So let’s get right to my Jazz Best Bets for the Holidays:

Adam Shulman Plays Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas – SFJAZZ – December 24th – December 26th

This week’s Fridays at Five performance is running for three days. Appropriately it finds pianist Adam Shulman playing composer Vince Guaraldi’s music for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The beloved half-hour cartoon first aired in 1965 and is considered amongst the best of all holiday specials. Shulman’s performance was recorded in December 2019.

Joining Schulman are bassist John Wiitala and drummer James Gallagher.

As with all Fridays at Five programming you need to have either a monthly membership ($5) or an annual membership ($60) to view the show. If you pop down to the end of these listings you’ll see what they have in mind for New Year’s Day (which would be included in either membership.)

Norwegian Digital Jazz Festival – Big Ears Festival – December 25th – January 1st

For eight consecutive nights, Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee is making available the Norwegian Digital Jazz Festival.

The line-up is as follows (note that all times are EST)

Dec 25 – Double Bill: Bugge Wusseltoft, solo (7pm) + Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity (8pm)

Dec 26 – Tord Gustavesen Trio (8pm)

Dec 27 – Double Bill: Bendik Hofseth’s Woodland (7pm) + Mathias Eick Quintet (8pm)

Dec 28 –  Double Bill: Silje Nergaard (7pm) + Ketil Bjørnstad, solo (8pm)

Dec 29 – Double Bill: Mats Eilertsen, solo (7pm) + Trygve Seim ‘Rumi Songs’ (8pm) 

Dec 30 – Double Bill: Hedvig Mollestad Trio (7pm) + Eivind Aarset Quartet (7pm) 

Dec 31  Double Bill: Beady Belle (7pm) + Arild Andersen Group (8pm) 

Jan 1  Double Bill: Elephant9 (7pm) + Nils Petter MolværTrio (8p)

Tickets are $8 per performance or all performances for $50. You must purchase the ticket for a given show on or during its scheduled streaming. Once you do, you’ll have 48 hours to replay the concert(s).

This is a great way to get introduced to some stellar jazz musicians you might not know.

Bill Charlap & Wynton Marsalis – Village Vanguard – December 25th – December 27th

Originally streamed in September, this Village Vanguard concert with pianist Bill Charlap and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is being re-streamed for the holiday weekend. This was an absolutely delightful concert and I strongly recommend spending the $10 to see these two brilliant musicians trading leads and sharing the stage.

Once you purchase a ticket to view the performance, you’ll have 24 hours to watch it.

Jeremy Pelt & George Cables – Mezzrow – December 26th – 5:00 PM EST/2:00 PM PST & 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST

Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and pianist George Cables perform from New York’s Mezzrow for two live-streaming concerts on Saturday.

Pelt is a sublime musician whose album The Art of Intimacy Vol. 1 is one of my favorite jazz albums of the year. Cables is a jazz legend who has been recording beautiful music since the early 1970s. Together they are amazing. (Did you catch them together Live From Dizzy’s in October?)

There’s no charge to watch this concert.

Jane Monheit – Feinstein’s at Vitello’s – December 30th – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

Jazz vocalist Jane Monheit will be performing live from Feinstein’s at Vitello’s. She’s recorded a dozen albums (and also has a Greatest Hits record out). Her most recent record was 2016’s The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald. Monheit has been singing and recording professionally for almost half her life.

Tickets to watch the live stream are $36.75 (which includes a service charge). There is also an Encore post-show event which is available for $26.75 (also including service charges). This will feature Monheit in conversation with Brad Roen.

Chris Potter Quartet – Village Vanguard – December 31st – January 3rd

New York’s Village Vanguard is ringing in the New year with a concert by the Chris Potter Quartet. Potter plays saxophone and is joined by David Virelles on piano; Joe Martin on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums.

Since 1993 Potter has been releasing one critically-acclaimed album after another. His most recent release was There Is a Tide which came out earlier this year.

As a sideman, he’s recorded with Dave Holland, Pat Metheny, Paul Motian, John Patitucci and Steely Dan.

Ticket prices had not been announced at press time. Usually these shows are $10.

NYE in NOLA – Tipitina’s – December 31st – 10:00 PM EST/7:00 PM PST

Actor John Goodman is the host for a New Year’s Eve concert that’s going to have a little bit of everything and a whole lot of fun. A different artist will perform each hour from various venues around New Orleans as each time zone enters 2021.

