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Thank you, Cyrano’s, for bringing CARNIVAL to an Alaska stage. It brought back sweet memories for me, since, as a child, I spent 6 months with the original national touring company of the show.

I have been a fan of Indigo Girls for many years and saw them when they were up here some years ago with Emmy Lou Harris at the PAC.

By MIKE DUNHAM

Saturday night's program by the Anchorage Symphony had an imaginative premise, focusing on narrative music. But the performance was less than inspired. The trouble started at the beginning, with intonation trouble in the cellos in Rossini's Overture to "William Tell." The melodic nuances were often buried in the sonic mix, including - almost unbelievably - the trombones in the storm music. Nonetheless, it was the best-received piece on the program judging from the lusty audience response.

Anchorage Opera’s spellbinding moments in French opera was more of a bizarre mélage of awkwardly directed moments in French opera. The only highlights were singers Yeghishe Manucharyan, Jamie-Rose Guarrine, Todd Robinson, and Janinah Burnett in any of their performances. But let me detail a few things that irritated me about this production.

Isn't it surprising that the ADN didn't send a reviewer to the fantastic Booker T Jones concert on Sunday night when ADN featured Booker T as a front page article in the weekend Play section? It didn't even get an online Artsnob mention. From the reaction of the audience (multiple standing ovations, hoots, hollers), this concert was thoroughly enjoyed by the attendees. If you love blues, rock, or even rap, too bad if you weren't there - it was great. What a bunch of talented people & what a really tight band.

Jackie Cochran's rendition of Valley Performing Arts' play The Secret Garden is a touching, feel-good production that you don't want to miss.
Admittedly, this show isn't for the fast-paced, joke-a-minute crowd. The plot revolves around prepubescent girl bringing animation into the lives of her caregivers while developing her own humanity.

TBA keeps on pushing the boundaries of what local theatre can do here in Anchorage. They've capped off an ambitious season (including the reflective parable The Magic Little Snowman and the incredible Mother Goose on the Loose) with a stellar performance of a really challenging musical.

The best Christmas stories are the ones we tell ourselves over and over. TBA’s The Little Magic Snowman by P. Shane Mitchell playing now at APU’s Grant Hall is quickly becoming one of these stories. It has all essential elements for a great Christmas story: a toy maker, a candy maker, a village of singing children, Jack Frost, an orphan girl and of course, a little magic snowman.

The Little Magic Snowman first premiered in Anchorage six years ago on the stage of the Wendy Williamson. I took my nephews to it and we liked it then. My nephews accompanied me to this season’s production and we all agree, this is our favorite show. Frank Bebey’s beautiful scenic design fills Grant Hall, making Snowman’s winter village look for all the world like one of those exquisite snow globes your grandmother used to make you hold with both hands when you asked to shake it.

This was an excellent play with generous helpings of comedy from each one of the actors. The actors really live in their characters. The show starts out looking like a broad caricature of Southern stereotypes, but by the end you get a sense of love for the eccentricity of the Futrelle family. The whole cast was great, but Reagan James especially impressed me as a good-hearted, earthy woman who helps ground the hypercharged dynamics of her family.

Pop star Jewel Kilcher is back in Alaska with shows in Homer and Anchorage. If you were there, tell us what you thought here.

Was a great show. Good singing and lots of laughs. I know its hard to give up a sunny night for two hours in the theater but this is worth it.

I enjoyed the Puddle of Mudd concert (outdoors next to Chilkoot Charlie's on Sat. June 20), but it could have been much better if the sound quality/sound mix had been better. The problem was that neither guitar could be heard well, lost under an overly loud bass. To corroborate my opinion, at least twice in the middle of hard-to-hear guitar solos the volume suddenly increased, as if the sound man finally realized that the guitars weren't coming through very well.

- George Nagel

Leapin’ lizards Anchorage, it’s “Annie!” If opening night of the long-time running Broadway hit musical “Annie” is any indication of what’s in store for theatre-goers in the days ahead, then surely they’ll be begging more then Sandy, the canine star, would be for a choice bone or two.

