Tag Archives: city arts

Arts & Entertainment, Dance, Music, Theatre, Visual Arts

City Arts Fest Begins in 5…4…3

“Emerald City”

The 2012 City Arts Festival begins Wednesday evening and wraps up Saturday, October 20. Some of the festival’s wristband passes have already sold out, so if you are a procrastinator, you may be hunting for tickets on an event-by-event basis. David Byrne and St. Vincent are opening the music side of the festival at the 5th Avenue Theatre, but there’s an equally anticipated arts facet as well.

How anticipated? The Arts Adventure Pass is sold out. That’s for people who want to see every single arts event during the festival. They want, for instance, to hear marimba player and singer Erin Jorgensen perform her “Waiting for Signs” at a local tattoo parlor. The show is “best suited for adults” and should contain, reference, or ignore “3 a.m. visions, melancholy chansons, and the philosophy of Simone Weil.”

Also suited for adults, in both senses of the word, is the KT Niehoff/Lingo Productions & Jill Donnelly fashion-party/installation-spectacle “Emerald City: I Have to Be Seen in Green.” It’s about “adornment, personal aesthetics, and how we choose to present ourselves to the world” and there will be live music. It may get weird.

Speaking of getting weird, there’s also Jose Bold & Friends, in their “Dream House,” which is possessed by a spirit highway. This also comes with musical accompaniment. On the dance front, there’s a smaller (physically) work from Zoe | Juniper called “Kate & Zoe” (the Kate being Kate Wallich) that offers “a brief glimpse into the mystery of the other,” and Danielle Agami‘s “Dance in a Public Place,” which is more or less what it sounds like.

There are many more events, including pop-culture historian Jennifer K. Stuller’s multimedia presentation on the female hero in modern mythology, “Ink-Stained Amazons & Cinematic Warriors.” Also of note, a multi-hour literary pub crawl.

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre

The SunBreak’s Picks for City Arts Fest Saturday

The closing night of City Arts Fest 2011 should pack plenty of unmissable moments in its own right. Enclosed, please find our picks for your Saturday evening.

Mudhoney w/Hot Bodies in Motion, Thee Emergency, Lovesick Empire @ Neumos
Katelyn: Mudhoney, people. MUDHONEY. Plus, Thee Emergency’s reinvented themselves at least twice since I saw them last, so I’m interested to see what the ever-sultry Dita Vox and the gang are up to now. Do wear flannel, and do prepare your eardrums for sonic assault.

Clint: Well, don’t I feel lucky going in for Mudhoney? I’d say that’s been covered quite nicely. Just one more thought: While other legendary Seattle bands/records celebrate 20 years in 2011, Mudhoney nears 25. And still the band’s spontaneous-yet-accomplished rock and Mark Arm’s serpentine, charismatic frontman talents remain unrivaled.

Tea Cozies will rock it up tonight at the Rendezvous.

Seapony w/Tea Cozies, Midday Veil, Witch Gardens @ The Rendezvous
Katelyn: Oh, you’d rather be less ragey, more happy on a Saturday night? Done. Go to the Rendezvous for Seapony and Tea Cozies.

Tony: Seapony’s girl-fronted pop’s just plain tasty and sweet, but my heart belongeth to Tea Cozies. The Ronettes fronting Gang of Four while channelling mid ’60’s Kinks, set to a walloping backbeat? Yep, that about covers it.

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down w/Grand Hallway, Lemolo, Kris Orlowski @ The Crocodile
Tony: The Croc’s wildly varied Saturday bill includes Thao’s winning herky-jerky indie pop, Grand Hallway’s entrancing and airy chamber-rock, Lemolo’s electronic allure, and Kris Orlowski’s burnished, beguilingly-ragged Mark Lanegen-esque pipes.

The Hold Steady w/ Grand Archives @ The Neptune
Josh: The pairing of Grand Archives (sunny American harmonics) and the Hold Steady (optimal bar band with a dash of literary tradition) make a great excuse to check out the Neptune.

Male Bonding w/Unnatural Helpers, Virgin Islands, The Fucking Eagles @ Chop Suey
Tony: The bill I’m most excited for this evening has to be this rock and roll quadruple feature at Chop Suey. British trio Male Bonding give great loud pop–short, catchy songs that sound like Teenage Fanclub after a case of Red Bull. But get there really, really early. The other three local bands on the bill pretty much rule: Unnatural Helpers and Virgin Islands serve up some great, spiky post-punk, and Tacoma collective The Fucking Eagles uphold T-Town’s noble tradition of gloriously git-down-and-dirty garage rock, but laced with some muscular R & B. Be sure to bring an extra pair of socks, as your first pair will be knocked off.

Seateeth: Jose Bold (John Osebold of “Awesome”) @ Theater off Jackson
Seth: I wrote about this earlier this week. I will be there at this very show, and if the Huskies beat Stanford that afternoon, I will be the guy smiling broadly and muttering “Keith Mother-f-ing Price! F-ing A!” at intervals. Sorry.

