Tag Archives: benefit

Arts & Entertainment, Dance, Music

A Chop Suey Dance Party for Hurricane Sandy Relief

Rock-a-Raise‘Twas the night before New Year’s Eve — ’twill be, rather, but that come on, ’twill? We couldn’t do it.

We have been alerted to the good-hearted efforts of the people behind Rock-a-Raise, a dance party to be held at Chop Suey on December 30, with all proceeds going to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Hurricane Sandy Relief and Rebuild Fund.

Tickets are just $10, but for $25 you’re entered to win (15 times!) a two-night stay for two at the newly restored Villa Verde in Merida, Mexico.

The fun — oh, there will be fun — begins at 7 p.m. as emcee Alex Grindeland from Comedy Sportz joins DJ Mike Steve and DJ Chrispy and a themed selection of New York/Jersey bands that you know and love.

Also, enjoy the burlesque/lounge stylings of Gams Galore (“That Glamorous Gal with the Golden Gullet!”), Mitzy Sixx, and Nitara Ashling. We are told there will be even more prizes besides the Mexico giveaway, but they will not be announced in advance. You just have to show up and shake it, and be ready to jump on what turns up.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Auburn Symphony Benefit Treats Crowd to a Galop and Cancan

The title of the concert, Music Especially for You, said it all. The Auburn Symphony Orchestra’s benefit concert Sunday afternoon at Auburn Performing Arts Center was given with the musicians and conductor donating their services to the community.

In return, they hoped the community would come to hear them play a bunch of familiar and popular pieces of music, and come it did, in droves, perhaps the biggest audience the orchestra has ever had at the PAC. The tickets bought Sunday will help the orchestra build its financial reserves, the start of a big fundraising effort to build those reserves over the next few years.

Maestro Stewart Kershaw

Conductor Stewart Kershaw introduced each piece from the podium, briefly, with humor, and often a little anecdote. The music ranged from the very well-known, like the Galop from Rossini’s William Tell Overture (in its other guise the music signaling the Lone Ranger) and Offenbach’s Cancan from his operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, for which Kershaw invited the audience to kick up its heels in the aisles; to familiar, peaceful works like the serene Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber and Bach’s Air on the G String.

Kershaw chose works which highlighted members of the orchestra, like Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of Greensleeves with principal flutist Karla Flygare, and Saint-Saens’ The Swan from Carnival of the Animals, with principal cellist Brian Wharton. Both soloists performed excellently, Wharton’s tone being particularly rich and warm throughout. Concertmaster Brittany Boulding took on Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, a fiendishly difficult work for any violinist, in which she achieved all the notes including the very tricky octave harmonics, but it was probably not the best showcase for her undoubted abilities.

Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance No 8, Tchaikovsky’s adaptation of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, the Waltz from Act 1 of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake were among other delectable offerings, varied and well chosen. The orchestra gave their usual fine performances throughout, though there were some ragged edges in Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz; and the program ended with a lively rendering of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No 1.

However, it wouldn’t be Auburn without an encore, and after several returns for bows and applause, Kershaw turned back to his fine professional orchestra, and gave the downbeat for a rousing performance of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, with the piccolos standing for their prominent role and later the trombones and trumpets doing the same.

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre, Visual Arts

For New Year’s, a Cafe (Un)American Benefit at Washington Hall

If you’re tired of the same old, same old for New Year’s Eve, Cafe (un)American may be for you. It’s a 21+ takeover of historic Washington Hall by 35 performers (burlesque, music, and more), with specialty cocktails from Sound Spirits liquors, food from Madison Park Conservatory, and desserts by Victoria Yee Howe and Theo Chocolates.

Presenting artists include but are not limited to: Jherek Bischoff and band, DJ Darek Mazzone, Gabriel Teodros, Buffalo Madonna, Sten Skogen, King Dro, Jed Dunkerley, DJ Steve Miller, Kate Ryan, and Celeste Cooning. Also, I’m told there will be a kissing booth.

Your ticket will total $103.50, and include an open bar and a champagne toast at midnight. In the interests of full disclosure, I know some of the people behind this production, and have no doubt that this will be an incredible evening. Also, full disclosure, your name will probably go on some kind of FBI watch list, so you have that going for you, too. You can’t buy that kind of notoriety.

A watch list? you ask. Yes, do you know the strange saga of Cafe (un)American?

Many years ago now–who even remembers 2006 and 2007 any more?–there was an outlaw arts speakeasy that used to regularly defy the letter of Washington state law regarding liquor sales and gambling. Past closing time, you could stop in at the secret location for illicit cabaret, burlesque, music, and games–people went in costume, so to speak, decked out in their finest vintage wear. It was a traveling show, popping up once in a building owned by Costco’s Jim Sinegal.

Perhaps thanks to zombie institutional memory–remember that Capone and other gangsters were often behind the speakeasies that regular people used to attend, glory days, they’ll pass you by–the FBI came to believe that the proceeds of these evenings was funding “domestic terrorism.” (So did the Seattle Police Department, which has just been the subject of a major Department of Justice investigation itself.)

Here we refer you to Brendan Kiley’s definitive story on what became a major operation that, after years of surveillance, bagged a small-time dealer and put an end to Capitol Hill hipster poker games alleged to involve more than $5,000 per month in stakes:

“That would seem to be an absurd waste of state financing and funding,” Rick says. “And that actually scares me more than the charges… You guys aren’t after anything bigger than this? This is it?”

One of the accused, belatedly, was artist DK Pan, whom King County prosecutors portrayed as Le Chiffre-like in his poker skills, while failing to provide actual…ah, yes…evidence of his wrongdoing. After DK Pan decided to fight the charges, the State decided to drop them: “After filing this case, the State learned that Pan’s involvement is more minimal than first thought and more similar to individuals who were not changed as part of the gambling enterprise.”

All’s well that ends well…except for DK Pan’s $50,000 in legal bills, incurred in preparing to mount a defense. (You, the taxpayer, are on the hook for the State’s costs, and for that years-long investigation.) Thus, Cafe (un)American returns as a DK Pan benefit, in particularly poetic way of thumbing one’s nose at the authorities. Drink up.