“Annie,” which opened Wednesday for a six-day, eight performance run, leaped right off the comic strip pages of the newspaper and straight into the hearts and minds before a packed Atwood Theatre in the Performing Arts Center. The storyline for this light-hearted, timeless production takes place in New York City in the early 1930’s.

The “Best of Ballet” misses the professional marker.
By Woodruff Laputka

The ambitious performances of young ballet dancers were portrayed at last nights, “The Best of Ballet”, presented by the Anchorage Classical Ballet Academy in the Discovery Theater. This show features a collection of both famous ballet pieces as well as in-house choreographed dances, offering an interesting mixture of music, style and form while still making an effort to surprise and fascinate its audiences by the end of its two Act run.

During these two acts, a multitude of young dancers are put out on the stage to show the audience what they’ve learned. I have to say that, before I go any further, I was looking for the perspective of a layman to the ballet art. That said here is my observation of the production.

Anchorage Opera's most recent undertaking, "The Barber of Seville", will at the same time, make you forget your troubles and make you forget you are at an opera. About the only reminder of operatic protocol will be the white, stuffy wig worn by Bartolo -- and even that gets ditched in the third act. "How can this be opera?", you will find yourself saying -- I'll tell you how.

Stage director Bill Fabris' genious combined with Rossini's brilliance makes for an unforgettable evening of perfectly timed choreography, dramatic finales, and intensly technical singing. Anyone who knows anything about Rossini understands that to sing his compositions requires an extremely accurate, light instrument capable of moving effortlessly through lightning quick scales, arpeggios, and florid passages.

For the Anchorage Daily News
Neale Caffin, Parent and Public Relations
Northwest Arctic Borough School District
February 11, 2009

A Winter Music Extravaganza in Kotzebue
Music is the universal language, and it was speaking clearly to all who attended the 2009 Winter Music Festival in Kotzebue on Tuesday evening, February 10. Through the partnership efforts of the Northwest Arctic Borough School District and the Sitka Summer Musical Festival coordinators, three world-renowned musicians flew into the cold weather of Kotzebue and heated up the June Nelson Elementary School auditorium with their electrifying talents. The classical music festival was free to the public and thoroughly enjoyed by all. Each an internationally acclaimed musician, the three musicians pianist Arnulf Von Arnim, celloist Armen Ksajikian, and violinist Paul Rosenthal, provided an evening of classical music including the works of classical composers Frederic Chopin and Franz Schubert.

Anchorage theater-goers should know that the heartfelt musical Les Miserables is being presented at Colony High School in Palmer. The teachers and students have worked incredibly hard for months preparing for performances the next two weekends Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 7:00 PM with Saturday matinees at 1:00 PM through Feb. 21.

The action takes place on a revolving stage, with dramatic smoke and lighting effects. The lead singers and choruses have wonderful voices, and the orchestra does an admirable job. Though the music is difficult, everyone carries it off. It's wonderful that Colony has such dedicated choir, band, set design, and costuming teachers working together with the students to create such a fine drama. It's well worth the trip to the Valley to see Les Mis!

Did anybody else see this. I can't believe with a packed house there isn't something on this great play and project.
Good luck Off the Rocks

Anchorage Symphony Orchestra presents The General
By Woodruff Laputka

After watching Buster Keaton’s, “The General” tracked live by the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, it is easy to see why the age old quote, “sound came to film 10 years too early” still stands. The concept of taking a classic film and tracking it live is something that’s done occasionally and in novelty, either as an experiment or as a study, and usually lacks the sincerity that a live, fully assembled orchestra carries with it. Considering logistics, man power and the over-all time needed for something that will impress the thousand some odd patrons who will be attending, while still appeasing to the promised many art snobs and film fanatics of the community, the project of revisiting the old movie theater style in a modern day concert hall, under the flag of delivering a good show, is ambitious at the very least. However, the Anchorage Symphony’s attempt to do this, if anything, has not only proven it to be possible, but that perhaps that age old saying about sound coming too early to film is quite correct.