REVIEW: BEARFOOT

NOVEMBER 21, 2009 - 12:11 AM

By MIKE DUNHAM
Bearfoot: present incarnation, 2009

Cavernous Wendy Williamson Auditorium filled to capacity on Friday night for a band that originally formed in Alaska and has since made a name in the wider musical world.

The handful of youngsters who came together at music camp and formed Bearfoot Bluegrass in 1999, won the national Telluride Band Competition in Colorado in 2001. This year, with their fourth album, they reached No. 1 on Billboard Magazine’s Bluegrass chart.

Now known simply as Bearfoot, the band has played innumerable times in Anchorage. But this show was different. For one thing, it marked the only time this year the band will play here, part of a home-state tour that winds up in Fairbanks today. They’ll have a break until January, when they start a series of concerts that will take them from Missoula, Montana to Glasgow, Scotland. Success is taking them, inevitably, away from Alaska.

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CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES

NOVEMBER 20, 2009 - 11:06 AM

MUSIC/THEATER/DANCE

Rehearsals: The Anchorage Community Concert Band will practice 7 p.m. Tuesdays. The band has a varied group of ages and talents and plays a variety of music from classical to marches. (258-7263, akband.org)

Ukulele Lessons: Beginners can learn to play ukulele for free. Bring your own uke or purchase one for $29.95. Fridays, 5-6 p.m., The Horn Doctor Music Store, 1000 Ingra St. (272-4676)

Scared Scriptless Monthly Improv Workshop: Work on skills that will help you in everything you do in life. After all, what is life but improvisation? Third Thursday of every month, 7-9 p.m., Turnagain Community Arts Alliance building. Class size limited and registration is required. (310-1973, jason@scaredscriptless.com)

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New Genaux album sensational

NOVEMBER 18, 2009 - 1:23 PM

Vivica Genaux
Word just in that Vivica Genaux's new album of Vivaldi arias will be released in the U.S. on Dec. 8.

The Fairbanks-born mezzo is again paired with violinist Fabio Biondi and the Europa Galante ensemble, my favorite period instrument ensemble right now, with whom she has previously scored much international success.

A sample received here suggests that Genaux's voice is reaching a powerful maturity, and that these ferociously athletic pieces are the music she was born to sing - or that Vivaldi was put on this planet to write this stuff so that Genaux could sing it 300 years later.

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REVIEW: CROOKED STILL

NOVEMBER 14, 2009 - 11:27 PM

By MIKE DUNHAM

Crooked Still brings a distinct sound to traditional string band folk music by limiting the use of guitar and by avoiding vocal harmonies — but mainly by putting a cello into the mix and spotlighting it. Tristan Clarridge treated it like a fiddle at the group’s concert in Wendy Williamson Auditorium on Saturday night with solo breaks that were both exciting and technically impressive, an equal partner in a group whose sound depends on getting high-flying effects from old time instruments.

Like Gregory Liszt’s sensational banjo virtuosity. There were times when he made it sound like a honkey-tonk piano, with power and precision. Precision also marked the playing of Brittany Haas on fiddle; while her solos tended to be more restrained than those of her colleagues, her playing consistently brought an element of controlled elegance into the roving blend of Celtic, folk and blues with a hint of jazz. Bass player Corey DiMario had no solos but solidly backed up the others throughout the evening.

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Shortest applause ever at piano recital?

NOVEMBER 13, 2009 - 10:29 PM

By MIKE DUNHAM
Natsuki Fukasawa

Some sort of record for the briefest burst of applause ever must have been set at pianist Natsuki Fukasawa's recital at UAA on Friday night. The first piece on the program was Mendelssohn's "Fantasy on 'The Last Rose of Summer,'" which few if any of the members of the audience could have heard before. The unfamiliar work based on a very familiar tune ends quietly with slow spaces between the final notes. Only one person in the Fine Arts Building Recital Hall clapped, and that person clapped exactly once then stopped. Like this:

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Creative Opportunities

NOVEMBER 12, 2009 - 5:01 PM

MOVIES/MUSIC/THEATER/DANCE
Screen search. Talent GPS is looking for a 8-12 Year old Boy for an upcoming adventurepPilot to be filmed in Anchorage. Send photo, any acting experience and contact information to kat@talentgps.com by Friday November 12, 2009. Auditions will be November 13, 2009. Shooting is scheduled for December.

Rehearsals: The Anchorage Community Concert Band will practice 7 p.m. Tuesdays. The band has a varied group of ages and talents and plays a variety of music from classical to marches. (258-7263, akband.org)

Ukulele Lessons: Beginners can learn to play ukulele for free. Bring your own uke or purchase one for $29.95. Fridays, 5-6 p.m., The Horn Doctor Music Store, 1000 Ingra St. (272-4676)

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Kenai watercolor winners announced

NOVEMBER 12, 2009 - 10:20 AM

She's Come Undone: By Georg-Anne Phillips, judged "Best of Show” in the 2009 Kenai Peninsula Watercolor Juried Exhibition.(This press release came to the Daily News from Gaye LaRane, a member of the Peninsula Art Guild board of directors and this year’s Coordinator of the Juried Watercolor Exhibit sponsored by the Kenai Fine Arts Center Watercolor Group, as well as one of the artists juried into the show.)

