Sunday, May 24, 2026

Defy Gravity for Altadena Tonight

[photo credit: Altadena Music Theatre]

Fifteen months is a long time between curtains.

When the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena last January, it took the Charles S. Farnsworth Park Amphitheater with it — along with the neighborhood that surrounded it. The open-air stage had been the home of Altadena Music Theatre, the company Sarah and Oliver Azcarate had spent four years building from a pandemic-era hunch into a full professional season. Their house went too.

Tonight, the company makes its move back. Enter Stephen Schwartz, the three-time Academy Award winner behind Wicked, Pippin, and Godspell, headlining a benefit gala at the AGBU Manoukian Performing Arts Center in Pasadena. He’ll share the stage with Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block, The Voice winner Alisan Porter, Vintage Trouble’s Ty Taylor, and original-Broadway-cast Wicked alum Brian Justin Crum.

Some context on the headliner: three Academy Awards, four Grammys, and a back catalog — Wicked, Pippin, Godspell — that has held Broadway stages for the better part of five decades. The man wrote “Defying Gravity.” At 78, he is still composing, still touring, and apparently still willing to play a Sunday-night Pasadena room to help a small Altadena company put its roof back on.

The roof, for the record, is on its way. There is more than $60 million in public and private recovery funding earmarked for Altadena parks, a $150,000 carve-out from the Los Angeles Philharmonic specifically for the Farnsworth Amphitheater, and a January benefit screening of Cabaret at the Manoukian that put AMT back in motion. Sunday is the next push — straight toward a full summer season back under the original 90-year-old open sky.

Cocktails start at 6:30, curtain at 7:30, and the room seats fewer than 600 — meaning the VIP meet-and-greet is exactly as advertised, not a velvet rope between you and a composer at the back of an arena. Buy a ticket, bring a friend who’s been waiting on good news from the foothills, and stay for the encore.

AGBU Vatche & Tamar Manoukian Performing Arts Center, 2495 E. Mountain St., Pasadena. Sun., May 24 — cocktails 6:30 p.m., performance 7:30 p.m. agbupac.ticketspice.com/schwartz