Founded in 1983, Korea’s Suwon Civic Chorale has been hailed as a ‘world-class choral ensemble’ bringing forth premiere harmonies. Since its formation, the group has staged 115 regular performances and over 800 tours, concerts and media appearances which have delighted the citizens of Suwon City, Korea. Now, the group is broadening its stage to include a global audience, and in the process continues to foster Suwon as an international city of music.

The Suwon Civic Chorale has served as cultural ambassadors in Africa (Uganda) after an official invitation by the Kampala Capital City, Makerere University, and the African Institute of Music in August 2011. Critics praised the performance raving, “The harmony of Suwon Civic Chorale was heart touching and sounded beautifully. The quality of sound was flawless and well-orchestrated. The perfect ensemble and blending and the exquisite and sophisticated harmony were marvelous enough to captivate souls.”

This year, the Suwon Civic Chorale celebrates its 30^th anniversary with a tour of the United States launching October 2013. In addition to their appearance on the 2013 Distinguished Concerts International Series (DCINY), the group will perform at Yale University and several Korean Churches throughout New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia.  The NYC details are as follows:

Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, Saturday October 19, 2013 at 7:30pm

Featuring The Suwon Civic Chorale (Korea)

Director: In-Gi Min, Director

Spend the evening immersed in a cultural nest of harmonies from foreign lands. Featuring beauitful, moving, orginial choral pieces by renowned Korean composers Sung-Hyun Yoon, Jung-Sun Park, JeeYoung Kim, Ki-Young Kim, and Gyun-Yong Lee.

 Tickets: $50 General Admission

On Sale Now!  Call CenterCharge at (212) 721-6500, or visit www.lincolncenter.org. For more information on group sales or other special offers, please contact us at 212-707-8566 x307 or BoxOffice@DCINY.org.

I’m thrilled to be giving away FOUR tickets to The Beauty of Korean Song at Lincoln Center!!!

To win, just comment below and let me know if you’ve taken the kids to a show like this, or if this will be your first time. Please note that you do not have to have kids to enter!  Feel free to take your friends, members of your extended family or whoever you like!

You can get additional entries by doing one of or more of the following:

- Follow The Culture Mom on Facebook.

- Follow The Culture Mom on Twitter.

- Follow The Culture Mom on Pinterest.

Winners will be selected randomly.  This giveaway will end on Friday, October 4th at noon EST. Winner will be posted here, on the Culture Mom Facebook page and via email and will have 24 hours to accept their prize.

Disclosure: I was not compensated to write this post, however the tickets for the giveaway are sponsored by the production and I will be getting a set myself.

During the next Culture Mom Media party, we’ll celebrate Ann Richards’ life, legacy and lessons for the future as seen in ANN, the critically acclaimed new play now on Broadway.

Written and performed by Emmy® Award winner Holland Taylor of ”Two and a Half Men”,  ANN is the inspiring and hilarious new play which takes a revealing look at Ann Richards, the impassioned woman who enriched the lives of her followers, friends and family.

Ann Richards was a loyal wife and mother before becoming Governor of the State of Texas. Once in power, she worked to transform the state into one she wanted to live in.  She truly believed that control lies in every citizen’s hands and that we all need to step up.

Join us to talk about ANN and Ann Richards. During the talk, we’ll have giveaways galore including ANN merchandise like a signed script, poster, hat and three pairs of tickets to the show!

We hope you can join us for what is sure to be a discussion as rambunctious as Ann Richards herself!  It’s taking place on Wednesday, May 22nd at 9pm EST at hashtag #AnnPlay and you can RSVP here.

Find out about tickets here or call Telecharge at 212-239-6200.

Disclosure: I am hosting this party via Culture Mom Media.

After submerging myself into new mommydom, I feel as though my brain stirred for the first time in 6.75 months.  This is by no means the fault of the city in which I live or the people in my life, by the way.  A night out at Lincoln Center Lyceum Theater’s latest production, THE NANCE , opened my eyes to the hypocrisy of the time, the joy of the burlesque, and the search for love in the automat.  And of course, who doesn’t love a cheesy vaudeville skit and pasties?

