Soka Performing Arts Center Presents Family Fun Favorite Band Jazzy Ash & The Leaping Lizards

December 17, 2019
Jazzy Ash and band members playing instruments on a dock

(Aliso Viejo, CA, December 17, 2019) – Soka Performing Arts Center presents the first and only New Orleans Jazz band just for kids and families Jazzy Ash & The Leaping Lizards on Sunday, March 8, 2020 at 3pm. The whole family is invited to come along on a Crescent City-inspired, jazzy music adventure with Jazzy Ash and her band the Leaping Lizards. Kids (and parents, too!) get to dance and learn about the music of New Orleans featuring gypsy jazz, zydeco, swing, blues, and Dixieland.

Tickets are on sale now: $5 for children 12 years old and younger; $15 for Adults. Tickets are available for purchase online, at the Box Office at 1 University Drive in Aliso Viejo, or by calling 949. 490.4278.

About Jazzy Ash
Jazzy Ash, also known as Ashli Christoval, grew up with her mother from New Orleans and her father from Trinidad. Music infused her home life every day, from jazz to Caribbean rhythms to the lively children’s music which was playing all the time for the kids in her mother’s home day care. She often spent summers in New Orleans with her aunts and grandparents, enjoying the culture and music that permeated their West Bank neighborhood.

Later on, after becoming mom to two sons, she earned a degree in early childhood development and embarked on her music education program, Leaping Lizards Music.

Jazzy Ash’s NOLA visits, especially during Mardi Gras, reaffirmed the importance of exploring this part of her heritage. “Learning about this music and performing it gives me a foundation. Truly, I’ve found myself through this experience. Even though I was born in California, I see myself as a second-generation New Orleanian, since New Orleans is so much a part of my family’s experience, going back at least seven generations.”

Ash and her band, Jazzy Ash and the Leaping Lizards, have had the pleasure of performing at Lincoln Center and Symphony Space in New York, Getty Center in California, and World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, and Ann Arbor Summer Festival, among other prestigious venues.

Additionally, Jazzy Ash continues to focus on education, regularly teaching performing arts to children and music education to educators. Most recently, Jazzy Ash has hosted workshops for National HeadStart, NAEYC, and MaxFunCon.

Her music has been featured in the Los Angeles Times and NPR, and continues to top the Children’s Music Charts.

About Soka Performing Arts Center
Now is in its ninth season of presenting the best of live performances on its extraordinary stage, Soka Performing Arts Center, located on the campus of Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California, is under the new leadership of General Manager Renee Bodie. The 1,000-seat concert hall features world-class acoustics designed by Yasuhisa Toyota, acoustic designer of noted performance venues like Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Suntory Hall in Tokyo.

Designed to truly reflect the university’s commitment to sustainability, the concert hall and adjacent Maathai Hall (featuring a black box theatre and dance studio) have been built to Gold LEED standards and feature vegetated green roofs. Photo voltaic cells on the Soka Performing Arts Center roof generate approximately 15% of the facility’s electrical needs.   

Soka University of America is a private, non-profit, four-year liberal arts college and graduate program. The university is open to top students of all nationalities and beliefs and was founded upon the Buddhist principles of peace, human rights, and the sanctity of life. For more information, please visit soka.edu.

Jazzy Ash & The Leaping Lizards
Sunday, March 8, 2020 at 3pm

Event URL:                  http://bit.ly/2RR8ps6  

Regular Tickets:         $5 for children 12 years and younger; $15 for Adults        

Parking:                      FREE

In Person:                  1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656
Online:                        performingarts.soka.edu
Phone:                        949.480.4ART (4278)

All information is accurate at the time of printing but is subject to change.

###

 

MEDIA CONTACT
Jennifer Urbano
949.480.4014
jurbano@soka.edu