Anya M. Wassenberg's Blog: Art & Culture Maven, page 17

Harbourfront Centre Presents the Ontario Premiere of Compagnie Virginie Brunelle’s Les corps avalés

From a media release

Harbourfront Centre Presents the Ontario Premiere of 
Compagnie Virginie Brunelle’s Les corps avalés

Celebrated Quebec-based dance company presents a stunning exploration of power relations, inequality and social upheaval, performed to live classical music from the Molinari Quartet

TORONTO, ON — Harbourfront Centre presents the Ontario premiere of Compagnie Virginie Brunelle’s striking union between contemporary dance and classical music with Les corps avalés, February 24 and 25, 2023, at 7:30pm at Fleck Dance Theatre, as part of the international contemporary dance series, Torque. 

Artists of Compagnie Virginie Brunelle perform Brunelle’s Les corps avalés (Photo by Vanessa Fortin)

Choreographed by Virginie Brunelle, the work showcases Brunelle’s signature expressiveness and vigorous physicality to portray both the intensity and vulnerability of humanity. The work is further heightened by the Molinari Quartet, whose classical repertoire, performed live, permeates the work and helps animate and amplify the dancers’ movement, resulting in a seamless fusion of gesture and sound.

“We are thrilled to present Les corps avalés to Toronto audiences for the first time,” says Nathalie Bonjour, Director, Performing Arts at Harbourfront Centre. “An award-winning choreographer, Brunelle is renowned for her highly detailed work and great musicality – all of which is widely on display in this mesmerizing performance. She deftly combines rhythm and individual notes with intricate choreography to showcase every nuance of the dancers’ movements.”

Les corps avalés features seven dancers and four musicians on the same stage, resulting in an immersive visual and auditory experience. The dancers capture loss, separation, resilience and hope through a fiery movement vocabulary: sharp throws and challenging suspensions portray the precariousness of our collective struggle to connect with the world and the drama of relationships and interactions. 

Artists of Compagnie Virginie Brunelle perform Brunelle’s Les corps avalés (Photo by Vanessa Fortin)

Hailed as a work of “great beauty, which touches the heart” (La Presse), the performance uses intense physicality and athleticism to communicate a complicated relationship with our physical world. The Molinari Quartet furthur energizes the steps and movements of each dancer for a poignant performance of healing and deep reflection.

Les corps avalés made its premiere at the Théâtre Maisonneuve de la Place des Arts (Danse Danse) in Montreal in January 2020 to audience and critical success. The work was supported by the Conseil des Arts du Canada, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Since its inception in 2009, the choreographic company Compagnie Virginie Brunelle has been under the artistic direction and management of choreographer Virginie Brunelle. Its repertoire includes award-winning contemporary dance works, which have been presented in Quebec and on international stages. Brunelle won the 2009 Bourse RIDEAU at the Vue sur la Relève festival for her work Les cuisses à l’écart du coeur, which led to the founding of her eponymous company in 2009. 

Artists of Compagnie Virginie Brunelle perform Brunelle’s Les corps avalés (Photo by Vanessa Fortin)

Brunelle’s works have toured Europe and Canada, culminating in an invitation in 2018 to create a production for the Gauthier Dance Theaterhaus Stuttgart company. Her most recent work, Fables, was presented in May 2022 at the Lugano Danza Festival in Switzerland, and in Montreal by Danse Danse in November 2022.

As part of their contemporary dance series Torque, Harbourfront Centre will host a Torque Q&A immediately following the performance on February 25, 2023.

Harbourfront Centre presents Compagnie Virginie Brunelle’s Les corps avalésDates: February 24 and 25, 2023, 7:30pmPrice: From $29–$69Address: Fleck Dance Theatre,Queen’s Quay Terminal, 3rd Floor, 207 Queen’s Quay WestBox Office HERE 

Performed last summer at Théâtre de la Ville

Jazz meets classical | Enrico Pieranunzi Trio & Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana: Blues & Bach - The Music of John Lewis

From a media release:

Jazz meets classical
Enrico Pieranunzi Trio | Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana | Michele Corcella:
Blues & Bach - The Music of John Lewis
(℗ 2022 Challenge Records/Jan 13, 2023)

Order it here

Classical/pop, rock/classical, classical/jazz, fusion: the list of possible crossovers can get very long. What all these couplings have in common is the desire to blend two or more different languages. It is a bit like triggering a chemical reaction, the outcome of which no longer has anything to do with the original components of the reaction itself. 

