A Perfect Fit: KINKY BOOTS and Dinner at Leatherby's Café Rouge

The Broadway show KINKY BOOTS that comes to the Center December 30 – January 11 was inspired by a true story. And the special KINKY BOOTS-themed menu at Leatherby’s Café Rouge is the inspiration of Executive Chef Ross Pangilinan. You can enjoy this delicious three-course prix fixe designer dinner before any evening performance of KINKY BOOTS in Segerstrom Hall. Leatherby’s Café Rouge is located in the beautiful Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, an easy walk across the Arts Plaza from the show – even in the most uncomfortable, albeit utterly fashionable, pair of shoes.

KINKY BOOTS 

DECEMBER 30, 2014 - JANUARY 11, 2015

FIRST

The Most Beautiful Thing

House cured Shetland's salmon, traditional garnishes

MAIN

Land of Lola

North Sea cod and corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots

DESSERT

Hold Me in Your Heart

Panettone bread budding, red wine poached pear,

candied orange sauce, Grand Marnier ice cream

45 per person 3 course menu

64 with wine pairing

MAKE YOUR RESERVATION | 714 429 7640

Executive Chef Ross Pangilinan

Menu subject to change

Even a Grinch Needs to Eat!

The Grinch may steal Christmas, but he will fall in love with the delicious menu that Leatherby’s Executive Chef Ross Pangilinan has planned for the holidays. In fact, to honor the arrival of DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! THE MUSICAL at Segerstrom Center from December 10 – 14, Leatherby’s Café Rouge in the Center’s Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall has a very special festive three-course prix fixe menu that will turn even the grinchiest Grinch into a pussycat. To take a peek at the special menu or to purchase tickets to DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! THE MUSICAL, click here.

DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! THE MUSICAL

DECEMBER 10 - 14

FIRST

Welcome, Christmas

Butternut squash soup with gifts – vanilla foam, sage, cranberry tempura, 

star anise crouton, parsnip chip, amaretti crumble, hazelnut soil

MAIN

Roast Beast

House porchetta, confit sweet potatoes, roasted market vegetables,

cranberry salsa verde, natural jus

DESSERT

Santa for a Day

"Milk and cookies"

45 per person 3 course menu

64 with wine pairing

MAKE YOUR RESERVATION | 714 429 7640

Executive Chef Ross Pangilinan

Menu subject to change

The Search for a Legendary Meal Stops at Leatherby's Café Rouge

In the Tony Award®-winning musical PIPPIN, the story is guided by the Leading Player as the young Prince Pippin searches for meaning and significance. This famous show in its new Broadway production comes to Segerstrom Center to open the 2014 – 2015 Broadway Series November 11 – 23. To help celebrate the occasion and to give meaning and significance to your culinary life, the leading player at Leatherby’s Café Rouge, Executive Chef Ross Pangilinan, has created a special menu inspired by the show. The three-course prix fixe menu is magic. To learn more about the PIPPIN menu and other special menus prepared by Chef Pangilinan for the other shows in the Center’s Broadway and Curtain Call Series, click here.

PIPPIN

NOVEMBER 11 - 23

FIRST

Magic to Do

Molecular beet salad, orange sphere, balsamic caviar, 

goat cheese gelée, pistachio powder, olive oil sorbet, beet air

MAIN

Prayer for a Duck

Muscovy duck breast, polenta cake, poached quince, pomegranate seed,

brussels sprout petals, truffle vinaigrette

DESSERT

Simple Joys

"Catherine royale," cinnamon swirl vanilla cake,

pumpkin ice cream

45 per person 3 course menu

64 with wine pairing

MAKE YOUR RESERVATION | 714 429 7640

Executive Chef Ross Pangilinan

Menu subject to change

A Whole New World

Historic collaboration brings musical theater programs to OC schools. First in a series. 

Segerstrom Center for the Arts and Disney Theatrical Group are off and running on an exciting new project, and four OC schools are bound to soon discover there may be something there that wasn’t there before. The Disney Musicals in the Schools program, the result of a $100,000 grant awarded by Disney to Segerstrom Center for the Arts last spring, recently dispatched eight teaching artists to four OC schools, where they will work with educators to produce a 30-minute Disney musical and lay the groundwork for ongoing musical theater programs.

