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The Art of Dessert at Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa California

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NEW SHOWS
  ON SALE Friday, May 15 at Noon
  50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa / 707-546-3600 / wellsfargocenterarts.org
 
  Madeleine Peyroux
  (Jazz)
  August 5 at 8pm
  $39.75, $69.
  “Postmodernist coolness” — Los Angeles Times
  Smoky-voiced singer Madeleine Peyroux returns to Santa Rosa with music from her earthy new album Bare Bones. Peyroux — who’s achieved critical notice and sales success with her signature “postmodernist coolness” (LA Times)—had a hand in writing all the songs on the new album, an artistic breakthrough. 
 
 
  Huey Lewis and The News
  (Rock)
  August 13 at 8pm
  $99.
  With such over-the-top hits as “Heart of Rock & Roll,” “Stuck With You,” “I Want A New Drug,” “If This Is It,” “Hip To Be Square” and “Workin’ For A Livin’,” this Bay Area band’s contagious brand of straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll has outlasted countless trends. 
 
 
  Medium & Clairvoyant
  Lisa Williams Messages from Beyond
  As Seen on Oprah and Lifetime Television
  (Speaker)
  August 20 at 7:30pm
  $48, $57, $70
  Audience members were astounded and deeply moved last year following a Santa Rosa speaking event by this internationally acclaimed medium and clairvoyant. By working with loved ones and spirit guides, Lisa Williams helps resolve past issues to give closure and healing. She has a hit show on Lifetime TV, is well-known for appearances on Good Morning America and Oprah, and recently completed her first book.
 
 
  Elvis Costello and the Sugarcanes
  (Rock/Bluegrass)
  August 21 at 8pm
  $69.75, $89.
  His new album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane proves again that Elvis Costello follows his musical curiosity. Few artists have displayed as many different musical sides. Over the years, he's ventured into new wave, country, jazz, R&B, and now bluegrass, and collaborated with everyone from Burt Bacharach to opera star Anne Sofie Von Otter.
 
 
 
  Diana Krall
  (Jazz)
  August 25 at 8pm
  $79.50, $99.
  Her cool, heavy-lidded vocals and strikingly sensitive piano playing transcend barriers of genre. For instance, Quiet Nights, Diana Krall’s latest work, uses Brazil as a point of reference to produce music that is disarming in its intimacy.
 
 
 
  Sheryl Crow
  (Rock)
  September 1 at 8pm
  $69.75, $89.
  2009 finds this nine-time Grammy winner more free-spirited than ever. She embarks on paths deeply personal and grandly global, singing about having and holding, changing and letting go, about beginnings, endings, and the roads in-between.
 
 
 
  The Beach Boys
  (Oldies)
  September 20 at 8pm
  $62.50, $82.
  Bask in the sunny vocal harmonies of one of the signature sounds of the modern era! From songs such as “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around,” and “Good Vibrations,” The Beach Boys are responsible for some of the most perfect harmonies and gorgeous melodies in rock ‘n’ roll history.
 
 
  34th Annual San Francisco
  Comedy Competition Semi-Finals
  (Comedy)
  September 25 at 8pm
  $39.
  This historically hilarious event features 10 comedy stars of tomorrow vying for prize money and glory, as they pull out all the stops to secure their futures in television and film. Former contestants include Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, and Ellen DeGeneres.
   
 
  On-Sale Now
  April – June 2009
  Additional performances are booked throughout the year.
  Performances held in the Ruth Finley Person Theater unless otherwise noted. 
 
 
  April 28 TONIGHT
  TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR
  BOZ SCAGGS
  (Rock)
  Show Time: 8pm
  $49.75, $69.
 
 
May

  3          Santa Rosa Concert Association, 60th Anniversary Bonus Concert!
  THE CHORAL PROJECT, SAN JOSE
  Show Time: 3pm $20, $30, $40
 
  9                    American Philharmonic, TENTH SEASON GALA
  Show Time: 8pm FREE – available day of show only
 
  10                American Philharmonic, TENTH SEASON GALA
  Show Time: 3pm FREE – available day of show only
 
  15         A NIGHT OF OPERA FAVORITES *
  Show Time: 8pm
  $15 
 
  19         B.B. KING
  (Blues)
  Show Time: 8pm
  $49.75, $69.75, $89.
 
 
  June
 
  5          FRANK CALIENDO
  (Comedy)
  Show Time: 8pm
  $39.75, $69.

 
  6          PRIDE COMEDY NIGHT
  STARRING ALEC MAPA & MARGA GOMEZ
  A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Celebration
  (Comedy)
  Show Time:  8pm
  $15, $29.75, $39.


