Hope you didn't even think of trying to get a cheap motel room in Fresno this weekend considering the influx of high-school marching band members flooding the area from north and south. The Western Band Championships are in full swing today and tomorrow. From Friday's 7 section:

The smaller bands (classes 1A, 2A and 3A) will gather at Koligian Stadium at 10 a.m. today, and the larger bands (classes 4A and 5A) will gather at Buchanan Stadium at noon today.

If you don't have two days to devote to your marching-band mania and only have time to see the top bands, my recommendation is to head out Sunday to Buchanan for the finals. The smaller bands step off at 10 a.m. and the larger bands start at 3:15 p.m.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The discipline, musicianship, visual impact and passion of these hard-working band members is incredible. Watching the top bands perform can be an artistic experience.

In the meantime, for any competing band members reading this, post a comment below telling folks what they can expect from your school's routine. Any predictions on who the top winners will be?

My faithful classical-music-in-schools-zealot correspondent, Robert Bullwinkel, dropped me a note today about cellist Zuill Bailey, the guest soloist for this weekend's Fresno Philharmonic concerts -- I have a story in this morning's 7 section about the program -- and his visit this morning to Kingsburg:

I just saw Zuill Bailey perform for students at Rafer Johnson Junior High in Kingsburg as a part of the Fresno Philharmonic's Concertos for Kids program. Mr. Bailey wowed the students with his performance of Bach's Cello Suites, but really connected with them when he spoke of the misconceptions about classical music. Bailey said that when he walks through the airport wearing shades and a black leather jacket with his black cello case strapped to his back, he is often asked what rock band he plays for. People are disappointed when he says that he is a classical musician, but when he played musical examples from popular movies, the students quickly realized that they did have a strong connection with orchestral music.

The students all came from classes taught by teachers in the Keeping Score Education program, a project of the Fresno County Office of Education and the San Francisco Symphony. This week, they studied Bach and listened to his music performed by today's special guest. I also heard the Phil rehearsing the Tchaikovsky Suite last night. It's going to be a GREAT concert!

From our 7 Things to Do list:

It's a long-standing tradition for the Fresno Art Museum's Council of 100 to designate a female artist of the year. The honor this time around goes to Joan Tanner, whose "as is: installation 09" runs through Jan. 10. Today's opening reception includes an appearance by Tanner, who modifies ordinary objects and building materials into exaggerated, arcane sculptural elements.

5-7 p.m. Friday / Fresno Art Museum, 2233 N. First St. / fresnoartmuseum.org, (559) 441-4221 / $5, free admission Sundays

If you can't make the reception, Tanner will give a lecture 2 p.m. Saturday in the Bonner Auditorium.

I swung by the museum yesterday as Tanner worked to get the exhibition ready. You can read about it in my upcoming Sunday Spotlight column.

The stars aligned at the Star Palace last night for Ashley Taylor and, by extension, the strong inaugural performance of the Organic Theater Factory.

For years, the hard-working Taylor has tackled one character role after another on the Fresno community theater scene -- from Mary Sunshine in "Chicago" to Gertrude the Bird in "Seussical" -- as a solid performer. But something special happens in Jason Robert Brown's intimate musical "The Last 5 Years." As Cathy Hiatt, the struggling actress whose story of a disillusioned marriage is told in reverse chronological disorder, Taylor gives a transluscent performance. Her voice is absolutely gorgeous -- there were times when I closed my eyes and thought about how often it matched the level of Sherie Rene Scott's version on the original cast recording.

Just as impressive is the way Taylor mines the emotional territory of her character, never overplaying the sentiment or joking up the giddy moments, always relating on a fiercely human level. She's a wonderful fit for the role, and she gives an already moving play even more of an impact.

My singling Taylor out for special notice isn't in any way meant to slight her partner on stage, Peter Allwine, or the production overall, which has a scrappy, low-key charm. It's just that when it comes to Taylor, it seems this is one of those rare times for an actor when everything truly clicks -- performance, type, spirit -- and it's a beautiful thing to behold.

I caught up with Anthony Taylor, artistic director of the new Organic Theater Factory, to ask him some questions about the inaugural performance tonight at the Star Palace at Warnors Theatre. (The show continues various nights through Nov. 27.) Here's the interview:

As far as you know, will this be the first theater production at the Star Palace?

I'm not sure if this is the first theater production in this space, but I wouldn't be surprised. It's a very interesting space though and part of the mission of the company is to find new places to produce theater in Fresno. It doesn't have to be in a traditional theater to be enjoyable and in some cases the unique nature of the space can add to the overall product.

