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Preview: Low Down Dirty Blues

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*Photo: Tim Fuller

By Theresa Allen, guest blogger

The heartbreaking stories of lost loves, hard-times, failed jobs, and all that is both painful and joyful in life comes to the Lone Tree Arts Center with Low Down Dirty Blues beginning Thursday, October 18 to Saturday, October 27, 2019. Through song, music and stories, Low Down Dirty Blues promises to take the audience from the midnight blues straight into the joy of a Sunday morning gospel redemption.

The musical revue features Felicia P. Fields as Big Mama, a Chicago bar owner, who gathers with several blues musicians for a bawdy and humorous conversation and an after-hours jam session that features the songs of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ma Rainey, Pearl Bailey, and Mae West. Fields is a Chicago native and veteran stage actress known for her Tony-nominated Broadway performance as Sophia in The Color Purple as well television and in stage performances in the Chicago theater scene.

Joining Felicia are Shake Anderson, who’s worked with some of the most recognizable musicians in the business, including Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder; and Chic Street Man, who has an impressive stage resume and has performed at many prestigious venues, including the Montreux and Bern Jazz Festivals in Switzerland and the General Assembly of the United Nations. All three were previously in the production earlier this year in Arizona. In Low Down Dirty Blues, Fields, Anderson, and Street Man, along with additional musicians, will perform blues standards such as “I’d Rather Go Blind,” “Good Morning Heartache,” “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” and “I Got My Mojo Working.”

Low Down Dirty Blues is brought to the Lone Tree Arts Center under the creative direction of Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman, the creators of Muscle Shoals: I’ll Take You There and It Ain’t Nothin’ but the Blues. The musical offers the extraordinary opportunity to hear a truly American art form with its roots in African-American work songs and spirituals learned at the knee of sharecroppers on their porches, in the fields, and in the church pews.

Tickets for Low Down Dirty Blues are on sale now from $10 to $60 and can be purchased at http://www.lonetreeartscenter.org/lowdowndirtyblues. Both matinee and evening performances are available in this beautiful venue that doesn’t have a bad seat in the house. The Lone Tree Arts Center is located at 10075 Commons Street in Lone Tree. Free on-site parking is available.

Preview: SFJAZZ Collective and the Music of Miles Davis and Original Compositions

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By Theresa Allen, Guest Blogger

Looking to spend an evening listening to world-class jazz music in the Greater Denver area? The SFAZZ Collective will be performing “The Music of Miles Davis and Original Compositions” on Wednesday, April 25 at 7:30 at the Lone Tree Arts Center.

The SFJAZZ Collective is an all-star ensemble that performs new and fresh arrangements of work by a modern jazz master. The SFJAZZ Collective, a nonprofit launched in 2004 in San Francisco, is a collaboration of many diverse and dedicated jazz musicians who wish to inspire audiences with high quality concerts and a children and teens’ music education outreach program aimed at encouraging the next generation of jazz performers.

The SFJAZZ Collective will perform a tribute to legendary jazz composer and musician, Miles Davis, who was one of the most innovative and influential jazz performers of the 20^th Century. “The Music of Miles Davis and Original Compositions” will be performed by eight SFJAZZ Collective musicians, all at the top of their fields, including:

David Sánchez, a Grammy Award winning jazz tenor saxophonist, from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Sanchez performed in Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nation Orchestra and Dizzy’s Trio until Dizzy’s death in 1993, toured with the Phillip Morris Superband and with many other jazz greats. He will be performing with Sean Jones, an American trumpeter and composer who was featured on Nancy Wilson’s Grammy Award winning album Turned to Blue in 2007. On vibraphone, Warren Wolf , a musician trained in many genres from classical to jazz and who is a percussion instructor at the Berklee College of Music. Wolf performs regularly with the Rachael Price Group (of Lake Street Dive fame) and the Donel Fox Group.

Miguel Zenón will be performing on the alto saxophone. He is a founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective as well as a composer, bandleader, teacher, and a four-time Grammy Award nominee. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Genius Grant. On trombone will be Robin Eubanks, a jazz and fusion musician who has performed with Slide Hampton, Sun Ra, and Stevie Wonder. Eubanks has appeared on The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live.

Edward Simon will accompany the group on piano. Simon is a Venezuelan jazz musician who has performed on several Grammy-nominated albums and who teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. The jazz bassist is Matt Penman, one of the most in-demand musicians in the United States. Penman recently joined the faculty of the Roots, Jazz and American Music program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. And last, but not least, Obed Calvaire will perform on drums. Calvaire has performed along with Wynton Marsalis, Seal, Lizz Wright, and Sean Jones among many others.

