If you’ve ever felt stuck, Elizabeth Gilbert has a few things to say about it.
The bestselling author of “Eat, Pray, Love” and “Big Magic” will come to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 E. Atherton St., on Sept. 19 for “An Evening with Elizabeth Gilbert,” an intimate night of conversation, ideas and a post-talk Q&A.
Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of “Eat, Pray, Love” and “Big Magic,” will come to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center on Sept. 19. (Courtesy of Deborah Lopez)
Gilbert’s career has been built around questions of creativity, spirituality, identity and the messy business of figuring out how to live a life of meaning. Her 2006 memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” — about her travels following a devastating divorce and her search for an answer to the messiness — became a global phenomenon, selling millions of copies, spawning translations in more than 30 languages and eventually becoming a film starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.
But Gilbert’s work has gone well beyond that one book, with others works such as “Committed” and “Big Magic,” and the novels “The Signature of All Things” and “City of Girls.”
Her latest memoir, “All the Way to the River,” published in 2025, takes an even more personal turn. It chronicles Gilbert’s relationship with her late partner, Rayya Elias, tracing a friendship that eventually became a love affair while also confronting addiction, grief and the consequences of keeping difficult truths hidden.
Gilbert has described her intended audience as people who are “seekers,” “hungry” and “restless” — people looking for greater meanings than the ones that have been handed down.That search for significance also informs the subject of her Carpenter Center appearance. Rather than offering another straightforward prescription for discovering one’s calling, Gilbert will discuss the potentially counterproductive ways that the pursuit of a singular “purpose” can restrict creativity and freedom.
It’s a fitting topic for an author whose “Big Magic” has become something of a creative-life handbook for millions of readers.
Before her books made her famous, Gilbert took an unconventional path, working in places ranging from Philadelphia diners to western ranches and New York bars, experiences that helped shape her instincts as a journalist and storyteller.
She went on to write for publications such as GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Spin and The New York Times Magazine, and even saw one of her magazine pieces become the basis for the 2000 film “Coyote Ugly.”
Gilbert’s Carpenter Center appearance will begins at 8 p.m., with a Q&A following her talk.
And for readers who want something tangible to take home, signed hardcover copies of “All the Way to the River” can be added to ticket orders, though Gilbert will not be signing books at the event.
For more information, go to carpenterarts.org/event/elizabeth-gilbert.
Carpenter Center gets funky
Five days after Gilbert’s appearance, the Carpenter Center, on the Cal State Long Beach campus, will shift gears — and gets considerably funkier.
Grammy Award winner Bilal will return to Long Beach on Sept. 24, bringing a mix of soul, funk and jazz to the Carpenter stage, with Queens-born singer-songwriter Yaya Bey opening the show.
For fans of this musical chameleon, this is a return engagement, after Bilal also appeared at the Carpenter Center last September.
The singer, songwriter and producer has spent his career refusing to stay neatly inside any one genre. His music draws from classic soul and jazz while incorporating funk, hip-hop and more experimental sounds, making his live performances an unexpected mélange of musical craft.
This time around, Bilal is promising both fresh material and fan favorites.
Opening the evening will be Yaya Bey, whose latest album, “Fidelity,” continues the Brooklyn/Queens-bred artist’s exploration of R&B, soul and contemporary songwriting.
Like Gilbert’s evening of conversation, Bilal and Yaya Bey’s musical conversations will begin at 8 p.m.
For more information, go to carpenterarts.org/event/bilal.
Conservatory’s fall season
The fall semester is shaping up to be a rich season of music at Cal State Long Beach, with the Bob Cole Conservatory moving from a 1980s pop celebration to contemporary piano minimalism to the full force of the orchestra.
The three programs — ”Ladies of the ’80s,” “Glass + Chopin” and the official season opener with the Bob Cole Conservatory Symphony Orchestra — also make for a particularly interesting snapshot of what a university music school can do in one short month.
The first concert, “Beach Café presents: Ladies of the ’80s,” will arrive on Sept. 11 and 12 at Daniel Recital Hall, and it has taken on an added poignancy following the death of Dolly Parton at the end of August.
Parton, whose career stretched across country, pop, film and musical theater, was one of the defining female songwriters and performers of the era, and her work will be part of the program.
Presented by the CSULB ACDA Chapter, this Beach Café event promises to be an affectionate musical tour through the 1980s, with an emphasis on the women who helped define it.
Along with Parton, the program will offer music associated with Cyndi Lauper, Fleetwood Mac and Mariah Carey.
That will make for a deliberately broad definition of what belongs in a conservatory setting: country songwriting, new wave, rock and arena pop all get placed alongside the classical and jazz training students pursue at Bob Cole.
Admission to the concert includes snacks and drinks, making this one of the more casual and fun ways to ease into the conservatory’s fall season.
Then, on Sept. 16, witness the virtuosity of pianist Hui Wu, whose lecture-recital “Glass + Chopin” will bring together two composers separated by more than a century but united here by their extraordinary demands on the pianist.
Wu’s program is part of her “Glassopedia” tour, named for her Grammy Award-considered album of the same title. She opens with Philip Glass’ meditative yet invigorating “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” a work based on Allen Ginsberg’s poem, before moving into 10 of Glass’ “Etudes, Book 1.”
The second half then turns to one of the monuments of Romantic piano literature: Frédéric Chopin’s complete “Twelve Études.”
It’s an intriguing pairing because Glass and Chopin can seem like opposites. Chopin’s études are associated with the virtuosic tradition of 19th century Romantic piano writing, while Glass’ music is famously repetitive and spacious.
But both composers, though, ask performers to find expressive possibilities within highly controlled musical frameworks.
In the hands of a pianist like Wu, the contrast becomes part of the point.
Admission to this lecture-recital is free.
The month will culminate with the Bob Cole Conservatory Symphony Orchestra on Sept. 23 at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, conducted by Johannes Müller Stosch.
This is the concert that officially opens the orchestra’s season, and it does so with a program that moves from a homegrown celebration to French elegance — and then to Bohemia.
The evening will begin with John Carnahan’s “Bob Cole Fanfare and Anthem,” written specifically as a celebratory curtain-raiser for the conservatory.
The piece brings together orchestra, brass band and choir led by Dr. Jermie Arnold.
From there, the orchestra will head into some of the most evocative music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune,” often regarded as one of the pieces that helped usher music into modernism.
Francis Poulenc’s “Les animaux modèles,” meanwhile, offers a much different vision of French modernism. The ballet suite, inspired by French fables, is witty and bright, a natural counterpoint to Debussy’s hazier atmospheres.
The program will close with Antonín Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 8 in G Major,” a work full of folk-inflected melodies, pastoral colors and expansive Bohemian optimism.
These three September performances make a strong argument for the breadth of the Bob Cole season. It’s a reminder that at this conservatory, the goal is not rigid genre separation but authentic musical connection.
For more information, go to web.csulb.edu/colleges/cota/music/events.