First Night Austin Schedule 2-5pm Family Festival 5:30-6:30pm Grand Procession 7pm Family Finale at City Hall 7-11:30pm Evening programming Midnight Grand Finale First Night Austin takes over downtown this Sunday, kicking off the second annual festival with three hours of family-friendly activities, performances, and art installations. From hip hop freestyling to Appalachian-style clog dancing, there promises to be enough culturally-rich distractions to entertain even that obnoxious nephew of yours who'd rather stay home to......

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If it’s still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage. Tonight Alamo Music Mondays presents Sound Unbound Volume 2, a film examining American avant-garde composers from the late 1940s through to the early 1980s. Through extensive interviews, performance footage and video art, the film focuses on experimental musicians (including John Cage, Philip......

Austin Lyric Opera has one more performance of Madame Butterfly tonight. We attended the Saturday opera, and while we weren't blown away, we weren't disappointed, either. Madame Butterfly is Giacomo Puccini's tale of a Japanese geisha done wrong by an American sailor, Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. Pinkerton marries a young Cio-Cio San (aka Butterfly), mainly to sleep with her. He explains to his friend that upon his return to America, he will marry a......

This weekend the Austin Lyric Opera presents their production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly to open their twentieth season. This early twentieth-century opera is still quite popular; it has been one of the most-performed operas in North America for the past twenty years. Set in 1904, the Italian opera tells the story of a young Japanese girl who falls in love with (and marries) an American sailor in Japan. They make beautiful music together, she......

FRIDAY 28 [music] Ghostland Observatory, Glass Family, Clap! Clap! and Crash Gallery at Emo's (info) [music] White Ghost Shivers (CD Release Ball) with The Small Stars at The Parish Room (info) [music] Texas Sapphires at Waterloo Records (Free, 5pm) (info) [music] Joe Satriani at The Paramount Theatre (8pm) (info) [music] Southern Culture on the Skids at Continental Club (Through Sunday!, 11:30pm) (info) [music] My Education and Cue at Blue Theatre ($6) (info) [music/food] ATX Fest,......

We are the Walrus. We are the Eggman. We are a shameless, self-promoting, self-interested no-goodnik with nothing but themselves at heart. We also have difficulty conjugating verbs while writing in the royal “we”. Why all the self-loathing? Because we've picked ourselves as the Austinist pick of the week! Even though Austin Lyric Opera is celebrating Mozart's 250th birthday by performing what is arguably the best opera ever written.... Even though Austin Shakespeare Festival, upon......

This weekend, the Austin Lyric Opera presents their production of Don Giovanni, the opera which many composers and philosophers have believed to be the best opera ever. We have never seen this opera live, so are looking forward to this performance. The music will be good, because, well it is Mozart. The story is that of Don Juan, so we are all vaguely familiar with it. Don Giovanni seduces the gals and makes 'em......

What a possible travesty! Might the Texas Commission on the Arts -- provider of grants, information, and technical assistance to artists and arts organizations in visual arts, theatre, dance, music, media and literature -- be destroyed? The organization, which has been the primary source of governmental funding of the arts in Texas for over forty years, was under the Sunset review this year, a process all state agencies undergo every 12 years to determine whether......

FRIDAY [24][music] Stereolab at La Zona Rosa (9pm) (link) [music] Car Stereo (Wars) Dance Party! at PLUSH, with album giveaways from The Cloud Room, DJ sets by Chris Rose and Adreon Henry. Check out their SXSW photo recap on their website. (Free, 10pm - 2am) (link) [opera/music] Austin Lyric Opera presents "Lights, Camera, Opera" -- opera-inspired film clips with live commentary, music by the White Ghost Shivers, the TX Rollergirls and more -- at Austin......

Starting off Austin's year-long celebration of Shostakovich's 100th birthday, the Austin Lyric Opera is performing Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It's a happy little story of murder, lust, sex, violence, and women's rights(?). At least, that's we gleaned from this synopsis. Our pal in the opera (who will doing some off-stage screaming in Austin's version) tells us this production is not for the kiddoes, so be warned. We haven't heard any music from the opera,......

This is a post from our new contributor, Elizabeth... We love A Night at the Opera, the Marx Brothers film from 1935. In the film the Brothers ruin and then save a production of "Il Trovatore", Verdi's great opus with its "Anvil Chorus". So far, this is our limited experience with this opera. We are hoping to change that this weekend when the Austin Lyric Opera starts off their 19th season with a production......

Austin took a big leap forward earlier this week in its goal to become a major performing arts powerhouse before the next decade. The ambitious Long Center - which when completed in 2008 will consolidate the Austin Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Austin, and Austin Lyric Opera as well as serve as an exhibition space for hundreds of local artists and organizations - received $500,000 from the Dallas-based Meadows Foundation. This brings the total level of......

Think you have to leave town to to get your fix of High Culture? Think again. Our little hamlet is one of a select number of US cities that boasts an Art Museum, a Ballet, a Symphony Orchestra, as well as an Opera! Starting today and running through this Monday, May 2, Austin Lyric Opera is putting on a production of The Marriage of Figaro at the Bass Concert Hall. Your choice of showtime and......