How will you use that space? How many seats?

We will be seating 100 people in the space and using the stage that exists there for concerts as the primary space for acting. Our director, Danielle Jorn, has really brought a fresh perspective to using space in exciting ways too. The first thing she told me was that we were going to need a projector, and so we are using a projector to enhance scenes and speak to where characters are throughout the show. In the future I'd love to do a show with the large floor to ceiling windows as the backdrop and the skyline in the background, but we'll save that for another show.

Bland, bland, bland. "The Wedding Singer" is not the worst show to ever travel through the Saroyan as part of the Best of Broadway series, but it certainly didn't show much sparkle. I saw the Wednesday night performance and was mostly unimpressed with the acting, music and storyline. (The singing and staging were more than adequate, and the dancing had a few stellar moments.) This adaptation of the popular Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore movie crammed in as many '80s references as it could, but it lacked the film's quirky, offbeat charm. The main characters, Robbie Hart (J. Michael Zygo) and Julia Sullivan (Jillian Zygo), who are husband and wife in real life, had some moments of sweetness, but there was little comic chemistry.

There's only one character who breaks through: that of Linda (Jennifer Gottlieb), the over-the-top fiancee who dumps the wedding-singer main character, Robbie. Stomping out in a Madonna-bustier-inspired wedding dress get-up, she delivers her "A Note From Linda" with a husky, grunting, full-of-herself, vocal-onslaught acerbity-- all the while offering satirical shades of the Material Girl. Later in the (admittedly better) second act, Linda shows up again, this time to steal the show once again with her over-the-top, acrobatic sexuality. If the creative team had figured out a way to extend Linda's appeal to the rest of the show, this could have been a raucous trip back to an earlier decade. Instead, it just sort of fades into the dustbin of Broadway history.

UPDATE 5 p.m. 11/19: We finally have a winner: Steve Hernandez. (Please, folks, if you enter these giveaway contests, be sure to check your email to see if you won!!!)

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Fresno welcomes a new local theater company Thursday when the Organic Theater Factory opens its first production, the two-person musical "The Last Five Years." It plays 8 p.m. at the Star Palace at Warnors Theatre on various nights through Nov. 27. We have TWO tickets to give away to Beehive readers for opening night. For the winner, I'll pick one comment at random among those posted to this entry. You have until 9:30 a.m. Thursday to enter. Winners will be notified in an e-mail, so leave a real one. No repeat comments. You're ineligible if you've won something in the past 30 days. Complete rules after the jump.

In the meantime, check out this promo video about the play:

There were lots of disappointed people this morning when tickets to Andrea Bocelli's concert Dec. 8 at the Saroyan Theatre sold out within minutes.

I got a call from a very disappointed Anita Newman of Clovis, who had asked her caregiver, Diane Lopez, to stand in line for her at the convention center box office. Lopez got there at 7 a.m. for the 10 a.m. sale, not realizing that many people (I've heard estimates ranging from 30 to 100) had been camping out since the night before. Only about 15 tickets were sold in person before the 500 available seats were gone.

"I could just cry," Newman said.

Tickets were available both at the convention center and also online, and that's where most of them were snapped up, said opera general director Ronald D. Eichman. The opera has received inquiries from all over the country regarding tickets, he said. Bocelli is only performing in six North American cities on his current tour (Fort Lauderdale, Toronto, East Rutherford, N.J., Fresno, Las Vegas and Anaheim), and his Fresno concert is in by far the smallest venue.

The intimate nature of the Fresno concert is because of a scheduling change that, at Bocelli's request, required a shift in venue from the 12,000-seat Save Mart Center to the 2,400-seat Saroyan Theatre.

Not that I'd ever want to disparage the personal hygiene of the hard-working cast members in Theatre Ventoux's "12 Angry Men," but thanks to director Lisa Taber's intimate staging and the play's evocative description of the cramped and heated quarters in this theater classic, I felt as if I were close enough to smell each and every one. This is less a trip to the theater than an actual camping-out experience in the jury room. I felt as if I'd been led into the chamber and told to crouch against the wall just before the jury arrived to begin deliberations.

Such intimacy works wonderfully for this stern, earnest play. It's one thing to watch "12 Angry Men" it in a large, proscenium theater sitting a fair distance from the stage. It's another to be almost on top of the actors.

This is a scrappy, bare production, but it also has a sense of authority to it -- and I'm impressed with the preparation of the actors. For long stretches of the show, I felt as if I was eavesdropping on real conversations, which is a tribute to the acting and direction.

