Visual art, music, architecture, performing arts, and the creative forces shaping Arizona’s cultural identity.
Standing tall on the southeast corner of Scottdale Road and Frank Lloyd Wright is an aqua blue, 125-foot steel and glass spire that, love it or hate it, is an iconic Scottsdale landmark with an interesting history. In fact, there may be more to it than you know!
For 24 years, the Sonoran Desert Chorale has delighted audiences in the Valley, singing an eclectic selection of music that transcends our differences and accentuates our commonality. The group begins its anniversary season in October with the first of four concert series that founding director Jeff Harris calls “a celebration of 25 years of music.”
The concept of yin and yang is a theory of opposites. Everything has a darkness (yin) and a light (yang), and one cannot exist without the other. For night, there is day; for cold there is heat; for birth there is death; and for masculine there is feminine.
If ever there was a woman comfortable in her skin, it’s Patricia Griffin. Wearing paint-spattered overalls, owl-rimmed glasses and a smile that shines with inner radiance, she took time to talk about life and art from inside her studio.
Touchdowns, cheers and school fight songs—it’s as American as apple pie and the Fourth of July. Yet in Cave Creek, the sound of the band has been nearly non-existent in recent years. Budget cuts all but amputated funding for music, and the high school band program tapered down to a dozen or so students.
It’s the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Every one of us is in the midst of a global conversation on a scale never before experienced in history. For the first time, thanks in large part to technology, we are seeing and hearing voices and perspectives of people outside our own echo chambers of experiences and ideas, and it is changing our political and cultural landscapes.
Walking into the art studio of James Muir’s well-appointed Sedona home, I can’t help but feel a sense of reverence. Gentle music is playing in the background, and deep fabrics and rich woods surround us.
Over two millennia ago, Aristotle opined that art imitates life. It took more than 2,200 years of human pondering before Oscar Wilde countered his theory, saying that it is life that does the imitating. Art, he said, provides the language we need to appreciate life, and without it, that appreciation would not exist.
Writer Amanda Christmann Photography Courtesy of Goldenstein Gallery [dropcap]A[/dropcap]s I approached the front door of
Writer Shannon Severson Photography by Loralei Lazurek [dropcap]H[/dropcap]er voice is clear, earnest and soulful, belying