  23         BILL ENGVALL
  (Comedy)
  Show Time:  8pm
  $45, $55
 
  July
 
  14         TEARS FOR FEARS
  with special guest Wainwright
  (Rock)
  Show Time: 8pm
  $49.75, $69.

  17       FRANKIE VALLI AND THE FOUR SEASONS
  (Oldies)
  Show Time:  8pm
  $69.75, $99.

 
  August
 
  14 -16        HEALDSBURG GUITAR FESTIVAL
  Event time:  11am-6pm
  $12 Day, $22 Weekend
  Tickets and information: festivalofguitars.com or 800.477.4437
 
 
  TICKET INFORMATION
  Tickets are available at the Box Office located at 50 Mark West Springs Road in Santa Rosa, by phone at 707-546-3600, or online at wellsfargocenterarts.org
  Box office hours are Tuesday-Saturday, noon to 6pm.

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Reminder Lisa Lampanelli’s HBO Comedy Special “Long Live the Queen” premiers this Saturday at 10pm PST.

More information on the special, recorded here on November 21, is available at: http://www.hbo.com/events/lisalampanelli/index.html

Lisa was will also host Howard Stern’s 101 tonight at 7pm EST.

Catch Lisa on Chelsea Lately this Wednesday on E! at 11:30pm PST.

Note: Lisa’s appearances are likely to include strong adult language.

"I was youngish," says Sylvia Waters of the time, in 1968, when she joined Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. "You can see that I'm trying not to be too specific," she jokes, speaking on a cell from a coffee shop in New York City.

But she's not shy about the number of years, 33, that she has led Ailey II, the Ailey young company that begins a tour in Ontario with a performance in Kingston's Grand Theatre.

The late Alvin Ailey, the man being celebrated in his company's 50th anniversary season, launched a repertory ensemble with a workshop for the best scholarship students from his company's school.

As it has evolved under Waters' direction, Ailey II is not just a farm team for the main company. Its six male and six female dancers bring shows performed in the unique Ailey style to towns all over North America that would otherwise see little if any live contemporary dance, let alone such an exuberant expression of African-American culture.

"A prodigiously talented woman, my steadfast friend and a most trusted confidante of Alvin and myself," is how the majestic AAADT artistic director Judith Jamison introduced Waters last month in New York. Honouring her colleague as a winner of a 2008 Dance Magazine Award, Jamison spoke of Waters' grace and passion as an interpreter of Ailey's choreography.

"I really started dance as a TV and movie dancer," Waters told her audience, "that is, in front of the TV." She took her first ballet steps in imitation of the ballerinas on the Sunday night Ed Sullivan Show.

A graduate of the Juilliard School, she danced with the New Dance Group and performed in Europe before joining Ailey's troupe, advised that "it would be a very important company one day."

Nurturing young dancers has become Waters' second career, rooted in her belief in the Ailey approach to dance as expression of soul. "It's our first language," she says. "Everyone dances."

Rachael McLaren, a long, lean dancer from Winnipeg, is one of those young talents nurtured in Ailey II. Jamison brought her into the main company last year.

McLaren started dancing in a small school at the age of 5. As a teenager she trained in the school of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. "Right after graduating from high school, I got a contract to perform in the Toronto production of Mamma Mia!," she said on a late afternoon before the Ailey company's City Center performance in New York.

There was some confusion, engendered by the success of Mamma Mia!: Was she destined to perform in musical theatre? Wondering whether to give dance another chance, McLaren enrolled in The Ailey School's summer program. She spent a year on an independent study production before Waters asked her to join Ailey II.

Like most members of the company, she danced in Ailey II for only a couple of years – long enough to know that this is what she wants to do. "I've definitely been very happy."