In the more specific field of jazz/classical music crossover, the 1920s were crucial. In fact, they gave us one of the first, absolutely extraordinary, works of the genre: the famous “Rhapsody in Blue.” In this masterpiece, Gershwin achieved exceptional results thanks to his merging of elements from American popular music, particularly the blues, with others typical of the European classic tradition.

John Lewis moved in the same direction as Gershwin, but from a very different vision and experience. Indeed, Lewis was an excellent jazz pianist (it’s enough to think of his collaborations with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis) where Gershwin, who was also a phenomenal pianist and very well-versed in the jazz of his time, was strictly speaking never a full-time jazz pianist. 

But above all Lewis, besides being a great jazz player, was deeply in love with the music of Bach and from the earliest years of his career onward made the blues/Bach pair the banner of his artistic life. The Modern Jazz Quartet, which he founded in 1952 – for nearly half a century one of the most celebrated groups on the international jazz scene was the unmistakable vehicle of his musical conception and the real workshop of his highly original crossover.

It is to this musical conception and to the compositional art of John Lewis that, a little more than two decades after his passing, “Blues and Bach” wishes to pay tribute. His tunes have been reworked and orchestrated for the occasion with an ensemble that, in some ways, is itself a crossover within a crossover (jazz trio plus string quintet and woodwind quintet).

As a final thought, we would like to add that “Blues and Bach” is a kind of documentation in music of our two musical biographies. Indeed, encountering blues and Bach were fundamental experiences for both of us, and it is precisely thanks to John Lewis’ dream of blending two musical worlds so far apart that these experiences have been happily brought together here. 

- Enrico Pieranunzi & Michele Corcella

​Music by John Lewis
Artists: Mauro Beggio - Drums; Enrico Pieranunzi - Piano; Luca Bulgarelli - Double bass; Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana, Michele Corcella conductor

Tracks:

1. Skating in Central Park (07:38)2. Spanish Steps (06:03)3. Vendome (04:59)4. Autumn in New York (06:14)5. Django (07:53)6. Concorde (07:30)7. Milano (07:31)8. Jasmine Tree (05:07)

All tracks composed by John Lewis, except track 4 by Vernon Duke, Arranged by Michele Corcella

The Blyth Theatre Festival Is Back In 2023

From a media release:

The Blyth Theatre Festival Is Back In 2023

Find Out More

After two defiant years undefeated by the global pandemic, the Blyth Festival is back bigger than ever. Celebrating their 48th anniversary season, the 2023 Blyth Festival is set to present its largest season ever with seven productions, both indoors and outdoors, running June 14th-September 9th. Both Memorial Hall in the town centre and the newly built outdoor Harvest Stage will host the season.

Artistic Director, Gil Garratt, says “you’ve simply never had more reasons to come to Blyth.”

Image courtesy of  Blyth Theatre FestivalA Quintessential Canadian Classic Reimagined

It’s been twenty years since the fairgrounds in Blyth resounded with horse hooves, and were lit up with fateful fire in the night. And in 2023, the local legend continues in three landmark productions in an unparalleled setting.

Outdoors, on our Harvest Stage: The Donnellys by James Reaney, adapted and abridged by Gil Garratt.

No other story from Huron County’s history burns as boldly, and this season audiences can see all three plays in three consecutive nights.

The three plays, Sticks and Stones, The St Nicholas Hotel, and Handcuffs will all be performed by one single company of ten actors, who will tell the tale from the killing of Patrick Farrell, to Johannah Donnelly’s march to Goderich to save her husband from the gallows, to the Stagecoach wars, to the Queen’s Hotel, to the Vigilance Society in the Cedar Swamp Schoolhouse, to the fiery February night when justice, revenge, and murder were left indistinguishable in the ashes.

With the blessing of the Reaney family, Garratt has newly adapted these stories. This will be the first time in decades that all three of these touchstone plays have been performed in repertory with each other, affording audiences the chance to take in the whole cycle over three nights.

Says Garratt: “I believe 2023 is the perfect time to re-ignite the telling of the Donnelly story in Blyth. At its heart, this is a story about grit, family, betrayal, the erosion of community, the rise of secret societies, the shadow of conspiracy, and the limits of faith. The show will be filled to the brim with folk music, stagecoaches, and live fire in the night."

