New Creative Sonoma online calendar offers ways to find virtual performances
In the new reality of the coronavirus and sheltering in place, most of us just don’t get out much anymore. But that hasn’t kept the Sonoma County arts community from reaching its audience through social media.
In fact, there’s so much local theater, art and music online now you need a scorecard to track it all.
To help residents find the diversion they want, the arts support nonprofit Creative Sonoma - a division of the Sonoma County Economic Development Board - has introduced a countywide arts calendar site at creativesonoma.org/event with links to nearly 50 local arts organizations listing their online events and programs. Activities range from movie nights to live interviews to curated performances from the archives of various local venues. Just open up the calendar site and click on the icons for the programs that interest you.
“People all over the world have turned to the arts to occupy their minds and soothe their spirits during this unsettling time,” said Kristen Madsen, director of Creative Sonoma.
“Watching the ingenious pivot that our Sonoma County arts community has made to move their content online and stay connected to their audiences prompted us to launch this website for one-stop shopping on the virtual creative activities across the county.
“We wanted to create a website where everyone in the county can explore the depth and breadth of creativity activity that is occurring every day, and to support the individuals and organizations who make Sonoma County such an inviting place to live and visit,” she added. “Hopefully it will help audiences keep connected with the artists they already know and love but maybe also introduce them to new art forms and activities that are occurring in our virtual backyard.”
Film
The Alexander Valley Film Society, known for its annual fall festival and smaller screening events throughout the year, responded to the statewide stay-home orders with its “Shelter in Place” series, featuring online screenings of ticketed film releases on Mondays, virtual food-and-wine movie nights on Wednesdays and live interviews via the Zoom conferencing service with notable guests from the movie industry on Sundays, which the society’s executive director, Kathryn Hecht, moderates from her home office.
At 2 p.m. Sunday, she’ll talk to Bret Parker of San Francisco, an animator and voice actress for Pixar, and Sarah Reimers, a Southern California indie film director and animator, who has worked for Pixar and Disney. In addition to the Creative Sonoma calendar, general information is available at avfilmsociety.org.
“For Mother’s Day, we wanted to feature filmmakers who are also moms,” Hecht said.
Local musicians
At Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, several new online programs have been introduced, including “Luther Locals,” which puts a spotlight on local acts who normally might never make it to the center’s mainstage, which most often features national names. It starts at 5 p.m. on Fridays. For more information, go to lutherburbankcenter.org and click on “virtual programs.”
“We had been having conversations for the past couple of years on how to engage local musicians more, so it’s not a new idea,” said Anita Wiglesworth, the center’s director of programs and patron services.
With the center dark during the virus shutdown, staff have been able to line up online performances by popular local musicians including eight-string guitarist Nate Lopez, jazz artist Eki Shola, singer-songwriter David Luning and performers from the Sonoma-?based Transcendence Theatre Company, all to be featured in June. The Kingsborough band, which once opened for ZZ Top at Luther Burbank Center, is scheduled for an online “Luther Locals” performance in July.
“It’s a fun way to introduce people to local artists,” Wiglesworth said. “This could continue even after we open up again. Then once or twice a year we could do a live, in-person show by the best of the ‘Luther Locals’ acts.”
There’s another benefit for performers. The names of acts featured on “Luther Locals” will be posted on the center’s hard-to-miss electronic signboard on northbound Highway 101.
“For some of these acts, all they ever wanted was to get their names on our marquee,” Wiglesworth said.
The center also presents “Drop the Mic,” featuring members of its own programming staff as hosts of a session of selected Spotify jams and YouTube clips, some by acts whose shows at the center were prevented by sheltering in place, at 5 p.m. every Wednesday.
Green Music Center in Rohnert Park has its own program similar to Burbank Center’s “Drop the Mic,” with its executive director Jacob Yarrow choosing clips by favorite acts, including some that had been scheduled to perform at the center but whose shows were canceled or postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Already, he has hosted shows on two of those acts: jazz artist Maria Schneider and the touring “Charlie Parker @ 100” salute. Yarrow, a musician, even sat in on his episode on Parker.
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