04-06-2011 Arts In April

South Arkansas Community College’s Arts in April celebration will bring a month-long amalgam of visual arts, music, written work and performances to El Dorado.

Jazz musician Gary Brown’s Noon Symposium on April 8 will be in Room 121 of the Center for Workforce Development on the East Campus. Brown has collaborated with such artists as Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Joe Cocker and the Bee Gees. He spent years as a live saxophone performer in New Orleans before being displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Brown now lives in Monroe, La.  The symposium is free and open to the public. Call (870) 864-7192 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.

A cast of SouthArk players will perform Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “The Mikado” at 7 p.m. on April 8-9 and at 3 p.m. on April 10 at the South Arkansas Arts Center.  Tickets are $10 for the general public and free for students with valid identification, on sale at the SouthArk Bookstore and the arts center. For more information call Victoria Harden (870) 864-7176.

Ballet Arkansas will appear in El Dorado for the first time at 7 p.m. on April 14 at the El Dorado Municipal Auditorium. This program is supported in part by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, and by the National Endowment for the Arts. Six dancers will perform numbers from two different shows.  Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for teenaged students with an ID; children age 12 and younger will be admitted free. Tickets are on sale at the SouthArk Bookstore.

The 14th annual Writers’ Ink awards ceremony is at 2 p.m. on April 17 at the El Dorado Conference Center. About 350 Union County high-school students participated in SouthArk’s creative-writing contest, with 47 selected for publication in Writers’ Ink, a literary magazine published by the college. All winners have been invited to read their work at the ceremony.  The event is free and open to the public.

The SouthArk Singers will be featured in an end-of-semester concert, which also will present SouthArk’s piano and voice students, at 5 p.m. on April 27 at the Library Auditorium.  This event is free and open to the public.

SouthArk art students will present their annual Starving Student Artists Exhibit and Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 25-27 at the EDCC. The sale will feature artwork completed as class projects as well as special projects that students have done on their own.  For more information about Arts in April, call Phil Ballard at (870) 864-7156.