This year’s Pima Writers’ Workshop will showcase a diverse selection of 14 workshop leaders.

“I try to choose authors who will be generous with their time and contribute to the supportive atmosphere of the conference,” workshop director Meg Files said.

The writing conference will be held May 24-27 at the West Campus Center for the Arts.

The $130 fee includes a manuscript consultation with an author or agent. The deadline for manuscript submission is May 10.

“New writers will gain much, in terms of both practical information about writing and inspiration,” Files said. “Writers will have opportunities to begin new stories and poems.”

Files aims for varied authors in genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction and screenwriting.

“I choose authors whose books and writing I really like,” she said.

“After reading Justin Torres’ ‘We the Animals’ and Michael Parker’s ‘If You Want Me To Stay,’ two books that just blew me away, I invited the authors to the conference.”

Other luminaries include “Crazy Heart” author Thomas Cobb, Kevin Canty, Joshua Mohr, Gina Ochsner and Sarah Raimone.

Workshop topics range from “Researching and Writing a Historical Novel” to “What I Learned in Hollywood.”

For registration details, view a PDF version of the workshop brochure at pima.edu.

For workshop details, call Files at 206-6084.

“Ninja Quest” tells the story of Darryl, a young man from a gang-ridden neighborhood. He tries to better his life by joining the Army. While on leave, he confronts the gang that has plagued his family.

Advanced cinematography students directed, funded and produced the film, under the direction of David Wing. It was shot using a broadcast-quality, high definition digital camera.

The free screenings will also showcase work from beginning and advanced students in digital video and film arts classes.

-By Eric Klump

Electrifying show

spotlights fashion

Pima Community College students will light up the runway with an “Electric Night” fashion show on May 4 at 7 p.m. in the West Campus Proscenium Theatre. Admission costs $2.

The show will spotlight  more than 100 student-designed garments, including wedding, formal and party dresses.

A Phoenix disc jockey will provide music, and Los Angeles designers will present awards.

KGUN-9 TV will feature “Electric Night” on its “Morning Blend” show, but a date has not yet been set.

For more information, email Nancy Spaulding at nspaulding@pima.edu or call the theater box office at 206-6986.

-By Vanessa Avila

Pima Community College’s Wind Ensemble will perform a “Gershwin Spectacular” under the direction of Mark Nelson on May 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the West Campus Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre.

The Wind Ensemble will perform selections from Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” and Larry Daehn’s “As Summer Was Just Beginning,” a tribute to the late James Dean.

The brass, woodwind and percussion ensembles will also perform selections of chamber music.

Faculty member Eileen Perry Schwartz will perform “Rhapsody in Blue,” one of Gershwin’s most well-known compositions.

Schwartz was recruited to the University of Arizona on a full scholarship. In 1980, she began to teach at PCC. She was named pianist of the year in 1989 and was voted “Outstanding Faculty of the Year” by her students in 1996.

Tickets are $6, with discounts available.

Go to pima.edu/cfa or call 206-6986 for more information.

College Chorale

and Singers

The Pima Community College Chorale and College Singers will present a spring concert under the direction of Jonathan Ng at the West Campus Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre on May 6 at 3 p.m.

The Chorale will perform works composed by Mozart and Mendelssohn. The group will also sing two folk songs, “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” and “The Water is Wide.”

The College Singers will perform pieces written by Mozart and Bach. They will join with the Chorale to perform “Gloria Patri,” a piece written in Venetian double chorus setting by G.P. da Palestrina.

The concert will conclude with a performance of Handel’s “Hallelujah, Amen from Judas Maccabaeus.”

Tickets are $6, with discounts available. For more information, contact the box office at 206-6986 or visit pima.edu/cfa.

Orchestra concert

Celebrate moms this year with a Mother’s Day concert performed by the Pima Community College Orchestra on May 13 at 3 p.m. in the West Campus Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre.

Alexander Tentser will direct the PCC Orchestra in their performances of pieces composed by famous classical musicians such as Schumann, Vivaldi, Haydn, Schubert and Tchaikovsky.

The PCC Orchestra is composed of high school and college students, as well as community adults.

The concert is open to the public. Tickets are $6, with discounts available. For more information, contact the box office at 206-6986 or visit pima.edu/cfa.

-Compiled by

Meggie Costello-Kessler

Pima Community College performing arts department is presenting the PCC Jazz Improv Combos in concert on April 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Proscenium Theater.
Under the direction of Pima jazz instructor Mike Kuhn, two small jazz improvisation groups will perform pieces inspired by the Great American Songbook.
Each group will contain a rhythm section, horns and a vocalist.
Also under the direction of Kuhn, PCC music presents the Jazz Ensemble in concert on May 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Proscenium Theater.
This 18-piece big band will perform jazz selections from various styles and jazz musicians, such as Miles Davis.
The concert will spotlight several solo improvisation roles, including lead trombonist Roger Wallace performing his own original piece “Double-Wide Blues.”
The concerts are open to the public. Tickets are $6 with discounts available and can be purchased at West Campus’ Center for the Arts box office.
For more information, visit pima.edu/cfa.