An evening with the SFJAZZ Collective offers us the extraordinary opportunity to hear selections of Mile’s Davis’ works interpreted by the foremost musicians in the field of jazz today. Tickets for the SFJAZZ Collective’s “The Music of Miles Davis and Original Compositions” are on sale now from $33 to $55 and can be purchased at www.lonetreeartscenter.org/sfjazz. The Lone Tree Arts Center is located at 10075 Commons Street in Lone Tree. Free on-site parking is available.

Preview: Moscow Festival Ballet’s Cinderella

Photo by Alexander Daev

By Ashton Temby, guest blogger

The Moscow Festival Ballet brings the classic folk tale Cinderella to the Lone Tree Arts Center’s main stage for one night only on Thursday, February 15, 2018.

Cinderella weaves the tale of an unfortunate young woman suddenly at the mercy of her evil stepmother and stepsisters. With the help of her fairy godmother, Cinderella transforms and gets to attend a royal ball wherein she meets her prince.

This interpretation of the classic story was shaped by Sergei Radchenko and his wife, Elena Radchenko.

Sergei Radchenko founded The Moscow Festival Ballet in 1989, creating the first independent company of classic ballet. As a graduate of the Moscow School of Dance, and a dancer for 25 years with the Bolshoi Ballet, Radchenko possessed the framework to found this, now, world renowned company.

Since 1989, The Moscow Festival Ballet has toured, Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, Canada, the United States, and many European countries creating its respected reputation for performing classical elements of Russian ballet.

While Spanish dance is known to be Radchenko’s favorite, he and the company continue to add to their breadth of work, and now also specialize in Twentieth Century ballets, such as Cinderella.

“To stimulate modern viewer interest and need for the art of Russian classical ballet is a main task of our team.” – Elena and Sergei Radchenko (radchenko-ballet.com).

Classical dance elements with a modern twist make this one night performance the event of the season. Tickets can be purchased here or at through the box office.

Preview: PostSecret: The Show

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By Joy Carletti, guest blogger

If you are unfamiliar with PostSecret, you may want to visit the website that spurred the show now. But you should only do so if you have some time to go down an internet rabbit hole. Reading PostSecret is like overhearing a truly intriguing snippet of conversation but knowing you can’t ever have the full back story. The site was started in 2005 and bills itself as “an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.” There’s something truly magical about browsing through the postcards. The reader feels a sense of familiarity and camaraderie with the writer even if the situation is new. The secrets range from mundane to scandalous, heartwarming to heart-wrenching, silly to downright horrifying. The site has received nearly 800 billion page views over the years, making it clear that people long for a window into all of these feelings.

PostSecret: The Show is looking to heighten these emotions by bringing secrets to life on stage. With the help of three actors and a guitarist, PostSecret: The Show will immerse the audience in a new level of storytelling. The actors will share anonymous secrets, both from postcards sent in by website readers and from audience members. Then they’ll flesh out the stories behind the secrets. What stories might emerge? It will depend completely on what’s shared on postcards that night, as this show changes from city to city, with each new audience supplying new secrets. If the postcards sent into the website are any indication, the show could run the gamut all the way from “I ate my co-worker’s yogurt” to “I’m having an affair with my co-worker’s wife.” Possibly relatable, possibly scandalous, definitely worth seeing!

PostSecret: The Show is at Lone Tree Arts Center for one night only on February 8 at 7:30pm. Don’t miss this opportunity to peer into other people’s lives – and maybe to share your secrets too! Tickets are available here.

Preview: The Peking Acrobats

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By Tracy Hauff, guest blogger

Flipping, flying, balancing, and diving. That’s what you’ll see at the Lone Tree Arts Center on Wednesday, February 7, 2018. The Peking Acrobats will commandeer the stage with athletic abilities that will make you scratch your head—how is that humanly possible?

Few have had the opportunity to travel to China and take part in a Chinese festival, but the Peking Acrobats bring the carnival to us with contortionists, gymnasts, jugglers, and cyclists. Musicians play Chinese instruments that provide traditional background music during each act. Colorful Chinese lions and dragons prance around the stage assisting the gymnasts and delighting the audience.

My ten-year-old granddaughter possesses impressive gymnastic skills, and she will accompany me to the show. She’s always looking for new moves to master, and the Peking Acrobats are sure to deliver an enriching performance that will inspire her quest for excellence.

The entire family will enjoy the choreographed program filled with fast-paced routines that date back to the Ch’in Dynasty. Join us at Lone Tree Arts Center for a night of thrills as the Peking Acrobats perform their time-honored tradition of entertainment.

Single seats are still available here: lonetreeartscenter.org/pekingacrobats