This is the first time my brain has been tickled in months and I loved the constant stream of racy double entendres and the dry sharp wit and vaudeville showmanship of Nathan Lane. Set in 1930’s New York, the play stars Nathan Lane as Chauncey Miles, a vaudeville performer whose stage specialty is the ‘nance’ routine. The twist here is that unlike most ‘nance’ performers of the time Chauncey actually is a homosexual, and openly so. Against his “better judgment” Chauncey meets and begins a relationship with Ned (Jonny Orsini), a naïve young man he meets at the notorious Horn & Hardart Automat. Ned becomes a fixture in Chauncey’s life as he joins the cast of the show at the Irving Place Theater. A staunch Republican and supporter of Mayor La Guardia, Chauncey’s private and public selves come under attack when the administration begins cracking down on burlesque houses, specifically on acts featuring the ‘nance’ for the moral protection of the masses. Nathan Lane is brilliant in the role of Chauncey, and makes you laugh from his first campy “Hi”.

The casting of Chauncey’s straight man, Efram (Lewis J. Stadlen) is the perfect balance, as are the choices of the leading ladies, Cady Huffman, Jenni Barber and Andrea Burns as they prance, preen and strut with attitude and insight.

A thoroughly good night out, as I reenter the adult conversation….”Meet me round the corner in a half an hour.”

The Nance is playing through June 16th. You can purchase tickets at Telecharge.

About writer Lisa Gerstel-Zach: A diverse and seasoned executive who has spent her career in Children’s and Family Entertainment via Publishing, Live Events and Broadcast before stepping back to take a much earned reprieve from the Corporate world in order to reinvent herself and remember why she moved to New York. She lives in the latest hip neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Disclosure: The writer received a complimentary pair of tickets to facilitate this review but all opinions are her own.

This week I noticed a lot of other parents juggling work/home balance.  It was every which way I turned.  At an 8am end of year party for my son’s French class, the teacher ran in 10 minutes late in a complete frenzy because her son had gotten sick right before she had to leave to entertain a classroom full of parents and children.   On a conference call, I heard crying while a working mom tried desperately to resume our call.  At art appreciation session training this morning, one of the creators  chased her daughter around the room while chiming in on the discussion. I, myself, juggled work and motherhood, running from meetings in the city to catch the very last train to make school pick-up.  For me, and for so many other women, life can be one big game of juggling.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

As I rushed from the suburbs to NYC to catch a matinee of ANN earlier this week, I thought about how hard it had been for go to a simple play. But as I sat watching a play about Ann Richards, the Texas Governor who was elected in 1990 but was then defeated by George W. Bush in 1994, I realized that my juggling issues are nothing compared to hers.  In the play, we saw Richards swapping between calls with governors to calls with her children. She had been married for over 40 years and was solely raising a family before she entered politics but once she did, she never gave up on her family duties. As Governor of Texas, the 9th largest economy in the world, she sought and created change. She reformed the prison system, improved the economy and sought to end welfare and fought to defend abortion rights. She had a full agenda.

When Bush beat her after her first term, she said “I did not want my tombstone to read, ‘She kept a really clean house.’ I think I’d like them to remember me by saying, ‘She opened government to everyone.’”  Remind you of a recent obituary that glorified a woman’s work in the kitchen?  Yvonne Brill’s, of course. If you didn’t read it, you need to read it.

The show starts with a clip from the 1988 Democratic Convention when Richards gave the keynote speech.  Her address was notable for including several humorous remarks displaying her down-home Texas charm such as: “I’m delighted to be here with you this evening, because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like.” That speech set the tone for her political future and it’s one that I remember very well.  Then Holland Taylor comes out with Richard’s signature white hair and a solid southern accent and tells the group of college students she’s addressing that if someone told her she’d be governor in her day when women didn’t amount to anything, she never would have believed it.

As she talks about her childhood, Taylor introduces us to a moment that shaped Richards’ life; when her father was called into the Navy and her mother packed the family up to move to California. It was the first time Richards, at age eleven, attended a school that was desegregated and this became her first awareness of inequality   ”Life is not fair. I learned that when I was eleven years old. Life is not fair. But government should be.”