One of her partners at AAADT has been long-time featured dancer Glenn Allen Sims. "He's my man," she laughs. It has been a thrill for her to perform with people she looked up to as a student in the school.

Yannick Lebrun is another dancer McLaren sometimes partners. Lebrun also came out of Ailey II.

"Everybody is so supportive," says McLaren of the organization that is now her home. No wonder dancers refer to "the Ailey family."

Ailey II has also provided an opening for emerging choreographers. Besides performing the Ailey rep and works by established artists such as Lar Lubovitch and Jamison, the company has premiered shows by Robert Battle, Donald Byrd, Shapiro & Smith, Avila/Weeks and Kevin Wynn. A program might include Ailey's Revelations, alongside something like Christopher Huggins' very abstract When Dawn Comes.

The company does the work of inspiring young and ambitious dancers in the towns where they perform. Ailey II does residencies in universities and high schools wherever it goes, taking professional dance right into the community.

Ailey II at Wells Fargo Center for the Arts  in Santa Rosa, CA
March 11 at 8pm
Pre-show discussion at 7pm
$15 and $25

http://wellsfargocenterarts.org/concert/0309_ailey-dance.html

http://www.thestar.com/Entertainment/article/571100

posted in Reviews, Santa Rosa |http://www.bohemian.com/citysound/?p=1331

"After you've had a few hit records," explained Johnny Mathis at the Wells Fargo Center last night, "you can just about do anything you want. And I wanted to record some of my mother's favorite songs."

His mother's favorite songs, it turns out, were Christmas songs, and the rest is history—Johnny Mathis has put out nine Christmas albums since. Though for a concert billed as "A Johnny Mathis Christmas," the set was actually a welcome 50/50 blend of seasonal classics and standards, touching on Mathis' biggest hits and even snaking down very interesting territory—an electric-guitar version of the Stylistics' "You Make Me Feel Brand New," for example, or a raucous street-party "Brazil," favela whistles and all.

Most noticeably, Johnny Mathis is a living miracle of preservation. At 73, he looks and sounds almost exactly like he did fifty years ago, with the same high-toned boyish singing and a surprisingly fit face and figure. He's also not just going through the motions. That he's still willing to take chances and go out of his comfort zone is one of the reasons he's persevered as one of the last in a literally dying breed. (Oh, 960 KABL, how missed you are.)

Mathis opened with "Winter Wonderland," the lead-off tune from his first and most famous Christmas album, and then went pretty quickly into "It's Not For Me To Say," sparking one of many sighs of recognition. The audience actually gasped at the immediately recognizable piano intro to "Chances Are," and during "Misty," when he nailed the final octave-high falsetto in the third verse, you could hear an entire theater of 1,400 audibly gasp.

Sure, they laughed at "Gina," but for the most part, Mathis—in a blue sweater and pants and white sneakers—held everyone rapt in his role as interpreter. "Stranger in Paradise," "Secret Love" and "A Felicidade" are all songs associated with other singers, but Mathis did them right, just as he delivered a touching "Christmastime is Here" from A Charlie Brown Christmas after giving an introductory nod to Charles Schulz. (Mathis' singing voice is gold, but man, his speaking voice is truly unusual; you gotta hear it to believe it.)

Yes, he did "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," and "Silver Bells," and a bunch of other Christmas songs. He also did "The Twelfth of Never" with a solo guitar backing, and "99 Miles From L.A.," and somewhere near the end of it all—after an intermission during which a know-your-audience comedian came out and told Viagra jokes—Mathis sang eight bars completely acapella, a 73-year-old man alone and unaccompanied in the spotlight, just totally ruling it. Miracles never cease.

.... Just a few nights later in Santa Rosa, CA I sat beside my daughter-in-law and good friend, Kelin, along with nearly 1600 others in a darkened theater to hear Mary Oliver read her poems. This was very different from the little Thanksgiving Day gathering. Clearly it wasn't a church service—far from it; for one thing, there were a lot more people in attendance; they were by and large dressed more elegantly; there was no sharing of bread, (although there was wine of course just beforehand—this is Sonoma County) Mostly only one person did all the speaking. And although she did make remarks between poems, most of her speaking was reading words in books. Beautiful words carefully crafted—words she had written over the years for publication. Poetry.

