Joan Baez, Oliver Mtukudzi, Errol Morris, more in Union Theater's 2010-11 season
Oliver Mtukudzi will play the Union Theater March 10, 2011.
The lineup the Wisconsin Union Theater announced Thursday night for its 2010 season will, as always, focus on jazz, world music, and classical music. It will also, as always, boast some surprises. Joan Baez, a folk legend who's still mighty (at least to judge from her show last year at the Barrymore Theatre), is scheduled to play the theater on Oct. 8. A clear highlight of the theater's always-pivotal slate of international music is Acoustic Africa, a March 10, 2011 concert that will feature three important guitarist-singers from the continent: Zimbabwe's Oliver Mtukudzi, Malian Habib Koite, and also-Malian Afel Bocoum. The latter served for a long time in the legendary Ali Farka Toure's band. The biggest non-musical event on the docket seems to be filmmaker Errol Morris' (Standard Operating Procedure, Vernon, Florida, The Fog Of War, and many other important documentaries) lecture at the Union Theater on October 21.
The lineups for the annual, free World Music Festival (Sept. 23-25) and Isthmus Jazz Festival (June 3-4) are still in the works, but the Theater did announce that vocalist Tierney Sutton will headline the Jazz Fest in a ticketed performance on June 5. Other highlights include the Fete De Louisiane (Feb. 11, 2011, with Cajun acts Feufollet and Cedric Watson), Gaelic Storm (Feb. 19, 2011), jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves (April 8, 2011), a two-night run of the Tony-winning musical Spring Awakening (Oct. 23-24), and the Travel Adventure Film Series. We'll be getting the entire season into our listings soon, and covering some of it more closely as it goes on, but for now you can browse it all at the Union Theater's website.