Bee photographer Darrell Wong got some GREAT shots last night of the "So You Think You Can Dance" tour at the Save Mart Center, including this picture-perfect view of finalist Evan Kasprzak in mid-air:

You can see a gallery of Darrell's other photos from the show here.

As for the audience at the Save Mart, all I can say is there must be some audience members with extremely hoarse voices this morning, considering all the yelling for Fresno's Jason Glover. The first time he was introduced, there was this huge, whooshing roar from the crowd that sounded like something you'd hear at an airport. After sustained applause, he said, "My name is Jason. I'm a contemporary dancer from ... "

The crowd bellowed: "FRESNO!"

He was obviously tickled at the reception. Jason told me earlier in the day that he'd been excited for this night all tour, and he marveled at the fact that his former dance teacher, Sue Sampson-Delana, actually closed down The Dance Studio of Fresno to mark the tour date. ("The whole day," he said. "That's big.") Most of the students were at the concert, it seems, more than 200 of them, all sitting in a prime section close to the stage. They held orange signs that spelled out "JASON" and a big yellow one that read "Glover Lovers."

Just got home from the nearly three-hour "So You Think You Can Dance" performance. Jason Glover had a grand time. His smile lit up the Save Mart, and you could tell that he was slightly awed by the roar of the crowd at every mention of his name. It isn't every day that you perform in an arena for thousands of people AND have your very own cheering section complete with five fans spelling out the letters of your first name. (There was also a sign that read "Glover Lovers.")

What did you think of the show? I'll check in tomorrow morning with my own thoughts.

I had a chance to chat in person this afternoon with Fresno's Jason Glover at the Save Mart Center a few hours before he planned to go on as the hometown boy in the tour of "So You Think You Can Dance." He seemed really pumped up about the coming evening. The tour bus from Sacramento arrived in town at 4 this morning, and Jason sat up front by the bus driver as it rolled past such familiar exits as Shaw Avenue. His dad met the bus and took him home. "I kissed my mom, hugged my dad, said hi to my dog and finally got to sleep in my own bed," he says.

Jason, wearing a dark sweater and hip leather jacket, and sporting earrings in each ear, joined five other dancers in the interview room. (It was just me and a KMPH photographer representing the media -- I was a little surprised the other TV stations didn't show up considering the hometown angle, but maybe it's considered too much of a network-related thing.) Jason and the other dancers touched on a number of subjects related to the tour, including:

HANGING OUT AT HOME: More than 40 people -- including all 12 dancers, 15 or so close childhood friends, his parents plus uncles, aunts and grandma -- gathered at Jason's house today for a bountiful buffet lunch. ("My mom made me eggs and potatoes on the side -- special for me," he says.) Caitlin Kinney, Jason's first partner on the show, declared the food "amazing," adding that there were delicious Mexican-themed items on the menu that she didn't even recognize. After lunch, the dancers played a game of HORSE -- "badly," Kinney says -- and just hung out enjoying the sun. Phillip Chbeeb took a nap.

After the jump, more tidbits from Jason and the rest of the crew. Plus, I'll be posting a late review of the show tonight.

I already reminded you yesterday about the national tour of "The Wedding Singer" opening tonight at the Saroyan Theatre. The hometown buzz will be at the Save Mart Center, however, where you'll have the chance to cheer on Fresno's Jason Glover in the "So You Think You Can Dance" live tour. Most of the other contestants have had a chance to play their hometowns already, and now it's Jason's turn. (I wrote about his plans for today, which included inviting all the dancers over to his parents' house for a late breakfast, in the Sunday Spotlight cover story.)

I'm heading over to the Save Mart in an hour or so for the official press interview session and will come back to the office to post a pre-concert blog. Anyone have any questions you want me to ask Jason?

It's what every choral conductor fears most: At the last minute, one of your soloists isn't ready to go on.

That was the situation Friday morning for Fresno Community Chorus conductor Anna Hamre. Her bass soloist for the Mozart Requiem, Anthony Radford, had started feeling ill on Thursday. By Friday, he didn't have a voice at all. And the Sunday concert was just three days away.

That's when a young father of 2 -- a Navy man from Lemoore named Thomas Drew Duncan -- saved the day.

Chris Darling, the chorus manager, writes:

Anna immediately began calling all over the state to try to find a replacement. All the singers we called who could have stepped in were already booked. The part calls for a low "G" and Anna thought to herself, "who do I know locally that can sing a low G?" She remembered a young, Navy man who had auditioned for the choir, had a wonderful voice and could definitely sing the low G. She called him, asked him to take a look at it, he agreed, she drove to Lemoore to rehearse with him, and Voila!

