Weekend Update: April 2010 Archives

Last week the Rossini Festival street fair and productions by both Knoxville Opera and UT Opera Theatre made for a busy weekend. There's just as much to do this weekend.

• Walking With the Dinosaurs at Thompson-Boling Arena on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday--as close as your going to get to seeing real-life dinosaurs anytime soon

• Indie-folk singer Josephine Foster (above) at Pilot Light tonight at 10 p.m. On her most recent album, Graphic as a Star, Foster has set several Emily Dickinson poems to music.

• UT's annual spring concert, Volapalooza, moves from Fraternity Row to World's Fair Park this year with electro-pop group Passion Pit, Celtic rockers Flogging Molly, and novelty rapper Asher Roth. The concert starts at 7 p.m. tonight. Tickets are free for UT students, $15 for everybody else.

• Mitch Easter, the guy who produced the first two R.E.M. albums with Don Dixon and fronted the classic North Carolina college rock band Let's Active for most of the 1980s, is playing at Barley's Taproom on Saturday night. The Tim Lee 3 and Angela Faye Martin, whose new album Pictures From Home was one of the last projects Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous worked on before committing suicide in March, are opening.

• Self-deprecating TV comedian Kathy Griffin is performing two shows at the Tennessee Theatre on Saturday. The first show, at 7 p.m., is already sold out, but tickets are still available for the 9 p.m. set. The performances are being recorded for an upcoming special on Bravo. 

• Rossini opera returns to the Rossini Festival with Knoxville Opera's The Barber of Seville, starring Knoxville native and Metropolitan Opera veteran Kevin Burdette, on Friday and Sunday at the Tennessee Theatre.



• It's been a hard year so far for the San Francisco black metal band Ludicra--a national tour was canceled and guitarist John Cobbett had a really bad case of appendicitis. But they're back on the road in support of their majestic new album, The Tenant, and play at Pilot Light with Argentinum Astrum tonight.


 
• Get your BBQ on at Pork Knox Q-Fest at World's Fair Park on Friday evening and all day Saturday.
 
• Rossini Festival Street Fair: Knoxville's biggest street fair, with everything from funnel cakes and corn dogs to opera.
 
• UT Opera pitches in for the Rossini weekend with two short opera productions at the Bijou Theatre on Saturday and Sunday: Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Stephen Paulus' The Village Singer.
 
• The organizers of the Knoxville Jazz Festival, scheduled for Aug. 26-28, are releasing a compilation of local jazz music, Tenors and Satin, this weekend. You can pick up a copy for $15 at the release party at the S&W Grand on Sunday afternoon (it starts at 5 p.m.). You can read more about the recordings here and here.