Gershwin spring concert

On May 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Pima’s Proscenium Theater, the PCC Wind Ensemble will be presenting a Gershwin Spectacular spring concert.
Under the direction of Mark Nelson, the ensemble will play several Gershwin selections in addition to pieces by John Krance, E.E. Bagley and Larry Daehn.
The concert will spotlight Pima faculty member Eileen Perry Schwartz performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
The concert is open to the public. Tickets are $6 with discounts available and can be purchased at West Campus’ Center for the Arts box office. For more information, visit pima.edu/cfa.

-Compiled by
Megyn Fitzgerald

Pima Community College music instructor Mark Nelson will present an eclectic range of music written and arranged for tuba in a recital on April 5 at 7 p.m. in the West Campus Center for the Arts Recital Hall.

Works include three Edward Elgar compositions arranged for tuba and piano by Ralph Sauer, and a trio for tuba, euphonium and piano called “Three Florida Orchids” featuring Kelly Thomas on euphonium and Marie Sierra on piano.

The program also includes the “Carson Cooman Sonata” for tuba and piano, a sonata by G.F. Telemann transcribed for tuba and piano, “Impromptu” for tuba and piano and the whimsical “Concertino” for tuba and piano.

Tickets cost $6, with discounts available. For more information, contact the box office at 206-6986 or visit pima.edu/cfa.

-By Andria Skanse

Larry Gaurano/ Aztec Press

Film Festival opens April 13

The 2012 Arizona International Film Festival will run April 13-29, with films playing at the Crossroads Festival, Reel Arts 6, Screening Room and other Tucson theaters.

More than 100 films from 18 countries will be part of the festival. The featured films come from a variety of categories including youth films, documentaries, animated shorts, comedies and drama.

Titles from the IndieYouth category include “Textbook Messaging” by German Torres, “Echoes of Exxon” by Lauren Lindberg, “A Sticky Note Situation” by Sarai Salas and “The Moment I Said It” by Reina Rouzaud.

Opening night will take place at the Crossroads Festival theater, with films playing on all six screens. Mimes, musicians and jugglers will perform.

Crossroads Festival and Reel Arts 6 are located in the same building at 4811 E. Grant Road. Call 327-7067 for additional information.

The Screening Room is located at 127 E. Congress St. Call 882-0204 for additional information.

For further details about the festival, visit filmfestivalarizona.com.

-By Miki Jennings

Pima Community College’s Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery will present the artwork of PCC students in the Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition.

The free exhibition will run April 2-May 4 at the gallery, located in the West Campus Center for the Arts.

The gallery will also host an awards ceremony and reception to honor the exhibition’s most outstanding artists. The reception will be held Wednesday, April 11, from noon-3 p.m., with the awards ceremony at 1 p.m. the same day.

Jurors for this year’s exhibition are University of Arizona art professor Ellen McMahon, Etherton Gallery director Hannah Glasston and Ben Johnson, director and curator of Tohono Chul Park Gallery.

The exhibition is considered an important event for emerging artists in southern Arizona. It gives students from all Pima campuses the opportunity to present their work in a professional venue that will be viewed by the public.

Gallery hours are Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. and Fridays from 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

For more information, contact the gallery at 206-6942, visit pima.edu/cfa or email centerforthearts@pima.edu.

Faculty recital to feature piano combos

The Pima Community College music department will present a faculty piano recital titled “Mano a Mano” on Sunday, March 25, at 3 p.m.

The performance will be held in the Center for the Arts Recital Hall at West Campus.

Featured performers will be faculty members Eileen Perry Schwartz, June Chow-Tyne, Raymond Ryder, Alexander Tentser and Kassandra Weleck.

The concert will feature the musicians performing solos, as well as pieces with four hands at one piano, four hands at two pianos and eight hands at two pianos.

Schwartz has been chair of the piano department at PCC since 1980. She has performed as a soloist with the Tucson Pops, among other orchestras.

Chow-Tyne has performed extensively in Asia and North America as a soloist and chamber music player. She serves as an adjunct piano faculty member at Pima.

Ryder is an adjunct faculty member who is active in the National Teachers Association and American Guild of Organists. He also has a private teaching studio in Tucson.

Tentser studied piano at Gnessin Music College in Moscow, and serves as an adjunct piano faculty and director of the PCC Orchestra.

Weleck has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at music festivals and master classes across North America and Europe. She is an adjunct piano faculty member at Pima.

Program pieces include works by composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alberto Ginastera.