Kicking the show off is Samantha Fish from Chickie Wah Wah. In the second hour leading up to New Year’s on the East Coast will be Anders Osborne live from DBA. The Central Time zone will have Galactic performing from Tipitina’s as their musical guide. The Mountain Time zone will have Rebirth Brass Band from The Maple Leaf. Finally the West Coast will start the New Year with the music of Dumpstaphunk from The Howlin’ Wolf.

Popping in along the way will be special guests Ani Di Franco, George Porter, Jr., Kermit Ruffins and Big Sam.

If you’ve ever been to New Orleans, you know this will not allow you to go quietly into that New Year. Get yourself some beads, perhaps a costume or two, certainly some cocktails and let the good times roll.

Tickets are $29.99.

Emmet Cohen Trio – Live from Dizzy’s – December 31st – 7:30 PM EST/4:30 PM PST

Jazz pianist Emmet Cohen will be performing with Russell Hall on bass and Kyle Poole on drums in this New Year’s Eve concert from Dizzy’s at New York’s Lincoln Center Jazz. Joining the trio will be saxophonist Houston Person and vocalist Samara Joy.

On the program will be music by George Gershwin, Cole Porter and some holiday classics.

Cohen has found a way to continue performing throughout the pandemic with multiple livestream concerts. He’s proven time and time again what a talented jazz pianist he is.

Tickets have a suggested price of $10. Additional donations are encouraged.

Hiromi: New Year’s Eve Countdown in Tokyo – Blue Note – December 31st – 11:00 PM EST/8:00 PM PST

Japanese jazz pianist Hiromi performs in this fundraiser for Blue Note New York from Blue Note Tokyo. The concert is scheduled to run about 75 minutes which means it will continue into 2021 making it a true New Year’s Eve concert.

Her most recent album is 2019’s Spectrum. It’s an ambitious solo album that includes her own version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. In this version she takes some interesting liberties with Gershwin’s composition. (Marcus Roberts did the same thing and has a very different take on his Portraits in Blue recording). It’s definitely worth listening to and probably not going to be included in this New Year’s Eve show.

Tickets are $20 but additional donations are encouraged. Viewing will be available after purchase of a ticket through January 1st.

Maceo Parker – SFJAZZ – January 1st – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

Saxophonist and R&B legend Maceo Parker will make sure you enter 2021 with some funk in your step with this concert from 2015.

Parker regularly makes SFJAZZ his home for New Year’s Day. And what a great way to keep the party going.

He’s recorded 18 albums including this year’s Soul Food: Cooking with Maceo. He’s had an amazing career recording with James Brown, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Parliament, Prince and the Red Hot Chili Peppers – to name just a few.

Amongst the musicians joining Parker for this concert are Nikki Glaspie (Beyoncé, Dumpstaphunk, Nth Power) and P-Funk bass master Rodney “Skeet” Curtis.

As with all Fridays at Five programming you need to have either a monthly membership ($5) or an annual membership ($60) to view the show. If you pop up to the top of these listings you’ll see what they have in mind for Christmas weekend (which would be included in either membership.)

Lastly I want to direct you to QwestTV (owned by Quincy Jones). There is an incredible archive of concert performances, documentaries and profiles available. This library will certainly appeal to any serious jazz fan. There’s an end-of-year promotion that allows for two months of access for less than one dollar. You can sign up for that here.

The New Yorker recently ran a story about how impressive and valuable this library is.

That’s all for my Jazz Best Bets for the Holidays! I hope you have swingin’ holidays!

I have other Holiday Best Bets for you in Classical Music, Dance and Muscials/Cabaret if you want even more choices.

Photo by Les Anderson

The post Jazz Best Bets for the Holidays appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

This weekend’s Best Bets include traditional ballet and hip-hop dance; a celebration of one of America’s greatest playwrights; an opera legend in concert; a production of an opera by Stravinsky; a chamber music concert from Carnegie Hall; one of Broadway’s most provocative events and a live concert with a Broadway star who knows his way around roller skates.

Here are your Best Bets at Home: July 31st – August 2nd:

The Sleeping Beauty – Royal Ballet – Now – August 6th

Fourteen years ago, the Royal Ballet dusted off their 1946 original staging of Sleeping Beauty. While the costumes and designs by Oliver Messel remained in tact, they combined the choreography of Marius Petipa from the 19th century with new sections created by Frederick Ashton, Anthony Dowell and Christopher Wheeldon.

