A packed spring is in store for arts-loving Tucsonans — from dance to rock to country to classical to theater, our weeks will be heavy with things to do.
On the theater front, who needs to go to New York when you've got the kind of theater coming to the Tucson stages?
Arizona Theatre Company opens Souvenir in previews Saturday — starring the same cast that won raves on Broadway.
And Broadway in Tucson is bringing in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — starring the same Tony-nominated Broadway cast. That play makes only five stops across the country; we're one of them.
Plenty more to look forward to, including Arizona Onstage Productions' The Full Monty, Arizona Repertory's Romeo and Juliet and Etcetera's Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Over on the classical music side, Tucson will rock with Rachmaninoff in March.
On March 7, a Wednesday, Van Cliburn International Piano Competition winner Olga Kern will play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.
2 with the National Philharmonic of Russia at Centennial Hall. The all-Russian concert, presented by UApresents, includes Shostakovich's Festival Overture and Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony Pathétique.
The following day, at Tucson Music Hall, fellow Van Cliburn winner Alexander Kobrin will play the Rach concerto with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in a program titled From Russia With Love.
Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony and music from Rubinstein's opera The Demon round out that program, which is part of the TSO's four-concert Celebrate Russia festival.
That festival kicks off Feb. 8 with the young Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts playing Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No.
2 in G minor. For tickets and details, contact the TSO at 882-8585.
Other classical music highlights include the appearance of a guest from Mexico, famed conductor Enrique Bátiz Campbell, leading the Catalina Chamber Orchestra on Jan.
28.
The concert includes works by American and Latin composers, as well as Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp.
Tucson's dance community is set to outshine its stellar winter season with 24 performances around town this spring.
Leading the pack is UApresents, which scheduled most of its dance productions for the 2006-07 season between February and April.
The Moscow Festival Ballet, Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Ballet Hispanico and the New Jersey-based Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company are all on tap for Centennial Hall showings.
Other highlights of the spring season include Ballet Tucson's rendition of Swan Lake, slated for May 5-6; New ARTiculations' Works of Art performances March 16-17; and Flying and Films at the Fox II, the second film and dance collaboration between the Fox Theatre and Orts Theater of Dance, May 26.
The Old Pueblo's world-music selections will be like visiting old friends this spring, with Tucson regulars Los Lobos, Lila Downs and the Chieftains making stops through town. And jazz fans will thrill over what UApresents has to offer, including visits by New York City's Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band out of New Orleans and the San Francisco Jazz Collective led by sax player Joshua Redman.
The biggie for mariachi fans will be the annual Tucson International Mariachi Conference, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
What better way to celebrate such a milestone than with hometown favorites Mariachi Cobre, conference staples Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano and the legendary powerhouse group Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán. The conference concert series runs April 26-28.
Some big rock and pop shows locally this spring include AFI and Of Montreal, both playing the Rialto Theatre, Deerhoof at Club Congress and Ghostland Observatory at Solar Culture.
Up in the Phoenix area, there will be Justin Timberlake and My Chemical Romance at Jobing.com Arena, the Who and Eric Clapton in separate shows at US Airways Center and Gwen Stefani at Cricket Pavilion.
And if you like your art on film, there's much there to keep you going.
Tucson's film festival season kicks up with the Tucson Jewish Film Festival beginning this weekend. April brings the Tucsonfilm.com Shortfest and the Arizona International Film Festival.
For details on all the performing-arts fun in store, read on . . .
? Kathleen Allen, Cathalena E. Burch, Gerald M.
Gay, Kevin W.
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