Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Performing Arts Season News Release
For Immediate Release

June 7, 2001
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB Arts & Lectures’ 2001-2002 spectacular performing arts season features an extraordinary array of world-class dance, music and cutting-edge theater

Summary Facts:

UCSB Arts & Lectures launches its dazzling 2001-2002 season featuring an unprecedented number of world-class musicians, stunning international dance companies and theatrical innovators. With 34 scheduled performances, the program expands its reach by showcasing more jazz, dance, world music and spoken word than ever before, and by presenting more events in off-campus venues, including three Chamber Music in Historic Sites® concerts. 21 artists and companies have never before performed in Santa Barbara. Furthermore, Arts & Lectures has commissioned work from a major artist, and UCSB Campbell Hall will be the site of its world premiere. For the first time, Arts & Lectures will host a week-long run of a major theatrical hit. Highlights of the 2001-2002 season include three extraordinary Special Events featuring live performances by musicians who represent the pinnacle of artistry and distinction in their fields.

Celesta Billeci, UCSB Arts & Lectures’ new director, has shaped a rich and innovative performing arts season that expresses her vision for the program: “For more than 40 years, UCSB Arts & Lectures has offered UCSB and Santa Barbara an extremely fine, diverse array of performances. I appreciate the strong base on which we are now able to build. We want to connect the program more closely to the community, to foster the creation of new art by commissioning work, to collaborate more closely with other cultural institutions so that we can present great artists who have not been seen or heard here before, and to make the program even more international, distinguished and cutting edge.”

THREE SPECIAL EVENTS

The UCSB Arts & Lectures season opens on Tuesday, September 25 in UCSB Campbell Hall with the first of three Special Events—the acclaimed Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Credited with bringing jazz to the forefront of American culture, Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter Marsalis conducts one of the world’s most swinging big bands.

For its second Special Event, Arts & Lectures offers the Santa Barbara premiere of the Buena Vista Social Club presents Orquesta Ibrahim Ferrer, featuring Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos and Guajiro Mirabel, on Tuesday, January 15 at the Arlington Theatre. Introduced to America by Ry Cooder’s blockbuster album The Buena Vista Social Club, these legendary Cuban musicians perform the romantic, bittersweet songs of a bygone era. Their performance is co-presented with The Lobero and Sings Like Hell.

One of the world’s best-known violinists, Midori makes her Santa Barbara debut on Wednesday, January 16 accompanied by pianist Robert McDonald. A virtuoso performer, Midori mesmerizes audiences with her commanding playing.

FOUR EXCITING NEW DISCOUNT PACKAGE SERIES

In addition to its popular Create Your Own Series, Arts & Lectures offers four new discount package series, each enabling patrons to explore a particular art form.

The Jazz Series features an unparalleled lineup of great musicians including the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis on Tuesday, September 25. The Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves will appear with her quintet and 30 members of the Santa Barbara Symphony in a tribute concert, “Celebrating Sarah Vaughan,” on Friday, February 15 at the Arlington Theatre; this concert is co-presented with the Santa Barbara Symphony. Newport Jazz® 2002 features a pantheon of jazz legends including Terence Blanchard, Joe Lovano and Cedar Walton as well as rising stars on Sunday, March 10. Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, dubbed “the last jazz immortal” by The Village Voice, will perform on Wednesday, April 17. Counted among the most brilliant musicians of our time, multi-Grammy-winning Cuban jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval will perform with his band on Saturday, May 4.

The ArtAbounds Series, co-presented with The Lobero, features pacesetting artists from around the globe. This boundary-breaking collaboration will open with the electrifying Miami City Ballet performing George Balanchine’s masterpiece Jewels on Sunday, October 14 at the Arlington Theatre. Choreographed by the legendary director of the New York City Ballet and recreated by Edward Villella, one of that company’s premier dancers, Jewels is an evening-length work in three parts titled “Emeralds,” “Rubies” and “Diamonds.” France’s creative and visually provocative dance/theater Compagnie Maguy Marin will perform on Tuesday, April 9. The Paul Taylor Dance Company, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most exciting, innovative and delightful dance companies in the entire world,” will present a repertory program featuring Taylor’s arresting choreography on Friday-Saturday, April 19-20.

The SuperStrings Series highlights a diverse range of the world’s top string performers including the highly influential, trailblazing Kronos Quartet on Friday, October 19. The celebrated Guarneri String Quartet, lauded for its rich sound and majestic playing, will perform on Tuesday, October 30. The world-renowned violinist Midori, whose performances are increasingly imaginative and profound, will appear in recital with pianist Robert McDonald on Wednesday, January 16. And finally, a very unique collaboration between one of the world’s most outstanding string ensembles, the Takács Quartet, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will perform All the World for Love, an enchanting evening of music and poetry centered on themes of love, on Sunday, April 7.

The Word of Mouth Series will enthrall audiences with four captivating evenings of spoken word. Artists include David Sedaris, regular National Public Radio contributor and author of the best-selling Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked, on Sunday, October 28. Arts & Lectures has commissioned and will present the world premiere of a new solo work by Laurie Anderson, who was once described by The New York Times as “the high priestess of multimedia technology,” on Wednesday-Thursday, January 30-31. Next up in this series is “The Vagina Monologues” by Eve Ensler, a profoundly affecting and empowering three-woman show based on stories Ensler gathered from ordinary women. Running in UCSB Campbell Hall from Wednesday to Saturday, April 10-13, this production has won devoted fans nationwide for its honest, amusing and occasionally painful revelations about women’s bodies, minds and hearts. The Word of Mouth series finale features Ira Glass, the host of the Peabody award-winning radio show This American Life, in a talk entitled Lies, Sissies and Fiascoes: Notes on Making a New Kind of Radio on Friday, April 26.