But, as I sat there I was carried back to the little gathering in the church. There was considerable silence this night, too—between poems, as the poet searched for the next one she would read. And there wasn't much applause—except at the beginning and the end—when people stood and clapped and whistled and expressed their heartfelt thanks for Mary Oliver. Occasionally there was applause after a poem, but the first applause of that kind came in response to a poem about her dog Percy and a mythical visit he paid to George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. That clapping exploded I think out of the pure joy of laughter (and perhaps the gift of dogs).

Mostly at the end of each poem, there was a soft a-h-h-h sound from the audience—kind of a murmur. Once on another evening sometime back, when a man named Doug von Koss, who is a magnificent bard here in the Bay area, led an evening of the poetry of Rumi and St. Francis, he began the evening by asking for no applause. He said, when you feel like applauding, instead sigh. He meant a sigh of contentment, of agreement, of thanksgiving, of homecoming. The way you sigh when something rings true, something is so beautiful it opens your heart. An a-h-h-h-h-h-h of recognition and thanksgiving. That evening was filled with sighs, and those sighs contributed to the beauty and the community—we who sighed were made one with the performers and the poetry. Sweet.

Mary Oliver gave no instructions about applause or sighs—but the evening was filled with the rhythm of the spoken word, the sighs, and the silence. Not unlike the rhythm of the people offering their thanks and the silences between them. And although her words were carefully written and spoken ones, they were like the words spoken in the church a few days earlier, in their honesty and truth. They, too, were filled with losses and longings, death and grief, vulnerability and strength, love and mystery—and praise and thanksgiving. Place and relationship. Connection to the earth and the creatures of the earth. Love between partners. Attentiveness: being present to life. Humility. Vulnerability. These were the marks of her poetry. She mentioned Jesus once or twice, she talked about God once or twice—but mostly she used the prism of her own life to open us to pure gift and beauty. In a sense she showed us how thanksgiving for the gift of life is best expressed by living life fully and deeply.

Our murmured sighs in response were expressions of our thanks for her remembering all of this for us. Reminding us. Speaking out loud the truths we share. And, opening us. That's what thanksgiving does. It reminds us who we are, and opens us to the divine in our own selves, others, and beyond. It dispels fear, opens our hands letting us unclutch. Making us ready to receive. A good Advent practice: thanksgiving.

Holy time and place and people at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts.


Posted by Patricia Moore under From Belief Systems To Relief Systems
The Rest of the Article:
http://avoluptuousgod.com

Review from Steely Dan's show in Los Angeles.

Review: Steely Dan in supreme form
Review: Rejuvenated after three years of touring, the one-of-a-kind band, which plays Aug. 4 in Anaheim, delivered arguably its best performance this decade.

KEVIN SULLIVAN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
IMPECCABLE: Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, always an unusual voice, sounded stronger than he has on any Dan tour since 2000 during the band's Nokia Theatre show Wednesday night. Bassist Freddie Washington is in the background. The band plays again Aug. 4 at the Theatre at Honda Center in Anaheim.
Where: Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles

By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register

It's been five years since Steely Dan issued its last album, "Everything Must Go." At the time, the title, from the disc's closing song about a corporation partying up as it's going out of business, somewhat suggested that this might be the last we'd hear from Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, those snarky eccentrics, masters of their own profoundly influential jazz-funk-rock idiom – an impeccable sound recognizable from just one chord out of Fagen's filtered electric piano or one weirdly harmonized horn sustain laying over a syncopated groove.

Becker, in a recent Rolling Stone interview, didn't rule out the possibility that he and his partner might eventually cut a new batch of tunes. Yet sometimes it can still seem as though "Everything" will remain the duo's final studio statement – for recently they've done everything but plan a 10th Dan album. Two years ago Fagen issued "Morph the Cat," the last piece in a solo trilogy that began with 1982's "The Nightfly" – and just last month Becker released the reggae-heavy "Circus Money," his second Fagen-free set and first of the sort since 1994's "11 Tracks of Whack."

Meanwhile, the sophisticates who early in their careers swore off touring in part because they couldn't achieve on stage what they could meticulously control in the studio have now spent the better part of the past three years on the road. California wasn't included in last year's Heavy Rollers outing, but this summer's Think Fast trek just began journeying up and down the coast, making two local stops – Wednesday night's superb set at Nokia Theatre in downtown L.A., followed by an Aug. 4 show at the Theatre at Honda Center in Anaheim.

