seniors.
