In cooperation with
Yavapai College Performing Arts Center
Carmen Elisa Cancél
& Jean Sophie Kim
“So…Is This a Date?”
Saturday, Feb 15, 2020 7:00 PM
$20 Advance, $22 Door, $25 Priority Seating
Buy tickets online at ShowTix4U.com
Through amusing (and often hilarious) “bad date” stories and song, soprano Carmen Elisa Cancél (Handel’s Messiah, Let The Season Begin!) and New York pianist/singer Jean Sophie Kim wrap their vocal and musical skills around the glory, the grind, and the heartbreak of dating in the postmodern age. It's an engaging tale of the glory and embarrassment found in the quest for a truly romantic life.
So...Is This a Date? was born of a desire to express our surprise and bewilderment at the rapidly changing dating landscape. Until very recently there was a loose script for courting, and we all knew the story: subtle flirting, less subtle flirting, increasingly shameless flirting, consulting friends/ hairdresser/bartenders about the risks of asking someone to go out with you, holding your breath while blatantly manipulating someone to ask you out, choosing a fetching outfit to withstand an evening of dinner, drinking, backseats of cabs, and the bleary-eyed walk of shame. You know, a fairy tale.
However, in our post-post-modern age, choosing prospective dates is about as exciting as choosing what you want to eat for dinner and Instagramming about it, or browsing those online food-ordering options. Should you choose one as exciting as that gluten-free salad (Mom would soooo like him)? Or indulge in one as impossibly decadent as a chocolate Gianduja layer cake (amazing for all the wrong reasons)? Or try the salted caramel (hope those aren’t the tears of his children). Every day brings a new purgatorio as you scan the faces of would-be partners. Suddenly, you feel ravenous. Should you try everything?
How can we enjoy pursuing and being pursued when the quest for a mate is reduced to swiping through so many options, as if we are shopping for dinner, mattresses, or skinny jeans? The hunt for a mate is positively unsporting in this age of GPS and night-vision goggles. It’s time to pull the plug on your phone and get back to the time-honored devices. Stop living up to (or down to) the standard set by your social media pages. And if the excitement of dating has nearly disappeared, you’ll just have to admit that you too miss the romance, the passion, and the chances.
In So...Is This a Date? Carmen and Jean share the glory and the embarrassment in their quest for a truly romantic life, or at least some good stories about bad dates.
JEAN SOPHIE KIM is a pianist, singer and conductor in New York City. She has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber player throughout the world. She has performed at the Alcazar Palace in Seville, Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall in New York, Fine Arts Building in Chicago and the Banff Centre in Canada, among others. As a choral conductor she works with the Grammy Award winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus. She has conducted at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn College, Leonard and Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts, and the Roulette Theater.
In addition to her work as a classical musician, she has begun a foray into the commercial world as a vocal producer collaborating with producer David Maurice of Foxglove Studios. As an improviser of different styles, she has been able to perform as a singer/pianist at the Montparnasse Piano Bar in Mykonos, Greece. In the fall of 2018, she was part of the creative team for David Lang’s Mile Long Opera assisting Directors Elizabeth Diller and Lynsey Peisinger which was performed by a thousand singers on New York’s High Line Park. Jean has earned degrees from the University of Western Ontario and Manhattan School of Music. Ms. Kim also teaches at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College, where she teaches music theory. musicianship skills and piano. She also maintains a private studio of piano, voice and music theory students in Manhattan.
CARMEN ELISA CANCÉL hailed as a singer possessing a “crystalline timbre and intense acting ability,” (L'Arena, Verona, Italy) Puerto Rican soprano, Carmen Elisa Cancél, has excelled in opera, musical theater, and cabaret. Ms. Cancél was proclaimed “flawless” and “completely believable” (Creative Loafing Tampa) in her performance as the title character of Maria’s Song, a musical drama focused on the desperate need for immigration reform in the US. Ms. Cancél enjoyed success as Sarraghina in Maury Yeston’s Nine with the Intermezzo Festival in Bruges, Belgium.
She has also performed in Don Giovanni, La Bohème, Le nozze di Figaro, Show Boat, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Street Scene, and a reworked play version of Maria's Song at Players Theatre in NYC. No stranger to the concert stage, Ms. Cancél has sung the soprano solos in Handel's Messiah and Pergolesi's Stabat Mater as well as the Requiems of Fauré and John Rutter. Her singing has taken her throughout the US, Europe, and Latin America. Currently, Ms. Cancél is co-producer of the Washington Heights Arts Salon series in NYC. In addition to performing, Ms. Cancél enjoys teaching voice and music theory through her private vocal studio in NYC, and she is also a teaching artist for Singnasium, where she teaches group music classes on vocal technique, vocal ensemble singing, and classical vocal literature.
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