If you’re looking for something a little different than the usual “holiday season” offerings, consider a concert by The OK Factor, a genre-bending instrumental duo whose music is a happy medium between folk and classical string playing.
Classical Music
The OK Factor
If you’re looking for something a little different than the usual “holiday season” offerings, consider enlivening mid-December with a genre-bending instrumental duo whose music hits something of a happy medium between folk and classical string playing. This charming, versatile and talented duo—The OK Factor—consists of Minnesota-based cellist Olivia Diercks and violinist Karla Colahan, who write and perform original music with an organic ease.
The OK Factor’s new classical crossover concerts have recently brought them to the Cedar Cultural Center, the Dakota Jazz Club and on Minnesota Public Radio, among other venues. Now, they’ll make their next stop at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, where they’ll treat the audience to new arrangements of favorite holiday tunes featured on their fourth studio album, released in 2017, titled Have Yourself an OK Christmas.
Friday, Dec. 14, at 8 p.m. at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 19805 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield. For tickets, call 262-781-9520 or visit wilson-center.com.
“Charlie Brown Jazz”
Noted American jazz pianist, composer and arranger Vincent Guaraldi (1928-’76) enjoyed a successful career with his own jazz ensemble and scored a hit single with “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” To most, however, he’s best known for his charming scores to beloved animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip. Indeed, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” through-composed with Guaraldi’s inimitable light-jazz score, remains a holiday season go-to.
Coming to the Oconomowoc Arts Center is the Eric Mintel Jazz Quartet with its Charlie Brown Jazz concert. The quartet will perform favorite holiday classics and original versions of songs by Guaraldi. Pianist and composer Eric Mintel, saxophonist and flautist Nelson Hill, bass player Jack Hegyi and drummer Dave Mohn are virtuoso jazz musicians individually and collectively who have been entertaining audiences of all ages for more than 25 years.
Saturday, Dec. 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Oconomowoc Arts Center, 641 E. Forest St. For tickets, call 262-560-3172 or visit oasd.k12.wi.us.
Theater
Velvet Gentleman
This play is a playful journey into the mind and music of witty and eccentric French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) whose music ranges from comically bizarre to hauntingly beautiful. Satie was a colorful figure in the early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as Minimalism, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd.
Created and performed by James Valcq (who also co-directs this production with Robert Boles), Velvet Gentleman is a multimedia theatre piece featuring Satie’s music, words and drawings that will fairly transport audiences to fin de siècle Paris. Valcq has received substantial praise for his embodiment of the famous Frenchman. Warren Gerds of WFRV in Green Bay remarked that Valcq “may be the best Erik Satie there ever was, for Satie is condensed and revealed in ways he himself never did or would have been able to do.”
Dec. 19-31 at Third Avenue Playhouse, 239 N. Third Ave., Sturgeon Bay. For tickets, call 920-743-1760 or visit thirdavenueplayhouse.com.
