Auctions, raffles, dinner and cocktails to benefit Milwaukee Achiever Literacy Services.

Tickets are $50 each. Please call 414.643.5108 or visit the website linked above for more information.

Smart. Sexy. Cool. Sultry. Nobody plays with paradox like Patricia Barber. The Cole Porter Mix is a canny re-examination of the basics. Her interpretations of Porter classics are elegantly idiosyncratic. And in her new compositions. You hear the inspiration, but Barber's celebrated edge takes you far into new territory.

Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by visiting the website linked above.

Alverno College will be hosting Project Girl, the nationally touring visual arts exhibition and series of hands-on art-based events and workshops designed to equip girls with the tools and knowledge needed to be better informed critical consumers of media, and create the foundation for long-term change. Created in 2006 by visual artist Kelly Parks Snider and video producer Jane Bartell of Madison, Project Girl uses art-based workshops to deconstruct harmful messages present in mass media.

Alverno’s exhibition will feature artwork created by local Project Girl adolescent artists from Community High School in Milwaukee who were guided by Alverno art students and faculty at spring workshops held at the College and Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. The girls’ artwork is an expression of their own interpretations of media messaging. The exhibition will also include visual, literary, digital and video artwork by professional artists. Project Girl initially began as a two-year series of workshops with Madison-area middle school girls who met regularly to talk about the effects commercial advertising and mass media had on their lives. The program evolved into a Web site (www.projectgirl.org) and later, an art exhibition. The exhibition continues to provide important lessons about how art can serve as an agent of personal transformation and social change.

Event Features: Opening reception on Friday, Oct. 24 beginning at 5:30 p.m., and a daylong conference Wednesday, Oct. 29 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the College Conference Center.

This is an interdisciplinary, interactive, multi-media exploration of media’s influences on women’s identity, self-esteem, relationships, life choices and more. The exhibition will include work from professional artists, as well as Alverno students and local youths. Gallery Hours: Wednesdays and Fridays: 12 – 5 p.m.; Thursdays: 12-7 p.m. Special hours on Wednesday, Oct. 29: 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Sat., Oct. 18 & Nov. 1: 12-5 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 11 & Oct. 25: 12-4 p.m. Sun. Oct. 19 & Nov. 2: 12-4 p.m.; Sun., Oct. 26: Closed.

To schedule a group tour, contact Lynda Sommers at 414-382-6149 or lynda.sommers@alverno.edu.

Eiko & Koma are masters of stillness, of suspense and of the Japanese concept of 'white space,' where emptiness completes and intensifies a movement or shape. Their new piece, Hunger, reunites them with Charian and Peace, two of the young Cambodian visual artists-turned-performers they first worked with in 2004. All four will paint with large canvases in real time on stage. The finished wet paintings will be hoisted aloft as a continually evolving component of the piece. As in everything they do, the absolute and mysterious beauty of the body is paramount.

Tickets are $30 and can be purchased by visiting the website linked above.

When was the last time you heard a voice that flies through jazz, cantorial chant and avant garde? Israeli singer/composer Ayelet Rose Gottlieb's performance juxtaposes formal elegance against raw sensuality. In Mayim Rabim, her song cycle composed to texts from the erotic biblical poem, Song of Songs, her thrilling use of Middle Eastern music as material for the largely western tradition of jazz boldly leads us into the 21st Century.

Tickets are $25. Please visit the website linked above for more information.