New Haven magazine April 2010

APRIL 2010

www.newhavenmagazine.com

THE GREEN ISSUE

POUNDS

OF FLESH

Creature Comfort

The business of losing weight

WHALE OF A TALE

Celebrating

Saarinen’s

Wild times for Connecticut’s animal rescuers

legacy at Yale

ONE FISH, TWO FISH

‘Sustainable’

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Miya’s 85 Willow Street New Haven, CT 06511

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Richard Barredo, Sandy Weber, Jennifer Lynch, Mark Candido

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GR ADUATE STUDIES OPEN HOUSE THURSDAY, APRIL 22

• 3 - 7 PM

ADANTI STUDENT CENTER SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY

• Meet with graduate faculty from more than 40 areas of study, including many programs that may lead to Connecticut teacher certification • Find out about financial aid and graduate assistantships • Get details on career services and living on campus

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New Haven I April/2010

Henry Fernandez on the progressive ramparts

Yale Opera comes of age with two one-act gems

06 INTEL

35 ONSTAGE

Connecticut most prominent female execs dish

The powerful message of ‘No Child…” at Long Wharf

13 ANIMAL MAGNETISM

43 WORDS OF MOUTH

Connecticut’s animal rescuers

‘Sustainable’ sushi at Miya’s, plus a green Donovan’s Reef

18 POUNDS OF FLESH New Haven’s weight-loss industry comes of age

Bob Cornell

32 OF NOTES

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF:

08 ONE2ONE

46 DISCOVERED What’s hot and cookin’ in Guilford

22 HOMING INSTINCT An architect couple yield surprising results from an unpretentious home

28 GALLERY Celebrating the legacy of Eero Saarinen at Yale

46 New Haven

| Vol. 3, No. 7 | April 2010

Publisher Mitchell Young, Editor Michael C. Bingham, Design Manager Larissa Philllips, Design Consultant Terry Wells, Contributing Writers Brooks Appelbaum, Duo Dickinson, Liese Klein, Margaret A. Little, Cindy Marien, Caitlin Marquis, Melissa Nicefaro, Tashema Nichols, Joanna Pettas, Steven Scarpa, Cindy Simoneau, Chelsea Jacob Tyler, Editorial Intern Alyssa Casey, Photographers Steve Blazo, Anthony DeCarlo, Senior Publisher’s Representatives Mary W. Beard, Roberta Harris

4

april 2010

New Haven is published 12 times annually by Second Wind Media Ltd., which also publishes Business New Haven, with offices at 85 Willow St., New Haven, CT 06511. 203-781-3480 (voice), 203-781-3482 (fax). Subscriptions $24.95/year, $39.95/two years. Send name, address & zip code with payment. Second Wind Media Ltd. d/b/a New Haven shall not be held liable for failure to publish an advertisement or for typographical errors or errors in publication. For more information e-mail NewHaven@Conntact.com.

OUR COVER Cover Design and Typography by Terry Wells.

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INT EL

NewAlliance’s Patterson dishes on balancing career with real life at the Oakdale.

Who Says You Can’t Have It All? WALLINGFORD — How do female executives at the top of their games — who also happen to be wives and mothers — handle “it all”? Find out April 22 when the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce’s (GNHCC) Women’s Business Council hosts a roundtable discussion for women entitled Inspirations: A Conversation with Connecticut’s Top Female Business Executives. That’s no mere puffery: the distaff trio are Peyton R. Patterson, chairman, president and CEO of NewAlliance Bancshares, parent of New Haven’s NewAlliance Bank; Marna P. Borgstrom, president and CEO of the Yale New Haven Health System and Yale-New Haven Hospital; and

Anne Worcester, director of Pilot Pen Tennis and chief marketing officer of Market New Haven.

WTNH-TV’s Desiree Fontaine moderates. The event takes place from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Oakdale Theater, 95 South Turnpike Road, Wallingford. It’s part of the fourth annual Fun Girls Night Out expo from 5 to 9 p.m. at the same venue. Admission to Inspirations is $20 for GNHCC members, $30 for others, which includes the $10 expo admission charge and a free goodie bag. Phone 203782-4342 or e-mail ptommaselli@ gnhcc.com to register.

Partnerz in Crime WEST HAVEN — Richard H. Ward, dean of the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences at the University of New Haven (UNH), will host a new program, Crime Wavz (sic), on university radio station WNHU (88.7 FM). Each Wednesday at 3 p.m., Ward and guests will plumb topics in criminal justice, forensic science, fire science and national security.