Meanwhile, on the Festival stage at Blyth Memorial Community Hall, theatre goers will be welcomed back to our intimate, indoor setting, for four Canadian plays, three of them commissioned and developed right here at Blyth Festival.

The first show indoors is the long awaited premiere of Sophia Fabiilli’s Liars at a Funeral. This play was originally slated to open our 2020 season.

Liars at a Funeral is the hilarious story of a grandmother who fakes her own death in a last ditch hope to get her dysfunctional family in one room, but with catering and bouquets. Full of classic farce gags (who’s in the casket? who’s in the closet? who’s in the kitchen?) the play builds to a hysterically funny pitch, and ends with an unexpected revelation, bringing the family together again…well sort of…mostly.

Cancelled in 2020, finally bringing Liars at a Funeral to the stage is a dream come true.

And speaking of delayed dreams: opening next is The Waltz by Marie Beath Badian.

The Waltz is a gentle romance about a young man on his way to University in BC, who stops for one fateful night under the Prairie stars, and meets a girl he will never forget.

Produced by Factory Theatre and directed by Nina Lee Aquino, (the newly-minted Artistic Director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre), The Waltz is the second in a trilogy by Ms. Badian, the first being the hit Prairie Nurse which premiered in Blyth in 2013. This is the show that was cancelled in 2022, due to covid.

Up next, the world premiere of Chronicles of Sarnia by Matt Murray (formerly of Sarnia). This is a comedy about community, in all its, err, community-ness.

The play follows Erin, a passionate, retired history teacher, who has convinced the City of Sarnia to create a 100-year time capsule for future generations to open. She organizes a town-wide meeting for community input, with a replica of the capsule itself, ready to momentously unveil. But in spite of homemade Nanaimo bars, only her husband, a department store employee, and a young woman who is there for... complicated reasons, show up. Oh, and the janitor. But refusing to reschedule, Erin, undaunted, takes this tiny group in hand and sets about distilling the essence of, well, of Sarnia.

Finally, the season closes with The Real McCoy written and directed by Andrew Moodie.

This play tells the biography of the inventor Elijah McCoy (1843-1929), whose name became a byword for quality, as in “the real McCoy.” The play tries to explain why we’ve all heard the expression and yet hardly any of us know why… And in answering that question, reclaims a fascinating man’s life from undeserved obscurity.

Born in Chatham, ON to runaway American slaves, McCoy showed so much promise as a boy in school that he won a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at Edinburgh University, where he developed an abiding love for large steam engines. After graduation, McCoy moved to the US where locomotives were radically changing the future of the growing republic. Only after emigrating did he learn that no one in the States believed a Black man could be an engineer, and so he was set to stoking boilers and shoveling coal.

Nevertheless, McCoy continued to dream and ultimately devised a solution to one of the greatest obstacles facing steam engines in his day. McCoy’s invention would go on to be sold all over the world, make him a household name and revolutionize locomotion on every continent; so long as he held to his partners’ proviso: to never tell buyers he was Black.

Award winning playwright, Andrew Moodie, last performed on the Festival stage in 2007’s World Without Shadows, and wrote the 1998 hit Wilbur County Blues.

Important Dates

The 2023 season will run June through September, 2023. Full season details will be available soon on the Blyth Festival website www.blythfestival.com Tickets go on sale to members in the month of January, starting January 9, 2023 (depending on level of membership) at 9am by phone only. Sales will open to the General Public beginning April 3 at 9am, by phone and online.Passes are back! Until February 4, 2023 passes are for sale for The Donnelly Trilogy for $135 (a savings of $5 per ticket). And until March 31, Bonanza weekend passes will be for sale for $175, a savings of $25.Bonanza Weekend will run Aug. 4-6, 2023 and will include The Donnelly Trilogy and the world premiere of Chronicles of Sarnia.

A conversation with playwright Marie Beath Badian:

Montreal Theatre Festival | WILDSIDE FESTIVAL Returns In Person January 16 to February 11, 2023

 From a media release

Montreal Theatre Festival
WILDSIDE FESTIVAL Returns In Person
January 16 to February 11, 2023

Find Out More En français

Montreal, QC (December 2022) Centaur Theatre is thrilled to announce the in-person return of WILDSIDE FESTIVAL 2023, featuring a thought provoking collection of experimental artistry with five theatre works, curated by Rose Plotek. At its core, the festival is on a mission to support local artists and independent theatre work, creating a platform for experimentation and unique artistry that challenges traditional conventions surrounding mainstream theatre. In CENTAUR THEATRE’S ongoing efforts to integrate cross-cultural conversations through theatre, WILDSIDE FESTIVAL 2023 will present works across languages, January 16 – February 11, 2023, in theatres across Montreal.

