Spot 5

You might never think that Travis Struble and Valerie Cingle have had serious health problems. After all, these are two of the healthiest-looking and most positive people you could find, him a fitness trainer and professional bodybuilder, her a fitness instructor with a glowing personality. They are both devoted to helping their clients live…

Slide guitarist and State College native Jason Tutwiler does it all. He plays in four bands, gives guitar lessons to interested musicians in the area, and writes and records music. Tutwiler makes it look easy, but he takes his work to heart and has a passion for music and performing. Tutwiler began playing guitar…

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, one of the world’s most celebrated musicians, will appear at Penn State for only the third time when he performs in concert with pianist Kathryn Stott November 3 at Eisenhower Auditorium. Ma, whose career is defined by an insatiable desire to find musical connections across cultures, and Stott, a fixture on…

“A master of visual composition” (Dance Magazine), choreographer Jessica Lang transforms ballet language into artfully crafted, emotionally engaging contemporary works. Lang is the artistic director of Jessica Lang Dance, a New York City-based company formed in 2011 after the choreographer and former member of Twyla Tharp’s company, THARP!, received a 2010 Joyce Theater Artist…

Bang on a Can All-Stars, which performed Julia Wolfe’s John Henry-inspired Steel Hammer at Penn State in 2009, returns to Eisenhower Auditorium March 30 for a concert featuring Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio Anthracite Fields. Penn State Concert Choir will join Bang on a Can for the performance. Anthracite Fields commemorates the history of the…

For some young people, life can seem like an endless ordeal. A new multimedia play by En Garde Arts, the company that brought Basetrack Live to Penn State in 2014, juxtaposes projected interviews with real people and actors on stage to tell the stories of teenagers and young adults grappling with addiction, depression, anxiety,…

Brooklyn Babylon isn’t an easy show to explain, but it’s an amazing one to experience. The multimedia production, coming to Penn State’s Eisenhower Auditorium February 28, simultaneously uses live instrumental music, animation, and live painting to communicate a story about the tallest tower in the world being built in a mythic Brooklyn. Brooklyn…

They come from a land down under, and, according to a San Francisco Chronicle reviewer, their brand of show business is “a bit punk, undeniably in your face, refreshingly progressive, unapologetically off-color, and gleefully Australian.” They’re the performers of Circus Oz, a rock ’n’ roll, animal-free troupe that has, since its creation in Melbourne…

A New York Times critic describes Bria Skonberg as “the shining hope of hot jazz, on the strength of a clarion trumpet style indebted to Louis Armstrong, a smooth purr of a singing voice inspired by Anita O’Day, and the wholesome glow of youth.” Skonberg’s album, Bria, her major-label debut released in September, includes…

The Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth is out to discover how far human voices can stretch. Through study with masters from traditions the world over, the eight-voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques, and through an ongoing commissioning process, it forges a new repertoire without borders. The group, which…