Sarah Palin usually gets more play over on the Bee's Opinion Blog, except when Tina Fey is doing her thing, but there's no denying she's sucking most of the air out of the room when it comes to pop culture this week. There's her book due out tomorrow, her Oprah appearance, her estranged son-in-law posing in the buff, her bashing of the Associated Press, her ticking off former McCain aides, and all sorts of other headline-grabbing endeavors.

What do you think? Are you going to read the book, or at least read about it? Or are you attempting to do the Cone of Silence thing and mighty irked that mention of "Going Rogue: An American Life" even seeped into the Beehive?

UPDATE 5:15 p.m.: And our winners are Debi Goehring, Laura Ramirez and Johnny Missakian. Congratulations!

ORIGINAL ENTRY: The lead item in my Sunday Spotlight column is the national tour of the Broadway musical "The Wedding Singer" based on the film starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The production opens 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Saroyan Theatre, and I have SIX balcony tickets for opening night to give away to Beehive readers.

I'll give two tickets each to the FIRST, THIRD and SIXTH commenters to this post. You'll need to pick the tickets up Tuesday at The Bee's front lobby. Winners will be notified in an e-mail, so leave a real one. No repeat comments. You're ineligible if you've won something in the past 30 days. We won't post any comments until we have the winners. Complete rules after the jump.

For three years now, I've participated in a delightful tradition: moderating a movie-screening night to raise money for the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust. My latest installment of "Parties for the Parkway" came Sunday night at the home of Juan & Clara Touya, which is set up with a killer home theater system. They were joined by co-hosts Mary & Rudy Savala and approximately 30 guests for an evening of dinner, cinema, discussion and lots of impressive homemade flan. The movie: the German film "The Lives of Others," which won the 2007 Oscar for best foreign film.

And what a sharp, layered, moral-center-rattling film it is. Set in East Berlin in the early 1980s, we follow the mission of a zealous agent working for the Stasi, the dreaded secret police. He's spying on a famous playwright who because of his model-socialist ways is beyond suspicion. But the machinations of power in a totalitarian state aren't always rational. The secret agent finds his own unquestioning loyalty to the regime beginning to crumble as he gets deeper into the case. The film touches on issues of voyeurism, relativism and idealism. Just knowing that the Berlin Wall is soon to crumble adds another level of complexity.

I saw the film at the height of its Oscar glory, and I liked it then. But I REALLY liked it the second time around. This is one of the ways I love to watch a film: Catch it when it's hot, and then return to it a couple of years later for another viewing. The short-term-memory specifics have faded enough so the experience isn't numbingly boring, but enough of the broad sweep of the film remains in your consciousness that you're able to look past just the plot and do some deep exploration of characters and themes. The discussion following was great, too.

This is the second Parkway party I've done this year. In May I helped host a downtown mural tour with my Beehive colleagues. There's a whole slew of party options offered, and they're for a wonderful cause. You can check out the remaining four parties for 2009 here. When the 2010 list is announced, I'll try to remember to post it.

It isn't often that a concert pianist from Belgium hops in a plane, flies to Fresno to perform, then turns around and goes back home, but that's Nikolaas Kende's itinerary this weekend. He performs 7 p.m. Sunday at Fresno State's Concert Hall as part of the Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Concerts series. I caught up with him via email to ask him about his Fresno concert.

Question: I understand this will be the second U.S. city in which to play. What was your first?

Answer: The first was Waco, Texas where I performed the first Brahms piano concerto with the Waco Symphony Orchestra led by Steven Heyde.

Do you have any other concerts scheduled during your upcoming trip to California?

No, this is the only concert in America, in fact I have to get back very quickly (monday very early) since I have tuesday a concert in Brussels.

Last-minute reminder: The Fresno Philharmonic is providing a great family-friendly opportunity tonight designed to get kids more comfortable with classical music. Here's our item from today's 7 Things to Do list:

7:30 p.m. Friday / Saroyan Theatre, 700 M St. / (559) 261-0611, fresnophil.org / $15, $10 children

Kids, we'd like you to meet this really cool guy named Tchaikovsky. The Fresno Philharmonic joins with Classical Kids Live! for a theatrical symphony presentation geared toward budding musical lovers ages 6 and up. The story tells of the composer's arrival in New York for the grand opening of Carnegie Hall. Free games and activities will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the lobby.

First off, here are our two winners for the "All in the Timing" ticket giveaway for this weekend: Amy Hance and Kelly Hawthorne. Each wins two tickets. Congrats.

I talked with some of the show's creative team last week and wanted to share some of their answers to give a little more background for people not familiar with the show:

Question: For people who aren't familiar with the Rogue "All in the Timing" productions, fill them in. Are you now presenting the full David Ives script?