Centaur Theatre's home in Montreal's original Stock Exchange building

"With this year's Wildside offering I am pleased to continue to introduce Centaur audiences to bold experimental theatre. This has always been what Wildside is at its core and it allows Centaur to encourage and support theatre creators from a great diversity of backgrounds in our community. It is a privilege to work closely with innovative artists that are creating unconventional theatre; theatre that challenges its audience and explores deeply personal yet worldly ideas and issues. We are thrilled to continue our collaboration with La Chapelle Scène Contemporaine for a fourth consecutive year." – Rose Plotek, Festival Curator 

To kick-off WILDSIDE FESTIVAL 2023, Talisman Theatre presents the English premiere of David Paquet's fierce dark comedy WILDFIRE. Follow three twisted triplet sisters with a toxic family heritage through a cycle of destruction, taking audiences on an unexpected emotional journey of ups, downs and laughs. Directed by Jon Lachlan Stewart and translated by Leanna Brodie, WILDFIRE will include French surtitles so that anglophone and francophone patrons can enjoy. 

PROJE(C)T; LES BONNES, is an adaptation of the play Les Bonnes by Jean Genet, performed by a collective of talented young graduates from Concordia University. The play tells the story of  Solange and her sister Claire, two maids, who begin working for a wealthy English Canadian from Westmount whom they call Madame, and during her absence, they find delight in imagining her murder. Unfortunately, their little ritual leaves its mark and then backfires.This uniquely contemporary approach to the play will include trilingual dialogue (English, French and Spanish), and Proje(c)t: Les bonnes will be accompanied by a post-show music series titled VICE VERSA on Friday, January 27 and Saturday, January 28. Travel to the Champs-Elysées and Beyond the Sea with VICE VERSA, a free bilingual music series celebrating English songs that you didn’t know were originally written in French. 

PROJE(C)T; LES BONNES (Image courtesy of Wildside Festival)

Halfway through the festival, please join us for THEATRE FOR ONE's two screenings of a series of short films based on theatre monologues. The screenings will be followed by a Q&A with artisans who worked on the films. In April 2023 there will be live performances of the same texts, facilitating conversations around those two approaches of screen and stage, examining the differences in artistry. 

Ahead of the one year anniversary of the Ukrainian invasion, PLANTING AN APPLE TREE is a new Ukrainian theatre work about a woman and her relationship to her land. Written as an immediate response to the war in Ukraine, this work will be staged by reputed experimental artists, Clare Coulter and Leslie Baker. PLANTING AN APPLE TREE will be accompanied by a one-night only music fundraiser on Friday, February 10. Come together and bear witness to Ukrainian resistance songs which were released in 2022, translated into English for the first time. Admission is free and any funds raised will be donated to Voices of Children and the Ukrainian Emergency Arts Fund.

WILDSIDE FESTIVAL 2023 will conclude with the return of CONFABULATION: ME, MY SELFIE AND I, Montreal’s showcase for true-life stories, featuring stories from first-timers and veterans. CONFABULATION is a fun, unique stage experience sharing honest, thoughtful stories from the people that lived them, told without notes, props, or gimmicks.WILDSIDE FESTIVAL will also include a series of free music sessions inspired by the theatre works that precede them, curated by Sarah Segal-Lazar. Audiences are invited to come together and enjoy a series of translated post-show songs. WILDSIDE FESTIVAL 2023 - Tickets and show info here

Niagara Icewine Festival January 13 to 29 2023

From a release

Niagara Icewine Festival
January 13 to 29 2023

Find Out More & Buy Tickets Here

With thousands of acres of snow-covered vines to set the scene, the annual Niagara lcewine Festival offers three weekends of incredible wine and culinary events. From the opulent Niagara lcewine Gala to street festivals and winery events, there is something for every taste and style.

The Niagara Icewine Festival is part of the Niagara Grape & Wine Festival and takes place January 13th through 29th across Niagara. 

This year’s Niagara Icewine Festival includes a weekend Discovery Pass self-guided touring program, the Cool as Ice immersive experience on January 14th and the Niagara-on-the-Lake Icewine Festival on January 20th, 21st, 22nd, 28th and 29th. 

