Live music options: Mraz, Jazzy Ash and Breaking Grass
Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, on a solo acoustic tour, performs twice in Arkansas this week:
8 p.m. Friday at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center, 495 W. Dickson St. Tickets are $75-$149. Call (479) 443-5600 or visit waltonartscenter.org.
8 p.m. Saturday at Robinson Center Performance Hall, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway, Little Rock. Tickets are $35$89.50 plus service charges. Call (800) 745-3000 or visit ticketmaster.com.
Mraz’s hits include “The Remedy” and “Love Someone.”
Jazzy Lizards
Also at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center this week, New Orleans-based Jazzy Ash (aka Ashli Christoval) & The Leaping Lizards perform jazz, music with Caribbean rhythms and lively children’s music at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets are $15, $9 for children. Call (479) 443-5600 or visit waltonartscenter.org.
‘Sound Textures’
The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s principal percussionist, Blake Taylor and the Rockefeller String Quartet will headline the orchestra’s River Rhapsodies concert, 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock.
The quartet — Trisha McGovern Freeney and Katherine Williamson, violins; Katherine Reynolds, viola; and Ethan Young, cello — will play the String Quartet
No. 3 in D major, op.44 No. 1, by Felix Mendelssohn. Taylor will be the soloist in Charles Hawthorne’s Hero’s Ascent for
Marimba. The program will also include Down a River of
Time by Eric Ewazen. The concert is part of the orchestra’s continuing Canvas Festival, blending music with the fine arts; works by local artists will be on a display in the lobby outside the Great Hall. Tickets are $23, $10 for students and active duty military. Call (501) 666-1761, ext. 100, or visit ArkansasSymphony.org.
Bluegrass Monday
Mississippi-based bluegrass band Breaking Grass — Cody Farrar on lead vocals and guitar; Tyler White, fiddle; Jody Elmore, banjo; Britt Sheffield, bass; and Zach Wooten, mandolin — will perform at 7 p.m. Monday at the Collins Theatre, 120 W. Emerson St., Paragould, part of Jonesboro public radio station KASU-FM, 91.9’s Bluegrass Monday series. The station will literally “pass the hat” to pay the group; suggested donation is $5 per person. Call (870) 972-2367, email mscarbro@ astate.edu or visit the Bluegrass Monday Facebook page.
Student art competition
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock art and design department’s “Student Competitive” exhibition will be on display Monday-April 15 in the Brad Cushman Gallery, Windgate Center of Art + Design, UALR, 2801 S. University Ave., Little Rock.
The winners, which juror Joshua Brinlee, a faculty member at the University of Mississippi, selected from among the drawings and design, paintings, prints, graphic designs and illustrations, photography, textiles, metals and furniture design, sculpture and ceramics, will be announced at an awards reception, 12:15 p.m. Tuesday.
Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, 2-5 p.m. Sunday. Call (501) 569-8977 or email becushman@ualr.edu.
Rock and race
Slate magazine pop music critic Jack Hamilton will discuss his recent book, Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination, 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Rogers Conference Center, University of the Ozarks, 415 N. College Ave., Clarksville. The talk is part of the university’s Walton Arts & Ideas Series. Admission is free. Call (479) 979-1433.
Fayetteville‘ Hallelujah’
The St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Choir will perform Part II, concluding with the “Hallelujah” chorus, of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah, in the context of Palm Sunday Evensong, at 5:30 p.m. today at the church, 224 N. East Ave., Fayetteville. Jack Cleghorn conducts, with organists Ann Rye and Linda Kelly. Admission is free. Call (479) 442-7373 or visit stpaulsfay.org.
Music Man tryouts
The River Valley Arts Center will hold auditions for Meredith Willson’s musical
The Music Man, 2-6 p.m. April 15 and 5-8 p.m. April 16, with callbacks 5-8 p.m. April 17, in the Band/Choir Room, Russellville Middle School Music Department, 1203 W. Fourth Place, Russellville. No advance preparation is necessary. Audition forms are available on the website, rivervalleyartscenter. org/forms.html. Production dates are June 22-24 and 29-30 and July 1. Call (479) 968-2452.
Smile auditions
The Arts Center of the Ozarks. 214 S. Main St. Springdale, will hold auditions for the musical Smile (music by Marvin Hamlisch, book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, based on a screenplay by Jerry Belson), 7 p.m. April 3-4, with callbacks April 7.
Director Jeremiah Albers will create a cast of 26- 28 people, age 11-50, with 18 roles for female teens. Production dates are June 15-17 and 22-24. Prepare 32 bars (approximately one minute) of a musical theater song and provide sheet music for the accompanist — no tapes, tracks or a cappella auditions, please. Also prepare and memorize a one-minute monologue. You only need to attend one night. You may check out a script with a refundable deposit at the center box office.
Details, a list of characters and their requirements and registration for an audition appointment are available online at acozarks.org/participate/ auditions. Call (479) 751-5441.
Improv camp
Second City Training Center will offer Summer Improv Camps at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center. Register online at waltonartscenter.org:
Two-week day camps, one for students age 11-14 and one for students 15-18, 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. weekdays. Registration fee is $785 until May 7, $850 thereafter. Middle-schoolers will focus on improv, writing and storytelling, clowning and physical comedy and theater arts and crafts. High-schoolers will focus on improv, sketch comedy, stand-up and storytelling. The camps will culminate with a show for family and friends.
6-9 p.m. July 9-13, a weeklong adult intensive training session, that a news release describes as “a crash course in the philosophies and methods that Second City uses to find, explore and create material.” Fee is $300.