Answer: "All In The Timing" is a collection of hilarious short comedies by David Ives, and we are presenting an evening (or afternoon) of our favorites. Think of it as sketch comedy a la "Saturday Night Live", but with an irreverent appreciation of relationships, language, and philosophy rather than politics and pop culture. There are 14 plays in the complete collection, and presenting them all would be too long for a single evening. We selected 8, including 4 we performed at Rogue Festival 2008 and 3 we did at Rogue 2009, plus 1 that is entirely new for us. Each play has humor on all levels as well as light but poignant commentary on the human condition.

In Friday's 7 section I have an interview with Lisa Taber, director of the new Theatre Ventoux production of "12 Angry Men," which opens 8 p.m. tonight at the Cal Arts Blackstone Theatre. Here's the full interview:

Question: Why "12 Angry Men"?

Answer: We [Theatre Ventoux co-founders Greg and Lisa Taber] ran into Jim Tuck on New Year's Eve and were talking theater. He mentioned "12 Angry Men" as a show he'd love to do, along with a number of actors, and wished someone in town would stage it. Greg and I thought it was a great idea, ran with it, and 11 months later, here we are. Also, we thought doing this play would be a nice counterpoint to "The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women," which featured an all-female cast.

Last week we gave away four tickets to last weekend's performances of the Artists' Repertory Theatre production of "All in the Timing." We have four more tickets to give away for this weekend as well. The show, which brings together the David Ives short plays that were a hit at the last two Rogue festivals, plays 8 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Cal Arts Severance Theater.

I'll pick TWO commenters to this post at random and give them two tickets each. I'll be picking the winners at 10 a.m. Friday, which is the deadline for comments. The tickets will be available at the door. Winners will be notified in an e-mail, so leave a real one. No repeat comments. You're ineligible if you've won something in the past 30 days. We won't post any comments until we have a winner. Complete rules after the jump.

Completely unrelated to my earlier Met post, here's a promising option for tonight: another of the museum's wine-tasting and lecture programs. I went to one of these events this summer and had a good time: lots of good wine and eats, too! The museum reports:

Tonight's tasting is themed Festive Wines for Holiday Feasts. The Met offers a unique setting for the Science of Wine Series lecture and tasting with Vino 100's Chuck Van Fleet and Central Valley's favorite wine broker, Chris Turner, hosting an intellectual and entertaining conversation about all things wine.

Meet us at the Founders Room on the 5th floor of the Museum at 6pm for some tasty treats and wonderful wines with a fabulous view of Downtown Fresno. The cost is $20 for members and $25 for non-members and special pricing for bottles of the evening's wines will be available.

Contact Amanda Allen at 559/441-1444 ext. 213 to reserve your space for tonight. The evening is limited to 40 paid reservations with only a few seats still available.

Lots of rumors have been floating around in recent days about the Fresno Metropolitan Museum's finances, even after the city bailout. Bee reporter George Hostetter addresses some of them in today's paper. The upshot:

City Manager Andy Souza on Wednesday said museum officials have told him there is good news and bad news in the museum's finances. "Their gate revenues are up, but they're having some challenges they didn't expect on the fundraising," Souza said.

Executive director Dana Thorpe, in a written statement to The Bee, said: "Questions regarding our sustainability have been raised, and I answer that in this current economy, unrestricted income is needed to operate the museum."

What do you think? Will the Met be able to drum up enough donations to survive?

"All in the Timing," a collection of short plays by the very talented playwright David Ives, was split into a couple of parts by Artists' Repertory Theatre and presented at the past two Rogue Festivals. Both outings were big artistic successes. Ives' gently absurdist contemplations of time and language fit perfectly into the Rogue's breezy, fast-paced format. Sharp performances abounded. The direction crackled. Audiences seemed to walk away exhilarated.

Now ART has brought back all the Rogue short plays, plus one bonus offering that hadn't made the cut, in an evening-length performance of "All in the Timing."

In this incarnation, the magic is harder to find. The laughs are still in evidence, but the wit and precision of the evenings is diminished.

Did you go to "Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance" last night at the Saroyan? One reader writes:

I just came from watching most of "Lord of the Dance." I say most because I couldn't stand to stay for the entire performance. The dancing was expectedly good, but that's it. There was no live band, no narrator, no free program and the costumes were horrific. During one scene the girls wore 2-piece neon spandex costumes, and during another dance tore off their dresses as if they were strippers! They used way too much make-up (bright red lipstick) and Dolly Parton wigs while acting like temptresses on stage. The red sparkling outfits with slits up the sides...excuse me, no self-respecting Irish girl would dress like that. It was a glittsey Americanized version of what used to be a cultural standard. Thumbs down.