The Niagara Grape and Wine Festival is celebrating its 73rd year.

Highlights...

Niagara Icewine Festival and Niagara Parks team up to offer all-new Cool as Ice immersive one-night event at Niagara Parks Power Station on January 14, 2023;Peller Estates Winery & Restaurant and the Riverbend Inn & Vineyards are offering fireside experiences January 13 to 15;All-inclusive event tickets offer admission to one of Niagara Falls’ most exciting new attractions, incredible wines, cocktails and foods, live entertainment, dancing and event parking.

On each of the festival weekends, historic Queen Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake becomes the Icewine Village. It's a food and wine lover's paradise, where you can stroll and sample the best of local wineries, and pairings with the area's finest restaurants.

Image courtesy of Niagara Parks Power StationCool As Ice

Niagara Icewine Festival will host the annual Ice Wine Event, Cool as Ice, at Niagara Parks’ newest must-see attraction, the Niagara Parks Power Station. This January, wine and food lovers will be wowed with an all-new feast for the senses. Cool as Ice is an immersive celebration showcasing Ontario’s signature flavours through VQA Icewines, cocktails and mocktails, and farm-to-table fare, set within Niagara Falls’ most buzzed-about new attraction, the Niagara Parks Power Station.

kets to January 14th’s Cool as Ice event offer an all-inclusive evening featuring a diverse selection of Icewine, cocktail and mocktail tastings, hyper-local culinary stations showcasing the exquisite delights prepared by Niagara Parks’ culinary team, access to the Niagara Parks Power Station’s full experience, and event parking. 

In addition to unparalleled views of Niagara Falls, Cool as Ice will also feature live performance art and stunning photo backdrops set to a music soundtrack sure to inspire time on the event’s dance floor.

Image courtesy of Niagara Parks Power StationCool as Ice Immersive Event at a Glance

Date: January 14 / Time: 7 pm – 11 pmLocation: Niagara Parks Power Station, 7005 Niagara Parkway, Niagara FallsDress Code: Wine Country Creative (Guests are encouraged to showcase their signature style, whether that’s gala-style glamour or wine-country chic)Pricing: $225 per person

Niagara Grape & Wine Executive Director, Dorian Anderson, is quoted in a media statement.

“After having to press pause on Icewine festivities for a few years, we wanted to come back in a huge way for 2023 with a jaw-dropping new venue. The Niagara Power Station really lends itself to the type of creative expression and exploration that Icewine is all about. Our guests won’t just get to explore Icewine and local foods in unique and unexpected ways, hosting Cool as Ice at the Niagara Power Station will allow our guests to explore and enjoy Niagara Falls in incredible new ways as well.”

The Icewine Village in 2020:

Natural classical | Richard Carr: landscapes and lamentations (Neuma Records / August 19, 2022)

Natural classical
Richard Carr: landscapes and lamentations
(Neuma Records / August 19, 2022)

Buy It Here

“Music and nature have a long and illustrious history together.” 

Composer, conductor, violinist, pianist and guitarist Richard Carr is also an avid hiker.

“It’s been done a zillion times, but I can’t fight it anymore. True, I spend more time than most knocking around the woods and winding up and down the trails. Over the course of six decades, I have explored the major mountain ranges of six continents. This has been long enough to witness first-hand the changes that have been so apparent not only to the naked eye but also through the empirical research of climate scientists.”

landscapes and lamentations continues his work using both semi-structured and fully structured pieces, all inspired by the environment within 15 miles of his home in New York's Hudson Valley.

Carr's work is performed on the recording by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble or ACME: Laura Lutzke (violin); Ben Russell (violin); Caleb Burhans (viola); and Clarice Jensen (cello). Car joins in at times, along with pre-recorded piano and guitar tracks. 

The pieces are expressive and melodic, using patterns and sounds evocative of natural rhythms. Layers of texture and melody ebb and flow together in organic waves. On Loop Road, the mood is thoughtful and veers towards melancholy; Gertrude's Nose is propelled by rhythmic intensity.

In each piece, he finds musical inspiration, and a fresh sense of expression, for each new theme from atmospheric to literal - Underwater Photography, Ice Caves, Powerline. 

It's a continuation of an eclectic career as a composer. , “I explored jazz, open improvisation, minimalism, just intonation, spectralism, dental equipment sampling, and anything else that might be a vehicle for self-expression,” Carr explains in the liner notes.