Tickets cost $6, with discounts available. For additional information, contact the box office at 206-6986, visit pima.edu/cfa or email centerforthearts@pima.edu.

-Compiled by Steve Choice

David Andres, director of the Bernal Gallery at Pima Community College’s West Campus, often works 10 extra, unpaid hours each week.

He also spends two hours commuting to a second job once a week. On top of that, he works a third job twice a week and volunteers at multiple organizations.

Just typing this is tiring. Living it can only be more exhausting. Yet somehow, Andres has the energy to complete his work week after week and still come back for more.

Photo By DAVID MENDEZ

“There isn’t any way, if you want to do anything of quality, to do it otherwise,” Andres said. “It just takes more hours, even if you don’t get paid for it.”

The college rates his art gallery position as a 25-hour-per-week job, but Andres often spends 30 to 35 hours a week there. “Sometimes 40,” he said.

The job only requires a bachelor’s degree, but Andres has a Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking, and a Master of Education with an art and museum emphasis.

“It’s overkill in every sense of the word,” he said.

In addition to the time he spends at the gallery, Andres teaches art classes at PCC. He also teaches once a week at Central Arizona College in Casa Grande.

Andres sits on boards for both the Downtown Gallery Association and the Central Tucson Gallery Association, and volunteers at the Arizona Theater Company and the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation.

He called himself “the itinerant artist” during his younger years, because of the many artist-in-residencies he accepted across the state. He still lives up to that nickname, yet finds time for his wife and family.

Work-study student Manny Arguello knows first-hand how hard Andres works.

“Sometimes he’ll come to me, saying ‘so I woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and I need you to research these notes I came up with,’” he said.

“He’s so active in the community,” Arguello added. “If it wasn’t for David, these exhibitions wouldn’t be happening. He’s very well known among artists and collectors in Tucson.”

Arguello can testify that Andres doesn’t let his teaching slip because of his other work.

“He’s always trying to inspire his students,” he said. “As long as you’re trying to better yourself, he will help.”

Andres shows no signs of slowing.

“I’m not ready to retire. I don’t have anything to retire from, really,” he said. “I figure if you choose artwork, it’s something you want to do for life.”

“Singing for Pleasure”

Sunday, Feb. 12, at 3 p.m.

Recital Hall, West Campus

Tenor Johnathan Ng has selected pieces inspired by love, in honor of Valentine’s Day, for a “Singing for Pleasure” recital.

Accompanied by Raymond T. Ryder, Ng will sing English and German art songs and two Russian opera songs. Featured composers include Schubert, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Handel and Rossini.

Ng directs Pima Community College’s Chorale and College Singers. He is also founder and conductor of the Arizona Choral Society, and music director at Catalina United Methodist Church.

Tickets cost $6, with discounts available. For further information, call the PCC box office at 206-6986 or visit pima.edu/cfa.

Tuba recital

Thursday, Feb. 16, at 7 p.m.

Recital Hall, West Campus

Northern Arizona University music instructor and tuba player Alexander Lapins will perform works by J.S. Bach, Schumann, Pilafian, Vincent Bach, Madsen, Pendrecki and Ewazen.

In a suite for horn, tuba and piano, Lapins will be joined by his wife, Sharon Weyser, with David Craig accompanying.

Lapins teaches tuba, euphonium, chamber music and the history of rock music at NAU. He has performed on hundreds of recordings with a wide variety of ensembles and orchestras.

Tickets cost $6, with discounts available. For further information, call the PCC box office at 206-6986 or visit pima.edu/cfa.

Creative Writing

Weekend Workshop

Friday-Sunday, Feb. 17-19

Sentinel Peak J-101, West Campus

Award-winning poet Simmons Buntin will lead an interactive workshop, “A Map to the Next World: Writing Poetry of Heritage and Place,” that enables writers to connect with other people, cultures and landscapes.

Buntin has taught workshops for the University of Arizona Poetry Center. He also received the Colorado Artists Fellowship for Poetry, an Academy of American Poets Prize and grants from the Tucson-Pima Arts Council and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

The workshop will run from 6-8 p.m. Friday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

In-state tuition and fees cost $136 for two academic credits. Students can register in person at any PCC campus, or online at pima.edu.

For further information, call Meg Files at 206-6084 or email mfiles@pima.edu.

‘Tribute to Hollywood’

saxophone quartet

Sunday, Feb. 19, at 3 p.m.

Recital Hall, West Campus

Presidio Saxophone  Quartet will pay tribute to the Hollywood Saxophone Quartet, active in the 1950s and ‘60s, during a “Presidio Goes to Hollywood” show.

The Presidio quartet features Derek Granger on alto, Ryan McCormick on baritone, Michael Keepe on soprano and Kelland Thomas on tenor.

The program will feature classical pieces, plus jazz compositions played with local musicians Fred Hayes on drums and Jack Wood on bass.

