See Hear Do: Take Five

The name should sound familiar to anyone who has ever wandered into a record store. Chris and Dan Brubeck are two of the four musical offspring of jazz legend Dave Brubeck. They carry on and even extend their father’s legacy through their dynamic live sets — rounded out by guitarist Mike DeMicco and pianist Chuck Lamb — incorporating jazz’s core tenets while experimenting with time signatures, the latter mostly through Chris’s work on bass and Dan’s behind the drum kit. It's a must-see for fans of improvisational jazz.

Show times: 5p and 8p.

Hidalgo, a local abstract artist and recent UNLV MFA graduate, is also the co-owner of Available Space Art Projects gallery. If his name sounds familiar, your intuition might be right: his public art has popped up around town.

For this exhibit, he merges digital photography and traditional painting, so it includes both photographs and paintings. All of which focus on a variety of themes: vision in the digital age, reality, personality, and the poetics of the mundane.

And the title? Hidalgo says his “lifelong project is to always be ‘goldmining’ the visual field for moments of unexpected visual poetry, to then enhance and distill these passages in intimately painted works.”

The exhibit runs through January 26.

Hear ye, hear ye devotees to Baroque-era orchestral music! Las Vegas Sinfonietta is teaming up with the Vegas City Opera to perform Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.

Composed by Purcell in 1692, the show is a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which focuses mostly on the exploits of Titania — who Shakespeare-lovers know is also “queen of the fairies” in the Bard’s work.

Interestingly, after Purcell’s death in the late 17th century, the score for the Fairy Queen was somehow lost for a few hundred years, only resurfacing in the early 1900s. So this is a newer classic, newer being relative.

Sigrid Nunez is coming to the Beverly Theater, the exact spot that author André Aciman absolutely packed two weeks ago for his own book reading. This time the New York City-based Sigrid will be reading from her latest novel, The Vulnerables. A lot is going on in this pandemic-set book, which is very much rooted in the malaise and tribulations of the modern era, but also expressed and processed through the lens of the past. It’s heavily reliant on our connections with one another. Bonus: Apparently it’s also funny and features a parrot.

Nunez will be speaking to former Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow, Tajja Isen. She’ll also be signing her book, which comes with your ticket, so don’t fret if you haven’t read it yet — you will.

“A familiar story, with a twist” was clearly the inspo behind Majestic Repertory’s latest show, The Devil Wears Payless. Unless you’ve been hiding in a closet for the last 20 years, you know that’s a nod to the bestseller-turned movie The Devil Wears Prada.

Everyone knows Vogue U.S. editor Anna Wintour, whom Meryl Streep’s hard-charging film character was modelled after. But Payless is also a familiar cultural reference, as those of us of a certain age will remember Payless Shoe Source, a low-budget shoe store famous for its cheap knockoffs of name-brand kicks. This satire, true to its name, juxtaposes both ideas — opulence and frugality — in a comedic kicker of a play, as Streep's character is now associated with fashion disasters as opposed to that season’s in-demand items.

Every December, the UNLV jazz program puts together a three-night festival that shows off their various ensembles — usually two or three a night. A great opportunity to see some new talent, considering UNLV has been churning out quality musicians for the last 15 years or so, and this jazz program has been heavily decorated with awards and acclaim in that time period.

And, lest you interpret the event’s name as proof that it’s just instrumental, it’s not. On Monday night, the Maryland Parkway & Harmon Avenue Vocal Ensembles perform, and on Tuesday, you can see the Studio Scarlett Jazz Vocal Ensemble. There’s also Latin jazz, contemporary jazz, jazz guitar, and big band performances.

Runs from Dec. 2-4

Some background on Grace Talusan: Not only does she teach at Brown University, she’s also the author of The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, published in 2019. It’s a memoir of Talusan’s struggle as a Filipino immigrant to the US. It also weaves in stories of the racism, xenophobia, sexual abuse, and health trauma she and her family faced as documented (then undocumented) residents. She’ll be interviewed by fellow author Monica Macansantos, who’s currently in Vegas for the 2024-25 academic year as a Shearing Fellow. Her forthcoming 2025 book is a collection of essays entitled Returning to My Father’s Kitchen.

You don’t see many literary or even capital “C” Cultural events featuring Filipino artists. But Filipinos make up 53 percent of our Asian-American/Pacific Islander population — there are some 200,000 Filipino-Americans here in Las Vegas alone. This lecture is an easy way to support this growing community.