Capsula w/Whalebones, Stag, Rose Windows @ The Comet Tavern
Tony: When it comes to my sixties revivalists, I like ‘em swirly, swaggering and dirty. South America’s Capsula know how to break out the bad-trip psychedelia, and Seattle’s own Whalebones provide a great excuse to show up early.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV, Music, Theatre, Visual Arts

The SunBreak’s Picks for City Arts Fest Thursday

Now that you’ve all purchased your City Arts Fest wristbands (you did get yours, correct?), you surely need some help choosing what acts/presentations/events to attend during Seattle’s Last Best Festival of the Year.  Enter your trusty SunBreak staff to offer their picks for Fest must-sees.

Robyn w/YACHT @ The Paramount
Katelyn: In the car, at my desk, at every party where I have even half an ounce of control over the playlist: I’ve been having Moments to Robyn’s defiantly hopeful dance pop album Body Talk nonstop since it dropped in late 2010. This is the can’t-miss performance of the entire festival, Ryan Adams included.

Josh: Show up at the Paramount early enough to see YACHT (off kilter musical motivational speeches/cult recruitment, with cowbell) open for for Robyn.

The Ecstasy of Influence @ Town Hall
MvB: Because this is an arts fest, there will also be poetry. Luckily it’s from irrepressible Heather McHugh, and three of her students: Kary Wayson, Kate Lebo, and Erika Wilder. Music sneaks in through the back door when McHugh’s poems are sung by the bluegrass trio The Half Brothers.

Crystal Castles w/Crypts, Nightmare Fortress @ Showbox SoDo
Josh: If you’re still standing after the interesting pairing of dance pop that is Robyn and YACHT, make the hike to ShowDo to have your eardrums assaulted while Crystal Castles strobe light you into seizures. One of the few bands that might actually benefit (instead of suffer) from the echo-y cavernous space of this venue.  Hey, it worked on Skins…

The Felice Brothers w/Gil Landry (of Old Crow Medicine Show), Shelby Earl, Gabriel Mintz @ The Crocodile
Tamara: Rootsy Americana-rockers the Felice Brothers always put on a lively gig, complete with songs about whiskey, lovers, and questionable characters, and featuring a healthy dose of down-home instruments (fiddles, washboards). But rumor is the guys have a new musical direction that includes synth, horns, and…acid jazz? That alone makes this my pick for the night: I’ve gotta hear it to believe it.

The Cops w/Birthday Suits, Strong Killings, Nazca Lines@ the Comet Tavern
Tony: Michael Jaworski’s raging post-punk quartet The Cops play a live show as pin-point sharp as it is electrifying. They’re so good, it makes me wonder why there aren’t as many Cops sound-alike bands in town as there are, say, Head and the Heart sound-alike bands.

That boring Mad Rad Buffalo Madonna guy will probably jump around a lot at Mad Rad's set tonight.

Mad Rad w/Katie Kate, Helluvastate, Slow Dance @ Neumos
Tony: I wonder if Mad Rad’s hushed acoustic set of fragile folk ballads will go over with a rowdy City Arts Fest crowd…Kidding. It’s always worth watching Seattle’s electro-trash hedonists work themselves into a lather.

Allen Stone w/Fly Moon Royalty@ The Triple Door
Katelyn: Allen Stone looks like my dad circa 1976, glasses included. Head to the Triple Door for some serious stylish redheaded soul.

The Horde and the Harem w/Exohxo, Elk and Boar, The Nameless @ The Rendezvous
Seth: Horde and the Harem put on a good show. They’ve got two frontmen, one who acts all cool and like “I-don’t-even-care” and another who flirts with the ladies. The tag team effect works.

Arts & Entertainment, Literature, Theatre

Seth Suggests Seateeth by John Osebold

The one City Arts Fest event I’ll be sure to hit this weekend: Seateeth, the new production by Stranger theater genius John Osebold.

I thought about emailing John to ask him some background about the production, but thought better of it, partially because City Arts already did, but also because of this: Much of the fun of Osebold’s shows is that you never know what to expect.

The most recent Jose Bold show I saw was his Christmas show, which ended up being a ton of songs (some funny, some sad, all beautiful) only tangentially related to Christmas, set to a bunch of old weird videos from The Prelinger Archives.

Then there was Spidermann, his parody of the dangerous Broadway musical. I missed that, but here’s how The Stranger described the show’s opening:

Projected onto a large screen, over darkness, the words ‘Jose Bold’ with botanical flourishes blossoming in the corner. Then a lens flare wipes the screen clean. Then ‘presents.’ Then in big, shapely, inspiring, timeless red letters, moving slowly up the screen, one at a time, S-P-I-D—eeeeeeeeeeerp!—an error sound over an error screen, a long awful beep over ‘PLEASE STAND BY,’ and then a janky white screen with Spidermann written in what looks like the clumsy square paintbrush on MS Paint.

As for Seateeth, as you’ll see from the trailer above, who knows? Osebold says the inspiration came from reading his first Haruki Murakami novel, and from seeing a giant whale skeleton at Honolulu’s stellar Bishop Museum. He describes Seateeth as “the Jose Bold version of a literary reading,” which is like saying “the Lady GaGa version of a three-piece suit”–it raises more questions than it answers. I don’t want to ruin the show for myself or for you by trying to figure it out. Go and enjoy as the mystery is revealed.

Seateeth plays Thursday October 20 and Saturday October 22 at Theatre Off Jackson, at 10:30 p.m. both nights, as part of City Arts Fest. (Tickets). Osebold will reprise the show Friday, October 28, as part of SAM Remix, at 9:45 p.m. in the Porcelain Room.