Correction: Actor Rob Sutton, who appears in TheatreSquared’sc production of the musical Next to Normal, which opened Thursday in Fayetteville, is a native of Mountain View. Because of incorrect information in a news release from the theater company, this article misidentified Sutton’s hometown.
Orlando, Fla.-based a cappella quintet Voice Play (Earl Elkins Jr. Geoff Castellucci, Layne Stein, Eli Jacobson and Tony Wakim) will perform at 2 p.m. Sunday in Riceland Hall of Arkansas State University’s Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Drive, Jonesboro. ASU vocal ensemble Delta Vox will open the show. Tickets are $30 and $20, $23 and $15 for senior citizens and students. Call (870) 972-2781 or (888) 278-3267 or visit www2. astate.edu/tickets or yourfowlercenter.com.
Also on the ASU calendar this weekend, the New Agrarians - folk singer/songwriters Tom Kimmel, Kate Campbell and Pierce Pettis - will headline the “Roots Music Festival” at 5 p.m. Saturday, part of the university’s Delta Symposium XIX at the City Water and Light Park, 1123 S. Culberhouse St., Jonesboro. (In case of rain, the festival will move to the Jonesboro Public Library.) The festival gets under way at noon with a Blues and Roots Music Showcase featuring regional musicians, followed by performances by Sky City, bluegrass band 2-Mule Plow, guitarist and singer Cedric Burnside and Jonesboro band Plain Meanness. Admission is free. Visit the symposium website, altweb.astate.edu/blues.
Memorial concert
Works by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert and a jazz duo are on the program for a memorial concert for Dr. David Nicholson, an arts patron and emeritus professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, 3 p.m. Sunday in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, Fine Arts Center, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. University Ave., Little Rock.
Pianist Julie Cheek, violinist Andrew Irvin and cellist Stephen Feldman will play Beethoven’s Piano Trio No. 7 in B-flat major, the “Archduke”. Soprano Christine Donahue will sing Schubert’s “Der Tod und Das Madchen” (“Death and the Maiden”) with Cheek at the keyboard.And violinists Irvin and Meredith Maddox Hicks, violist Ryan Mooney and cellist Feldman will play the second movement from Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in d minor, nicknamed “Death and the Maiden.” The Tom Cox Duo - Tom Cox, piano, and Bill Huntingdon, bass - will close the program with a jazz medley.
Admission is free. Call (501) 663-1739.
Nicholson died Dec. 28 at the age of 91. He was on the UAMS faculty from 1978 until his retirement in 1996.
On area stages
Ouachita Baptist University’s School of Fine Arts will stage Hello, Dolly! (music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, book by Michael Stewart, based on the play The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder) at 7:30 p.m. today-Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jones Performing Arts Center, OBU, Arkadelphia. Tickets are $10. Call (870) 245-5555 or visit obu.edu/finearts/boxoffice.
Conway Community Arts and the Lantern Theatre will stage Hats! The Musical (book by Marcia Milgrom Dodge and Anthony Dodge, with additional material by Rob Bartlett, Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Sharon Vaughn and songs by “various composers,” including Melissa Manchester, Pam Tillis and Kathie Lee Gifford) at 7:30 p.m.Friday-Saturday and April 26-27 and 2:30 p.m. Sunday and April 28 at the Lantern Theatre, 1021 Van Ronkle St., Conway. Due to mild sexual humor, the play is recommended for audiences 16 and older. Tickets are $15. Call (501) 733-6220, e-mail ConwayLanternTheatre@gmail.com or visit conwayarts.org.
The Rialto Players will stage Rex’s Exes by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten at 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday and April 26 and 2 p.m. Sunday and April 28, with an April 27 dinner theater show (dinner at 5:30 p.m., curtain at 7) at the Rialto Arts Center, 215 E. Broadway, Morrilton. Tickets are $10; for the dinner theater, $25. Call (501) 477-9955 or visit rialtoartscenter.com.
Ouachita Little Theatre, 610 Mena St., Mena, will stage Irving Berlin’s musical,Annie Get Your Gun, using a live orchestra, at 7:30 p.m. today-Saturday and April 25-27 and 2:30 p.m. April 28. Tickets are $10, $8 for students and adults 60 and older. Call (479) 243-0186, e-mail info@ouachitalittletheatre.org or visit ouachitalittletheatre.org.
The Weekend Theater will hold a talk-back session to discuss the director’s and actors’ creative processes after its 7:30 p.m. Friday performance of Doubt by John Patrick Shanley. The session is free; tickets to this and to Saturday’s closing-night performance are $16, $12 for students and adults 65 and older - visit WeekendTheater.org. For more information, call (501) 603-0055.
Violinist’s homecoming
Violinist Curt Thompson, a Conway native who now heads the strings department at the Melbourne (Australia) Conservatory of Music, will solo in Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Conway Symphony Orchestra and conductor Israel Getzov in “A Classical Homecoming” concert, 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas, 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway. The program will also include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in g minor. Tickets are $20-$38, $6 for children and students. Call (501) 450-3265 or (866) 810-0012 or visit ConwaySymphony.org.
Dance project
The San Francisco-based Purple Moon Dance Project - artistic director Jill Togawa and dancers Ruth Ichinaga and Sharon Sato - will put on a performance titled When Dreams Are Interrupted at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Townsend Wolfe Gallery, Arkansas Arts Center, MacArthur Park, 10th and Commerce streets, Little Rock. The performance, adapted for the arts center from a piece the company premiered in 2009, ties in with the “Tag Project,” currently on display in the gallery, consisting of replicated identification tags worn by Japanese-Americans who were removed en masse from the West Coast in 1942 and interned in camps, two of which were in Arkansas, during World War II. Admission is free. Call (501) 372-4000.UCA jazz
The University of Central Arkansas Jazz Ensembles will perform at 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the Recital Hall, Snow Fine Arts Center, UCA, 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway.
Jazz Ensemble I will perform “It Might as Well Be Spring” from State Fair by Richard Rodgers, “’Round Midnight” by Cootie Williams and Thelonius Monk and “Cherry Juice” by Thad Jones. Larry Jones will conduct.
Jazz Ensemble II, conducted by Christian Carichner, will focus primarily on tunes composed before the 1960s.And the UCA Dixieland Band and conductor Jackie Lamar will open the concert with “Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None of My Jelly Roll” by Clarence and Spencer Williams, “Alcoholic Blues” by Billy Murray and “Ballin’ the Jack” by Chris Smith.
Admission is free. Call (501) 450-5018 or e-mail rljones@uca.edu.
Russellville stories
Professional storytellers Andy Offutt Irwin and Bil Lepp will perform at 7 p.m. Friday in the Hall of St. John’s Catholic Church, 1900 W. Main St., Russellville, under the auspices of the Arkansas River Valley Arts Center. Tickets are $10. Call (479) 968-2452 or e-mail artscenter@centurytel.net.
Weekend, Pages 34 on 04/18/2013