Sure, many of us have had Christmas covers on repeat lately, but I’ve also been playing the soundtrack and score of the still-brilliant 1994 movie “The Lion King” (because I’m writing something about its sequel/prequel, in theaters today). I’m staff writer Ashley Lee, putting my little listening party on pause to bring you another edition of Essential Arts with my colleague Jessica Gelt.

Best bets: On our radar this week

‘Unbound’
Contemporary art gallery Karma is presenting the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles of Jeremy Frey, the foremost contemporary practitioner of Wabanaki basketry, a tradition that dates back more than 13,000 years and is the oldest continuously practiced art form in the area now known as Maine. His creations — formed from fallen black ash trees, then pounded and separated into thin sheaths — both honor long-established Indigenous practices and explore innovative techniques like weaving flat or using his sculptures to make indexical prints. Catch the exhibition before it closes on Saturday. Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles. karmakarma.org

‘Noche en Triana: Holiday Edition’
The Fountain Theatre continues its celebrated Forever Flamenco series — which consistently showcases what Times contributor Victoria Looseleaf once described as “the earth and fire of first-class flamenco” — with a holiday installment to close out the year. The one-night-only performance will feature guitarist Antonio Triana, percussionist Johnny Sandoval, singers Reyes Barrios and Antonio de Jerez, and dancers Vanessa Acosta, Wendy Castellanos and Cristina Hall. Sunday, 8 p.m. Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave. Los Angeles. fountaintheatre.com

‘A Christmas Carol’
So many Scrooges, so little time! Some of this year’s takes on the Charles Dickens classic include Independent Shakespeare Company’s clever two-hander (through Monday), Jefferson Mays’ solo show at San Diego’s Old Globe (through Sunday) and a staging of the Alan Menken-Lynn Ahrens musical at Westminster’s Rose Center Theater (through Sunday). The more traditional, larger ensemble productions at Pasadena’s A Noise Within and Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory run through Christmas Eve. (For all you extra festive readers, The Times has rounded up the best holiday to-do’s around town.)

— Ashley Lee

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY
Digable Planets The alternative hip-hop trio is joined by the Pharcyde and Arrested Development.
8 p.m. The Novo, L.A. Live, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., downtown L.A. thenovodtla.com

Disney on Ice Mickey, Minnie and the gang discover “Magic in the Stars” via music and characters from “Wish,” “Frozen 2,” “Cars,” “Toy Story,” “Encanto” and more.
7 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m., 3 and 6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Crypto.com Arena, 1111 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. cryptoarena.com

A Johnny Mathis Christmas The Grammy Hall of Famer sings his holiday hits.
7 p.m. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos. ccpa.cerritos.gov

The Nutcracker Pasadena Dance Theatre’s new co-artistic directors, Jean Michelle Sayeg and Eric Shah, present their first production, the holiday classic featuring Matisse Love and Aaron Smyth, the Pasadena Chorale and more.
7:30 p.m. Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. San Gabriel Mission Playhouse, 320 S. Mission Drive, San Gabriel. pasadenadancetheatre.org

Sweet Honey in the Rock The vocal ensemble blends vocal improvisations and choral-stacked spiritual/gospel and jazz on its 50th anniversary tour.
8 p.m. The Soraya, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. thesoraya.org

SATURDAY
Home Alone in Concert David Newman conducts John Williams’ memorable Oscar-nominated score for screenings of the 1990 holiday favorite starring Macaulay Culkin.
2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

SUNDAY
Holiday Movies The American Cinematheque stuffs all three of its venues with traditional and nontraditional seasonal fare in the run-up to Christmas, including “It’s a Wonderful Life” (7 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Egyptian; 7:30 p.m. Monday. Aero), “Carol” (7 p.m. Sunday. Los Feliz), “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” (10 p.m. Sunday and 4 p.m. Tuesday. Los Feliz), “Bad Santa” (10 p.m. Monday. Los Feliz) and “Elf” (7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Aero).
Sunday through Tuesday. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; Los Feliz Theatre, 1822 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. americancinematheque.com

The Nutcracker World Ballet Company wraps its holiday tour to the Land of Sweets.
2 and 6 p.m. Sunday. La Mirada Theatre, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada; 6 p.m. Monday and 2 p.m. Tuesday. Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. worldballetcompany.com

Out of the Ordinary: Uncommon Materials, Marks, and Matrices Contemporary artists, including Tara Donovan, Anya Gallaccio, Mona Hatoum, Richard Long, Umar Rashid, Sherrill Roland, Ed Ruscha and Zarina, deploy unorthodox media in this exhibition drawn largely from the collection of UCLA’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.
Through April 6. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu

Passing: Bobby Garcia, international pioneer

Bobby Garcia, the theater director and producer who pioneered productions throughout Asia and Canada, died on Tuesday in Vancouver. Garcia’s family confirmed his death to ABS-CBN News on Wednesday. He was 55.

