As the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music gears up for its 50th anniversary season, maestra Marin Alsop talks about the festival’s reputation for embracing “the weird and the wonderful” and explains why, despite being insanely busy, she’s “completely satisfied.”
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Laura Karpman, Chief ‘Girl’
Laura Karpman’s resumé looks like the result of a life without downtime. The genre-bending lead composer for Hidden World of Girls has won four Emmys for her sci-fi television scores and written music for video games, film, opera, string quartets and world premiere commissions. “I definitely do collaboration,” Karpman says. “All of these concert music pieces I’ve done lately so profoundly draw from my work as a film composer. Even the really technical stuff came directly from the TV work.”
Hidden World of Girls
What does it mean to grow up female? An ambitious multimedia collaboration between NPR’s Kitchen Sisters and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music explores a dynamic question through sound, light, story and music. Hidden World of Girls</i has its world premiere Saturday, July 28 in Santa Cruz.
Top 10 Santa Cruz Mountains Wines
We fed Christina Waters a truth serum so she’d name her top 10 Santa Cruz Mountains wines. Here’s what we got, from the summeriest whites to the most profound pinots.
Santa Cruz County’s Best Microbrews
As the mercury rises, so do our cravings for a cool, refreshing beverage. But which one? It would be a mighty undertaking to channel your inner beer geek on your own and find the best local beer. So we, ever community-minded, did the homework ourselves with a blind taste test, scientifically weighing the pros and cons of each and searching for strengths and weaknesses.
A Fundraiser for Hicko
It’s 10am and Thomas Hickenbottom, one of the founding fathers of Santa Cruz surfing, is showcasing lattices of berries and fruit trees laden with the summer’s bounty in the Eden he has helped to create around his Westside home. Breathing deeply, he presses the stoma that has replaced the vocal chords he lost to cancer and whispers excitedly about the fundraiser being held in his honor on Saturday, July 21.
Santa Cruz Fringe Festival
We’ve made it our mission to see as many Fringe Festival shows as possible and will be bringing you constantly updated reviews, observations and warnings to help you achieve the ultimate Santa Cruz Fringe Festival experience.
Our Fringe Festival Picks
This Friday marks the first day of the ten-day long Santa Cruz Fringe Festival, a celebration of offbeat, anything-goes artistic performance. All week the artists have been preparing their shows for performance and generally fluttering around town in a haze of excitement and stage makeup. Santa Cruz Weekly was able to sneak preview some of the 42 shows and noticed several buzz-worthy performers we can’t wait to see in full Fringe regalia.
Boulder Creek Bluegrass Fest
If the multiplicity of venues and festivals from the Boardwalk to Boulder Creek are anything to go by, Santa Cruz loves it some music. So when a beloved festival like the Brookdale Bluegrass Festival needed a helping hand (read: a new venue) after the Brookdale Lodge became… let’s call it indisposed, the Boulder Creek community rushed to its aid. This year, the revitalized Boulder Creek Bluegrass and Old Timey Festival is a smorgasbord of fiery finger-pickin’ spread out over three days and multiple locations.
Fringe Director’s Picks
When asked to name which shows she’s most excited about, Dixie Shulman’s monologue is like frenzied Oscar winner firing off thank-yous as the music creeps in: “There are so many great ones I forgot to mention!”
Understood. But without further ado, a starting place.