Photo by Michael Kirsch

Training began with a flourish in our Studio Performance Space a few weeks ago with three days of intense instruction in which teaching artists were run through the paces of building an elementary school musical from the ground up. Directing, blocking and casting were just some of the elements featured in the sessions, the third day of which brought the actual classroom teachers from the four school sites in to the fray. 

Photo by Michael Kirsch

The four schools taking part include Eisenhower and Hill Elementary Schools in Garden Grove, Price Elementary in Anaheim and Rea Elementary in Costa Mesa. Teachers were given little time to stand on ceremony. “They had us jump right in,” Rea Elementary 2nd grade teacher Jessica DeLloyd told The OC Register. 

The 17-week program is free to participating schools and the goal is to bring substantial and meaningful encounters with the arts for students, building confidence and community, which in turn aims to enrich relationships and bolster motivation in academics.

It’s also going to be fun – and once that genie’s out of the bottle, he’s not going back in.

Out of the Background

Lisa Fischer. Photo by Chiaki Sato.

It's been a good year for Lisa Fischer. 

With the Oscar®-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom thrusting her into the national spotlight, Fischer now finds herself sharing that spotlight with Becca Stevens and Moira Smiley on tour with Billy Childs' Map to the Treasure, a jazz interpretation of the songs of Laura Nyro. 

They perform a show in the Samueli October 17th at 8 p.m. (Check ticket availability.)

Billy Childs. Photo by Javiera Estrada.

A Grammy®-winner as a solo artist in 1992 (for "How Will I Ease the Pain"), Fischer worked with the late Luther Vandross for 22 years and more recently with Sting, Tina Turner, Chris Botti, Nine Inch Nails and others. She has toured with The Rolling Stones since 1989, adding backing vocals before moving up front for the solo on the famous chorus of "Gimme Shelter." 

Now, Fischer, Childs, Stevens and Smiley are putting Nyro, who passed away in 1997, back in the spotlight with fresh versions of "And When I Die," "Save the Country," "Stoned Soul Picnic" and others. 

Read more about Billy Childs, the tour and the star-studded Map to the Treasure CD in this month's Revue. 

– Cristofer Gross

Only the Best for Orange County's Own

Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley

Much of Opera News magazine August edition is dedicated to Broadway. On the cover is a stunning Marin Mazzie, called “Broadway’s Brightest Light” by Opera News Features Editor and author Brian Kellow. In the story titled “What Mazzie Knows” by Kellow, he writes, “On September 26, 2005, in a one-night staged concert performance to benefit the Actors Fund of America, Marin Mazzie gave the greatest single performance I have experienced in the musical theater.“ For those who remember and are in the musical theater know, Mazzie and her also-star-quality husband Jason Danieley were sensations in the Center’s 2012 – 2013 Cabaret Series. They performed a special Valentine’s Day program. In addition to their performances in Samueli Theater, the celebrated couple conducted a master class for promising young Orange County artists who have their eyes on the Great White Way. 

Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley teach a master class in Samueli Theater.
Photo by Xuong Do.

The Center's Cabaret Series is a veritable constellation of vocal luminaries, Broadway and musical theater stars, including this year’s line-up of Tony Award® winners Brian Stokes Mitchell and Laura Benanti, Tony nominee and 14-time award winner from The Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs, singer-songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway, and Grammy Award® winners and recording legends Johnny Mathis and Judy Collins. 

Only the best for the Center’s audiences and stars-to-be!

Misty Copeland Recalls Center Triumph in New Autobiography

Misty Copeland and Roman Zhurbin in The Firebird.
Photo by Gene Schiavone.

Misty Copeland, soloist with American Ballet Theatre and one of the brightest young stars in the dance world, recently released her autobiography. Copeland was raised and studied dance in San Pedro. On page 242, she writes, “Before kicking off our season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, we debuted The Firebird on the road. Our first performances were at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, California. It was a homecoming....” The chapter goes on to quote Jean Lenihan’s LA Times blogged review: ”Ratmansky’s revised storyline and forward-backward movement idiom finally emerged clearly with second cast leads Misty Copeland and Herman Cornejo, a hypnotizing pair.... With them, the audience’s standing ovation was absolutely spontaneous.” 

Misty Copeland and Herman Cornejo in The Firebird.
Photo by Gene Schiavone.

The book is titled Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, and was written with Charisse Jones. 

The Center will present another ABT world premiere March 3 – 8, 2015. This will be the company’s new production of The Sleeping Beauty. And for the 2015 holidays, the Center will present ABT’s The Nutcracker for the first time outside of New York.