West Seattle, Washington
13 Monday
You might recall our note January 29th about TV/film actor Thomas Haden Church sighted at Admiral Safeway, while the film “Lucky Them” was shooting in West Seattle. It’s coming back, according to notes from WSB’ers both north and south who both had received visits from production-crew members alerting them to the impending shoots in the next few days: One on Alki, one in Gatewood/Sunrise Heights. So if you see a film crew in either of those areas – that’s what they’re here for. Here’s the iMDB page for the movie, which is directed by Seattle’s Megan Griffiths and also stars Toni Collette.
(January 2011 photo)
Two years after the last Kiwanis Club of West Seattle-presented free concert by the Seattle Symphony, the orchestra is coming back next week – Tuesday, February 26th. Here’s the announcement:
The Seattle Symphony will perform a free Community Concert this month as, part of the Orchestra’s ongoing commitment to provide free opportunities for West Seattle to experience the transformational and inspiring impact of live music. The program, while sure to delight symphony fans of all ages, should have special appeal to youngsters.
The evening concert will take place at West Seattle’s Chief Sealth International High School, 2600 SW Thistle St. at 7:30 pm on February 26. Ample parking is available onsite. Admission to the Community Concert is free and tickets are not required.
Assistant Conductor Stilian Kirov will lead the Orchestra in a charming program of 19th- and 20th-century masterworks, including Béla Bartók’s Rumanian Folk Dances for Orchestra; Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin; and Johannes Brahms’ popular Hungarian Dances Nos. 5 & 6.
Talented 16-year-old violinist Amelia Sie, who hails from Bellevue, will also perform the first movement of Sergey Prokofiev’s virtuosic Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor.
The announcement continues ahead, including the full program:
Read More
Local artists are invited to come sell their creations at the next “Homemade Brigade,” March 2nd at Freshy’s in The Admiral District, according to Krystal Kelley from event partner Mind Unwind:
The Homemade Brigade is a community partnership between Mind Unwind and Freshy’s Coffee. The Brigade is comprised of artists who create goods and art pieces in small batches by hand. Most of the artists featured in the past use recycled and reused materials, but this is not necessary.
For artists, come sell your wares. Entrance fee includes table, you keep all your sales…there is no commission. Table fee is $15 per artist. Register early, space is limited!
Follow this link to register.
For art enthusiasts, come buy local art that is creative and inspiring. Support local art and business!
That just-published video shows a winning performance – the Chief Sealth International High School Percussion Ensemble, led by student leaders Farhan Vohra and Francisco Leon, under the direction of CSIHS band director Marcus Pimpleton – as they won the Elliott Bay Music Educators‘ Solo and Ensemble competition last weekend at Seattle Pacific University. In April, they will represent the Seattle area in the large percussion category at the WIAA/WMEA State Solo and Ensemble competition in Ellensburg. Congratulations!
(Photos by Nick Adams for WSB. Above, the Au Lac Vovinam Dance Team)
With a lion dance, firecrackers, and even a mayoral appearance, all graced by sunshine, West Seattle’s Vietnamese Cultural Center celebrated the Lunar New Year on Saturday afternoon. But there is more to the celebration than those bright and loud elements:
That’s the center’s director Lee Bui, after lighting incense. Another tradition: A tray of five fruits, as an offering:
Lanh Bui prepared it …
… and placed it on the outdoor altar:
There were photos with their guest, Mayor McGinn:
And time to admire the center’s growing complement of tributes and temples:
What looks like garlands hanging in the foreground of that view were actually strings of firecrackers, waiting to be lit:
That’s Duong Tan setting them off. And of course there was dancing:
From the Au Lac Vovinam team, which performed, here’s Doan Dinh in the foreground:
The celebration was about ceremony, but also about people – like Phuoc Huynh, who spoke:
And Chi Nguyen:
And the uniformed veterans often seen at Cultural Center events, like Len Hua, photographed saluting during the national anthems:
And this time, a special guest:
You’re welcome to visit the center on Saturday afternoons, when it’s open to the public, noon-3 pm at 2236 SW Orchard. The iconic statue on its grounds depicts the 13th-century hero Gen. Tran Hung Dao.
Big news for the little dancers of Gildenfire and their leader Jenna Lutton. They’ll soon have a permanent studio, reports Megan Kelton-Rehkopf (who also shared the photo from their latest performance):
On Neighborhood Appreciation Day (Saturday), Jenna Lutton’s Gildenfire Dance held their annual performance for the residents at The Kenney. At the end of the performance, Jenna announced that Gildenfire has found a permanent home and she’s launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $5500 for a dance floor and mirrors to transform the space into an amazing dance studio. The new home of Gildenfire will be in White Center, located behind McLendon’s.
Here’s the link to the Gildenfire fundraising page on IndieGogo – as of this writing, already two-thirds of the way to the goal!
