This week in arts and entertainment

Editor’s note: a previous version of “Weekender” included an error in identifying the donors of a record $1 million gift to the Santa Cruz Symphony. The late Roy Chambers-Bray was the husband of Mark Chambers-Bray.

Hi friends,

The news is troubling on the California wildfire front. Here’s hoping that all of this summer’s fires remain metaphorical and are confined to the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

Now, on with the show.

THIS JUST IN

Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Nicole Zuraitis has been booked to headline the Kuumbwa Jazz Center Oct. 25. The hard-charging LA metal band The Ghost Inside will blow out The Catalyst Nov. 23. Gospel/jazz singer Michael Mayo is set to come to Kuumbwa Oct. 7. And the greatest all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band on this or any other planet, Zepparella lands at Moe’s Alley Nov. 23.

Check out our always-updated, curated list of the best in upcoming performances and appearances in Santa Cruz County in Down the Line.

Here they are, nine necessary arts and entertainment know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the midsummer’s-dream B9:

1. The great old classic surf doc “Endless Summer,” free on Main Beach at sunset — I mean, can you get any more “peak California” than that? 
2. Almost as fascinating as the magnetic Lana Del Rey are her fans, and they’ll be out in numbers at Saturday’s “Lust for Lana” tribute show.
3. The spirit of the grand old Bonny Doon pipe-organ tradition “Boomeria” lives on, but in a different Santa Cruz Mountains venue.
4. OK, so you’ve skated on Cabrillo Stage for a few years — now’s the time to re-engage with the dazzling, hip-hop musical “In the Heights.”

Keep Reading…

Bring popcorn

Gotta say, one of the great, underrated pleasures of the summer months is movie screenings outdoors, and I remember a time when renegades in Santa Cruz used to regularly set up screens in parking lots on warm summer nights and show cool films for free. (I also remember once stumbling upon a screening of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” on the National Mall in Washington, DC; it remains a peak movie experience in my life).

This weekend, you have two chances to catch great films under the stars on consecutive nights, in two of Santa Cruz’s most breathtaking spots. The Boardwalk hosts a free movie screening every Friday at Main Beach, but this week, it’s a special one. This one’s not necessarily for the kiddies, but the grown-ups — you might even say old duffers. It’s Bruce Brown’s magnificent 1966 surf adventure “Endless Summer,” a surf documentary that hasn’t been topped since its debut almost 60 years ago. The movie starts at 9 p.m., but The Boardwalk has invited some of the surfers from the film’s 1994 sequel — Robert Wingnut Weaver, Jeff Clark, and Jimbo Phillips — to meet and greet with fans, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. That’s all on Friday.

Then, the very next evening, at the Quarry Amphitheater on the UC Santa Cruz campus, comes a screening of the classic 1984 concert film “Stop Making Sense,” capturing the famous “big suit” tour of Talking Heads. Imagine the live vibe of maybe the greatest band of the 1980s in that magnificent redwood-studded site on campus — it’s going to be great. And, to enhance the film experience, I will get the chance to interview UCSC alum and film archivist James Mockoski on stage about his efforts in restoring this beautiful new print of “Stop Making Sense.”

Do both, and on Monday, when someone asks “How was your weekend?,” make sure they hear every detail.

New era at Cabrillo Stage

Reminder: The theater pros at Cabrillo Stage have been giving Santa Cruz County audiences big, bold, high-quality musicals for more than four decades, but they’ve had a tough go of it since the pandemic. With a new artistic director comes a new direction for the company — to turn the page generationally and embrace the hip-hop moment. The first step is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights.” 

The last ingredient in this transition is you and me. Tickets are now on sale for this new production which opens this weekend, and closes Aug. 4. 

Symphony gift

The Santa Cruz Symphony received an enormous boost recently, a record-setting one, in fact. The Symphony has been given a $1 million donation by Mark Chambers-Bray in the memory of longtime Symphony supporter Roy Chambers-Bray, who died in May. The gift is the single largest donation in the Symphony’s 67-year history. 

Donations such as this one are crucial to the continuing existence of organizations like the Santa Cruz Symphony, given that less than a third of its operating budget comes from ticket sales. The Symphony reported that the recently concluded 2023-24 season was a successful one, with overall attendance up 25 percent after a pandemic dip. 

The new Symphony season, beginning the weekend of Sept. 21-22, will include, for the first time ever, a Pops concert in December, “Peter and the Wolf” as its family concert, a tribute to Shakespeare in March, and Mozart’s “Requiem in May. 

Big news at The 418

The 418 Project, the Santa Cruz-based nexus for a large part of the dance/movement community, has paid off its mortgage at its building, the former Riverfront Theater on River Street downtown. The organization — named for its old address on Front Street, which no longer exists due to demolition for new housing — moved into the old theater space, on the heels of the closure of DNA’s Comedy Lab at the same site, in the spring of 2021. The non-profit’s next big plans involve improving the building itself with renovations that include a green rooftop deck overlooking the San Lorenzo River. If the plans for the revival of the San Lorenzo Riverwalk come to fruition with the development along Front Street further down, the 418 could be well positioned to be a hub of a new emerging downtown. 

‘America: The Melodrama’

It makes sense in the United States of Infotainment where a former “reality-TV” star is threatening to put an end to the American experiment in pluralism and democracy that a movie star be the one who says the emperor has no clothes. Can George Clooney cut through the noise? Man, this season of “America: the Melodrama” is a thriller!

On the local front, Bookshop Santa Cruz is hosting an event July 19 called “It Can’t Happen Here — Again!” to remember the 1936 play by Sinclair Lewis about the rise of fascism in America. Congressman Jimmy Panetta, Mayor Fred Keeley, NAACP president Elaine Johnson and city councilmember Martine Watkins are all going to read from the play. Mind you, this is happening right at the tail end of the Republican National Convention, and smack dab in the middle of the roiling debate among Democrats about President Biden. It will be fascinating to see where these prominent local Democrats will be standing on the Biden question on July 19. Right now, they may not know themselves. The event is free at Bookshop, at 7 p.m.

Finally, President Biden might want to listen to a contemporary of his right about now, the great Bob Dylan and his song “Mississippi,” in which Bob says, “The only thing I did wrong/ Was stay in Mississippi a day too long.” Food for thought, Mr. President.

That’s all I got, friends. Come at me with comments, ideas, complaints, or thundering insights. Thanks to all Lookout members for your faith and support, and please, spread the word on what we’re doing.