ZOE ALEXANDER GOIN’ TO NASHVILLE

MONTEREY country singer/songwriter Zoe Alexander is going for the big time in Nashville. He’s been accepted by a major producer there and is taking a bundle of his own original songs. And he’s asking for the support of his fans in the area. Click HERE

 

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON

OUR CALENDAR shows several Valentine’s Day concerts, including the above-titled at La Mirada in Monterey. It features three popular area singers, Reg Huston, Nancy Williams and Lydia Lyons (pictured) in the Great American Songbook.

PHILIP PEARCE’S THEATER NEWS

DIRECTED by Walt deFaria and organized by a committee of local people who love theater and don’t want to see it stamped out by budget cuts, MPC mounted a big, glittering benefit called The All Star M.P.C. Follies on the Morgan Stock stage last weekend. The show is now history, so I won’t review it in detail, but only testify that it was slick, exciting entertainment from start to finish and deserved the standing riot of applause it got – at least when I was in Row K, seat 116 on Saturday night.

Looking back on the event, which featured more than sixty committed and loving musical theater stars and raised thousands of dollars for the beleaguered company, I thought about a remark made by a lady who sat next to me recently in a different local theater.

“Why is it always the things that make us better human beings that get hit first by budget cuts?” she wondered. “I’ve never heard of a fund raiser for a war, have you?”

TO READ Philip’s critiques of Breath of Life at Carmel’s Cherry Center and The Tye More Binding at Monterey Museum of Art, click HERE

PERFORMING ARTS PEOPLE

DID you know that William Faulkner plays the harp? No, not in heaven, but right here on the Monterey Bay. Click HERE

YMMC’S ABUNDANT EXCITEMENT

WHEN young musicians get a chance to shine, it always comes with an extra charge of adrenaline. At least that’s the history of Youth Music Monterey whose orchestras shone brightly last Sunday at Sunset Center. Credit of course goes to their energizing conductor, Farkhad Khudyev, who kindled a fiery Capriccio Espanole with the senior Honors Orchestra. This year’s concerto winner, Ari Friedman, (right) displayed startling virtuosity in a cello concerto by Haydn. Youth Orchestra Salinas (YOSAL) joined the Junior Youth Orchestra for a confident and sonorous Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity from Holst’s The Planets.

SELECTED GRAMMY WINNERS

WE wrote about two of them in our Weekly Updates: the Partch Ensemble’s “Plectra and Percussion Dances” and “In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores.” Another winner, John Adams’ City Noir, was heard in Santa Cruz during the 2010 Cabrillo Festival when Marin Alsop and the orchestra performed it.

Scott MacClelland, editor