Anyone care to rebut that view?

At this point I figure that everyone on the face of the planet with even the slightest interest in "Riverdance"-style entertainment has had their fill of Irish clogging, but the phenomenon rolls on. This time it's Michael Flatley's "Lord of the Dance," which opens the Broadway in Fresno season 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Saroyan Theatre. I'm not going to review the show because I saw it when it came here in 2005, and, frankly, I think I'm good for another 15 or 20 years, but I'll start a post this afternoon for reader reviews.

But on a different day: Dec. 8 instead of Dec. 10. And to a different venue: the Saroyan Theatre instead of the Save Mart Center.

The date had to be changed because of a conflict in Andrea Bocelli's schedule, according to the opera's press release. And because the Save Mart was already booked on the new date, the concert was moved to the Saroyan. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Nov. 18. The full press release is on the jump.

Immediate questions: How will Fresno Grand Opera be able to pay for someone like Bocelli, who normally plays arenas, to perform in the Saroyan, a much smaller venue than the Save Mart? Will tickets have to be more expensive? The Save Mart seats between 12,000 and 13,000 for concerts like this. The Saroyan seats about 2,500. Will there be a lot of disappointed opera patrons? And will people want to travel far and wide from across the country for the chance to hear the singer in such an intimate setting? (In other words, will ticket prices soar on Craigslist?)

More details TK.

--------------------------

Previously on the Beehive:
Bocelli update
Why no Bocelli tickets?

Not much new to report, I'm afraid. I'm getting more calls/emails from readers wondering what's going on with Bocelli's announced Dec. 10 concert for Fresno Grand Opera at the Save Mart Center. Tickets were originally scheduled to go on sale to the general public a week ago. One reader says:

I'm concerned about the Fresno Opera and Bocelli. We had tickets for the Bocelli concert. We noticed on our credit card account that we have been credited back for [the purchase], and we're wondering why. Nobody for two weeks at the office has been answering or returning phone calls.

The reader, a season subscriber, was annoyed that the opera has been so tight-lipped about the issue. She also said that a recent meeting was cancelled for the opera's Team of 200, the mover-and-shaker group of donors formed to advance the cause of Fresno Grand Opera.

I did receive a statement Friday from Fresno Grand Opera's Ron Eichman. He wrote:

Sorry I've not been able to return your call earlier in the week. We should have confusion cleared up regarding AB concert first part of week.

Mike Scott, on his Channel 47 blog, has been tracking this story as well. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything new.

In Sunday's Spotlight section, my column is about my recent trip to New York City to attend the National Endowment for the Arts classical music/opera institute. We covered lots of issues during the 10 days, and I wanted to at least touch on some of them in digest form. Some I'm sure I'll be pursuing for future stories, and others I just wanted to pass along.

Plus, I wasn't going to let you get away without me rhapsodizing about my list of all the Broadway shows I saw. More on that at the end of the post. First, about the music:

DIMINISHING SUPPORT?
Essentially, we're coming off an era in which there was unprecedented broad financial support for the arts from government and foundations. The Ford Foundation alone, with its historic gifts to orchestras in the 1960s, was almost singlehandedly responsible for creating a new "musician class" in which players in medium-sized cities were actually able to make decent livings. This was a major point emphasized by the institute's co-director, Joseph Horowitz, who wrote the book "Classical Music in America." (Some people say, in fact, that there are too many orchestras playing in venues that are too large -- creating an oversupply of product.) Now foundations like Ford are shifting priorities away from classical music. To survive in the future, orchestras will have to find more individuals to support them rather than institutions.

UPDATE: We have our winners: Robert Boro and Lauren Bagato. Thanks for playing!

ORIGINAL ENTRY: This is absolutely last-minute, folks, and a golden opportunity for those of you hanging out here on a late Friday afternoon. I have FOUR tickets to give away to the Artists' Repertory Theatre production of "All in the Timing," which continues this weekend at the Severance Building. (This is a combination of the two wildly popular Rogue Festival presentations.) Tickets are good for the 8 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday or 2 p.m. Sunday performances. I'll give two tickets to the FIRST commenter to this post and two tickets to the THIRD commenter. The tickets will be available at the door. Winner will be notified in an e-mail, so leave a real one. No repeat comments. You're ineligible if you've won something in the past 30 days. We won't post any comments until we have a winner. Complete rules after the jump.