The next two hours we hear about the rest of her life. How she married a defense lawyer she was mad about and entered domestic life with zest.  ”If I had a spare 15 minutes, I’d plan a dinner party for 60.”  But at some point, she became disgruntled and started drinking.  After a few tough years, her marriage ended and she entered politics to change the ratio.  She decided that people in office need a conscience and that government needed to look more like the population.  She tells us that true public service requires passion and we watch her in her office juggling important phone calls from the likes of Bill Clinton, signing paperwork, planning a family trip and trying to decide whether to grant a stay of execution. Her years in office go fast but they are important. She left a legacy of pushing for equality, fairness and helping those who need it the most. Taylor gets inside Richards in such a way that I feel as though I spent two hours with the actual woman and that’s saying a lot so kudos to her.

At the end of the show, Taylor enters a dream like moment where she looks back at Richard’s life from heaven. Richards died from cancer in 2006 and we see her looking back at her life but she mainly talks about getting off up and making a difference.  If she could do it, any of us can and have to “stop whining and start participating.” She leaves us by saying  “Why should your life be just about you?”

And why should it?  The play tells to stop and look around. Take the time to create change.  Because we all have the power to do so, and that’s a message I’ll keep with me for a while. Between all the juggling, I’ll remind myself about both Ann Richards and the amazing Holland Taylor.

“My favourite she-dies-he-lives [production of Swan Lake] is that of The Australian Ballet … This version, choreographed by Graeme Murphy, will be performed by the Australian company in New York, at the David H. Koch Theater, next June. I’ll be there.” Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

When I was offered a pair of tickets to experience The Australian Ballet’s “Swan Lake”, I didn’t hesitate.  A big fan of ballet and of this one, in particular, and a huge Lincoln Center goer, it definitely caught my interest. And as my husband reminded me on our way to the theater last night, we rarely go to the ballet, as I am very fixated on NYC theater.  He’s 100% right, and I want to expand my knowledge and repertoire of evenings out.  This was a great start.

As we walked toward the David Koch Theater, passing by the beautiful dancing fountain, the Metropolitan Opera House which I used to visit more frequently (I now vow to go to more opera often, as well), Alice Tully Hall, the Film Society and hundreds of other people about to partake in an evening of culture, not only did my internal excitement build, but I remembered what a wonderful place Lincoln Center is and how rich it has made my own life and so many others.  Anyway, I knew I was in for a special night, but I had no idea how special.

You probably know the story of “Swan Lake”, either because you’ve seen it or you remember Natalie Portman’s vivid portrayal of a ballerina who loses her mind in the film “Black Swan” just out only a few years ago.  Now I realize what even more of a genius Darren Aronovsky was for adapting that script from the ballet.  Or else you are familiar with the score by Tchaikovsky.  It’s haunting, dazzling chords stay in your mind forever.

The story of “Swan Lake” is about a love triangle – Odette, a beautiful young girl who discovers on the day of her wedding that her handsome prince, Siegfried, is in love with a Baroness.  Her nemesis is married with children, but that does not appear to hold her back from loving her suitor and stealing him out from under Odette.  Odette is pushed into a sanatorium where she dreams vividly about her lost love and finds escape in a frozen dream where swan-like maidens, much like herself, keep her calm.  Her downfall is so heart-breaking, it pulled on my heart strings.  The three hours it took to tell the story felt like only minutes to me.

This production is so breath-taking and beautifully choreographed that my husband and I were both memorized from start to finish.  It has traveled to Paris, London, Tokyo and Shanghai under the direction of Graeme Murphy and was more than ready for a debut in NYC.

The Australian Ballet has so beautifully woven together this tragic tale through its lush costumes, set and score. It has won numerous major awards (including the UK Critics’ Circle award for Best Foreign Dance Company) and sold out theatres around the world.   At our performance, the leads were played by Madeleine Eastoe, Kevin Jackson and Lucinda Dunn.  They were each exquisite and it was clear the rest of the audience agreed with me on their brilliant dancing.  We clapped and clapped and clapped and gave them many an encore which they relished and deserved.

Find out what makes this Swan Lake so special when you get a chance.

Disclosure: My tickets were complimentary to facilitate this review but all opinions are my own.

