Top 10 classical, dance concerts in November
Best bets for classical music and dance this month include opera’s answer to “The Little Mermaid” (Dvorak’s “Rusalka”) and a festival celebrating avant-garde composers that includes a work written for 100 metronomes. Here are our Top 10 picks for November.
‘A Vampire Tale 13’
Dubbed “The ‘Nutcracker’ of Halloween," Scorpius Dance Theatre’s holiday tradition is a sort of bloodsucker’s circus with sexy aerial dance and a touch of campy humor set to an original goth-electronica score.
Details: Continuing through Saturday, Nov. 5. Phoenix Theatre, 100 E. McDowell Road. $33. 602-254-2151, scorpiusdance.com.
Warsaw Philharmonic
One of the world’s top orchestras celebrates its Polish heritage — as well as global multiculturalism — with a performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 featuring soloist Seong-Jin Cho of South Korea, winner of the 2015 Chopin International Piano Competition. Also on the bill: Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s “Polish Melodies No. 2” and Brahms’ Second Symphony.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3. Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. Second St. $69-$99. 480-499-8587, scottsdaleperformingarts.org.
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‘The Animal Kingdom’
The Phoenix Symphony’s family concert series is one of the best buys in the arts scene. The orchestra’s latest straddles the classical and pop world with Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” and selections from Disney’s megamusical “The Lion King.” In keeping with the theme, kids are invited to get hands-on experience at a “petting zoo” for musical instruments before the performance.
Details: 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 6. Orpheum Theatre, 203 W. Adams St., Phoenix. $11-$20. 602-495-1999, phoenixsymphony.org.
‘Rusalka’
It’s Arizona Opera’s take on “The Little Mermaid” — not the cute Disney version with the singing lobster, but the tragic tale of a supernatural creature whose love for a mortal man comes with a heckuva price tag. Also, no scales: The title refers to water spirits of Slavic folklore, which don’t have fish tails. First performed in 1901, the Dvorak work will be the Phoenix-based company’s first opera sung in Czech.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 11-12; 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13. Symphony Hall, 75 N. Second St., Phoenix. $25-$135. 602-266-7464, azopera.org.
Contra-Tiempo: ‘Agua Furiosa’
Los Angeles-based Contra-Tiempo calls itself “urban Latin dance theater” and draws on salsa, Afro-Cuban music and hip-hop in its socially conscious performances. “Agua Furioso” reflects that hybrid philosophy with a story inspired both by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and Oya, storm spirit of the Afro-Cuban Santeria tradition.
Details: 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12. ASU Gammage, Mill Avenue and Apache Boulevard, Tempe. $20. 480-965-3434, asugammage.com.
‘Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert’
On Nov. 10, 1966, jazz great Duke Ellington brought his “Concert of Sacred Music” — complete with tap dancer — to Phoenix’s Trinity Cathedral. The Grammy-winning Phoenix Chorale will mark the 50th anniversary of his visit with a concert featuring selections from the monumental work that fused jazz with both African-American and European sacred music. (No tap dancing, though.)
Details: Two venues. 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 100 W. Roosevelt St., Phoenix. 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13, at Mesa Community College Performing Arts Center, 1520 S. Longmore. $13-$32. 602-253-2224, phoenixchorale.org.
The Salt River Brass: ‘Made in America’
If your patriotism is flagging after this year’s presidential election, the Valley’s brassiest band will cheer you up with selections such as Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Their fall concert also includes a contemporary work featuring the trumpet, Allen Vizzutti’s “Three World Winds.”
Details: 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13. Mesa Arts Center, 1 E. Main St. $15-$24. 480-644-6500, mesaartscenter.com.
PRISMS Contemporary Music Festival
Take the “contemporary” with a grain of salt. Arizona State University’s seventh annual festival explores experimental music and this year focuses on “spectral and noise music,” with a trio of concerts spanning nearly a century from Edgard Varese’s “Ionisation” (1929/31, for 13 percussionists) to John Richards’ “Duet for Voice and Electronics” (2016). One more interesting title: Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Poeme Symphonique” for 100 metronomes (1962). The event also features lectures and film screenings.
Details: “Noise Spectra” concerts, 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 18-19; noon Sunday, Nov. 20. Katzin Concert Hall, ASU School of Music, Mill Avenue and Gammage Parkway, Tempe. $5-$9 Friday and Saturday; free on Sunday. 480-965-6447, music.asu.edu/events.
Harlem Quartet
The Phoenix Chamber Music Society presents a concert by an acclaimed string quartet whose mission is to expand the definition of “classical” music. So along with selections by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, they will play arrangements of tunes by jazz great Dizzy Gillespie and Brazil’s founding father of bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19. Camelback Bible Church, 3900 E. Stanford Drive, Paradise Valley. $45. 602-252-0095, phoenixchambermusicsociety.org.
Helene Grimaud
The French pianist is known for her unconventional phrasing and also for her synesthesia — a rare neurological condition that lets her see music as colors. Water imagery is the theme of her program, which includes Ravel’s “Jeux d’eaux” (or “Water Games”), Debussy’s “La cathédrale engloutie” (“The Submerged Cathedral”) and Janacek’s “In the Mists.”
Details: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29. Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E. Second St. $29-$79. 480-499-8587, scottsdaleperformingarts.org.
Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896.
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