Jul 26 Saturday
Join us for a fun and relaxed watercolor class where vou'll explore new techniques and experiment with vibrant colors. Perfect for all levels - no prior experience needed!
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
Creative watercolor techniquemixing and blendingLayeringbalance between water and pigment
The Normandy Park Arts Commission has worked throughout the winter and spring to create an exciting summer music schedule for the annual ‘Music in the Park’ concert series! Every Sunday in July and August at Marvista Park, the City is hosting free concerts starting at 5:00 pm. These concerts are open to the public and feature live music and a theater performance. The summer will culminate with a special jazz music finale in late August featuring This finale will offer an entire afternoon of music with three bands. Bring a picnic blanket or lawn chair and enjoy this fantastic summer lineup in 2025
Get ready to swing into something special! Join us for an unforgettable experience as we dive into the smooth and playful moves of the Balboa, a dance invented in 1930s southern California, and still danced today worldwide.
Whether you're a complete beginner or a seasoned dancer, our expert instructors will guide you through every shuffle step. Plus, enjoy THREE nights of live music that'll keep your feet moving and your heart racing, featuring:* The Rhythm Wrecker Dance Band (Portland, OR)* The Cascade Swing Orchestra (Seattle, WA)* The Jacob Zimmerman Quintet (Seattle, WA)
All taking place at the historic Washington Hall in the Central District, where greats such as Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington played. 🎶✨
Don’t miss out on this vibrant 10th anniversary celebration of rhythm, community, and fun. Mark your calendars, grab your dancing shoes, and let's make memories on the dance floor! 🎉
Festival Tickets now on sale, Scholarships also available-- ALL LEVELS WELCOME, including COMPLETE BEGINNERS --https://northwestbalboafestival.com/
June 20 - August 1, 2025 Summer Festival 2025 The World’s Largest Chamber Music Party returns!
This five-week celebration of extraordinary music and first-rate artists presents 12 mainstage concerts at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall, each including a free pre-concert recital; two outdoor concerts in idyllic parks in Seattle and Bellevue; 18 concerts aboard The Concert Truck; the live music and cooking event Tasting Notes; an exciting variety of community and education programs, and for those who can’t attend in person, the return of our live streaming and on-demand, state-of-the-art Virtual Concert Hall.
Among the renowned artists participating this year are violinists James Ehnes, Elena Urioste and Noah Bendix-Balgley; pianists Yulianna Avdeeva and Inon Barnatan; and cellists Bion Tsang and Sterling Elliott. Highlights include masterpieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Fanny Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky; music by important 20th-century composers, such as Mieczysław Weinberg, Rebecca Clarke and Amy Beach; and a selection of lesser-known works handpicked for the festival, including neglected pieces by Mel Bonis, Charlotte Sohy, and Moritz Moszkowski.
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.”
A distant heir to a family fortune sets out to speed up the line of succession by using a great deal of charm…and a dash of murder. When the low-born Monty Navarro finds out that he’s eighth in line for an earldom in the lofty D’Ysquith family, he figures his chances of outliving his predecessors are slight and sets off down a far more ghoulish path. Can he knock off his unsuspecting relatives without being caught and become the ninth Earl of Highhurst? And what of love? Because murder isn’t the only thing on Monty’s mind.
About the ProgrammePoetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting is a Poetic Drama in seven chapters: Scroll Unfolding, Seal Tracing, Silk Reeling, Minerals Exploring, Brush Making, Ink Grinding, and Painting Alive. In the dance drama, together with a modern-day Palace Museum researcher, the audience unfolds a scroll in multiple perspectives, wandering in the midst of legendary-like and charming traditional Chinese aesthetics.It tells a story closely related to A Panorama of Mountains and Rivers, a masterpiece of traditional Chinese landscape painting characterized by its depiction of blue and green colors, which has a history of nearly 1000 years and is said to have been painted by the 18-year-old genius Ximeng. By adopting a narrative structure that interweaves space and time, this dance drama is set at a time when the painting was to be exhibited upon Ximeng's finishing strokes. By fully devoting himself to the study of the painting, the researcher steps into Ximeng's inner world, accompanying him during those precious moments when the young painter was making his greatest efforts. Through this experiential journey, the researcher is able to resonate with the painter's youthful genius, exploring the combination of chance and necessity that led to the unique emergence of A Panorama of Mountains and Rivers, and interpreting the sentimental bonds between national cultural relics of the past and people in modern times.On the stage, a richly-layered picturesque scene is stretched: the moon hangs high in the sky, as it was in the past thousands of years; under the moonlight, the researcher and Ximeng gaze into the other's eyes; the dedicated researchers of the Palace Museum, along with the craftsmen from ancient times, jointly unveil a harmonious picture where feelings and scenes mingle.
Reuel Lubag with a new quartet featuring Joel Steinke - Tenor Sax, Osama Affifi - Acoustic Bass, and Mark Ivester - Drums. The group will be playing an eclectic mix of music to feature the unique strengths and musical vocabulary of each of the musicians. It's a unique blend of different musical backgrounds, but each player brings an intensity which is always rooted in playing great feeling grooves regardless of the style. There will be some original music and arrangements and songs which many folks may not have heard in a while.
Jul 27 Sunday
Presented by KNKX. NEA Jazz Master and four-time Grammy Award Winner Stanley Clarke has attained “living legend” status during his over 50-year career as a bass virtuoso. He is the first bassist in history who doubles on acoustic and electric bass with equal ferocity and the first jazz-fusion bassist ever to headline tours, selling out shows worldwide. A veteran of over 40 albums, he won the 2011 Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy Award for The Stanley Clarke Band. Clarke co-founded the seminal fusion group Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Lenny White. In 2012 Return to Forever won a Grammy Award and Latin Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Forever.
Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable: gold and platinum records, Grammy Awards, Emmy nominations, virtually every readers and critics poll in existence, and more. In 2022 Clarke was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of its four new Jazz Master honorees. He also was Rolling Stone’s very first Jazzman of the Year and bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years. Clarke was honored with Bass Player Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of Guitar Player Magazine’s “Gallery of Greats.” In 2004 he was featured in Los Angeles Magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People. He was honored with the key to the city of Philadelphia and put his hands in cement as a 1999 inductee into Hollywood’s “Rock Walk” on Sunset Boulevard. In 2011 he was honored with the highly prestigious Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival for his entire body of work. Clarke has won Downbeat Magazine’s Reader’s and Critics Poll for Best Electric Bass Player for many years. In September 2016 he became a part of the permanent collection displayed at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC.