DANCE

In addition to the distinguished lineup featured on the ArtAbounds Series, Arts & Lectures rounds off its outstanding and diverse roster of dance companies on Tuesday-Wednesday, October 2-3 with Philadelphia’s hip hop sensation, Rennie Harris Puremovement, translating the energy and spirit of the street into an electrifying form of body language. Trinity Irish Dance Company returns to UCSB by popular demand, performing with breathtaking athleticism and grace on Saturday, February 9. The exuberant and electrifying Philadanco returns to Campbell Hall with Messages from the Heart, a new evening-length work choreographed by Bebe Miller, Jawole Zollar, Elisa Monte and Eve Gholson on Saturday-Sunday, February 23-24. And the National Song & Dance Company of Mozambique delivers stylish and virtuoso performances celebrating traditional and contemporary Mozambican culture on Thursday, March 7.

THEATER

In addition to “The Vagina Monologues” and Laurie Anderson, Arts & Lectures presents more cutting-edge, world-renowned theater this season. New York’s innovative theater ensemble Anne Bogart’s SITI Company presents “War of the Worlds—The Radio Play,” a staged dramatization of Orson Welles’ 1938 panic-inducing radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ story about a Martian invasion of a New Jersey town on Friday, October 26. In Hair Stories, Urban Bush Women wake up audiences with their physicality and furious energy, fusing dance, music and storytelling to explore the relationship of African American women to their hair on Tuesday-Wednesday, February 5-6. America’s foremost touring repertory theater company, The Acting Company returns in a performance of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew on Tuesday, March 5. And three-time Obie award-winning writer and director, Eric Bogosian takes audiences on a dramatic thrill ride with his critically acclaimed high-octane one-man show Wake Up and Smell the Coffee on Thursday, May 9; this show contains adult themes and language.

CHAMBER MUSIC IN HISTORIC SITES®

As part of its commitment to expand into the community and to enhance the concert-going experience of its audiences, Arts & Lectures offers superb music at architecturally significant sacred and social sites. Renowned for a pure and luxuriant sound, the great English a cappella ensemble, The Tallis Scholars makes its Santa Barbara debut with a Christmas concert at Our Lady of Sorrows Church on Friday, December 14. Selling more than a million CDs worldwide and regularly topping Billboard’s classical charts, Anonymous 4 has been celebrated for their rich, dazzling vocal blend; these early music superstars will perform The Second Circle: Love Songs of Francesco Landini at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Montecito on Sunday, February 3. And the illustrious Borromeo String Quartet will perform quartets by Mozart and Beethoven plus the world premiere of a new work by UCSB composer Michael Ellison at the Montecito Country Club on Thursday, February 21. Presentation of these three concerts is supported by the Pearl Chase Society. See our Chamber Music in Historic Sites page for more information on the performance venues.

WORLD MUSIC

This season, Arts & Lectures brings the world to our audiences with a breathtaking array of artists representing an inspiring plethora of musical flavors and rhythms. In the tradition of the world’s great vocalists, including Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday, the “barefoot diva” from the Cape Verde Islands, Cesaria Evora intoxicates with her rich soulful voice and wistful ballads on Saturday, October 13. Rolling Stone calls Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour, “a singer with a voice so extraordinary that the history of Africa seems locked inside it.” N’Dour performs with his band, Le Super Étoile on Tuesday, October 16. A descendant of one of India’s preeminent musical families, sitarist Shujaat Khan is among the top-ranking North Indian classical musicians of his generation; he will be joined by tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain for a concert of North Indian classical music on Wednesday, November 7. Israel’s most accomplished singer, Chava Alberstein performs a soulful blend of traditional folk and pop music, Thursday, November 29. With sophistication and verve, the spectacular Afro-pop singer from Senegal, Baaba Maal returns in a spellbinding acoustic evening on Sunday, February 3. And world-renowned Turkish multi-instrumentalist Burhan Öçal and the Istanbul Oriental Ensemble, featuring a number of Turkey’s finest traditional and Gypsy musicians, play with jubilant virtuosity on Monday, April 8.

TICKETS AND INFORMATION

Details about UCSB Arts & Lectures’ 2001-2002 Performing Arts Season are available in Arts & Lectures’ Subscriber’s Guide. Phone 893-3535 to request a copy.

At present, Arts & Lectures is selling series subscriptions that offer an excellent means to get priority seating and to save. Patrons can purchase Jazz, SuperStrings, ArtAbounds and Word of Mouth discount package series, saving up to 20% on the price of individual tickets. They can become Create Your Own Series subscribers by buying tickets to at least five of 31 performances and save 10% on the price of individual tickets. Tickets to the three Special Events are available now only to A&L series buyers.

Individual tickets for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis go on sale to the general public on Saturday, August 25. Individual tickets to Midori and to 31 other A&L performances go on sale on Saturday, September 8. Individual tickets to Orquesta Ibrahim Ferrer go on sale on Saturday, November 3.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.

©2001 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara