Arts And Entertainment

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.

New work—including an overture by composer and North Coast resident Michael Kibbe—plus band classics and an anniversary tribute characterize the shared concert of the HSU Symphonic Band and the Jazz Orchestra on Saturday, February 27, in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Three HSU ensembles bring the sounds of drums and marimbas to Fulkerson Recital Hall—along with gongs, tin cans and random radio music—in a Percussion Showcase on Sunday, Feb. 21.

The First Street Gallery presents "Just Cause," a two-person exhibition of sculpture, paintings, drawings and mixed-media works by the artists Donovan Clark and Jeremy Hara, through March 6. Their art is a mélange of pop, conceptual, and graffiti approaches that showcase the artists' craft while gleefully playing with and subverting a variety of popular tropes within our culture.

HSU’s Reese Bullen Gallery presents African Masks from the James Gaasch Collection on exhibit Feb. 10 through March 10. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 10 from 4 to 6 p.m., with a brief welcome and presentation about the collection at 5 p.m. The public is invited to attend this free event.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery presents, Chronic Fatigue, a two-person exhibition of sculpture and photographs by the artists Walter Early and Benjamin Funke, running February 2 through March 6.

With a seasonal flavor and a diverse menu of songs, the University Singers and Humboldt Chorale present their shared winter concert on Sunday, December 13 at Fulkerson Recital Hall.

HSU Jazz Orchestra honors Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington Orchestra arranger and composer, celebrating the centennial of his birth with an all-Strayhorn program, including a never before-performed arrangement, on Saturday, December 12 at Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Humboldt State University's First Street Gallery presents "Ceramic - affordable art for the season," through Dec. 31. Featured in the show, will be artwork by twelve artists from California's North Coast who work in diverse styles and mediums. The show is a fundraiser for the gallery, with a broad selection of affordable, high-quality ceramic pieces suitable for gift giving during the Holiday Season.

It’s not the new movie, but it is the signature music: HSU Symphonic Band plays two movements of the Star Wars Suite on Friday, December 4 at Fulkerson Recital Hall.

A youth group’s return, a marimba classic and some of the Calypso Band’s greatest hits are featured in an all-percussion concert on Saturday, December 5 at the Van Duzer Theatre.

Three actresses navigate a precarious production of Anton Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters” in Texas, inside the maelstrom of 21st century American theatre. A satiric comedy that also echoes poignant themes of this classic Chekhov play, “Anton in Show Business” is on the Gist Hall Theatre stage for two weekends beginning Friday, December 4.

HSU Madrigal Singers go all a cappella and Mad River Transit jazz singers offer a contemporary Christmas Lullaby on Sunday, Dec. 6 in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery presents, "I was Born, But...," a solo exhibition featuring 500 small paintings by Tsuya Pratt. The exhibition runs through New Year's Eve, Tuesday, Dec. 31.

Humboldt State University’s Reese Bullen Gallery presents its annual Fall Art and Artisans Fair. For two days, the Art Department’s students and studio art clubs will sell paintings, photography, ceramics, jewelry, sculpture, prints, mixed media creations and more.

In two shows with different groups in each, HSU Jazz Combos take the Fulkerson Recital Hall stage on Sunday, November 15.

From opera overture to musical comedy, a Veterans Day tribute to a holiday season preview, Humboldt Bay Brass Band presents its autumn mash-up and its only HSU concert of the school year, “Destiny of Knights and Cossacks,” on Saturday, November 14 at Fulkerson Recital Hall.

From “Claire de Lune” to Ravel, HSU Guitar Ensemble plays with a French accent—including homegrown music in the same spirit—in its concert on Friday, November 13, at Fulkerson Recital Hall.

New works by three student composers, including a prize-winner, are presented in the HSU Composers Concert on Friday, November 6, in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

Violinist Cindy Moyer continues her project of playing all the Beethoven violin sonatas with the stormy Sonata in C Minor, plus a contemporary jazz-influenced sonata by William Bolcom and a lyrical sonata by Gabriel Faure, in concert with pianist John Chernoff on Sunday, November 8, in Fulkerson Recital Hall.

A small fishing boat swept into the ocean by the 2011 tsunami off the coast of Japan washed ashore two years later in the coastal Northern California town of Crescent City, about 350 miles north of San Francisco.

A new statewide traveling exhibition of photographs by artist Dugan Aguilar (Mountain Maidu/Pit River/Walker River Paiute) that depict the diversity, richness and vibrancy of contemporary Native California cultures comes to Humboldt State University’s Goudi’ni Gallery. lo/Jemez Pueblo) on Friday, Nov. 13, from 5 to 7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

With high-spirited singing and dancing backed by an orchestra of classic Broadway size, HSU evokes the 1948 of Cole Porter’s most applauded musical comedy “Kiss Me, Kate” in Van Duzer Theatre for two weekends beginning Friday October 16.