As we launch our 2013-14 season, I want to share our great pleasure in the fact that Broadway programming is returning to Centennial Hall. All of us at UApresents look forward our new partnership with Broadway in Tucson.

As always, UApresents is proud to offer a season of celebrated performing artists from the far corners of the world. 

As we plan each event, we look not only at who will perform, but at what will be performed. The Joffrey Ballet’s “American Legends” program, for example, showcases the choreography of Jerome Robbins, the music of John Adams and the crooning of Frank Sinatra. Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet makes its Tucson debut with works by cutting-edge choreographers from Israel, Canada and Sweden. American balladeer Michael Feinstein will reflect on his six years of work with Ira Gershwin. The inimitable Bobby McFerrin reimagines Americana with a program of spirituals. Our classical roster features Quartet for the End of Time, a luminous work originally composed and premiered in a prisoner of war camp.

Where is also important. When Indian feel-good band Red Baraat comes to town, we’ll increase our hip factor by presenting it at the Rialto Theatre. Our jazz audience responded with gusto to last season’s concerts at the Fox Theatre, so with one exception, this year’s jazz series will take place in that Art Deco gem. The exception is terrific pianist Jonathan Batiste, whom I saw earlier this year in a postage stamp of a Greenwich Village club. For comparable ambience, Batiste and his band will play in the lobby bar of Tucson’s Hotel Congress.

To score the best possible seats, we encourage you to become of member of UApresents. A donation of as little as one hundred dollars gets you priority seating. More important, you’ll help us bring the power of the performing arts to area schools through our ever-expanding outreach programs. As I hope this season will prove, the arts are to be shared. 

Charles Tennes, Executive Director