SEATTLE

Seattle's Winter Festivals

Seattle's Winter Festivals

Introduction

Seattle, although a relatively new city, is a significant center for the performing arts. The century-old Seattle Symphony Orchestra is among the world's most recorded orchestras.[2] The Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet, are comparably distinguished. On at least two occasions, Seattle's local popular music scene has burst into the national and even international consciousness, first with a major contribution to garage rock in the mid-1960s, and later as the home of grunge rock in the early 1990s. The city has about twenty live theater venues, and Pioneer Square is one of the country's most prominent art gallery districts.

19th Century

The entertainments in Seattle in its first decade were typical of similar frontier towns. The first established place of entertainment was Henry Yesler's one-story 30 feet (9.1 m) x 100 feet (30.5 m) hall (built 1865), which hosted monologuists, Swiss bellringers, phrenologists and the like(Jones, 2004). The first professional play in the city was an 1871 production of Uncle Tom's Cabin; numerous Tom Shows would play Seattle in the following years, including one with an entirely African American cast. The first local theater company was the short-lived John Jack Theatrical Company, whose performances in the late 1870s received generally unfavorable reviews.

The Ladies' Musical Club, founded 1891, quickly became an institution. Active members had to pass an audition. Well into the 20th century it would play a prominent part role in Seattle culture, and still exists as of 2008.

Early 20th century

Success in the Gold Rush era made several box house entrepreneurs think of grander things. John Considine and Alexander Pantages pioneered vaudeville circuits; John Cort became a leading impresario of legitimate theater, at one time controlling more quality theaters around the country than anyone else in America(Morgan, 2008). It would be many decades before Seattle ever again had a comparable impact on American arts and entertainment to what it had in these years.

Although Seattle in the early 20th century was more of a center for variety shows and vaudeville than for the high arts, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (SSO) was founded in 1903. Nor was the SSO alone: there were two separate Seattle Musical Arts societies, a Schubert Society, and a Seattle Choral Symphony. The Ladies' Musical Society was particularly prominent in bringing world-class performers to Seattle; a pinnacle among their programming was a 1908 concert where Fritz Kreisler and Harold Bauer performed Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, Brahms' Paganini Variations, Schubert's Moments Musicaux, and Schumann's Fantasiestücke.

Emergence of Seattle as an arts center

Seattle first began to be a visual arts center in the 1920s(Berner, 2006). Australian painter Ambrose Patterson arrived in 1919. Over the next few decades Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Irving Anderson, and Paul Horiuchi would establish themselves as nationally and internationally known artists.

Century 21 Exposition

When Seattle decided to try to put itself on the map with the futuristic Century 21 Exposition — the 1962 World's Fair — high culture was on the agenda, as well as popular entertainment along the lines of "Gracie Hansen's Paradise International" ...