Don't forget the Lord High Executioner this weekend. The Fresno City College Opera Musical Theatre Workshop presents Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Mikado." And you don't want to disappoint a guy with a blade.

Details: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday / Fresno City College Theatre / (559) 442-8221 / $10, $7 students and seniors

Another photo and the flier on the jump.

I saw some interesting shows last night. Feel free to add your own observations about these and other venues in the comments section.

GALLERY 25
Robert Weibel is known for his "gunpowder art," and his full show at Gallery 25 -- he was scheduled to display with Karen LeCocq but she had to drop out -- is, dare we say, explosive. He has a couple of works titled "Delta Smelt," which I'm assuming is a reference to a political powder keg of a Valley water issue (sorry, I have to ease up on the munitions puns), which are stunning visually, with the mixture of gunpowder and metallic leaf making a shimmering impact on the paper. I love how Weibel organized his show, too -- to the extent that representations of birds actually seem to "flock" up a corner wall, as if they're ready to take flight. There will be a reception 1-4 p.m. Sunday at Gallery 25. The show continues through Nov. 29.

DeROUCHEY CREATIVE DESIGN STUDIO
A fun, different ArtHop stop -- definitely with a youthful vibe. Most, if not all, of the artists appeared to be recent Fresno State graduates, and the crowd in this warehouse district -- just down the street from the Chris Sorensen Studio -- brought the average ArtHop age WAY down. I ran into Fresno State art prof Doug Hansen, who was proud as a papa of his former students. One of my favorites of the bunch: Uriel Tekunoff's surrealist-style painting of a bearded man. This was a one-night-only show.

UPDATE 4:30 p.m. 11/5: I added a couple of other ArtHop venues in response to reader feedback today, including this image from Joan Sharma's show at the K-Jewel Art Gallery. (The artist included info about the show in the comments section.)

ORIGINAL ENTRY 6:30 a.m. 11/5: In Thursday's Life section I have a story about the November ArtHop, including a couple of picks for new and different venues to check out:

• DeRouchey Creative Design Studio, at 1803 S. Van Ness Ave., for the third year opens its doors for a group show by local artists. In "Variations of Flight," the emphasis is on the process by which objects move either through the air within or beyond our atmosphere. The show includes digital photography, works in acrylic and mixed media on canvas, granite and stone.
• Fulton's Folly Antique Collective, at 920 E. Olive Ave., features a reception for Brazil native Christina Motta, whose professional career began in 1969 with drawings and oil paintings. She has shown her works in variouscollective exhibitions and more than 25 individual exhibitions in Brazil and other south American countries.

On the jump: more info and images from these and some of the other ArtHop venues I mention.

UPDATE 4 p.m. 11/5: Still no word on Bocelli tickets. The Ticketmaster site still has the Dec. 10 date listed but that tickets are "currently not on sale." The Fresno Grand Opera isn't returning calls, and the company's voice message is telling callers: "Regarding Andrea Bocelli, we are experiencing some unforeseen issues, and we are working hard to solve them. Unfortunately, we will not be taking any orders for tickets today."

ORIGINAL POST 11/4: I'm not sure why tickets for Andrea Bocelli's Dec. 10 concert with the Fresno Grand Opera at the Save Mart Center didn't go on sale as scheduled Monday, but Mike Scott, on his Channel 47 blog, has his suspicions.

I gave the Save Mart a call, and marketing manager Annie Melvold told me that she's not sure why tickets aren't yet on sale. She's supposed to get back to me when she learns anything new. I also called Ron Eichman at Fresno Grand Opera but haven't heard back from him yet, either.

I'm not ready to hunker down into "oh no he's not coming" Fresno mode, and I'm speculating that the ticket delay has something to do with how the arena is going to be configured, but as Mike points out, the Fresno concert date still isn't listed on the Gelb Promotions tour Web site. Wonder what's up?

"Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter," which continues through Saturday, premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2008. Fresno State director Kathleen McKinley deserves kudos simply for getting such a current work onstage. In today's world of 24-hour news cycles and immediate blog postings, it's tempting to think of theater as quaint in terms of reaction time to current events. It often takes years for plays to be written and produced, and university theater seasons are often planned long in advance.

It's a pleasant surprise, then, that this drama about a woman soldier coming home from the Iraq War with a devastating injury has a ripped-from-the-headlines feel to it.

Of course, the war in Iraq has been going on for many years now, alas, so perhaps part of my reaction reflects an unwillingness to believe that it's gone on for as long as it has.