A graduate of New York’s Fordham University and the University of British Columbia, Garcia directed and produced over 50 plays and musicals across multiple international markets and won three Aliw Awards for direction (the premiere live entertainment award in the Philippines). He founded the prolific Atlantis Productions, overseeing stagings of popular Broadway titles “Rent,” “In the Heights,” “Fun Home” and “Waitress” for audiences in Asia, oftentimes for the shows’ international premieres.

“We choose shows based on themes that reflect our sensibilities and stories about identity, community, and diversity,” he told NBC News in 2019. “Even though the stories seem to be in a specific location — be it in New York City or the Midwest — the themes that surround them are universal.”

Garcia served as Hong Kong Disneyland’s first show director when the amusement park opened in 2005, and often collaborated with Lea Salonga, producing many of her concert and television specials over a span of about 25 years. He also served as a casting consultant for musicals on Broadway, on the West End and on tour — most recently for “Here Lies Love,” for which he was also a co-producer.

“My heart is broken,” wrote Vina Morales, the esteemed Filipino actress who made her Broadway debut in “Here Lies Love” last year, on social media. “I am so blessed to have known you, not just as my director but as a dear friend. You were such a brilliant artist and an even more incredible person.”

“Another one of our greats has been taken from us again,” wrote fellow director Chay Yew on Facebook. “Bobby Garcia was my intern at Center Theatre Group during one unforgettable Los Angeles summer, and grew to become a wonderful peer, and passionate champion of Asian and Asian American theatre throughout the years.

“May your art and love continue to live in the hearts of everyone you have touched, Bobby. You did mine.”

Culture news and the SoCal scene

The famous opera singer Maria Callas can’t be reduced to the size of a Hollywood biopic, writes Times classical music critic Mark Swed of the new film “Maria” streaming on Netflix. Starring a chilly Angelina Jolie as Callas, the film insists on depicting the larger-than-life singer as a sad, hollow woman facing a tawdry death. The film follows in the footsteps of “Tar” and “Maestro” when it comes to sucking the joy out of music, Swed writes, noting, “All three films have this in common: Over-the-top musicians are tragically brought down by their own hubris and turn monstrous. Each is a victim of her or his celebrity — something celebrity-incubating Hollywood happens to be pretty good at.”

“Once Upon a Mattress” might be a musical from another era, but it dances straight from Broadway into the Ahmanson full of fizzy, playful glee, writes Times theater critic Charles McNulty . Its star, Sutton Foster, a two-time Tony Award winner, is a particular thrill, taking on a role that made Carol Burnett famous and adding her own brand of joie de vivre. “These are not easy shoes to step into,” writes McNulty of Burnett. “But Foster spends much of her time onstage barefoot, pawing her way into the part with those dirty, bare-soled, hilariously expressive feet of hers. … The effortless grace of her tumbling suggests a new branch of choreography.”

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming the first Black, female Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage when she made a one-night-only appearance in “& Juliet” at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre earlier this month. The ensemble role was written especially for her, and the production recorded behind-the-scenes footage of her time with the cast.

The unfairly maligned, endlessly examined teenage years will be the subject of the Orange County Museum of Art’s, “California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, but Social.” Set to open June 25, it will be OCMA’s 15th edition of this highly anticipated exhibition series and will feature 12 artists and collectives, working across media and disciplines to, according to a news release, “explore the richness of late adolescence, a stage of life full of potential, possibility, and hope yet also fraught with awkwardness, anxiety, and myriad pressures.” Artists and collectives presenting work from their own teenage years include Seth Bogart, Miranda July, Brontez Purnell, Laura Owens, Joey Terrill and the Linda Lindas. The curators are Courtney Finn, Lauren Leving and Christopher Y. Lew.

A graduate fellow at USC has won the Montreal International Poetry Prize, which comes with it a $20,000 award. Kizziah Burton’s poem, “Portrait of Me Incensing the Mushrooms Channeling Demeter,” was chosen by the 2024 prize’s judge, A. E. Stallings, Oxford professor of poetry.

Pepperdine University has received a $2.49-million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. The funds support a five-year project called “Passages,” at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at the university. A series of exhibitions, programs and scholarly writing, the project will explore religious identity through contemporary art.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

An upcoming film about “a desperate gallerist who conspires to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami” has added Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Sterling K. Brown, Zach Galifianakis, Daniel Brühl, Charli xcx and Catherine Zeta-Jones to its cast. Consider me seated in that movie theater!

— Ashley Lee