Georg-Anne Phillips received the Best of Show award for “She’s Come Undone” in the 2009 Kenai Peninsula Watercolor Juried Exhibition which opened Thursday, November 5th. The presentation of awards came during the First Thursday artists’ reception at the Kenai Fine Arts Center in Old Town Kenai. Artists from all over the Kenai Peninsula working in water media entered the annual exhibition.

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Review: THE AUDITION

NOVEMBER 10, 2009 - 11:01 PM

By MIKE DUNHAM
A wacky night before the opera: "The Audition," the first show of the Anchorage Opera Dark Night series features Carolyn Morris in horns as Carmen Carmen, John Fraser as the opera workshop director and Liz Millikan as Heddy Ingeborg Giselle Iceberg. Photo: Bill Roth.
Evidence of Anchorage Opera's efforts to get more local singers on stage can be seen in the current production of "Sister Angelica" with an all-Alaskan cast (previously reviewed) and Tuesday evening's "Dark Night" presentation of Martin Kalmanoff's "The Audition." "Audition" is as comic as "Angelica" is tragic and, though the silly music of the former makes no attempt to match the nobility of the latter, the audience at the Discovery Theatre didn't seem to mind, laughing and applauding heartily after each solo.

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Final Auditions for Barrow Film Wednesday

NOVEMBER 10, 2009 - 1:22 PM

The producers of a full-length movie version of Alaska director Andrew Maclean’s award-winning film “On the Ice” (“Sikumi”) will hold a final round of auditions in Anchorage. Maclean is looking for an all-Inuit cast, ages 17-70, for the film, which will be shot in Barrow. Auditions will take place from 4:30-6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11, at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 427 D St.

More information is available online at www.ontheicethemovie.com.

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Fred's heads: Naknek artist's unusual ink

NOVEMBER 9, 2009 - 3:34 PM

By MIKE DUNHAM
Fred Anderson: Self portrait in 2004.
A blue ink drawing by Fred Anderson Sr. at the recent "Virtual Subsistence" group art show sent us to the archive where we discovered he's won previous statewide exhibitions twice with self portraits. And the berry-picking bug in the "Virtual Subsistence" show kinda reminds me of him, too.
Fred Anderson: Self portrait in 2006.
From his home in Naknek, the artist said he got interested in the difficult blue Japanese ink while trying to teach himself how to draw some years ago. Living in Naknek, that's how you do it, the nearest art academy being some hundreds or thousands of miles away.

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REVIEW: PAGLIACCI and SISTER ANGELICA

NOVEMBER 8, 2009 - 1:09 AM

By MIKE DUNHAM
'Pagliacci' stalwarts: While Jennifer Tiller, as Nedda, sings, Jane Drebert accompanies her with silent antics. Photo: Chris Arend.
The most entertaining moment in Anchorage Opera’s double-bill of “Sister Angelica” and “I Pagliacci” comes right at the opening of the latter and doesn’t involve singing. Jane Park Drebert does a cartwheel on the edge of the stage and, with comic intent, flubs it, falling on her patoot.

Drebert – a fine singer as well as dancer, though she doesn’t sing in this production – is part of an adroit trio of mute clowns that includes Don Love and David Haynes. They remain on stage for most of the opera, visually commenting on the drama in fascinating parallel action. It’s hard to keep one’s eyes off them.

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Did you see the Sioux?

NOVEMBER 6, 2009 - 9:34 PM

Lakota Sioux Dance TheaterThe Lakota Sioux Dance Theater troupe performs in Atwood Concert Hall on Nov. 6 and 7. Did you see the show? Tell us what you thought here.

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REVIEW: MOMENTUM DANCE COLLECTIVE

NOVEMBER 6, 2009 - 9:29 PM

Momentum

By ANNE HERMAN
Daily News correspondent

Exploration is the name of the game for contemporary dance companies like Momentum Dance Collective. Choreographers and performers launch themselves into little-charted territory to see what they can discover and use in crafting a dance. Whether that new territory is in their minds or their bodies, what results can be exciting, dangerous and at times perplexing.

Momentum Dance Collective opened its second season with “Levels,” an hour long concert Friday night at the Sydney Laurence Theatre. Many of the works on the program were more familiar than alien, but the tang of artistic adventure was there.

