ON STAGE: The Foreigner, Bat Boy: The Musical and Edge Performance Festival

Music, art and theater — UC Davis has it all for Picnic Day (April 20) and beyond:

On Picnic Day, the Symphony Orchestra will present a free concert at noon in the Yocha Dehe Grand Lobby of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. The program:

• Copland — Clarinet Concert, featuring All Lavin on clarinet
• Bizet-Waxman — Carmen Fantasy, featuring violinist Alina Kobialka, senior division grand prize winner in the Mondavi Center’s Young Artists Competition in 2012

Common House Productions, in partnership with the arboretum, presents The Foreigner, a comedy by American playwright Larry Shue, opening Thursday (April 18) and continuing through April 28 — including a free performance on Picnic Day (10 a.m., Wyatt Deck). See separate story for more about this production and others at UC Davis.

Campus galleries and museums announced the following hours for Picnic Day:

• Craft Center Gallery — noon-3 p.m. (with demonstrations in all of the Craft Center studios)
• Design Museum — 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
• C.N. Gorman Museum — 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
• Nelson Gallery — 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

The Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center, where a UC Davis employee's watercolors grace the walls, will be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Picnic Day visitors also are welcome to visit the Art Building's Basement Gallery, venue for the University Honors Program's inaugural exhibition and silent auction. The exhibition closes at the end of Picnic Day.

Read more about all the exhibitions.

More music

Empyrean Ensemble — The university's ensemble in residence presents an opera concert, 7 p.m. Sunday (April 21), Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center. The program:

• Monteverdi — Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, arranged by Pablo Ortiz, professor of music, and featuring Suzana Ograjenšek, soprano (Testo, Tancredi and Clorinda)
• Ortiz — Parodia, featuring Ograjenšek, soprano (Clorinda), with Jon Smucker, tenor (Tancredi) and a guest chorus (Testo)

Firebird Ensemble (Cambridge, Mass.) — From Calm to Clash, 7 p.m. Monday, April 22, Vanderhoef Studio Theatre.

• Stephen Stucky — Dust Devil for Solo Marimba
• Donald Crockett — Night Scenes for Piano Trio
• Eric Moe — Meanwhile Back at the Ranch for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano and Percussion

The program also includes a snare drum suite:

• Nicholas Papdor — Variable Rates
• Roger Zahab — a spunky twenty-eight
• Curtis Hughes — flagrant

Firebird Ensemble — Mystical Journeys, 7 p.m. Friday, April 26, Vanderhoef Studio Theatre

• Jonathan Harvey — Flight-Elegy for Violin and Piano
• Andrew Norman — Companion Guide to Rome for String Trio
• C. Bryan Rulon — Divine Detours for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Percussion
• Rolf Wallin — The Age of Wire and String for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Percussion

Tickets for the Empyrean and Firebird ensemble concerts are available through the Mondavi Center box office, online; by telephone, (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787; or in person (the box office is open from noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday).

Poster celebrates center's 10th anniversary season

The Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts is offering patrons a fun to remember the center’s 10th anniversary season, which wraps up in May.

The remembrance is a poster of legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer’s vibrant Dancer — who, back in October, came to life on the Jackson Hall stage to help launch the 2012-13 season. Music and choreography added to this “Mondavi Moment,” during which more than 200 people took to the stage to dance with the cartoon.

For the celebratory poster, commissioned by the Mondavi Center, Feiffer’s Dancer comes to life at the center’s front door. Fittingly, center officials said, the Dancer’s lively and joyous appearance reflects the same energetic and inspiring moments that all kinds of artists brought to the center in its first decade.

The poster comes in two sizes: 20 inches by 30 inches ($35) and 11 inches by 14 inches ($25), and can be ordered online or purchased at the Mondavi Center Gift Shop and UC Davis Stores (main bookstore, Memorial Union).

A limited edition of 100 posters signed by Feiffer will be available for $250 each starting Monday, April 29. For more information on the limited edition posters, contact Elisha Findley (530) 754-5436.

All proceeds go to Friends of the Mondavi Center.

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