The music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky remains front and center as does the story of a young girl, Aurora, who has a curse placed on her. On her 16th birthday she will prick her finger on a spindle and die. The Lilac Fairy can’t reverse the curse, but she does create an opposing spell that spares Aurora from death, but she will remain asleep until a handsome prince kisses her.

Fumi Kaneko dances the role of Aurora. Kristen McNally dances the role of Carabosse who puts the curse on the girl. The Lilac Fairy is danced by Gina Storm Jensen. The Prince is danced by Federico Bonelli.

The Kindness of Strangers – TennesseeWilliams.net – July 31st – August 14

When the 2020 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival had to be cancelled, actor Bryan Batt (Mad Men) suggested rounding up long-time participants in the festival and taking it online. The result is Friday’s The Kindness of Strangers. The event takes place live on Friday, July 31st at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT. It will remain available online for free through August 14th.

If you need me to tell you the source of the event’s title, perhaps The Kindness of Strangers isn’t for you. But for a quick refresher course on Williams, he is the playwright who gave us The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Night of the Iguana and, of course, A Streetcar Named Desire.

The festival was launched in 1986, so they have a length list of participants and many of them are joining for The Kindness of Strangers.

Batt will serves as the host. The scheduled performers includes: Samantha Beaulieu, Troi Bechet, Curtis Billings, Betty Buckley (Camino Real), Leslie Castay, Michael Cerveris, Patricia Clarkson, Patrick Cragin, Brenda  Currin, Lisa  D’Amour, Arsène DeLay, Gwendolyne Foxworth, Alison Fraser, Lawrence Henry Gobble, John Goodman (who was a terrific “Big Daddy” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Geffen Playhouse), Rodney Hicks, Kenneth  Holditch, Corey Johnson, Idella Johnson, Peggy Scott Laborde, Donald Lewis, Ti Martin, Elizabeth McCoy, Jessica Mixon, Whitney Mixon, Wendell Pierce (who gives a great performance in the film Clemency), Francine Segal, Janet  Shea, Harry Shearer, Carol Sutton, Beverly Trask, Kathleen Turner (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Cassie Worley, and Jake Wynne-Wilson.

The Kindness of Strangers is free to watch, but donations are encouraged.

Janine Jansen and Jean-Yves Thibaudet play Grieg, Debussy, and Chausson – Medici.tv – Now – August 2nd

This week’s Carnegie Hall concert made available on Medici.tv finds violinist Janine Jansen and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet performing a chamber musical recital from 2018. They are joined by the Dover Quartet for performances of music by Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy and Ernest Chausson.

The program offers Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Minor; Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major and Chausson’s Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet in D Major.

This concert was part of Carnegie Hall’s Perspectives series which allows an artist to program a series of concerts. This was the next-to-last of Jansen’s series.

Zoo Nation: The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – Royal Ballet – July 31st

Hip-hop meets Lewis Carroll in this adaptation inspired by the author’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Zoo Nation/The Kate Prince Company was commissioned to put this dance piece together by The Royal Ballet to accompany Christopher Wheeldon’s full-length ballet named after Carroll’s book.

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party centers around a young psychotherapist in his first job at the Institute for Extremely Normal Behaviour. His patients are all familiar characters to fans of this book: the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Queen of Hearts. He hopes his PhD in normalization will help him understand his patients better. Perhaps there isn’t anything to understand beyond that normal may not be all it is cracked up to be.

Kate Prince directed and choreographed the show. Music is by Josh Cohen and DJ Walde with all three creators collaborating on the lyrics.

Zoë Anderson from the The Independent in London said of the show, “Prince blends big group numbers with explosive solos. The whole company is strong, with dazzling turns by some of its best regular performers.”

Renée Fleming in Concert – Metropolitan Opera – August 1st – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

As part of the Metropolitan Opera’s ongoing series of Met Stars Live in Concert, Renée Fleming will be accompanied by pianist Robert Ainsley for a live recital from Washington, D.C.’s Dumbarton Oaks.

Lyric soprano Fleming is amongst the most popular opera singers in the world.

A graduate of Juilliard, she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 1988. That same year she made her debut with the Houston Grand Opera Company in The Marriage of Figaro. She sang the role of The Countess. Three years later she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the same opera and the rest is history.

She is a 17-time Grammy Award nominee with four wins. She’s a fierce advocate for the study of health and music and how they are intertwined. Fleming is also passionate about education. She can be found on Broadway (the most recent revival of Carousel) and has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Brad Mehldau and more.

