San Diego's Top Weekend Events: From 'Phantom' To Festivals

This is KPBS midday edition. I'm Andrew Bowen a classical musical is back. Plus there's free music in Carlsbad and a day of books at Liberty Station. Joining me for our weekend preview is Mina Nina and PBS arts calendar editor and Nina welcome to the program. Thank you. So the masked man returns. Andrew Lloyd Webber is Phantom Of The Opera is back at the Civic Theatre. Nina was the show just here so you might be thinking of love never dies which is the sequel to Phantom Of The Opera. And actually yes this production was here a few years ago. It's the updated one. It's different from Broadway. This one has new choreography new lighting different staging. So if you've seen it on Broadway it will be different. If you go to the one at the Civic Theatre So remind us what the show is about. It's based on the book by Gus thundery true. It's the story of this masked figure and he lurks beneath the catacombs of the Paris Opera House. And he kind of haunts everybody. But then he falls in love with a young soprano Christine. And then the story sort of picks up from there. Now this there is a very loyal fan base of Phantom Of The Opera. Why is that do you think. Yeah lots of people really really love the show. It's the longest running show in Broadway history and there have been several movies about it and this is the musical people referred to when they argue about Andrew Lloyd Webber versus Stephen Sondheim. They're like oh the Phantom of the opera. I think they like it because it's very layered story with romance and mystery and a little bit of. It's scary a little bit. And then of course the famous falling chandelier. So let's listen to the title track of this musical. Here is the Phantom of the opera. That organ music still gives me goosebumps so you saw this production when it was here the first time around. What did you think. So traditionally this is not my favorite show but I really did like the updated version. It's magical. The sets are very creative and it's gorgeous. The Phantom has lives in this lair and they recreate that and the costumes are also really lush and they look for tour so it's just this beautifully visual experience and who are playing the main characters in this production. So Quinten Oliver Lee stepped into the phantom role in December and about Tavares is Christine and Jordan Craig plays well the Phantom of the Opera runs through September 2nd at the Civic Theatre so the Carlsbad Music Festival is also happening this weekend. Tell us about this event that describes itself as adventurous music by the beach. This event is really unique. It is three days of music and it's just all kinds from classical and jazz to electronic and indie rock. You just hear everything and there are two ways to do the festival. There are free performances happening throughout downtown Carlsbad and there's also more intimate ticketed shows. So I love free stuff. Let's start with the freebies. Who are some of the acts that people can watch. So there's popular local bands like trouble in the wind. Cindy Lee Barry Hill the paragraphs they're performing at St. Michael's there's also the Jack Curtis Dabrowski ensemble. They perform live scores for silent and experimental film and then you get things like the Carlsbad High School string orchestra and other community groups. And so you kind of just show up and see what's going on. And there were also a handful of ticketed concerts how do those work. Yeah most of the ticketed shows are classical music so you get like the Haussmann quartet violinist Johnny Gandelman. He's from the Silk Road Ensemble and he's going to play the complete sonatas by Bach. So let's listen to Johnny Gandelman playing Bach here. And you can buy tickets for individual concerts as well. So you actually buy passes for each day and that gets you into all the ticketed shows. There are packages that are about a hundred dollars for three days or fifty dollars for each day. The Carlsbad music festival happens Friday through Sunday throughout the Carlsbad village. Now finally we've been talking about this San Diego Festival of Books all week. But you're going to give us some details. And this is the second annual event. Yes. And it's back at Liberty Station and it's a day that is filled with all things literary. There's authors having conversations there's panels you can meet and greets illustrators local authors it's just all if you love books you need to be there. So let's talk about some of those panels. Many of them have themes to them. It opens with a free fake news panel. But then there's also a bunch of themed panels like military fiction or middle school. And then we have border stories with our own Jeanne Guerrero. There is an LGBTQ panel there's one that's all in Spanish. And so these are three dollars per panel and you can buy those tickets online. And there's also something exciting for fans of our One Book One San Diego reading program isn't there. Yes so this year's selection will be announced at the festival and they'll be handing out copies while they'll last. And they're also announcing the title for kids the San Diego Festival of Books happens Saturday at Liberty Station. You can see more of all of these events that we talked about at Cape dot org slash arts and I've been speaking with KPBS arts calendar editor Nina Gueron. Thank you so much Nina. Thank you.