What I like best about Julie Marie Myatt's play is the nonsentimental -- and occasionally brusque -- way that the playwright dives into issues related to the homecoming. Rather than setting "Jenny Sutter" in a traditional family environment, with the wounded soldier returning to the cocoonlike atmosphere of a doting (or dysfunctional) family, Myatt pitches her title character into a more noncommital setting: an itinerant community named Slab City in which various people, many down on their luck, form their own bonds.

Pat Dodds writes:

We just got the mailing from Children's Musical Theaterworks about their 2010 schedule, and they'll do "Hair" in March. For years, our family has had a running gag about CMT and their increasingly edgy shows. (Our daughter was in the company's first-ever production - "Annie" - many years ago.) As they've done shows like "Tommy" and "Sideshow" and "Evita," we keep saying things like, "What'll they do next? Chicago? Oh, Calcutta? HAIR???!!!!!"

This gag is no longer going to work. (By the way, did they once do "Gypsy," or am I making that up?)

There must be a new, young people's version of "Hair" out there somewhere, subtracting a lot of language and adding a lot of clothing. Even the song titles will have to change. I can't wait!

My response: I, too, was a little surprised at the "Hair" announcement. (When I originally posted it on the Beehive, I added that I thought of the much-replayed Jane Lynch line from a "Glee" promo in which she says "That was the most offensive thing I've seen in twenty years of teaching, and that includes an elementary school production of 'Hair.' ") Something to keep in mind, however, is that CMT has a community-theater arm, Musical Theaterworks Fresno, which will be presenting "Hair," and I'm presuming the production will be with an adult-dominated cast. Still, I've gotta wonder if even that version will have to be, um, significantly modified in order to play in Fresno.

A local music news tidbit:

The Youth Orchestras of Fresno, a youth music organization that has served the Central Valley under various names for the past 59 years, announces the appointment of Julia Copeland as executive director. Copeland comes to Fresno from the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra in Bloomington, Ind., where she served in the same capacity

The first concert of the season will be a performance of the Mahler First Symphony combining the 100-strong Youth Philharmonic Orchestra with the 50-member Fresno State Symphony Orchestra. The concert is scheduled for Dec. 6 at 7:00pm at the Saroyan Theatre.

UPDATE 11/5: Our winner is Brad Rocha. Thanks, everyone, for playing.

ORIGINAL ENTRY 11/3: We've got quite the lineup of Beehive ticket giveaways scheduled for you this week. First up: We're giving away two tickets to the Pop Laval Foundation's "The Party of A Century" on Saturday at the RiverView Shopping Center. This fund-raiser benefits the Claude "Pop" Laval Photographic Collection, which will turn 100 years old next year. From the organizers:

The party begins at 2:30 p.m. with an antique automobile show that is open to the public. Then, for ticket holders, The Party of A Century starts at 5:30 p.m. in a tented courtyard in the RiverView Shopping Center parking lot. Although not required for entrance, attendees are encouraged to get into the spirit and come dressed as a Flapper Girl, Gangster or other twenties-style attire to the event. Prizes will be awarded for the best costumes in several categories.

These two tickets are worth $80 each, and I'll give them randomly to one commenter to this post. You have until 11 a.m. Wednesday to enter. No multiple entries are allowed. You must be 21 years or older to enter. I'll notify the winners by email, so be sure to provide a valid email address. Rules are on the jump.

UPCOMING BEEHIVE GIVEAWAYS
Wednesday: Little Dragon concert | Thursday: Fresno Fall Home Improvement Show | Friday: The Fresno Met's Dr. Seuss exhibit.

It'll take me a while to get back into the swing of things after my two-week trip to New York City. (I plan to write more about the experience in my Sunday column and online.) So bear with me.

First I want to ask a theater-related question: Did anyone get out to see the original musical "Havin' a Hot Flash" a couple of weeks ago at the Tower Theatre? I'm always interested in original works, and I'm curious to hear how this project played out. What did you think?

For the remainder of the week, I'll be doing some catch-up. Tonight I'll be at Fresno State to watch "Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter," directed by Kathleen McKinley, which opened Friday. I need to get over to the Fresno Metropolitan Museum to see two new exhibitions, "Marc Chagall: The Early Etchings from the 1920s" and "The Art Books of Henry Matisse," which both opened in mid-October. (Pictured: Chagall's "The Ass and the Dog.") I hope to work in a return trip to "All in the Timing" at Artists' Repertory Theatre, a title that delighted audiences at two Rogue festivals. And there's a slew of mid-November events to get ready for, including Tchaikovsky at the Philharmonic, the touring show "The Wedding Singer" and the Western Band Association championships.

Besides the big hoopla over the mural, did I miss anything else of interest while I was out of town?