Arts And Entertainment

What happens when a video game addict’s avatar gets interested in his real-life girlfriend? When does an all-consuming passion cross the line? Is the choice between life or death always a simple one?

CenterArts regrets to announce a pair of cancellations for our 2009/10 season.

It’s not your grandfather’s opera. No exaggerated emotions in foreign languages by heavily costumed figures standing around until the fat lady sings. On Friday and Saturday, April 23 and 24, the HSU Opera Workshop explores contemporary relationships with selected musical scenes and two short comic operas, including the story of a young man searching for true love at a video dating service.

In 1967 a group of students came together to bring worldly movies to Humboldt State, giving life to the Humboldt Film Festival. Now filmmakers from the across the globe vie for a top spot in the nation's oldest student-run film festival.

Inspired by the artistic potential of plywood, ink, and a steamroller, the HSU Printmakers will give Humboldt an exciting day of steamroller printing. On April 21st from 9am to 9pm at the HSU Main campus, a team of student artists will be creating several woodcut prints, led by HSU Professor Sarah Whorf. The public will have the opportunity to witness large-scale printmaking.

Emotions dancing inside the brain, healing from within and from a decent health care system, a spy movie jazz spoof, traditional dances from the Yucatan, and a water ballet on dry land-- these are just some elements of the HSU MOTION COLLAGE dance concert, presented for one weekend only in the Van Duzer Theatre beginning April 15.

It’s double the music in two evenings of HSU Jazz Combos: instead of the usual three combos playing a single night, this time there are six student combos playing completely different shows over two nights.

Humboldt State University’s Reese Bullen Gallery will host the 2010 Annual Juried Student Exhibition on Thursday, April 15, featuring an array of student-created artwork spanning drawings, paintings, photography, jewelry, printmaking, graphic design, ceramics and sculpture.

The Humboldt Bay Brass Band has established itself as Humboldt County’s only all-brass ensemble in the traditional configuration of 27 brass and three percussion players. But the concert on Saturday, April 10 in Fulkerson Recital Hall marks the premiere of the new band within the band: the Humboldt Bay Brass Quintet.

Humboldt State University’s First Street Gallery will present Mimi LaPlant: My Life as an Artist, a survey comprising different subjects and mediums spanning her art 1973-2010, from Saturday, April 3 to Sunday, May 16.

Don’t call it a children’s show. Like “The Princess Bride” or even the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, “Stefanie Hero” by Mark Medoff (whose award-winning “Children of a Lesser God” was decidedly adult) engages and entertains on several levels, for audiences of all ages.

The North Coast Wind Ensemble welcomes spring with a symphony, a song, a couple of marches and some famous variations, in its Fulkerson Recital Hall concert on Saturday, April 3.

Students pursuing a degree in Composition at HSU face the music of a live audience on Friday, April 2 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Join Humboldt State University English professor Janet Winston and Arcata sculptor Marilyn Andrews as they present their work on the English writer Virginia Woolf on Wednesday, March 24 in HSU’s Green and Gold Room (Founders Hall 166) at noon.

Including a piece that features “among the most exciting moments in the 20th century guitar repertoire,” Nicholas Lambson performs solo guitar works from his forthcoming CD, as well as several duets with flutist Laura Snodgrass, on Friday, March 26 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Pianist Rika Uchida plays Debussy’s famous “Claire de Lune” and selections from his Preludes and Images, to illustrate the transition from Romantic to modern in classical music, in a concert and commentary on Saturday, March 27 at the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

The Humboldt Symphony presents an airy early-spring program filled with folk melodies and jazz, but in compositions displaying the rich and varied sounds of the symphonic orchestra.

Harold Pinter’s _The Homecoming_ was a theatrical earthquake when it was first performed in the mid-1960s. Shocking, controversial and hotly debated, its Broadway run won the Tony Award. It became an instant classic.

The HSU Symphonic Band goes tandem with the Jazz Orchestra on a program of American tunes. The Band plays “Variations on America” by the “American original” Charles Ives, and the “Americans We” March by Ohioan Henry Fillmore, who toured the U.S. with his band and his wife, the exotic dancer Mabel May Jones.

It was after the Humboldt Light Opera Company production of _The Music Man_ that several cast members decided to stick together awhile longer—and sing together, to raise money for HLOC as well as have some fun.

Humboldt State University has received a $40,000 gift from the estate of artist Brian Sproul, along with a significant collection of Sproul’s artwork.

If you like favorites of the violin sonata repertoire, you couldn’t do better than two selections played by violinist Cindy Moyer and pianist Daniela Mineva, in concert at HSU on Saturday, Feb. 13.

It’s a concert in two parts. The HSU Jazz Orchestra begins with a suite of compositions by jazz bassist, pianist, band leader and composer, the legendary Charles Mingus. His long career stretched from the 1940s into the 1970s. “These are social-political pieces from the 1950s,” said Jazz Orchestra director Shao Way Wu. “They showcase his unique approach and his highly personalized sound.”

In what’s becoming a holiday tradition, the Humboldt Symphony, Humboldt Chorale and University Singers perform a work for voice and orchestra that celebrates the season.

Beginning with the _Fanfare For Christmas Day_ by English composer Martin Shaw, the HSU Madrigal Singers and Mad River Transit celebrate the season with their patented mixture of 16th century tradition and 20th century jazz in their annual holiday concert on Sunday, Dec. 6.