It was also a thrill to see the fabulous Mary Louise Wilson on stage.  She plays Vera Joseph, a widow and very blunt an eloquent woman.  Her sidekick, Leo, played by Gabriel Ebert, shows in the middle of the night after just finishing a 40,000 mile bike trip across country.  Though she is initially upset by his appearance, she sinks into an acceptance of his presence and becomes glad to have the company.  Leo, on the other hand, needs a place to rest and think about the rest of his life.  He has questions about what to do with the rest of his life, and his girlfriend, Bec, has zero patience for his empty procrastination.

Staying with Vera gives him a sense of meaning.  He helps her with the laundry, he helps her find things, she listens to her argue with her neighbor on a daily basis.  Wilson plays a woman who is grappling with the fact that all of her friends are dying and she is one of the last ones standing.  She struggles to understand her daughter, Leo’s mother.  As words escape her, and her memory is lapsing, she seems to be bracing for what’s to come.

Leo seems to have appeared at precisely the right time. Ebert, who I saw in Brief Encounter on Broadway, and remember that performance quite well, is a superb actor, an up and comer.  Hurting from an experience that happened on the road, it takes his character a while yo open up to his grandmother about it. Ebert plays Leo with such control and his portrayal is very believable and worthy of some kind of theater award – a Tony, perhaps, though I hope that this is a play that will be considered carefully come time to grant awards.

The concert is taking place at the Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60^thStreet, New York, NY.  Tickets for the Jazz for Young People concert are $12, $20, and $28 and you can win a family pack right now on MamaDrama!

I hope that you’ll head over there to enter.

Photo credit.Frank Stewart for Jazz at Lincoln Center

I’ve talked a lot about Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis on this blog, and I’ve offered giveaways to their shows.  I really hope you listen up and enter this giveaway as it’s something I think is very special and a real NYC experience for both you and your children.

In its first holiday concert in years, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will be joined by the versatile singer Kim Burrell in a performance of new arrangements of holiday jazz and spiritual classics.

When:

December 15-17, 2011, 8pm; Saturday, December 17, Special family matinee at 2pm.  Free pre-concert discussion, Friday and Saturday evening only, 7pm. No pre-concert discussion December 15 or prior to matinee performance.

Where: Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60^th Street, New York, NY.

How:

Ticket prices for Rose Theater are $30, $50, $75, $95 or $120 for evening performances and $30, $50, $70, $80 or $95 for matinee performances dependent upon seating section.

Note: Hot Seats, $10 seats for each Rose Theater performance (excluding Jazz for Young People^® concerts), are available for purchase to the general public on the Wednesday of each performance week.  Subject to availability.  Hot Seats are available only by walk up at the Box Office, maximum of four per person.

All tickets can be purchased through jalc.org or CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, open daily from 9am to 9pm.  Tickets can also be purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office, located on Broadway at 60^th Street, ground floor.  Box Office hours:  Monday-Saturday from 10am to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain) and Sunday from noon to 6pm (or 30 minutes past curtain).

OR YOU CAN WIN A FAMILY PACK OF FOUR TICKETS to the matinee of A New Holiday Revue on December 17th at 2pm.  It’s the first time the Jazz atLincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will be doing a holiday show, not to mention with the very special guest, Kim Burrell!

To enter, leave a comment below with your contact information (email or twitter handle). Open to U.S. only, enter by Wednesday, November 16th at 11:59 PM EST.  Winners will have 24 hours to claim their prize, or I will have to offer it to the runner-up.

BONUS ENTRIES: Earn a bonus entry for each of the following that you do or have done. Leave a separate comment for each-

• Subscribe to The Culture Mom feed in a reader or by email, leave a comment telling me which way you subscribed.
• Stumble the post, submit to Digg, delicious, Mixx, Reddit, Propellor, or other social bookmarking sites. Leave the URL in your comment.
• Blog about the giveaway with a link back to this post. Leave a comment with the URL.
• Facebook-Friend me on Facebook and post the link to the giveaway on your Facebook wall. Leave a comment with the URL.
• Follow The Culture Mom on Twitter and tweet the link to the giveaway, you can use this: Win 4 tickets to see Jazz at Lincoln Center with @WyntonMarsalis @jalc 

Disclosure: These tickets were provided to me free of charge and I have received no compensation to administer this contest.  

Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 16^th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival culminates when the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis joins the top three high school jazz bands across North America for the finale concert of the festival.  The first half of the concert will feature the three high school bands performing with guest soloist Wynton Marsalis.  After intermission, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will perform next season’s Essentially Ellington repertoire. Repertoire includes Duke Ellington’s “Ridin’ On a Blue Note,” “Sepia Panorama,” and from The Queen’s Suite, “Sunset and The Mocking Bird,” and Dizzy Gillespie’s, “Night in Tunisia,” “Oop Bop Sha Bam,” and “Things To Come.”

Where:

Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 65th Street, NY, NY

When:
Saturday, May 14, 2011, 7:30pm

How:

Tickets are $20-25 and are available at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office on Broadway at 60^th Street, at the Avery Fisher Box Office at 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, by calling CenterCharge at 212-721-6500 or via jalc.org.

You can win family pack (4) of tickets to see the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis today on The Culture Mom!

Disclosure: These Jazz at Lincoln Center tickets were provided to me, free of charge, with no requirement or agreement of review requested in turn.

Queen Marlene's Toy Theatre

Queen Marlene’s Toy Theatre

Follow “Queen Marlene” of the Toy Museum as she tells the tale of toys from America’s past and around the world only to be tricked by Raggedy, the Toy Museum’s largest doll, as Raggedy creates mischievous and silly fun!  See hundreds of old toys from the 1880s-1980s including classic favorites such as Howdy Doody, Shirley Temple, Raggedy Ann, Toy Soldiers and old toy blocks to Beanie Babies, just to name a few.  Perfect for ages 4 years old and up, and for adults who are still young at heart.  The show is interactive, engaging and educational. The show is 60 minutes, no intermission; price includes admission to the museum.

Where: 157 Montague Street
2nd Floor
Brooklyn, NY  11201

Jazz for Young People: What is the Big Band Era?

Even 75 years after the big band era, many scholars and fans—not to mention dancers—agree that it was the period when jazz reached its peak of popularity and musical greatness. In this family concert, Ted Nash leads the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in a program sampling all the major big bands—Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington—that shows what made them swing so hard.

Where: Rose Theater, Broadway at 60th Street, Columbus Circle

Price: $12, $20, $28

Dates & Hours:

Sat, March 26, 2011, 1 pm
Sat, March 26, 2011, 3 pm

Neighborhood Concert Series: Soh Daiko, Taiko Drum Ensemble

NanoDays at the New York Hall of Science

Come explore science at the nano-scale through a variety of hands-on experiences demonstrate how small nano is and how nanotechnology can be applied to everyday life. Activities include discovering the importance of using proper tools, learning how butterfly wings and peacock feathers get their colors, witnessing how nano-sized whiskers can protect clothing from stains, as well as exploring how a material can act differently when it is nanometer sized.

Where: 47-01 111th Street, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, (at 48th Avenue)

Price: Free with NYSCI admission.

Dates and Hours:

Sat, March 26, 2011, 11 am – 5 pm
Sun, March 27, 2011, 11 am – 5 pm
Tues, March 29, 2011, 11 am – 1 pm
Wed, March 30, 2011, 11 am – 1 pm
Thurs, March 31, 2011, 11 am – 1 pm
Fri, April 1, 2011, 11 am – 4 pm
Sat, April 2, 2011, 11 am – 5 pm
Sun, April 3, 2011, 11 am – 5 pm

Urban Word NYC 13th Annual Teen Poetry Slam Semi-Final

Where: Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street (between Seventh and Eighth Avenues)

Price: $5.00 children, $7.00 adults, $7.00 general.

Dates & Hours:  Sun, March 27, 2011, 3 pm

Disclosure: This information was provided by NYCkidsARTS, a Web site of Alliance for the Arts, which serves the entire cultural community through research and advocacy and serves the public through cultural guides and calendars.  The Alliance publishes information on the arts and cultural events in New York City as well as studies highlighting the importance of the arts to the economy and to education.