From the Total Experience Gospel Choir (above) to the Chief Sealth International High School Choir (below) …
… to student/pro collaborations like Septimus with the Denny International Middle School Jazz Band:
… last night’s third annual “Soul Jambalaya” (free, with donations benefiting the Denny and Sealth music programs) “was truly incredible,” reports Denny principal Jeff Clark (who also shared the photos):
Congratulations to the Denny and Sealth Jazz Band and Choir students! A huge thank you to our guests from Septimus and the Total Experience Gospel Choir!
This musical celebration is the creation of our inspirational band director, Mr. Marcus Pimpleton. He described the thinking behind this amazing event this way:
“Three years ago, I had the opportunity to take a group of Denny students to the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival’s ‘Jazz is Blues and Sacred Roots Concert.’ That concert, through the language of music, provided students with a musical history lesson connecting the jazz music our students study in their school ensembles to its musical roots in the blues and to the spiritual songs of hardship and struggle that grew initially out of the experience of negro slaves … My primary hope in organizing Soul Jambalaya is to recreate that synergy that I felt that night at Hampton, to expose my students to the music they may have limited experience with, and in the tradition of Black History Month, to celebrate the influence of African-American music styles to the musical landscape of America.”
Thank you, Mr. Pimpleton, for bringing that synergy and celebration to our scholars and our community!
Will the third time be the proverbial charm for West Seattle-based musicmaker David Miles Huber, when the Grammy Awards are announced tomorrow? He’s been nominated for the third time – this time, “Chamberland” is up for Best Surround Sound Album. The video above shows Huber’s in-studio performance of “Emerald,” one of the album’s cuts. His previous nominations, also in the Best Surround Sound Album category, were announced in 2009 and 2010.
West Seattle’s Sheila Lengle is one of the artists showing and selling work right now at the “pop-up art gallery” event under way at the Technology Access Foundation’s center in White Center’s Lakewood Park. Last year, Sheila’s work was seen all over West Seattle after she won the WS Garden Tour’s poster contest. Also there, Jave Yoshimoto:
He’s exhibited internationally and is currently a teaching artist at West Seattle-based ArtsCorps.
Second from right in the photo above, that’s Vera Johnson, owner of Village Green Perennial Nursery, who’s showing photographs tonight. The event organized by Menrva Labs continues till 8 at 605 SW 108th.
Filmed at, and premiered at, West Seattle’s own Feedback Lounge (WSB sponsor), that’s the new video for the second single by the on-the-rise Van Eps, “Save Yourself.” The band members include West Seattle resident Matt Strutynski. On the heels of last night’s premiere party, the video’s West Seattle-based director Jamie Burton Chamberlin just sent the clip.
(Photo from 2012 West Seattle Garden Tour, by Nick Adams for WSB)
Before hundreds of people spend next July 21st wandering beautiful West Seattle gardens – the West Seattle Garden Tour will again celebrate “The Art of Gardening” with its second annual poster-art contest! With less than a month till the deadline, the WSGT is recirculating its call for artists. Not only will the winner’s work be seen by thousands – there’s a prize: $500. There’s also a list of rules/guidelines for entries, so if you’re interested, check out the contest details here (the entry form is linked on that page too).
(Septimus at Soul Jambalaya 2012; photo courtesy Jeff Clark)
Saturday night, you’re invited to enjoy what’s become an annual tradition – a soul-stirring night of music in a wide variety of styles, performed by pros as well as students – all free! – on behalf of the Denny/Sealth music programs. Here’s the announcement:
“SOUL JAMBALAYA” will raise the roof at Chief Sealth International High School (2600 Thistle SW) on Saturday, February 9, 2013 @ 7:00 pm. Gospel, blues, jazz, funk, and reggae will be performed by The Total Experience Gospel Choir, Septimus, Denny International Middle School and Chief Sealth International High School jazz ensembles, and the Chief Sealth Honor Choir.
Admission is free – donations will be accepted to benefit the schools’ music scholarship program.
Many of those same performers were part of the first “Soul Jambalaya,” which we covered with multiple video clips, in 2011 (here’s our story), and returned for last year’s edition.
A first-of-its-kind Seattle Opera production will feature young local singers. The official announcement:
West Seattle youth (L-R above) Wilder Cufley, Zane Cufley, Sarah Rosoff and Monique Allen are have been cast in Seattle Opera’s upcoming production of Our Earth and are pictured here with the four principal soloists (L-R) Thomas Thompson, Rachel DeShon, Sonia Perez, and John Coons.
