On Thursday at noon we will give away a $100 gift card to La Sombra Bar and Grill to whoever has the most popular uploaded image on our Facebook wall!  Join in the fun!  Visit AustinPictures.org and follow the Facebook icon to the upload instructions.  Then tell your friends to vote for your image!

Why Pictures? Our opening night at the 2,200-seat ACL Live Theater on October 1st is called Austin Pictures.  The centerpiece is Jorge Caballero doing the near-impossible: playing the 40-minute orchestral masterwork Pictures at an Exhibition on solo guitar.  By now you’ve read about Peter Bay and the Miro Quartet and the 100+ guitarists from over 1,000 miles away.  Today we’d like to talk a bit about the 11 distinguished young visual artists who are also participating.

The music of Pictures at an Exhibition has 11 evocative themes based on images.  We have commissioned 11 distinguished young visual artists from area high schools to each paint one of the 11 themes on 20”x24” canvases.  Meet the artists now, by visiting Austin Pictures online! These young artists have been asked to study and listen to the music by Mussorgsky that relates to their theme, and paint a work of art in response to it.  In that way, we’ve brought the art-work full circle, since Pictures at an Exhibition was originally composed in response to drawings – we’re doing the reverse!

We want your pictures involved too! The images posted to Facebook in the next 8 weeks will not only be eligible for awesome prizes, but they will also be woven into the fabric of the fabulous AV we’re planning in conjunction with our friends at the Alamo Drafthouse.  We look forward to your participation.

La Sombra Bar and Grill. More than a thousand of you experienced the fabulous food of La Sombra Bar and Grill this summer during our Pasión Latin Series.  Our fun with La Sombra continues!  Not only are they generously donating the $100 gift card we’ll give away this Thursday, but they are also preparing the Opening Night Dinner hosted by Silicon Labs, before Austin Pictures on the evening of October 1st!  Since Chef Julio is originally from Peru, and so is Jorge Caballero, we decided to ask the Chef to make an amazing multi-course Peruvian feast! Info about the dinner is online here.