UCF Celebrates the Arts 2016 – a free festival of music, performances and visual displays – combines an abundance of arts and talent that would weigh down an actual marquee.
The festival, which is all open to the public, reprises its second season April 8-16 at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando with an extended program of student and faculty presentations and collaborations.
Two more days of events have been added to this year’s festival, which will feature offerings from more than 1,000 university students and 100 faculty members and include some collaborative programs with outside partners.
The festival will showcase the talents of the university’s artists and practitioners in theatre, dance, orchestra, choirs, big band, chamber music, cabaret, concert bands, opera, visual arts, studio art, gaming, animation, photography and film.
There’s even a concert that organizers think may be the first of its kind: a presentation geared exclusively for expectant parents. (An ambulance will be on hand if needed to respond to any pregnant women who may go into labor!)
Collaborative music performances by UCF students will be under the direction of visiting composers Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, and more than 150 other films), and Patrick Doyle (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sense and Sensibility, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and more than 45 other films, including several movie adaptations of Shakespeare works).
“The festival allows us to show the breadth and depth of UCF arts in one location,” said Jeff Moore, director of the UCF School of Performing Arts and artistic director of the festival. “Last year someone said to me: ‘We know UCF is big, but an event like this brings it home.’ This demonstrates the quality of programs we have at UCF.”
The festival also will provide an opportunity for high school arts students to attend workshops led by UCF faculty and perform at the new Dr. Phillips Center’s state-of-the-art venue in downtown Orlando.
The full schedule is available on the UCF Celebrates the Arts website.