Dec 04 Thursday
Echoes of the Floating World features a striking collection of 18th, 19th and early 20th-century Japanese woodblock prints from the Tacoma Art Museum and others, displayed alongside works by contemporary Northwest artists. This exhibition honors the rich legacy of ukiyo-e while exploring its cultural impact on today’s artistic expressions.
Hours-
Monday CLOSEDTuesday CLOSEDWednesday 10 am – 5 pmThursday 10 am – 8 pmFriday 10 am – 5 pmSaturday 10 am – 5 pmSunday 10 am – 5 pm
We are protesting project 2025. TacomaRama marching band will join us for the next 4 years. We will meet each month on the Saturday closest to the 18th each month. Always 10am, always Reconciliation park. Feel loved and supported.
On the First Thursday of every month, general admission to the Museum is free! When selecting First Thursday tickets, your complimentary discount will be applied at checkout. Reserve your tickets in advance online and make sure to stop by the Admissions Desk to check in for First Thursday. Walk-ins welcome!
The period from the 1870s to the 1900s, known as the Gilded Age, saw the rise of the railroad, textile industry, and production. It also saw a rise in migration to US cities, providing workers to fill low paying jobs producing many of the fashions of the era. This era marked a turning point in fashion as new technologies and changing cultural norms transformed the ways in which people dressed.
Explore this history and enjoy the rare chance to see clothing, notions, and artifacts of the period from the Washington State Historical Society collections.
Never Turn Back: Echoes of African American Music unveils the profound legacy of Gospel, Blues, Jazz, and Soul artists who shaped the soundscape of American culture and used their music as instruments of resistance, identity, and representation.
Gospel, Blues, Jazz, and Soul embody the profound influence of African American music on culture and history. From the spiritual foundations and transformative movements of Gospel hymns to the revolutionary improvisations of Jazz, the Blues’ Southern roots rising from the Mississippi Delta, and Soul’s powerful amplification of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, these genres have defined the unique sound and undying spirit of a nation that continues to echo through contemporary Black music today.
The fruitcakes of the Reduced Shakespeare Company are coming to take you on an irreverent yet heartwarming trip through the holidays. It’s festive funny physical family fun as these Three Wise Guys send-up and celebrate your favorite winter holiday traditions. CONTENT ADVISORY: Contains comic depictions of violence, mild innuendo, bawdy language, and the occasional rude word.
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.”
Black Thunder is the dazzling, fully improvised, fully realized new album by Seattle-based musician, producer, and engineer Brittany Davis. Featuring the artist on keys and vocals, Evan Flory-Barnes on bass, and D’Vonne Lewis on drums, the Josh Evans-produced offering recalls artists like Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk in its immersive, incantatory spirit.
The trio — who barely knew each other previously — extemporized Black Thunder in a surge of interactive creativity across two days in the studio. The pressure-cooker environment did away with overthinking and brought each musician’s A-game. Steeped in Black and Afrocentric cultural influences, this is Davis’s most poignant and cathartic work to date.
“Brittany, Evan, and D’Vonne have, in some way, been preparing for this recording all their lives. Honing their instrumental craft and ability, of course — but more importantly, preparing their ears, emotions, and egos to be fully present and create absolutely in the moment,” Evans says. “To listen deeply and respond empathetically. To speak with uncomfortable honesty. To listen, and be vulnerable.”
Black Thunder marks a shift away from the drum machines and programmed keys of her previous album, 2024’s Image Issues. This is a fully live, organic performance, one that showcases her stylistic maturation and the breadth of her versatility.
Born in Miami, during World War II, Chris Smither grew up in New Orleans where he first started playing music as a child. The son of a Tulane University professor, he was taught the rudiments of instrumentation by his uncle on his mother’s ukulele. “Uncle Howard,” Smither says, “showed me that if you knew three chords, you could play a lot of the songs you heard on the radio. And if you knew four chords, you could pretty much rule the world.” With that bit of knowledge under his belt, he was hooked. “I’d loved acoustic music – specifically the blues – ever since I first heard Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Blues In My Bottle album. I couldn’t believe the sound Hopkins got. At first I thought it was two guys playing guitar. My style, to a degree, came out of trying to imitate that sound I heard.”
Dec 05 Friday
Slow Burn is a new high point in a remarkable career that now spans more than three decades and includes a long list of accolades; four GRAMMY nominations, three NAACP Image Award nominations, a Soul Train Award for Best Jazz Album and four RIAA Gold Record certifications. In 2009, Billboard named James one of the Top 3 Contemporary Jazz Artists of the decade. In 2024 year Boney became the first ever artist to score 20 number one singles on the Billboard Smooth Jazz chart.
But Boney James has never been one to look backwards and Slow Burn, which the artist produced, marks several firsts. Beginning with the album's opening track, 'Arcadia.' The very first notes on the album are the acoustic bass playing of the legendary Marcus Miller. It's one of the few times that Miller, known for his electric bass guitar work, has committed his standup bass playing to a recording and the first time that James has incorporated an upright bass into his own music.