Powerline:

Stretching The Sax | Dylan Ward: Tourmaline (Neuma Records / July 15 2022)

Stretching The Sax
Dylan Ward: Tourmaline
(Neuma Records / July 15, 2022)

Sample/Buy/Stream It Here

Saxophonist Dylan Ward was inspired by the tourmaline in creating this collection of work, a semi-precious stone that can come in many different colours, and is spread throughout the globe. In new age circles, it's knows as the stone of reconciliation, and is linked to healing and positive connections. It was also of importance in alchemy as a symbol of the philosopher's stone.

According to the liner notes, he set out to create a "kaleidoscopic array of electroacoustic textures", and that's an apt description of the five tracks. They explore the range of the saxophone, from solo to hybrid electroacoustical instrument. 

He uses a variety of effects, including dense electronic processing, delay effects, and sampling. Ward works with five young composers, Alexandra Gardner, Viet Cuong, Seth Andrew Davis, Kenneth Michael Florence, and Emma O’Halloran, each contributing one of the tracks. Davis also contributes laptop and electronics on his track, Angelus Novus, a multi-layered web of electronics and agitated saxophone.

Kenneth Michael Florence adds guitar, pianos and electronics to their piece Seven Steps. It's an intriguing mix of jazz-pop rhythm guitar, exploratory sax, and fuzzy electronic sounds that weave in and out of each other.

Dylan Ward

In Tourmaline, the title track, Ward's saxophone emerges from a web of electronic sounds in a compelling and virtuosic thread that drifts in and out of melody. Viet Cuon's Naica explores the sounds of the sax enhanced by a range of effects that take it from whimsical to spooky and atmospheric.

Irish composer Emma O'Halloran's Sum of its Parts is a shimmering wave of sound that seamlessly integrates the sax into a kind of hybrid sound.

It's a very interesting debut album from an artist obviously committed to exploring the saxophone and its possibilities with a 21st century mindset.

ItalJazz | Umbria Jazz Winter #29 in Orvieto December 28 2022 to January 1 2023

From a media release

ItalJazz
Umbria Jazz Winter #29 in Orvieto
December 28, 2022 to January 1, 2023

Check Out The Artists & Get Tickets Here

The magic of great music takes place in one of the most charming cities of Umbria from December 28 to January 1. The Festival’s signature lies in the balance between culture and tourism, two crucial mosaic tiles describing the high standard of living that Orvieto and its land can offer its visitors and locals.

Umbria Jazz Winter is confirmed as a flagship event of the winter tourist season nationally, both for its history (2023 will be its 30th anniversary) and its formula, which lies in an attractive program and the charm and warmth (including good cuisine and noble wines) of an art city like Orvieto.

The fil rouge of this year’s program is characterized by excellent musical quality. Umbria Jazz Winter #29 can be considered a return to the first editions’ identity, with original proposals aimed at a public who wants to explore less popular – not less attractive – aspects of jazz music.

As usual, the formula includes concerts from late morning to late night in the old town of Orvieto. The fact that almost all musicians are resident artists allows people to choose a different route every day.

The concerts take place in two strategic buildings in the architectural heritage of Orvieto: the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, with the Sala dei 400, and the Teatro Mancinelli. Even the city center of Orvieto is an exceptional venue for Funk Off and their joyful parades. Except for last year, an event closely related to the particular time of the year is central to the program of Umbria Jazz Winter.

Duomo di Orvieto (Image courtesy of Umbria Winter Jazz)

It is the gospel concert in the cathedral on the afternoon of New Year’s Day, the Day of Peace. After the Mass, one of the most famous choirs in the United States will sing African-American religious songs. Gospel itself is a message of peace and brotherhood and represents the deep faith of the Christian communities in America. Special events are scheduled to say goodbye to 2022 (with no regrets) and celebrate 2023, hoping for a better year. Nothing better than looking forward to it with the warmth of music and being together.

UJ4KIDS returns to Orvieto after the successful edition of 2019 at Umbria Jazz Winter and two years of a forced break due to the pandemic. On December 29, 30 and 31 (from 10 to 11.30 am), the Sala del Carmine will host activities resulting from workshops held by the Scuola Comunale di Musica “Adriano Casasole” in collaboration with the local primary schools. On the morning of December 29, there will be a symbolic changing of the guard between a young marching band – a school initiative – and Funk Off. This encounter will take place near Piazza della Repubblica.