Tickets cost $6, with discounts available. For further information, call the PCC box office at 206-6986 or visit pima.edu/cfa.

Pima Community College Jazz Improve Combos Concert will be held Nov. 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the PCC Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre.

The concert features two jazz groups, each with a rhythm section, several horns and a vocalist. Program selections include Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Girl from Ipanema” and Django Reinhardt’s original

“Django’s Castle” among others.

The concert will be directed by Mike Kuhn, and is formed out of the weekly improvisation class. Kuhn also plays saxophone in a variety of venues around the greater Tucson area.

The Jazz Improv Combo Concert is open to the public. Tickets are available at the Center of the Arts box office for $6 with discounts available. For more information, call 206-6986.

-By Ryan Tsarsis

Memoir 101

What is a memoir? This is a question that will be answered at the weekend workshop Memoir 101: Remembering and Practicing the Basics.

This is designed for writers who want to reinvigorate the fundamentals of memoir craft.

The workshop topics include the definition of memoir, what it must do as a story, and common mistakes; how to recognize memories worth writing about; structuring a memoir; using the reflective narrator that distinguishes memoir from first person fiction, and voice.

The workshop will be held at PCC West Campus, Sentinel Peak building, room J-101 on Friday 6-8 pm, Saturday 9am-5pm (plus writing on your own Saturday) and Sunday 9am-5pm. Registration is held at any campus in person or at the pima website.

The workshop consists of two earned credits.  Cost for Arizona residents is $117 plus $19 fees.

The workshop will be taught my Lisa Dale Norton who is the author of the popular writing book Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir and the Literary memoir Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills. She teaches memoir writing through the Santa Fe Writing Institute, blogs for The Huffington Post as an expert on story, and consults internationally with writers completing book manuscripts.

For more information contact Meg Files at (520) 206-6084 mfiles@pima.edu or http://www.pima.edu/announcements/201109/Creative-Writing-Workshop-Fall-2011.pdf

-By Vanessa Avila

Musical theater lovers are invited to “The Glamorous Life,” Nov. 4 and 5 at West Campus’s Center for the Arts Recital Hall.

Directed by music faculty Nancy Davis Booth, audiences will get a view of how musicals are put together as students rehearse and perform musical numbers in various stages of readiness. Selections include pieces from “West Side Story,” “A Chorus Line,” “Rent,” “Wicked,” and “A Little Night Music.”

The workshop will take place Friday Nov. 4 at 7 p.m., and Saturday Nov. 5 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $6 with discounts available.

For more information, call 206-6986, visit www.pima.edu/cfa, or email centerforthearts@pima.edu.

Call to artists for new sculpture

Artists are invited to propose artwork for the latest installment of the Sculpture-on-Campus project at East Campus.

“Sculpture-on-Campus has been so vital to how the college connects with the community,” said Mike Stack, an art faculty member who helps coordinate the project. “At the start of every semester you can see that lone new student addressing each sculpture almost as a way to prepare for the challenges that lay ahead.”

Works are chosen that inspire the campus community to think creatively, allowing for the campus to become a public gallery without parallel.

The deadline for submissions is Dec. 16 at 4:45 p.m.

For more information, contact C.J. Karamargin, Vice Chancellor for Public Information and Government Relations, at 206-4850 or through email, ckaramargin@pima.edu.

Award-winning writer to teach poetry workshop Nov. 4-6

Steve Kowit will teach a workshop on “The Art and Craft of Authenticity: Writing Memorable Poems” Nov. 4-6.

The workshop will focus on what makes one poem more powerful and indelible than another of the same subject.

Participants of the workshop will draft at least four new poems. They will also learn how to sharpen their writing skills, improve their visual writing and practice establishing emotional and rhetorical skills likely to engage a reader’s attention.

Kowit is an award-winning writer. His most recent collection, “The First Noble Truth” won the Tampa Review Prize. He is well-known for his poetry writing guidebook, “In the Palm of Your Hand,” and has been conducting poetry writing workshops for many years.

The workshop costs $117, plus $19 in fees, providing 2 credits. Registration takes place in person at any campus, or online at www.pima.edu

For more information, contact Meg Files at 206-6084 or email mfiles@pima.edu.

-By David Mendez

SandScript now accepting submissions for 2012 edition

Pima Community College’s art and literary magazine has been around for over 20 years, serving the public with student and staff’s creative works in the form of a nationally award winning publication.

On Oct. 1, the magazine began accepting submissions, which are accepted in the form of short stories, poetry and visual art. SandScript will accept works through March 1.

Those interested must be a student, faculty member of staff at PCC. The submission form and guidelines for submission may be found at aztecpressonline.com/sandscript or by emailing the SandScript staff at sandscript@pima.edu.

-By Debbie Hadley