So they haven't become inert – if anything, they're more active now than at any other time in their storied (if interrupted) past.

Two years ago, when I complained that Don and Walt and Co. turned in a rather perfunctory performance at Irvine's Verizon Wireless Amphitheater (and wasted opportunities with opening act and former supporting player Michael McDonald), I couldn't help but wonder why such nostalgia resisters were bothering, other than to pick up a paycheck. Merely keeping chops sharp seemed a feeble excuse; after all, if they just wanted a workout, they could simply plot a string of dates at, say, New York's Beacon Theatre, like the six-date run they just played in June, and come away feeling up-to-snuff again.

I left that show sensing Steely Dan had succumbed in a way I never thought it would – it had lost some edge. Sounds crazy to say about a group that, perhaps more than any other of the last four decades, could be held responsible for the rise of smooth jazz. But the Dan has always been different – the terminally bland music it hath wrought was never any measure of the fractured funkiness (lyrical as well as musical) that Fagen and Becker injected into the mainstream like an overdose of heroin.

Along with everything else that can be said of its challenging music – how demanding it is of even highly skilled players, how film-noir cool but also soulfulness leap from such immaculate conceptions – it's also true that Steely Dan is just plain brilliantly weird.

Always ironically humorous, and more endearingly above-it-all the since its masterminds started reelin' in the years, Fagen, 60, and Becker, 58, have concocted an indelible songbook by rooting around in society's underbelly. Their lyrics have pored over drug dealers ("Kid Charlemagne"), New Orleans streetwalkers ("Pearl of the Quarter"), Me Decade romantic drifters ("Haitian Divorce"), lecherous relatives ("Cousin Dupree"), Adolph Hitler ("Pretzel Logic"), whatever "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" is about – and maybe, just maybe, there's been a self-portrait or two, though we'll probably never know which ones qualify for sure.

So here's the amazingly redemptive thing about Wednesday's Nokia show, even more so than the fact that here at last was a group that could finally make that movie-theater of a concert venue sound warm: Suddenly it's as if the Dan has gotten its groove back.

Not only did so many details come across more trenchantly (in older pieces like "The Royal Scam," in newer satire like "Godwhacker"), not only was their fascination with the dark side of the Southwest more pronounced (whether in the Lost Wages skewering of "Show Biz Kids" or the picturesque "Glamour Profession"), but the music itself often sounded refurbished, expertly tweaked by the same band of aces I saw in 2006, here rising to the challenge of fresh reinterpretation. (And let us now bow at the drum altar of the mighty Keith Carlock, for his immensely impressive dynamics – robust and progressive yet never obtrusive – greatly enliven old workhorses while his stunning fills often boggle the brain. They say Keith Moon played as if he had eight arms. Carlock's working with at least 10.)

Mind you, what you'd get out of this show depends on how you like your Dan these days. Devotees of more willfully odd early albums like "Pretzel Logic" (which yielded only a swift "Parker's Band," sung by the ensemble's trio of backing vocalists) and "Katy Lied" (which yielded only a bit of "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" in an overture) must have been disappointed to some degree.

With each tour Becker and Fagen increasingly return to their most complex period, 1976-1980, this night dusting off half of the criminally underrated "The Royal Scam" (though none of it retains its paranoiac thrill anymore), the majority of the indestructible "Aja" (Carlock was incredible on the title track) and five of seven from "Gaucho." Toss "FM" (the usual encore-ender) and Fagen's Kennedy-era snapshot "New Frontier" (cast from the same sonic mold) onto your homemade mix disc and you'll have most everything they played here. (See the complete set list here. )

Which is hardly a complaint. I do wish, though, seeing as they seem so rejuvenated, that B&F had opted not to enlist opening act the Joey Defrancesco Trio and instead served up two sets, using one of them to retool some unexpected gems. "Your Gold Teeth" and "Doctor Wu" are just begging for an overhauling, doncha think, guys? Maybe in '09?

Or, heck, how 'bout for the Anaheim gig? You were so supreme here, you've convinced me to come again.