Grab your skates and celebrate the Schenley Park Ice Rink's 50th birthday or check out the tour of "Funny Girl" at the Benedum Center — here's what to do in Pittsburgh this weekend!
Outdoors
This month, the Schenley Park Ice Rink turns 50 years old. Though closed all last season for repairs, this year the rink is again open seven days a week. Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays bring adults-only evening sessions, while Thursdays feature Family Skate Night discounts. The rink generally closes for the season in late February or early March.
Words
Acclaimed poet Kimiko Hahn visits Alphabet City for a discussion of one of her key inspirations, the 17th-century haiku master Basho (“old pond / frog leaping / splash”). Hahn is the author of 10 poetry collections and the recipient of an American Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a lifetime-achievement award from The Poetry Foundation. The free event, a co-presentation of City of Asylum and the International Poetry Foundation, is Sun., Jan. 5.
Music
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s JazzLive series offers free performances in a casual setting Downtown just after work every other Tuesday. The winter season at the Lounge at Greer Cabaret kicks off Tue., Jan. 7, with the Chad Taylor Quintet. The Pittsburgh-based Taylor, a percussionist and composer, has recorded with the likes of Pharoah Sanders and Marc Ribot. Up Jan. 21 is the Rich Zabinski Sextet.
Theater
The 1964 Jule Styne and Bob Merrill musical “Funny Girl” is known as the Broadway show that helped launch Barbra Streisand’s career into the stratosphere. But the story of Fanny Brice, a kid from the Lower East Side who knocked show-biz on its tuchus in the 1910s, has endured. The touring version of the acclaimed Broadway revival hits the Benedum Center for eight shows, Tue., Jan. 7, to Jan. 12. Katerina McCrimmon sings Fannie, and songs such as “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”
Visual Art
For “Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology and the Contemporary Landscape,” Carnegie Museum of Art curators have gathered about 100 works by 19 artists from around the world (including newly commissioned pieces) to explore environmental history, with a focus on the U.S. The exhibit that asks how photography can change our relationship to the land is in its final days; it closes Jan. 12.
Visual Art
It’s the final weeks for “KAWS + Warhol,” an exhibit exploring the dark themes that run through the work of both Andy Warhol and the Brooklyn-based KAWS, known for his cartoonish characters with X’d-out eyes. The Andy Warhol Museum show features Warhol’s car-crash prints and other works confronting death, and new paintings, sculptures and more by KAWS. The exhibit closes Jan. 20.
