February 2nd, 2006

  PERFORMANCES Sandwiched between upcoming performances of Porgy and Bess, Romeo and Juliet, and Brahms and Mendelssohn at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is the iconic Burt Bacharach, who will perform on February 10–11. He will be on stage beside the Pacific Symphony principal pops conductor, Richard Kaufman, who is celebrating his 15th anniversary this season.
Maestro Kaufman’s career has been devoted to conducting and supervising music for the PSO Pops as well as film and television productions. Kaufman has been at the podium for such notables of popular music as Andy Williams and Ray Charles. He has coached actors in musical roles including Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, and Susan Sarandon. He has conducted such performers as Diana Krall and Art Garfunkel. “I always appreciate—and am often overwhelmed—by the musicianship, commitment, and kindness of these artists. And whether it’s light classics, film scores, Broadway music, or accompanying a great singer, this orchestra never ceases to amaze me.”
Angel Corella, Johan Kobborg, Ethan Stiefel, and Nikolay Tsiskaridze are four of the world’s great dancers and represent the American Ballet Theatre, the Royal Ballet, and the Bolshoi Ballet. They will jeté onto the stage at Segerstrom Hall in the world premiere of Kings of the Dance, February 16–19. Each will dance a world premiere solo created by an acclaimed choreographer.
Judith O’Dea Morr, the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s vice president of programming, has been chiefly responsible for making OCPAC an internationally renowned center of ballet performance, bringing the world’s top companies here on a regular basis.

Morr is openly pleased about the upcoming Kings. “Each dancer is at the top of his form––each has his own unique style and each has that special charisma that commands attention. They are all technically brilliant and together on stage will knock your socks off,” she says with her typical humor. The program is a ballet lover’s, as well as a dancer’s, dream. “They each chose choreographers who would create a special work in order to showcase their individual talents. And all get to dance the quintessential male role choreographed by Roland Petit.” So often in classic ballet the focus is on the ballerina, Morr points out, “The male dancer is the partner––all of these gentlemen are perfect partners as well as premier dancers. This is their night!”
PROFILES Aaron Egigian, OCPAC’s senior director of music programming, has booked concert, jazz, and cabaret singers into the 250-seat Founders Hall for many years. Inside this charming place, Egigian provides audiences with an incomparable experience for enjoying music by some of the most recognizable and prestigious artists gracing the earth today. He is a composer and arranger of music in his own right.

Egigian’s enthusiasm for his work is obvious. “When I watch a jazz audience delight in the debut of a supremely gifted young performer such as Eldar Djangrov or an audience celebrate pianist Angela Hewitt and the Australian Chamber Orchestra as they reveal the great enveloping humanity of a Bach Concerto, I see how the music makes a difference in our lives. I think of this as a musical journey we’re taking together. I enjoy searching out new artists, wider repertoire. I do an enormous amount of listening, both in concerts and in recordings. I want our audiences always to be some of the first to witness a rising artist.”
Egigian has been innovative and has booked rising stars at a time in the ir lives when they are beginning to make an impression “In 1995, when I planned to turn Founders Hall into a jazz club with tables and drink service to better connect our audience to this distinctly American art form, I had been listening to a young artist whose first album stood out as a new voice for jazz. While I couldn’t fit her into the first season, which opened in the fall of 1996 with the celebrated trumpeter and composer Terrance Blanchard, I secured her for our second season. And by the time her concert dates arrived, Diana Krall was well on her way to bringing jazz singing and playing to a large and diverse young audience.”

Egigian believes in the compelling aspects of his work while he is “affecting lives with quality, discovery, delight, and deep satisfaction. This is about joining together in an audience to celebrate what is the best that society—human beings––can create and do for one another. And it’s here for everyone to take—entertainment that delights the spirit and enlightens the mind. Once you’ve had the experience, it’s difficult, if not genuinely impossible, to live without it.”
POSTINGS Members of Ballet Pacifica’s Signature Guild, theguild@balletpacifica.org,
gathered at the Irvine Barclay for a closed rehearsal of The Nutcracker with star American Ballet Theater dancers Sascha Redetsky and Stella Abrera. “The Signature Guild includes 30 talented, active, and engaging women from the business and social circles,” says B.P. board director Robyn Grant.
The Discovery Science Center has engineered 120 hands–on science exhibits to keep the kids, as well as the adults, amazed. After school you can take the kids to play a game of virtual volleyball, watch a 12-foot geyser erupt, play music on a laser harp, make waves in a wave tank, feel aerodynamics in a wind tunnel, dance on a musical floor, climb a rock wall, fly an airplane, and lie on a bed of nails.