Experience the Impact of Live Music

The Jazz and Creative Institute Faculty Ensemble
featuring Greg Jasperse

April 3, 2020
$50 includes drink ticket and dessert
Cocktails and Dessert 7:30pm, Performance 8:00pm

Our lobby is transformed into an intimate club setting for the Jazz & Creative Institute Faculty Ensemble. These hot young artists serve up cool standards and original tunes. Rounding out the band is noted vocalist (and WMU faculty) Greg Jasperse bringing fresh song stylings.

From bebop to modern jazz, you’re in for an evening of unforgettable entertainment.

Based in Kalamazoo, the Jazz & Creative Institute is a unique, comprehensive learning environment of performing artists and students from ages 6 through 86. From individual instruction and mentorship to weekly group playing opportunities to jam sessions or masterclasses alongside professional musician faculty artists, the JCI’s professional faculty foster a community environment for learning and collaboration. JCI faculty have been hand-selected and vetted from dozens of applicants — 95% of them have a masters degree in performance and are currently working as a professional artist. Jazz faculty are cross-trained across many genres and are adept at improvisation.

“Heart & Soul” is hosted by Shirley Sutton & Dick Shaw, Pat & Larry Sharp, Kim Redlin & Phillip Crump, Mary Terzino & Gregg Potter, and Anthony & Susan Pastor. Our hosts are passionate about the SCA’s Growing Young Artists program which gives K-8th grade migrant and at-risk students important creative educational opportunities.

They invite you to join them to support Growing Young Artists and make a difference for these too often forgotten young people in our community.

Founding member of The Wailin’ Jennys, Cara Luft teams with JD Edwards to bring The Small Glories to Saugatuck on April 18th. NPR Music says, “Luft is a Wailin’ Jennys alum whose work on the clawhammer banjo is to die for, while Edwards’ guitar and vocal harmonies deepen and enrich the duo’s sound.”

Roots powerhouse duo The Small Glories are a musical tour-de-force partnership planted on the Canadian Prairies. Thrown together purely by accident for an anniversary show at Winnipeg’s venerable West End Cultural Centre, The Small Glories could almost make you believe in fate. With a stage banter striking a unique balance between slapstick and sermon, these veteran singer-songwriters have a way of making time disappear, rooms shrink, and audiences feel as though they are right there on the stage with the band.

It’s not uncommon for listeners to find themselves laughing, dancing, crying, or caught up in a good ol’ fashioned sing-along. Their material is welcoming in terms of subject, folk-pop melody and instrumentation — songs of love, loss, and environment, delivered with soaring, interwoven vocals on various combinations of stomping clawhammer banjo, guitar, and harmonica.

The SCA is thrilled to partner with the Gilmore Keyboard Festival to present its 2020 Young Artist, Maxim Lando! Maxim is a 16-year-old pianist who loves to make people smile. His passion for classical music has already set him on an exciting path of performing. Maxim’s most recent accolade is the prestigious 2020 Gilmore Young Artist Award, presented every two years to single out the most promising of the new generation of U.S. based pianists, age 22 and younger. Dedicated to making classical music accessible to his own generation, Maxim Lando has been featured on international radio and television programming. He first received international attention in 2017, appearing to perform the parts intended for Lang Lang’s injured left hand at Carnegie Hall’s Gala Opening Night; Chick Corea joined them for an unprecedented three-pianist version of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Mr. Lando won First Prize and four special prizes at the 2018 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. He has performed with major orchestras of the world including symphonies of Pittsburgh, Toronto, Vancouver, Hawaii, throughout Russia, Kazakhstan, Israel, and China. In 2020 Mr. Lando will also appear as soloist with the Neubrandenburger Philharmonie, and the Westmoreland, Lansing, Fort Smith, and Wheeling Symphonies. He opens the 2019-20 Young Concert Artists Series with recital debuts at Carnegie Hall and at the Kennedy Center. Maxim Lando is the 2019 Artemisia Laureate, an Artemisia Akademie Fellow at Yale University alumnus, and winner of the Gold Medal at the 2017 Berlin International Music Competition. He is a proud alumnus of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation and has been a student at Juilliard Pre-College since the age of 11. This rising star’s special guest performance in Saugatuck is a BONUS Hempy Keyboard Series event.

Platinum Hit-Makers, Orleans, Head to Saugatuck on May 23! Praised by their peers for their songwriting skills, instrumental prowess and classic trademark harmonies, their iconic radio hits, including “Still The One”, “Dance With Me” and “Love Takes Time,” still resonate with audiences of all ages thanks to continued airplay.

Since its humble beginnings in Woodstock NY and throughout countless worldwide tours, Orleans has set standards respected by other musicians. In 2020, Orleans will continue to meet and exceed those standards at every show, to the delight of audiences everywhere.

The Capitol Steps, a Washington DC-based comedy troupe that began as a group of Senate Staffers, will present a show based on songs from their current album “The Lyin’ Kings” at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts on July 6, 2020.

What better time to see the Capitol Steps, the group that put the “mock” in “democracy” than now, with election season approaching? Don’t miss songs about the Democratic primary candidates (“76 Unknowns”) and the newest late-night thoughts from President Trump (“Tweet It”). No one knows what the next election will bring, but whether it’s Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Beto O’Rourke, the Capitol Steps can tell you what rhymes with it! Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican (or somewhere in-between), if you’ve ever wanted to see Donald Trump sing a rock song, Bernie Sanders sing a show tune, and Vladimir Putin dance shirtless…this is the show for you!

Since they began, the Capitol Steps have recorded over 30 albums, including their latest, Orange Is the New Barack. They’ve been featured on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS, and can be heard twice a year on National Public Radio stations nationwide during their Politics Takes a Holiday radio specials.

July 23 | 8PM | $46 Advance | $49 Day of the Show

From the #1 rated NPR show, “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me”!”, Paula Poundstone returns to the Saugatuck Center for the Arts on Thursday, July 23.

Paula Poundstone is a humorist, author and comedian known for her clever, observational humor and spontaneous wit. Paula’s stand-up credentials are endless: Cats, Cops and Stuff; Goes to Harvard; Look What the Cat Dragged In; and numerous television appearances including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Last Call with Carson Daly, Late Show with David Letterman and HBO specials.

Famously, Paula provided backstage commentary during the 1992 presidential election on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and was the first woman to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Paula can be heard on the big screen as “Forgetter Paula” in Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out, winner of the 2017 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. She has also starred in her own series on both HBO and ABC, is included on Comedy Central’s Top 100 Comics of All Time and won an American Comedy Award for Best Female Stand-Up. In February 2019, Paula’s stand-up special, Cats, Cops and Stuff was named by TIME Magazine and Tig Notaro as one of The 5 Funniest Stand-Up Specials Ever.

15 years and 1 million secrets….
Join Frank Warren for a special evening of secrets and stories from his internationally acclaimed PostSecret project.

A growing collection of more than 1 million secrets, mailed anonymously on hand-made postcards, PostSecret Live! features some of the funniest, most touching, most revealing secrets from the project. Warren also shares extraordinary behind the scenes stories of interactions with secret-sharers and the “PostSecret family” that has evolved through the years.

Guests at the event will have an opportunity to share their own never-before-told secrets as Frank helps curate stories and conversation. As Frank says, “secrets are powerful, vulnerable, and the currency of intimacy.”

Don’t miss this deeply moving, deeply personal, deeply communal PostSecret event in our intimate 400-seat theater!

6:30pm VIP reception with Frank Warren
(includes a meet-and-greet with Frank + 1 drink ticket with a cash bar available)

8:00pm PostSecret Live! Event
PostSecret Live! event