The recital is scheduled to include works by Handel (Semele), Massenet (Manon), Richard Strauss (Der Rosenkavalier), Korngold (Die Tote Stadt), Cilea (Adriana Lecouvreur), Puccini (Giannia Schicchi) along with a folk song by Joseph Canteloube and a little nod to Hollywood with Over the Rainbow from The Wizard Oz by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg.

Tickets to watch the concert are $20. With your ticket you will be able to watch the performance live and have access to it for 12 days.

Broadway Bares: Zoom In – Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS – August 1st – 9:30 PM EDT/6:30 PM PDT

One of the most popular annual events in the Broadway community is a burlesque show called Broadway Bares. Director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell created the event to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Broadway Bares finds Broadway dancers performing uniquely choreographed routines that all gradually peel away their clothes.

Nobody appears fully nude in show, as per the truest tradition of burlesque. Men and women perform the numbers which are choreographed by some of the Broadway community’s best.

This is always one of the toughest tickets to get in New York. But this year, we’re all invited. Broadway Bares: Zoom In takes place on Saturday and will feature newly created pieces filmed/performed adhering to social distancing guidelines, plus there will be films of classic routines from the nearly 30-year history of the event.

There is no charge to watch the event, but donations are encouraged.

The Rake’s Progress – Glyndebourne – August 2nd – August 9th

Igor Stravinsky’s opera had its world premiere in Venice in 1951. Poet W. H. Auden and poet/librettist Chester Kallman wrote the libretto. All three were inspired by artist William Hogarth’s paintings from the 1730s – a series entitled A Rake’s Progress.

The opera traces the fall of Tom Rakewell. When he encounters Nick Shadow, he leaves behind Anne Truelove. Shadow and Rakewell soak up all that London has to offer.

But Rakewell is unaware that Shadow is actually the Devil. One series of events leads to another and our protagonist finds himself in a mental word.

In this 2010 production from Glyndebourne, Topi Lehtipuu sings the role of Rakewell. Matthew Rose sings Shadow and Miah Persson sings the role of Truelove.

This is a revival of John Cox’s 1975 production that was designed by artist David Hockney. Vladimir Jurowski lead the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Tim Ashley, writing for The Guardian, said of this revival, “Designed by David Hockney and directed by John Cox, Glyndebourne’s production of The Rake’s Progress dates from 1975 and is still widely regarded as the benchmark staging of Stravinsky’s great, if difficult, opera.

“Hockney’s designs mediate between the 18th century and the 20th, just as the score self-consciously shuttles between Mozartian models and modernism. Cox’s understanding, meanwhile, of when to keep us detached and when to let emotions through remains wonderfully acute.”

Cheyenne Jackson with Seth Rudetsky – BroadwayWorld.com – August 2nd – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

If you only know Cheyenne Jackson from his roles on Glee or American Horror Story, there’s much more than that to him. For it is Broadway where he truly rose to fame.

Jackson made his Broadway debut as a replacement in the musical Aida. He was also a replacement in Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Audiences started taking serious notice when he starred in the musical All Shook Up in 2005. The stage musical Xanadu was next in 2007 (which showcased his roller skating abilities). He starred alongside Kate Baldwin in the wonderful 2009 revival of Finian’s Rainbow. His most recent show was The Performers in 2012.

Jackson joins music director/composer/pianist and Broadway expert Seth Rudetsky for his weekly Online Seth Concert Series. The show will be a combination of conversation and song. Sunday’s performance will be live. If you can’t watch the show live, there is an encore showing on Monday, August 3rd at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT.

Tickets are $20 for either performance.

As you can see, this week’s Best Bets at Home: July 31st – August 2nd is a short but sweet list. But I have a few reminders before we go:

This weekend’s opera productions from the Metropolitan Opera are Dvořák’s Rusalka on Friday; Verdi’s Ernani on Saturday and Wagner’s Die Walküre on Sunday.

SF Jazz continues their multi-part Wayne Shorter Celebration on Fridays at Five with Branford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard on Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT.

The Fred Hirsch Trio will perform live sets from the Village Vanguard on Friday and Saturday at 9:00 PM EDT/6:00 PM PDT.

The Julius Rodriguez Trio performs live from Smalls on Sunday at 7:45 PM EDT/4:45 PM PDT.

I hope you enjoy this weekend’s Best Bets at Home: July 31st – August 2nd. Stay safe and healthy!

Photo: Artwork from the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival 2020 Cover/Courtesy of the Festival

The post Culture Best Bets at Home: July 31st – August 2nd appeared first on Cultural Attaché.