Arts and Entertainment

On Wednesday night from 4-9 p.m., the second annual International Jazz Day celebration at CityScape featured jazz from respected musicians Carlos Rivas and Azar Lawrence.

Moviegoers looking for something a little more exotic than the typical Hollywood blockbuster can participate in the Czech That Film festival at FilmBar. The festival aims to expose downtown Phoenicians to Czech arts and culture.

For the month of April, Obliq and Gallery Luxx have hosted a tribute to Debra Friedman, the former dean of ASU’s College of Public Programs and vice president of the Downtown campus.

Phoenix Art Museum director James Ballinger is stepping down after a lengthy career. Ballinger was considered a valuable cultural advocate to the national art community by his peers, amassing 10,000 pieces of art to the museum's collection and overseeing the expansion of the museum grounds.

After a hiatus in Los Angeles, Valley native Hector Paul Primero is in Phoenix share his artistic vision of a brighter future for the city.

Hosts Miguel Otarola and Jayson Chesler treated listeners to just the "meat and potatoes" in this week's edition of Devil's Pass. Focal points were Art4All's mobile art classes and the 10th anniversary of The Real Coachella.

The Rising Youth Theatre meets in a room at the Phoenix Center for the Arts, and the group writes and produces a show in four to six weeks. The upcoming show is "Light Rail Plays," to be performed June 6-8.

Burton Barr Public Library gave the stage to Arizona's first poet laureate Alberto Rios on Tuesday for the third event in a series in honor of National Poetry Month. The writer emphasized the importance of poetry in people's lives during his reading.

Art4All, a program presented in collaboration with Valley Leadership and Phoenix Center for the Arts, provides art education to students in districts with small arts budgets. The program recently received a large van that was donated by Valley Metro and is used to take the classes around the city.

Kirk Strawn, who recently opened Walter Studios at Roosevelt Street and Seventh Avenue, has developed a fleet of four refurbished vehicles named Walter, Big Red, Heathen and Kalliope that bring music and light shows to events around the Valley.