Our Earth is Seattle Opera’s first-ever three-part opera for young audiences. The first performance in the series, Heron and the Salmon Girl, will premiere on Sunday, February 10, at Town Hall at 2 pm. Seattle composer Eric Banks has written three brief operas, with libretti by Irene Keliher, all set in the Pacific Northwest. They tell the story of local animals and people—including people who can transform into salmon!—and an ecosystem in danger. The Opera soloists play the human and animal characters and the Youth Chorus represents the waves of the Puget Sound. Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra (which organized last weekend’s Southwest Seattle Super String Saturday at Chief Sealth International High School) performs the score:
Seattle Opera also partnered with The Nature Conservancy to inform the plot and characters – which include a hungry orca, a helpful heron, a grumpy fisherman, and a girl whose brother is in trouble in the big city. They all set off to find out what happened when the salmon fail to return to sea one spring. Later on in the trilogy, the characters continue their quest into a river valley and all the way up into the watershed, atop a forested mountain. Find information about the premieres of the second and third Our Earth opera here.
Next Sunday’s performance will also feature Seattle Youth Symphony performing with former Seattle Opera Young Artist Adina Aaron singing Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Siegfried Idyll. Tickets are $10 for youth under 18 and seniors, $20 General Admission. To purchase tickets, please visit www.SeattleOpera.org/OurEarth or call 206.389.7676 or 800.426.1619.
Another highlight in West Seattle High School‘s year of musical milestones: The first-ever Big Band Dance, last night in the WSHS Commons. Thanks to Anne Weglin for sharing photos; above, that’s the WSHS Jazz Ensemble, directed by Ethan Thomas; below, the West Seattle Big Band, directed by Donn Weaver:
Before the bands played, the night began with a round of swing-dancing lessons!
One of the lesser-discussed combined-sewer-overflow (CSO) facility projects in the works for West Seattle – a retrofit for the city’s facility in Delridge – will also include a “1% for Art” project. That’s the fund created by the Public Art Ordinance more than a quarter-century ago. The announcement of this comes by way of this call for applications from interested artists:
The Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, in partnership with Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), seeks an artist or artist team to develop a permanent, site-integrated artwork for the North Delridge Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Retrofit Project. The project is located in West Seattle’s Delridge neighborhood. The call is open to established professional artists residing and eligible to work in the United States. Applications are due 11 p.m., Monday, March 18, 2013 (Pacific Daylight Time). Go to www.seattle.gov/arts for a link to the online application.
Beginning in late 2014, SPU will install new hydraulic controls and active-control technology at the facility, with gates, pumps and sensors that monitor and control the amount of flow that is allowed to enter the downstream sewer system. Based on SPU’s work to retrofit the CSO tank, the selected artist will work with the CSO project design team, SPU staff and community members to design, fabricate and install an artwork at the CSO Tank 168 facility at 2106 S.W. Orchard St. The artwork should focus on the agency’s system-wide stormwater infrastructure and solutions designed to protect local water quality. The artwork should also address stormwater management as it relates to SPU’s work, the local community and natural elements of the nearby Longfellow Creek watershed. The artwork can include a variety of media including light, stone, steel, glass, sound and passive water features.
The Delridge CSO control and storage facilities were constructed in 1982 and were among the first CSO facilities built by the city. They are the city’s largest existing CSO storage facilities, with each tank providing 1.6 million gallons of sewer and stormwater overflow storage. Despite being sized to store a 10-year flood event, sewer overflows into local waterways from each facility have continued to exceed a long-term average of one overflow per year. The retrofit project’s improvements will optimize the performance of the facilities and reduce the frequency and volume of untreated stormwater and raw sewage overflows into Longfellow Creek.
The CSO project is currently in design through mid-2014 and construction is expected to begin in late 2014. Project completion is expected in late 2015. The artist will work with SPU and its consultants to develop an artwork that will be constructed within the project schedule.
The total budget for the artwork project is $200,000 inclusive of all costs to design, fabricate and install the artwork. The artwork is funded by SPU 1% for Art funds and administered by the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.
Next weekend, you have two chances to support young performers and their school – parents from Alki Elementary 
want you to know that second- through fifth-graders have been working hard on their production of “Annie Jr.,” which will take the stage in the West Seattle High School Theater at 7 pm Friday, February 8th, and 2 pm Saturday, February 9th. It’s the third year that Alki students have worked with a director from Youth Theatre Northwest in an intensive six-week after-school program – and the results of their work (along with all the parent volunteers who are helping) will be all the more sweet if they’re performing to a packed house of West Seattle supporters. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for kids, and you can order them via e-mail – contact Nikki Eisenhut at nicolelee916@yahoo.com or Davina Dilley at thedgreen@yahoo.com.
(WSB photo from August 2012, Caspar Babypants at Summer Concerts @ Hiawatha)
Next Sunday starts with something “super” long before the football game: The musician with a big following among little fans is performing to benefit the scholarship fund for the South Seattle Community College Preschool Co-op. At 10 am on Sunday (February 3), Caspar Babypants performs at Brockey Center at SSCC (WSB sponsor). Proceeds will help pay tuition for preschool families in need. Admission is $10 at the door, kids under 1 free.
