Defining Season Maine Center for the Arts rolls out impressive 2001-2002 lineup

This is a good year to stop and take stock of the role the Maine Center for the Arts plays in the cultural life of the community. It imports world-class acts so that, in the dead of winter, when airline service is even worse than it is any other time of the year, you only have to go as far as your own back yard, or perhaps a jaunt on the interstate, to be connected to a dialogue with the blues, with Schoenberg, with Jacob Marley and Eliza Doolittle.

Kicking off its 2001-02 performance series Sept. 7, MCA is celebrating its 15th anniversary season of bringing the unlikely, the classical, the outrageous and the enlightening to the far reaches of the Northeast. After this season, the promise is that the MCA will only get better – after closing in May 2002 for a $9 million renovation lasting 16 months. Organizers are being spirited and clever about finding alternative spaces for events during the building’s hiatus, and you can count on them making good use of the situation to uphold the well-established tradition of quality programming.

In the meantime, calendar dates are set for a coming season that is rich with music and theater, global with dance and spectacle, and mindful of the blend it takes to achieve the valued contribution to quality of life that has been the vision of the MCA since the beginning.

This year’s gala on Oct. 13 features the worthy talent of Mandy Patinkin, whose first appearance on Broadway, as Che in “Evita” won a Tony Award. Patinkin is what you might call a triple threat – he can sing, he can dance and he can do it all in Yiddish if he wants. Plus he was a knockout on the TV hospital drama “Chicago Hope,” for which he won an Emmy. His touring show “Mandy Patinkin: In Concert,” which includes pianist Paul Ford, is sure to show his intense interpretations of popular standards.

While Patinkin is probably the best-known celebrity in this year’s lineup, the season also has a lengthy list of top-notch performers including the touring country music melange of John Berry, Suzy Bogguss and Billy Dean (Sept. 7), all of whom have released new recordings recently; the folk-pop chanteuse Shawn Colvin (Oct. 16), who was on the rise the last time she appeared at the MCA several years ago and has now become a singer-songwriter of solid standing; the 1960s baritone and folk guitarist Gordon Lightfoot on March 30; and Irish music king Tommy Makem, who will appear with the Makem Brothers on April 13.

Other music acts include Buckwheat Zydeco (Feb. 22), a leading proponent of the grass-roots Cajun music that does not suffer seated audiences gladly; the holiday sparkle of Canadian Brass (Dec. 14); “All Over Blues” (Nov. 19), which shows off the considerable legacy of the Muddy Water Tribute Band, Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson and others; and the Turtle Island String Quartet (Feb. 24), whose eclectic performances are both unpredictable and entirely reliable when it comes to talent and innovation. The group will be accompanied by Cuban jazz legend Paquito D’Rivera.

For the classical music lovers, there’s also a formidable lineup beginning with pianist Peter Serkin’s Schoenberg/Haydn Project (Oct. 24), a juxtaposition of music styles, performed by 10 internationally noted musicians. Pamela Frank, whose violin playing has been a favorite on the MCA stage, will perform with her violinist-violist husband Alexander Simionescu on Jan 20. The last time they performed locally together, it was just before their wedding, and sparks flew between them onstage. You can bet they have refined their fireworks even more in the two years that have passed.

Borrowing its name from the Wallace Stevens’ poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the six-person chamber group eighth blackbird (March 3) has had a huge wingspread in the classical music scene. Awarded the 2000 Walter W. Naumberg Foundation Award, the group is clearly on a whirling sky-high flight that has won regard as virtuoso, imaginative and driven.

The most popular music events are sure to be performances of a new version of the musicals “My Fair Lady” (Nov. 9) and “Annie Get Your Gun” (Jan. 18) as well as London City Opera’s “The Merry Widow” (Feb. 7). A new version of “Cinderella” (two shows Nov. 7) by the Philadelphia-based Landis & Company will be performed for schoolchildren, and “Scrooge” (Dec. 8 and 9), a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” will be the principle Christmas event for families.

Several months after the holidays, however, MCA will present “Jacob’s Folly” (March 8, 9 and 10) about Scrooge’s business partner Jacob Marley. A work-in-progress, the musical is a collaboration between John Dennis, a playwright and filmmaker at the University of Maine at Machias, and composer, conductor and musician John Haskell.

Additional theater presentations include an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” (Oct. 28) by Vermont’s Weston Playhouse; and Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson” (April 23) by the Acting Company.

But one would not want to leave Bill T. Jones out of descriptions of theater experiences. With the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the renowned choreographer will return to the MCA with “D-Man in the Water” (Feb. 12), an exploration of disparate cultures and longing with, as always, an aesthetic focus on sensual movement and beauty. There will also be outreach activities the day before and the day after the performance.

Four other dance companies bring movement from around the world, plus from the United States. The American Indian Dance Theatre (Oct. 10), which presents traditional American Indian dances; Ballet Gran Folklorico de Mexico (Nov. 1), with a presentation of 1,000 years of culture from Mexico; the Grigorovich Ballet (March 28), founded by Yuri Grigorovich, a former artistic director and chief choreographer for the Bolshoi Ballet; and a production of “Copelia” (April 9) by Ballet Jorgen out of Canada.

Spectacle events for the season include a second visit by the working-class muscle performance “Tap Dogs” (two shows Sept. 29) and the breathtaking derring-do of the New Shanghai Circus on Feb. 3.

For information on any of the performances, call 581-1755 or 1-800-MCA-TIXX. Information is also available online at www.MaineCenterfortheArts.org.