Everything was scheduled to organize an excellent edition that acts like an ideal prologue for the 50th anniversary of the summer one and the 30th of the winter one, both planned for 2023.

Radio Monte Carlo | Umbria Jazz Winter #29 Official Radio

Five Angry Men (Vincitori Conad Jazz Contest 2022)THE MUSICIANS OF UMBRIA JAZZ WINTER # 29

Famous artists and young emerging talents, traditions, modern mainstream and sophisticated jazz music, music for purists and genres for all tastes: Umbria Jazz Winter is an inclusive event where everyone can find their most suitable concert. This edition is known for the excellent attention given to songs and voices.

Umbria Jazz Winter begins with the jazz of tomorrow. The first concert of the Festival – with free admission – is focused on young emerging talents: the winners of the Conad Jazz Contest 2022 (Five Angry Men), a competition that takes place every year during the summer edition, and the band including the best students of the classes and winners of the Berklee Umbria Jazz Awards.

Orchestra Nazionale Jazz Giovani Talenti conducted by Paolo Damiani can be placed within this context. This project was born to enhance some of the best new professionals on the Italian jazz scene. They are young but renowned since they won the Musica Jazz Top Jazz Awards.

Orchestra Nazionale Jazz Giovani Talenti conducted by Paolo Damiani (Image courtesy of Umbria Winter Jazz)

Vinicio Capossela returns to Umbria Jazz: among the most original songwriters of the last decades, he presents a retrospective of his outstanding career.

Burt Bacharach’s songs find an ideal place in Dianne Reeves and in Ethan Iverson’s new arrangements: this is the most recent project involving the Umbria Jazz Orchestra. Iverson himself, with Peter Washington and Dan Weiss (the rhythm section of the tribute to Bacharach), will also perform in trio. Most demanding jazz lovers can’t miss this performance.

An audience favorite at Umbria Jazz, Allan Harris has a new story to tell through his songs. “Kate’s Soulfood” is a cross-section of America revolving around a popular luncheonette in Harlem owned by his aunt Kate.

A special chapter of the vocality is the choir conducted by Vincent Bohanan, The Sound of Victory, founded in 2014 by selecting around fifty young singers from the New York metropolitan area: this is an important professional opportunity and a witness of faith.

Umbria Jazz did not forget Charles Mingus, one of the jazz geniuses who was one of the protagonists of the first editions of the Festival. The centenary of Charles Mingus’ birth will be celebrated with a sextet of American musicians from the Mingus Big Band and Italian players Roberto Rossi and Piero Odorici.

Javier Girotto presents his new “Legacy” project and performs his compositions from some years ago but never played. He will perform with a quintet: three horns (including his saxes), bass and drums.

This pianist should be followed carefully. Kris Davis is one of the most interesting personalities among those who emerged on the jazz scene in the 21st century. Nowadays, Canadian musician Davis, who has been living in New York for 20 years, is very acclaimed in the jazz and the most innovative music scene.

Dianne Reeves (Image courtesy of Umbria Winter Jazz)

Romero Lubambo’s facility, creativity and energy are in a class all their own. These are the words of the magazine “Jazziz”, but it is only one of the many testimonies of respect for the Brazilian guitarist from the music world. Lubambo is part of the project on Burt Bacharach’s songs in Orvieto since his long-time artistic partnership with Dianne Reeves, but he will also give a solo performance.

Jon Cleary, a British musician raised in the countryside of Kent, is now one of the most acclaimed interpreters of New Orleans, the city where he has been living for decades. Jon faces the genres defining New Orleans’ music identity with exceptional versatility (he also won a Grammy Award), from the traditional to the most modern ones: jazz, blues, rag, stride, gospel, funk, soul.

Here is a band that can always combine show and good music, so much so that it has become a music postcard of Umbria Jazz. Funk Off have been the most present musicians in the summer and winter editions of the Festival. Besides their usual street parades, Funk Off are scheduled to perform at midnight on New Year’s Eve in front of the parvis of the Cathedral to welcome 2023 together.

Umbria Jazz Winter #29 is dedicated to Franco Fayenz.

Iconic Japanese Superhero Shin Ultraman Comes To Canadian Theatres January 11 & 12 2023

From a media release

Iconic Japanese superhero Shin Ultraman
Comes exclusively to Canadian Theatres for two days ONLY
January 11 and 12, 2023

DENVER, December 2022 – Fathom Events, Tsuburaya and The Exchange are partnering to bring the iconic Japanese superhero Ultraman to theaters nationwide this coming January for a two night engagement.

