Valentine’s Cabaret kicks off ARCA’s season

FOXBURG — Allegheny RiverStone Center for the Arts will begin its season with a Valentine’s Cabaret featuring clarinetist Susanne Ortner and guitarist John Marcinizyn on Saturday, Feb. 11.  The performance is set for 7:30 p.m. at Lincoln Hall in Foxburg.

Ortner and Marcinizyn performed at ARCA’s annual donor dinner.  Their performance drew such acclaim that it was decided to showcase this duo in a cabaret table setting at Lincoln Hall just before Ortner moves to New Orleans to become a part of its vital musical community of jazz musicians.

Tickets are $30 for adults, $25 for ARCA members and $5 for students.

ARCA will present the Tony Award winning revue, “Side by Side” by Sondheim, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 3.  Resonance Works will perform this celebration of the wit and genius of musical theater’s most influential artist of the last half-century Stephen Sondheim.

Stage director Craig Joseph returns after directing Resonance Work’s “Trouble in Tahiti” last season. Singing Sondheim’s introspective and dramatic numbers will be seasoned RW singers Hilerie Klein Rensi (“Evidence of Things not Seen”), Rebecca Shorstein (“Elixir of Love,” “Cinderella”), Daniel Teadt (“Amahl,” “Evidence of Things not Seen”) and Christopher Scott (“Evidence of Things not Seen”).  Carnegie Mellon alumna Gillian Hassert, who will have just returned from the national tour of “Fame,” will make her Resonance Works debut.  The production will be narrated by Pittsburgh’s opera and musical icon Anna Singer.  She has performed with Pittsburgh Opera in “Daughter of the Regiment” and is the onair host of classical WQED.  Tickets for this performance are $30 for adults, $25 for ARCA members and $5 for students.

The Irish band Carnival of Souls will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 18.

The Lowry family and friends will perform an evening of Irish and Celtic music.  Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for students.

Also making their ARCA debut this season will be the Grove City College Touring Choir and Andres Cardenes, former concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Returning performers include the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Players, Cabaret songstress Judi Figel, The Allegheny Drifters, John Burgh and his Big Band and David Allen Wehr with members of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Wurlitzer Theatre Organ aficionados can look forward to the return of Walt Strony on Sunday, May 21, in honor of the 90th birthday of Paul McKissick, who rebuilt Lincoln Hall’s Wurlitzer that bears his name.  Other Wurlitzer performances are planned.

More information on these performances and membership ticket prices is available online at www.alleghenyriverstone.org or by calling (724) 659-3153.