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Get ready for a packed arts weekend
If weekends on the performance calendar were local intersections, Friday through next Sunday would be the equivalent of Blackstone and Shaw. It's busy.
The crowded arts schedule happens every year. Weekends during the holiday season get piled upon by arts groups for a variety of factors: Everyone wants to avoid Thanksgiving or being too close to Christmas, unless you're "The Nutcracker." Lots of groups have to fit into academic calendars, too.
Which is why it's very possible that if you're at all interested in the local arts scene, this coming weekend could become a marathon.
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Orchestras combine for mega-Mahler performance
Lest you underestimate the sonic firepower that will mark the performance of the Mahler Symphony No. 1 tonight at the Saroyan Theatre, consider this:
There will be 13 French horns.
That isn't just a horn section; it's a horn county. We're talking about a tsunami-sized wave of sound. If 13 French horns playing together were a vehicle on Highway 99, it'd be a fully loaded 18-wheeler barreling down on you at 85 mph.
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Musical collaboration for children
It's a big weekend for classical music with three prominent local organizations -- the Fresno Philharmonic, the Fresno Community Chorus and the Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Concerts series -- hosting concerts. But the Philharmonic's event veers the most from its standard fare. It's designed for children.
"Tchaikovsky Discovers America" is a collaboration with Classical Kids Live!, the theatrical orchestral group that brought the popular "Beethoven Lives Upstairs" to Fresno last year.
This year's 50-minute show, designed for children 6 years and older, includes more than 25 excerpts of the composer's music woven into a story line about his famous trip to Niagara Falls.
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Local events for the week of Jan. 15-21
Pet comedy
7 p.m. Jan. 21 / The Tower Theatre, 815 E. Olive Ave. / towertheatrefresno.com, (559) 485-9050 / $29.50-$39.50
The Popovich Comedy Pet Circus is coming to Fresno with a show that features 15 cats and 10 dogs -- all strays or rescues. Gregory Popovich usually performs his show at the V Theater at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. You can find out more about this family-oriented performance at comedypet.com.
Real reality TV
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Clovis church is 'sole(d) out' for charity project
Congregants at First Baptist Church in Clovis are trying to raise $15,000 to buy about 700 pairs of shoes for students at a Fresno elementary school. The school's principal wants the school to remain nameless.
"Sole(d) Out for Kids" began Nov. 1, when the the Rev. Timothy Brown kicked off his shoes at services, put them on the church's altar and asked, "Won't you join us?" Streams of people at three services came forward with their shoes off as a symbolic act of unity.
"It was an incredible response," Brown remembers.
To choral groups these days, John Rutter is like butter. How can you resist slathering it on? The contemporary English composer's music is so tuneful, accessible and moving that it's easy to conceive of an entire concert devoted to his works.
You could say, then, that Dave Hensley, artistic director of the Fresno Choral Artists, definitely succumbed to Rutter fever when planning the group's fall concert. The Sunday event will be all Rutter, all the time.
But, says Hensley, it's an all-Rutter concert that doesn't have as its centerpiece one of the composer's big, beefy, full-length works such as his Magnificat or Requiem. Instead, the program is devoted to a mix of his shorter works, both religious and secular.
"I think the audience will be very pleased," Hensley says.
Then again, Rutter has a way of doing that to people. His choir, The Cambridge Singers, has long been a powerhouse on the choral scene. The composer, who works almost exclusively on commission, has a special way of establishing a bond with audiences, Hensley says.
The program includes such Rutter titles as "A Gaelic Blessing," "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind," "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" and "When the Saints Go Marching In."
And just to stir things up a bit with some earthiness, there'll be a round of "Good Ale" from "When Icicles Hang." We all get thirsty, after all.
For the singers, the most difficult aspect of a concert such as this is shifting mood and vocal style so quickly, Hensley says. When you're singing a full-length work like the Magnificat, it's as if you're playing just one character, in a sense. With the program's wide variety of songs, they'll have to bounce from silly to sacred in an instant.
For this auditioned, intensely rehearsed group, it will be a chance to indulge with the audience in an excess of Rutter. After all, you can always diet tomorrow.
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