Arts And Entertainment

AS Presenters a number of great events for the coming academic year.

CenterArts proudly announces another astounding performing arts season for 2016-17. Humboldt State University will host some of the leading performers and thinkers in the worlds of comedy, music, dance, science, and theater, beginning this August through May, 2017.

Humboldt State Calypso Band ends its 30th-anniversary celebration in the place where the band began—Fulkerson Recital Hall—with a concert featuring a guest artist, the legendary steel pan player Andy Narell, on Thursday, May 5.

Marie Campfield’s recent painting, “Child’s Skull, Kandahar Province,” is part of the prestigious Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Exhibition at the Museum of American Illustration in New York City in May. Campfield is the first Humboldt State student to have work accepted in the competition.

Humboldt Chorale revives a favorite in John Rutter's "Gloria" and the University Singers celebrate the blessings of nature in the music of seven cultures, on Sunday May 8 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

HSU Jazz Orchestra cooks “Awful Coffee” and exudes “Positive Sweat” in its adventurous concert of contemporary big band jazz, with originals by current and recent HSU students, on Saturday May 7 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

An orchestral suite from the opera “Carmen,” favorites by Rachmaninoff and Copland, and a tribute to Louis Armstrong highlight two combined concerts by the Humboldt Symphony and the ArMack Orchestra of Arcata and McKinleyville high schools, in a home-and-home Mother’s Day weekend series on Friday evening May 6 at HSU and Sunday afternoon at Arcata High School.

It's all about rainbows at the Madrigal Singers and Mad River Transit concert on Sunday May 1 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

If the blockbuster movie “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” got you nostalgic (or curious) about the Star Wars that started it all, you’re in luck. The HSU Symphonic Band performs the original Star Wars Suite, plus a world premiere by HSU composer Brian Post, Copland’s “Promise of Living” and a trombone piece featuring student Craig Hull, on Friday April 29 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Morris Graves Museum of Art April 23rd, 2016 • 8PM All Ages • 5 dollars For the April 2016 Constellation Series at the Morris Graves Museum, students and faculty of the HSU Composition Studio will be giving electro acoustic performances of original minimalist works as well as performing the classic minimalist composition, "In C" by Terry Riley. At times performers will be located in different parts of the museum while performing at the same time. Four of the pieces performed will be collaborative compositions written by everyone in the studio. Improvisation will be an important element of all of the pieces being given throughout the evening. The goal of each piece will be to spontaneously create a musical and electronic soundscape through the use of precomposed and improvised material.

She doesn’t fall down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass. Instead a young woman enters her self-made Wonderland by answering the cell phone of a strange man she soon realizes is dead. That’s the beginning of “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” the imaginative comedy and surprising love story by famed American playwright Sarah Ruhl, which opens at HSU on Friday April 22 for two weekends.

Humboldt State University’s Reese Bullen Gallery presents the “2016 Art Graduates Exhibition” from April 21-May 14. A reception and awards ceremony will be held on Thursday, April 21, from 5-6:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend this free event in celebration of HSU’s emerging artists.

Humboldt State University announced its Outstanding Students 2016-2017 at award ceremonies on April 14.

The Humboldt State Music Department—an integral part of the local arts community—recently received over $100,000 that will enable the next generation of gifted students to pursue their musical ambitions.

Three HSU percussion groups lead a rhythmic tour from Bali to West Africa and the Cuban Carnival in their shared concert on Sunday April 17 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Student choreographers and two faculty members present their latest work—including a recent regional prize-winner—in the HSU spring dance concert, “Soma Spiritu,” opening Thursday, April 7 for two weekends in the Van Duzer Theatre.

Four bands playing jazz classics, newer jazz and HSU originals perform in the HSU Jazz Combos concert on Friday, April 8 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

The Associated Students of HSU are set to host the 49th Humboldt International Film Festival at the reopening of Arcata’s historic Minor Theatre on April 20-23.

A queen’s romance, a gypsy’s passion, a show of force, and the legend of a cathedral emerging from the sea are all evoked in music performed by the Humboldt Symphony in an afternoon concert on Sunday April 3.

A piece for full orchestra evoking a lost Aztec city, and variations for symphonic band based on hip hop tunes highlight the spring HSU Composers Concert of new works on Friday April 1 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

HSU Guitar Ensemble proceeds from 20th century France to contemporary Arcata and five pieces by student composers, in its spring concert on Saturday April 2 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Cellist Elizabeth Grunin performs two works by 20th-century composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg in an intimate Guest Artist lecture and recital on Saturday March 26 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Steampunk Girl, Panic Attack, Lives at Home and Love Me, Love My Cats! are a few of the characters enacting a frantic contemporary mating ritual in the comic opera “Speed Dating Tonight!” performed by the HSU Opera Workshop for four performances beginning Thursday March 24 in Gist Hall Theatre.

Humboldt State University hosts a one-of-a-kind concert featuring music both historic and fun. Much of the concert will be played on historic instruments; the real deal—not reproduction, brass of the 19th century. Included is a tuba once owned by one of HSU’s “Founders.”

The gym teacher—a big bear of a man—surveys his fourth and fifth graders at recess, inert and buried in smart phones and laptops on their battered schoolyard. He challenges them to enter a jungle of imagination, to take on the roles of animals and the young human foundling raised by wolves who faces life and death decisions, and the future.