The Seasons

A couple of Rifftides readers have asked if there is a website for The Seasons, the nifty 400-seat performance hall in Yakima, Washington, my current home town. The Pacific Northwest of the United States is a wonderful place to visit. It is unlikely that many of you have immediate plans to come here, especially those in, say, Beijing, Perth or Oslo. Nonetheless, click here to be transported to The Seasons site and see its intriguing artist lineup for the next few months. Perhaps you'll decide to hop a plane and come. If you do, please let me know. We'll tour a few of the Yakima Valley's world-class wineries.

Recent performances I have attended included splendid concerts by Tierney Sutton and her band, the Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos Neto and his Quartet, and the Thomas Marriott Quartet. I am told that in addition to the musicians listed on the website, Kenny Barron, Meredith d'Ambrosio, Miguel Zenon, and Luciana Souza (with Romero Lubambo) will all be playing The Seasons before the year is out. The Bill Mays Trio, which inaugurated the hall, will be back, and Mays is likely to cross over and perform the stirring finale from Mendelssohn's Trio in D Minor with The Seasons' classical artists-in-residence, the Finesterra Trio.

Not bad for a city of 75,000 on the unpopulous side of the Cascade Mountains in the upper left corner of the country. The sky, by the way, is nearly always as blue as you see it in the photograph above; this is the non-rainy side of the Cascades. (Full disclosure: I am not in the employ of the Yakima Chamber of Commerce. I am a volunteer advisor on talent matters to The Seasons nonprofit management and sometimes give unpaid pre-concert talks. They get me in free.)

For previous Rifftides postings about music at The Seasons, go here and here.