The film, Shin Ultraman turns the Japanese icon Ultraman - first broadcast on television in 1966 – into a full-length feature film, written and produced by Hideaki Anno – a self-described Ultraman fan – and directed by Shinji Higuchi.  The film is set in modern Japan – depicting a world where Ultraman is witnessed by human eyes for the first time, ever!

Tickets for Shin Ultraman can be purchased here or participating theater box offices.  Enter your location  for a complete list of theater locations near you (theaters participants are subject to change).Please contact your local theatre for individual safety precautions.

Shin Ultraman follows the continued appearance of giant unidentified life forms known as “S-Class Species (Kaiju)” – now commonplace in Japan. Conventional weapons have no effect on them and, having exhausted all other options, the Japanese Government issued the S-Class Species Suppression Protocol and formed an enforcement unit, known as the SSSP. 

The members chosen for the unit are Captain Kimio Tamura (Hidetoshi Nishijima), strategic planner Shinji Kaminaga (Takumi Saitoh), unparticle physicist Akihisa Taki (Daiki Arioka), and biologist Yumi Funaberi (Akari Hayami). 

In the midst of another Kaiju threat, a silver giant appears from beyond Earth's atmosphere. 

Analyst Hiroko Asami (played by Masami Nagasawa) is newly appointed to the SSSP to deal with this giant and is partnered with Shinji Kaminaga. 

In Hiroko's report, she writes— “Ultraman (tentative name), identity unknown.” 

Art Basel Miami Beach | World Premiere of Guns Kill - New Artwork by Bonnie Lautenberg

From a media release

Art Basel Miami Beach
World Premiere of Guns Kill
new artwork by Bonnie Lautenberg
at the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU

On view through March 26, 2023

Find out more here

The new solo museum show celebrates powerful images of women from two decades of art by Lautenberg. Spanning her multiple series of photography and conceptual art, the women in these works are admired by Lautenberg for their spirit of freedom.

Guns Kill, by Bonnie Lautenberg (2022). Benefits the Giffords Foundation, dedicated to the mission of saving lives from gun violence: www.Giffords.org. Dye sublimation onto aluminum (4 ft. x 4 ft.)

More than thirty of Lautenberg’s works, including Guns Kill, were selected by the Jewish Museum Florida-FIU, located on South Beach, for Lautenberg’s new solo exhibition Lady Liberty: A Bonnie Lautenberg Retrospective (On view now through March 26, including Miami Art Week) during Art Basel Miami Beach which attracts 70,000 art lovers from around the world.

Bonnie Lautenberg is an artist, photographer and writer based in New York and Palm Beach. Her works have been featured in gallery shows, museums and art fairs throughout the country. 

“I am so honored to be selected by the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU during Miami Art Week and Art Basel Miami Beach, especially at this time in our history when women’s issues are at the forefront,” says Bonnie Lautenberg.

One of her Lady Liberty works is currently on view at the New York Historical Society Museum’s Center for the Study of American Culture, in an exhibition about how New York artists found original ways to express their appreciation for health care workers during the pandemic.

“Our museum is thrilled to premiere this retrospective of Bonnie Lautenberg’s images of women shining a light on liberty,” says Susan Gladstone Pasternack, the Executive Director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. “In capturing the independent spark of these women through her art, Bonnie Lautenberg reminds us we should never take our freedoms for granted.” 

Star Spangled Touch - Katy Perry in Concert, by Bonnie Lautenberg (2016). From Lautenberg’s Pop Rocks series. Dye sublimation onto aluminum (5 ft. x 3.3 ft.)

The Museum is located in South Beach at 301 Washington Avenue, in the historic Art Deco District, and is the State of Florida’s official museum dedicated to telling the story of more than 250 years of Florida Jewish history, arts and culture.

Bonnie Lautenberg’s artwork is in several private and museum collections, including: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture; the Boca Raton Museum of Art; the Collection ofNorman and Irma Braman; The New York Historical Society Museum; the Broad Museum in Los Angeles; The Newark Museum of Art; Portland Museum of Art; and Stillman College Art Gallery in Alabama, among others. 

Her series How They Changed Our Lives: Senators As Working People is in the Library of Congress. She is based in New York and Palm Beach.