And more showbiz news: Our WSBeat correspondent Megan Sheppard reports seeing Thomas Haden Church at Admiral Safeway. One quick check of Google News revealed this Deadline.com story reporting that he is in Seattle because filming has just begun on “Lucky Them,” described as an “’un-romantic comedy’ about a female rock journalist on assignment to hunt down her musician ex-boyfriend.” Don’t know if they’re shooting over here; keep an eye out for film-crew sightings. But we do know that Seattle-based director Megan Griffiths has filmed on this side of the metro area before – with “Eden,” partly shot in White Center in 2011.
The weekend after this year’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service – one service project continued today at Denny International Middle School: A three-level stairwell mural celebrating where the students have come from, and where they’re going. On the first level – the 6th graders’ floor – a reminder to never forget your roots:
On the second level, the 7th graders’ floor, a work in progress honoring the scholars as they take shape and grow up:
And on the third level, the 8th graders’ floor, the art parallels their growth as they get ready to take flight (to the left of the totem pole, we’re told, the Space Needle will be depicted):
According to Seattle Public Schools, MLK Day of Service work at Denny, with other beautification projects as well as the mural, included district/school personnel and CityYear team members, as well as volunteers from Starbucks.
That’s the “instrument petting zoo” from the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra‘s “Southwest Seattle Super String Saturday” event today at Chief Sealth International High School (2600 SW Thistle), a celebration of symphonic music for and by students – including the SYSO’s free mini-concert:
Afterward, SYSO musicians coached students from the eight participating Southwest-region schools – we peeked in on one session in Sealth’s Little Theater, where Alex and Jack from SYSO were working with viola players:
(WSB was a media sponsor for today’s event.) Find out more about SYSO and its programs at syso.org!
Two youth-music notes today:
First, whether you’re interested in enjoying a mini-concert, exploring youth-music resources, or both, tomorrow’s the day for the free Southwest Seattle Super String Saturday event, presented by the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra at Chief Sealth International High School (2600 SW Thistle), including a mini-concert by the SYSO:
The community is invited to hear the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra (SYSO) perform excerpts from (its recent) Benaroya Hall concert at a free mini-concert on January 26th at 10:30 am at Chief Sealth International High School Auditorium.
After the mini-concert, Seattle Youth Symphony musicians will mentor younger musicians who participate in the SYSO in the Schools program at Arbor Heights, Concord, Gatewood, Roxhill, Sanislo, Highland Park and West Seattle Elementary schools, as well as at Denny International Middle School. These student musicians will have the opportunity to participate in master classes, chamber ensemble demonstrations, and play side-by-side with Seattle Youth Symphony. SYSO thanks media sponsors West Seattle Blog and Classical KING-FM for their support of Southwest Seattle Super String Saturday. For more information about the event, contact Kathleen Allen, SYSO Director of Education, Communication and Partnerships at kathleen@syso.org or 206.362.2300.
You can find out more about SYSO here.
Second, band musicians from Denny and Sealth presented the schools’ third and final winter concert last night, and Denny principal Jeff Clark shared photos:
(Those are the Denny Beginning and Junior Bands.) He says it was a great night:
What a thrill it was to hear the fantastic music performed by our amazing bands at Denny and Sealth (Thursday) evening. Equally impressive as the sound of the music was the number of our scholars performing: 73 in the DIMS Beginning and Junior Band, 70 in the DIMS Senior Band, 19 in the DIMS Jazz Band, and 70 in the CSIHS Symphonic Band! Music is thriving in our pathway thanks to our outstanding students, families, and teacher, Mr. Pimpleton!
More photos ahead:
Thanks to the WSB reader who shared photos from the West Seattle Lions‘ mural dedication today at 17th and Roxbury – that’s artist Xavier Lopez Jr. above, signing his creation. Just last month, he was honored as a White Center Hero for his role in the mural art that’s popping up all around the area, including the work dedicated today.
(WS Lions president Jimie Martin with Mark Ufkes from the WC Chamber)
A map to all the White Center-area murals, including this one on the West Seattle side of Roxbury, can be found on the WS Chamber of Commerce‘s website.
(Male Anna’s Hummingbird, photographed by Danny McMillin, shared via WSB Flickr group)
If you haven’t checked the WSB West Seattle Event Calendar yet today – you’re missing a double-digit list of things to do in the hours ahead. Venues with live music this afternoon and evening include C & P Coffee Company (WSB sponsor) and Skylark Café and Club; health-care reform is the topic of a 2 pm community forum at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church; wellness author/practitioner Tierney Salter signs her new book at Metropolitan Market (WSB sponsor). And that’s not even half the list – see it all (and peek at the days/weeks ahead) by going here.
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