A year in review: These Monterey County arts and culture events made us feel alive in 2022.

Sometime in January 2022 we finally crawled down off our sofas and armchairs, put away paperbacks and picked AirPods out of our ears, and got dressed to attend our first post-pandemic (or maybe it’s mid-pandemic) concerts, performances and exhibits. Many of us expressed the feeling of being overwhelmed, dizzy, and not used to so many faces around. We weren’t sure what to wear and what to say; in other words: In 2022 we were all debutantes, ready to be seduced by any cultural experience.

It was in this state of frenzy that I attended The Evening with Fran Lebowitz at Carmel’s Sunset Center on Jan. 19. When I spoke with Lebowitz in December 2021 I was sure the show would be canceled, and with it a story I really enjoyed writing.

Later, on April 25, the Ukrainian world music band DakhaBrakha graced the same stage. The show was so striking both audibly and visually that it filled my dreams with butterflies and drums for a couple of nights.

Through May, most socializing required a vaccination card. Then, local venues announced they would stop checking, relying on the good judgment of the community instead. We enjoyed Cali Roots (May 26-29) with stars such as Ice Cube and Damian Marley and the Carmel Bach Festival (July 14-30), featuring Grete Pedersen and Andrew Megill. Warmer weather brought the annual West End Celebration of music and murals to Sand City (Aug. 27-28) and then finally the Monterey Jazz Festival (Sept. 23-25) – the Weekly’s staff was most taken with A Moodswing Reunion (Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Brian Blade), Chucho Valdés, Matthew Whitaker, MJF On Tour band (Christian Sands, Kurt Elling and Dee Dee Bridgewater), female supergroup Artemis and Ravi Coltrane, the Grammy-nominated son of John and Alice Coltrane.

Still, some diehards claim that big festivals had nothing on the actual local best festival – Deakfest Sportsman, inside the Sportsman dive bar in Seaside, where especially the all-female band Snatcher from Oakland gave a show Seaside will long remember (Sept. 2-5).

Speaking of festivals, while June is celebrated as Pride Month across the country, two local organizations happily break the rules – Monterey Peninsula Pride celebrated in July and Salinas Valley Pride celebrated in October. Both events attracted local communities, offering music, food and some civic education, all in one.

Cali Roots’ younger offspring, Rebels & Renegades, debuted deeper in the fall (Oct. 15-16), aspiring to – and succeeding – combining country and folk audiences. October and November were also the time of this year’s most intense individual music experiences, among them the queen of fado, Mariza, at Sunset Center on Oct. 11. Golden State Theatre promoted a strong fall lineup, with Nebraska’s cult band Bright Eyes on Oct 25 and The Cult on Nov. 16.

The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur enjoyed a fun year in terms of diverse and worldly musical performances. It started in April with Brazilian singer and multi-instrumentalist Rodrigo Amarante, who wrote the bolero-style theme song for the Netflix series Narcos (2015). There was Valerie June and Rising Appalachia in July, and Anglo-French Stereolab and English post-punk British Dry Cleaning in September. Welsh indie musician Cate Le Bon and Canadian Patrick Watson visited the Library in October before it got too cold to perform outdoors and enjoy music under the redwoods. Watson was charmed with the venue, which made the concert all the more special. He also brought along another Montreal force – singer Ariel Engle, also known as La Force from her 2018 solo project. The combination of their voices soaring in the temple of the trees won’t be forgotten by those who attended.

Then, there was movement. First Spector Dance’s choreographer’s showcase (May 19), then Carmel Dance Festival’s residential company Ballare Carmel performed Aug. 5-7 at Folktale Winery in Carmel Valley and at Carmel’s Sunset Center on Nov. 4.

A few stage spectacles made the year special, including Pacific Repertory’s musical Mary Poppins with a local actress and singer Malinda DeRouen (Aug. 11-Sept. 18), the intimate Three Trees: A Dramatic Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara, Anette and Alberto Giacometti at the SandBox on Sept. 18 and the fantastic Testament of Mary with local star Jane Press as Mary from Nazareth in August and September, at the Carl Cherry Center in Carmel. Done with a small crew and performed by one actress, the spectacles demonstrated how much is possible with so little. In terms of the plot, it’s a rumination on the potential point of view of Mary, the living person in Judea. While potentially controversial to those who see religious orthodoxy, the Testament of Mary couldn’t be more human in its exploration of grief, anger, helplessness, and other difficult human emotions. The play deserved even more audience and more attention than post-pandemic 2022 could offer.

Finally, as always, Monterey County enjoys its fair share of visual arts exposure, from the massive and universal Arts Habitat Open Studios event (Oct. 8-9 and Oct. 15-16), to well-curated exhibits at the Monterey Museum of Art. In terms of the latter, three shows throughout 2022 deserve a special highlight: Seeking Eden: James Fitzgerald in Monterey (Jan. 13-April 23), Courage Within: Women Without Shelter, a joint exhibit by artists Melissa Smedley, Amanda Salm, Denese Sanders and Dora Lisa Rosenbaum (Jan. 27-April 23) and The Fire of Heaven: Enrique Martínez Celaya and Robinson Jeffers (May 12-Oct. 9), where literature and visual arts met in a dialogue.

Martínez Celaya brought more to Monterey County than just his work (paintings and sculpture), inspired by the mid-20th-century poet Robinson Jeffers. He also started a new tradition at Tor House, Jeffers’ house in Carmel that finds itself under the care of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. Thanks to Martínez Celaya’s wish to sit and write in the Tor House, the foundation opened this possibility – a fellowship – to other artists. Since then, the foundation has hosted seven artists from various fields.

But this is just the beginning. This past year has brought us up to speed – indicating that the arts and culture scene in 2023 will be only faster, more intense, and more plentiful.