Mar 26 Thursday
Bring your favorite jazz standards and join the House band on the Treehouse Stage.
Play, Sing or Listen
For almost two decades, the Women's University Club of Seattle Foundation has given grants to public school music programs through their Music Counts! Grant initiative. Schools then use grant money for basic classroom needs such as sheet music, instrument repairs and accessories, educational materials, coaching, and purchase of instruments. This year, 21 schools won more than a combined $11,000 in awards, benefiting almost 6,000 students.
Award-winning schools are recognized annually at Cabaret, an event hosted by the Foundation that also serves as a fundraiser for the program. This year’s Cabaret will feature a Garfield High School jazz ensemble, Bellevue High School’s jazz chorus, and a 21-piece jazz band from Hazen High School of Renton. It is scheduled for Thursday, March 26 from 7-9 PM at the Women’s University Club in downtown Seattle. Tickets for the Roaring 20’s dessert fest are available here for $35.
Club members and jazz lovers are invited to attend Cabaret!
Welcomed by KNKX. Frank Vignola is one of the most extraordinary guitarists performing before the public today. His stunning virtuosity has made him the guitarist of choice for many of the world’s top musicians, including Ringo Starr, Madonna, Donald Fagen, John Lewis, Tommy Emmanuel, Lionel Hampton, the Boston Pops, the New York Pops, and guitar legend Les Paul, who named Vignola to his “Five Most Admired Guitarists List:” for the Wall Street Journal.
His dynamic genre-spanning music has brought him to 21 countries on three continents – and still growing – performing in some of the world’s most illustrious venues, including the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, New York’s Lincoln Center, The Blue Note, and the world’s oldest indoor concert hall, Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy.
Pasquale Grasso - It was the kind of endorsement most rising guitarists can only dream of, and then some. In his interview for Vintage Guitar magazine’s February 2016 cover story, Pat Metheny was asked to name some younger musicians who’d impressed him. “The best guitar player I’ve heard in maybe my entire life is floating around now, Pasquale Grasso,” said the jazz-guitar icon and NEA Jazz Master. “This guy is doing something so amazingly musical and so difficult. “Mostly what I hear now are guitar players who sound a little bit like me mixed with a little bit of [John Scofield] and a little bit of [Bill Frisell],” he continued. “What’s interesting about Pasquale is that he doesn’t sound anything like that at all. In a way, it is a little bit of a throwback, because his model—which is an incredible model to have—is Bud Powell. He has somehow captured the essence of that language from piano onto guitar in a way that almost nobody has ever addressed. He’s the most significant new guy I’ve heard in many, many years.”
Ohhh those summer nights! From its earliest performance in a Chicago nightclub through its record-breaking Broadway run and hit feature film, Grease has remained one of the world’s most popular musicals. Featuring the many hit songs that became the soundtrack of a generation, like “Greased Lightnin’,” “Alone at the Drive-in Movie,” and “It’s Raining on Prom Night,” this 1950s pop culture satire is filled to the brim with grit, glam, and youthful exuberance.
In roles made famous by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, head “greaser” Danny Zuko and new girl Sandy Dumbrowski try to relive their sizzling summer fling as the Burger Palace Boys and Pink Ladies of Rydell High’s senior class navigate the peer pressures and social politics of high school in the 1950s. Directed and choreographed by Lisa Shriver (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), this production of Grease promises nonstop, nostalgic, hydromatic fun. So throw on a poodle skirt, dust off that leather jacket, and rediscover the show that’s been winning hearts for generations!
Hurricane DianeWritten by Madeleine GeorgeDirected by Annie LareauMarch 20 - April 12, 2026Evening and matinee performances
Meet Diane, a permaculture gardener dripping with butch charm. She's got supernatural abilities owing to her true identity—the Greek god Dionysus—and she's returned to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore the Earth to its natural state.
Again, There Is No Other (The Remix) is a dark and joyful ritual merging street dance forms and contemporary dance. The work interrogates fear of the Feminine in patriarchal culture, asking: If perceptions of race and gender are inseparable, can we be a post-gender society when we are far from a post-race society? Through hybridizing the nightclub, the cypher (the circle), and the theater, five physically multilingual, femme-identified dancers explore touch, support, the imperative of connection, the tensions of identity, and the embrace of difference.
Mar 27 Friday
Presented by KNKX. Backed by her ace all-female rhythm section, and joined as usual by a stellar group of guest artists, including Elena Pinderhughes (Herbie Hancock), and Karriem Riggins (Diana Krall), Kandace delivers her most heartfelt and personal record yet. The songs range from an early gem, “Look,” that Kandace actually wrote with her father, to the album’s feature track, “Run Your Race,” written in late 2022, which is a touching tribute to her college track star dad’s journey through life. A couple of classic standards, “Wild Is The Wind” (made famous by Nina Simone) and “What a Wonderful World,” make their appearance as well, as they were songs that Scat introduced to his daughter in her formative years. “He opened the door for me of a whole musical world, I went in and I’ve never left.”
The National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) is the world’s largest, most influential film festival for emerging filmmakers returns for its 19th edition, showcasing the best short films from filmmakers 24 and younger. The festival celebrates and elevates work by women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other young persons from traditionally marginalized communities who are building a more equitable and inclusive film industry. This year's festival weekend will feature 235 short films from 41 countries and 30 states. The four-day festival includes professional development sessions, networking opportunities, masterclasses, parties, and more. Previous editions included early work of Sean Wang (Dìdi) and Chappell Roan; you never know who you'll discover!
The Seattle Jewish Film Festival, one of the largest and longest-running film festivals in the Pacific Northwest and Jewish film festivals in the country, returns March 14–29, presenting powerful independent and international films that illuminate Jewish life, culture and global stories for everyone. For the 31st, SJFF invites audiences to explore how roots—family, faith, tradition, culture and community—and cinema foster connection and conversations that sustain and unite us.
The Roots + Reels lineup offers festivalgoers a rich blend of tasty special events, guest conversations, and narrative features, documentaries and a curated shorts program, “It Takes a Shtetl!” —bringing people together to share stories, both personal and universal.
Opening Night film is ONCE UPON MY MOTHER, a crowd-pleasing and heart-felt French megahit about a devoted immigrant mother whose fierce love moves mountains for her child, followed by a Paris ’60s DJ set and dessert party. AMC Pacific Place, March 14, 8:15 p.m.
