ENTERTAINMENT
May 30, 2012 | By Mike Boehm
A two-year effort to bring Italian opera to south Orange County will come to fruition Wednesday with the opening of the three-night Tuscia Operafestival at the Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo. Organizers of the festival, an annual summer event in Viterbo, Italy, first announced in 2010 that they hoped to present a three-week festival that September at a harbor-front park in Dana Point. Logistical and funding problems ensued, and the focus shifted to Soka University, where a new 1,034-seat performing arts center opened last year.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 30, 2012 | By David Ng
The new season at the Soka Performing Arts Center in Orange County will feature appearances by the Warsaw Philharmonic, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Vancouver Symphony, as well as by pianists Jeremy Denk and Joyce Yang, and cellist Alisa Weilerstein. The venue, which is the newest classical hall in Southern California, opened last year at Soka University in Aliso Viejo. The 2012-13 season is set to begin in September. Soka's symphony series will include the Warsaw Philharmonic, with pianist Yulianna Avdeeva (Nov.
ENTERTAINMENT
September 17, 2011
Soka Performing Arts Center Where: Soka University, 1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo When: Opens 8 p.m. Saturday with Pacific Symphony concert Full schedule and ticket information: http://www.performingarts.soka.edu
ENTERTAINMENT
September 17, 2011 | MARK SWED, MUSIC CRITIC
There is something new under the South Orange County sun. The Soka Performing Arts Center, which opens Saturday night with a gala concert by the Pacific Symphony, may seem but a modestly budgeted $73-million facility at a small, little-known 10-year-old private liberal arts college The facility at Soka University of America, tucked away in the hills of Aliso Viejo, consists of a multipurpose hall of about 1,000 seats and a black box named Nelson...
ENTERTAINMENT
August 6, 2011 | By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times
The new Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo will debut Sept. 17, offering what appear to be by far the lowest major-venue ticket prices in the region, for its opening season of 23 shows. The 1,034-seat hall features acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, famed for his work on such projects as Walt Disney Concert Hall. Jazz, classical music and world music will be the main fare at the $73-million auditorium and arts classroom complex on the Orange County campus of Soka University, a small liberal arts institution affiliated with the Tokyo-based Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 2, 2011 | By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times
What the San Fernando Valley is celebrating this week ? the debut of a major performing arts center that figures to be a source of enjoyment and pride for an area that had been short on cultural bragging rights ? is on the agenda for southern Orange County too. In Aliso Viejo, a small but wealthy private school, Soka University of America, has begun the countdown toward October, when it expects the first public notes to sound in its Soka Performing Arts Center. Construction has been completed on the 1,034-seat auditorium that, together with a companion building for arts classrooms, studios and offices, cost $73 million (the Valley Performing Arts Center, at 1,700 seats plus an educational building, cost $125 million)