Arts and Culture

Arizona Opera opens enterprising RED Series with Frank Lloyd Wright production

Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home until his death in 1959, was one of eight of the iconic architect’s buildings named UNESCO World Heritage sites in July.

And now, two months later, Arizona Opera is set to premiere a new, “Taliesin West” version of the opera “Shining Brow” for Arizona audiences, chronicling the rise of a young Wright.

“What incredible timing, right?” says Joseph Specter, president and general director of the Arizona Opera. “I didn’t engineer that part. But I would have! UNESCO didn’t call me up and say, ‘Hey, Joe, what are you guys doing? Can we can we help you out?’”

This renewed version of the 1990s opera “Shining Brow” will premiere on Sept. 27 at the Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix, with additional performances on Sept. 28 and 29. The opera will also be performed at the Temple of Music and Art in Tucson Oct. 5 and 6. [Read more]

Flinn Foundation awards rural arts grants

Six Arizona arts-and-culture groups, from Globe to the international border, have received a combined $60,000 in grants as part of a Flinn Foundation-supported program designed to spur engagement between the small-town organizations and their communities. The Creative Communities Program supports arts-and-culture organizations in small and rural communities that have participated in the AZ Creative Communities Institute, a program of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design, and Southwest Folklife Alliance, a University of Arizona affiliate. [Read more]