Thiebaud: A Celebration
Five months after Wayne Thiebaud passed away, the Crocker Art Museum is mounting a retrospective of the artist’s career. The museum’s chief curator Scott A. Shields gives us a tour of 10 of the 117 pieces in the exhibition, and lends his perspective on Sacramento’s “patron saint of painters.”
Bucks for Books
At one local bookstore, a crisp Didion can buy you, well, a Didion.
Staging a Comeback
The Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera closes out the season with The Barber of Seville, its first fully staged opera in almost a decade. But in other ways, that’s just the beginning. New executive director Giuliano Kornberg talks about doubling down on operas next season and the road ahead.
Q&A with Sci-Fi Author Kim Stanley Robinson
The Davis author is celebrated for epic sci-fi novels, but in his new memoir "The High Sierra: A Love Story," Kim Stanley Robinson takes a turn for the terrestrial, covering a half-century adventuring across our altitudinous backyard.
Q&A with Shonna McDaniels, Director of the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum
Inside South Sacramento’s Florin Square mall resides a hidden treasure: the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum, named for the trailblazing abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights who was born into slavery. Since 1996, the institution has been an evolving fusion of art gallery, historical collection, education center and community nexus. We visited Shonna McDaniels, the 56-year-old artist and executive director of the “Sojo” Museum, at the cultural institution she founded over 25 years ago.
Super Natural
California’s oldest living tree, the Jurupa Oak, is believed to have sprouted thirteen thousand years ago. St. Peter’s Basilica? Notre-Dame? Those man-made monuments have nothing on California’s sometimes millennia-old cathedrals—the groves of oak, cedar, spruce and sequoia that dot our…
Big in Japan(ese)
Daisuke Tsuji has clowned around (literally) for Cirque du Soleil, appeared on stage at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, voiced the lead character in the blockbuster video game Ghost of Tsushima (a role that earned him a BAFTA nomination), and acted in Japanese on television shows like The Man in the High Castle and Brockmire. In his latest Japanese-speaking role, he co-stars with Sam Neill in the new Apple TV+ sci-fi series Invasion. The Sacramento-raised multihyphenate talks about landing his biggest part yet, filming around the world during the pandemic, and the lasting impact of his Rio Americano drama teacher’s words.
Fall Arts Preview 2021
To borrow from the Bard, it has been, by all measures, the spring, summer, autumn and winter of our discontent. Every theater shuttered, each seat unfilled, preview posters of musicals never performed hung in frames like broken clocks. But make no mistake, the stage is set for the arts to come roaring back as the curtains rise again this fall. So cue the music—it’s time to sit back and enjoy the shows.
Q&A with CEO of Broadway Sacramento Richard Lewis
After going dark in the spring of 2020 due to Covid, Broadway Sacramento (which produces Broadway on Tour and Broadway at Music Circus) will finally raise the curtain on its first show in a year and a half, the 11-time Tony Award-winning Hamilton—and in a newly renovated theater to boot. Richard Lewis, CEO and president of the arts organization, addresses the pandemic elephant in the auditorium, reveals the best seat in the (new) house, and gives a pro tip for Hamilton first-timers that’s super, well, sonic.
The Thrill Isn’t Gone
After his 2020 birthday concert was canceled due to the pandemic, Mick Martin is getting his band back together for take two at The Sofia in August—his first live indoor performance in over a year. At 72, the Sacramento bluesman is readier than ever to reclaim the stage.
La Vie en Cinéma
The Sacramento French Film Festival celebrates its 20th year this June. Beret optional, champagne required.
A Lasting Impression
The Manetti Shrem Museum celebrates Sacramento painter Wayne Thiebaud’s remarkable legacy with a group exhibit featuring works by the longtime UC Davis professor alongside those by former students and other artists influenced by him.
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