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First Friday Rambles

NOVEMBER 6, 2009 - 9:27 PM

By Mike Dunham

Alaska Womens Training Bra: Cindy Shake's contribution to "Wild Bras on Parade." Photo by Martha Peck
The "Wild Bras on Parade" fundraiser for breast cancer patients wound up without the proposed style show on Friday night. Many of the pieces of frolicksome foundations proved to be too fragile for facile handling and few were actually wearable. But that didn't stop a crowd from inspecting them and bidding on their favorites at Half Moon Creek Gallery, where the bras wound up after parading through nine other galleries or stores over the past month. My favorite was Diane Barske's clock-bearing "Felix the Cat." All of the art left the gallery with the owners as soon as the auction closed, but you can get a look at some of them at our online gallery.

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Review: UAA Dance Ensemble

NOVEMBER 5, 2009 - 10:08 PM

UAA Dance Ensemble: Old publicity photo. This particular pose wasn't part of the opening night show.
Two complex and contrasting pieces bookend the showcase of new choreography presented by the University of Alaska Anchorage Dance Ensemble this month.

Leslie Kimiko Ward’s “iTouch, 5 meditations on interdependence” suggested narratives on how contemporary America keeps up a guard regarding physical contact. It opened with the company walking and talking on beeping cell phones then cut to a scene where a man and two women flirted, clung or dismissed one another as a fourth dancer flitted behind them delivering distracting taps on the back — I thought of Cupid — while others sat on the sides with laptop computers.

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CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES

NOVEMBER 5, 2009 - 4:01 PM

MUSIC/THEATER/DANCE

Auditions: World Premiere of “Wind Blown & Dripping” By Peter Porco. 11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14 at Cyrano’s Off Center Playhouse, 413 D St. (cyranos.org)

Auditions: “Caroline or Change” Bring a song of your choice, blues, pop, gospel, opera. Performances in May 2010. 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 10. at the Opera Center, 1507 Spar Ave. in Ship Creek (Next to Alaska Mill & Feed). (cyranos.org, anchorageopera.org)

Auditions: Alaska Sound Celebration invitation for Women to visit us during our Membership Drive. Learn holiday music and join us on stage to perform as guest artists on the Midnight Son’s Holiday show. 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10, Wayland Baptist University, 7801 E. 32nd Ave. (566-3987, alaskasoundcelebration.org)

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Kane reading on First Friday

NOVEMBER 5, 2009 - 11:07 AM

By Mike Dunham
Joan Kane
Fresh back from picking up her Whiting Writers' Award and launching her first book in New York, poet Joan Kane will read from her work at the first Friday opening at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation gallery, 500 W. 6th Ave., at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6. The visual art will feature guest curator Holly Nordlum's "Sharing the Spirit" group exhibition of new work by Ed Mighell, Aakatchaq, Francine Chiklak, Moses Wassilie and others. Hot tip: for the first time in my recollection, the gallery will have a pre-holiday 25 percent off sale through this weekend. The gallery handles both top-quality traditional work as well as contemporary art.

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Oboe-Organ collision avoided

NOVEMBER 3, 2009 - 3:30 PM

By MIKE DUNHAM
Sharman Piper
A chamber recital featuring oboist Sharman Piper, violist Anne Gantz Burns and pianist Cynthia Epperson has been planned for months to take place this afternoon at Anchorage Lutheran Church, 420 N Street. Then came word that Paul Jacobs, head of the organ department at Juilliard, would perform at the same time at St. Mark Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3230 Lake Otis Parkway.
Paul Jacobs
Jacobs, 32, is winding up a marathon of performances in all 50 states, Alaska being the final one in the series. His national reputation is nothing short of spectacular.

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Should I see the corpses?

OCTOBER 28, 2009 - 4:40 PM

By MIKE DUNHAM

So here I am in Seattle. I've seen the Michelangelo and Calder exhibits at the Seattle Art Museum. But I have a conflict about another show.

"Bodies: The Exhibition" has returned to Seattle, skinned and disected people posed in lifelike positions. Some call it beautiful and fascinating. Others suspect the display is of people who criticized their government and, as a result, are now displayed to make money for the government that they dared to criticize.

I don't know. I walked by the place, a few blocks from the SAM, and debated buying a ticket to go in. In the end, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

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Grant Hall Haunting

OCTOBER 27, 2009 - 10:05 AM

By Mike Dunham

I've received some terrific pictures of TBA's "The Daemon of Darby Castle," by P. Shane Mitchell, now playing at Grant Hall auditorium - correctly identified in the press release as Brown Auditorium. Unfortunately, I'm on the road and unable to load them onto the blog. But costumes and sets look striking for this spookfest based on accounts of Ireland's most haunted castle.

A brief synopsis from TBA: "Henry and Millicent have come to the Darby's ancestral home to be married. An ill fated attempt to communicate with the world beyond leads to a series of mysterious deaths that build to a breath-taking climax. Recommended for ages 10 and up or those that can handle a good scare."

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