Upcoming Crime Wavz guests

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include experts, practitioners and UNH faculty members including renowned forensic scientist Henry C. Lee (for whom the school is named) and former UNH Haven President (and current Republican gubernatorial hopeful) Lawrence J. DeNardis.

Foot Soldiers NEW HAVEN — On April 1, Maundy or Holy Thursday, Christians recreate the tradition of Christ washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper the night before the crucifixion. On the New Haven Green, newly ordained Episcopal Bishop Ian Douglas joined other area clergy in washing the feet of New Haven-area homeless people at the Mandy Thursday service of Chapel on the Green. Following the service a podiatry clinic also was offered. Explains Rev. Alex Dyer, associate rector of Trinity Church on the Green, which began Chapel on the Green in 2008 as a way to minister to the homeless and others not served by traditional church services, “The average homeless person walks over eight miles per day and often does not have access to foot care. This is about respecting the dignity of every human being and serving Christ by serving others. That is what Maundy Thursday is about.”

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new haven

7

A conscience of progressivism, New Havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fernandez speaks his piece

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

8

april 2010

H

enry Fernandez, 41, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the country’s largest ‘progressive think tank,’ run by John Podesta, one-time chief of staff for President Bill Clinton.

Fernandez focuses on state and municipal policy, but he also writes on a variety of issues, including immigration reform. Hernandez served several years as New Haven’s director of economic development and is credited for helping bring to fruition several major projects, including relocating Gateway Community College’s new campus in downtown New Haven. He served as John DeStefano Jr.’s general election campaign manager for his run governor in 2006. In 1992 he was the founding executive director of Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP) a New Haven mentoring program for city youth.

Fernandez lives with his wife, former New Haven deputy mayor Kica Matos, and their son in New Haven.

vvv

of views and experiences in the world racially, ethnically, economically. It was true with the scout troop; it was also true with the schools. My early school was overwhelming African-American, but we only had one middle school, so kids were coming from all over. I became a pretty good soccer player and was playing on a team with kids from probably a dozen countries. I had teammates from Jamaica, Haiti, Somalia, Iraq. I had friends on the team who had fled Laos, and that really informed my understanding of the struggles that people faced to get to America, what it meant to be an American and what we can offer to the rest of the world in being a place where they could be free and not have violence be a part of their life, or extreme poverty be a part of their life. I also had classmates from very well to do families. It helped me interact very comfortably with people of all backgrounds.

In an article you wrote you said were a Boy Scout growing up. Are you a ‘boy scout’ today, and what did you learn as a scout?

You went to college at Harvard, that’s pretty different from Poughkeepsie. How did you adjust?

In the article I talked about why I’m not associated [any more] with Boy Scouts and how I’ve chosen not to involve my son in scouting. Scouting got hijacked for a very right-wing agenda. It will be interesting to see whether ‘being a Boy Scout’ means the same kind of thing now as its membership has collapsed compared to the meaning both you and I have. I don’t know if I’m a Boy Scout, but I am a true believer — that people can make a difference, that how you treat your fellow person matters in their life and your life.

It was a culture shock. It was the first predominantly white school I went to and predominantly well to do. In my first semester I was pretty sheltered because I spent a lot of time playing soccer. After my first semester I decided I did not go to college to be a soccer player, and I wasn’t good enough to be a player on what at that time was one of the best varsity programs in the country. I started working in a public housing development [in Boston] called Mission Hill. I worked there through graduation and even a little after that, and tried to help kids get an education and mentor them and expose them to the tremendous resources that were available in Boston.

Where were you living when you were a scout?

PHOTOGRAPH:

I was in an inner-city troop in a small city, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. I call it inner-city, but really it was very diverse. Kids came from very troubled backgrounds as well as kids whose fathers had been scouts and were working at IBM and had done very well. I graduated from Poughkeepsie High, went to public schools my whole life. That’s my hometown no doubt about it.

Steve Blazo

How did growing up in small, diverse city affect you?

It helped me to understand a variety

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Your personal success story is built on education. Do you agree we have to break the system to fix it, as some say?

I think we do have to break the [publiceducation] system. What built the American middle class was a combination of public education, affordable college, particularly for people coming back from World War II [on the GI Bill], the development of the state college system and subsidies for people to be able to buy homes. How did it break? Maybe it

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broke because the economy changed and our delivery systems for education didn’t change. It is very hard to find long-term, consistent, safe employment without a college degree.

The political obstacles to change remain difficult or impossible to overcome.

You’re a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C.? Wow do you define a ‘progressive’?

For me it means that our lives are dependent on one another, [that] the success of any American relies on all Americans. I support wholeheartedly that we’re going to have health care for the large majority of Americans now.

Government can play an important role to make sure we have opportunity, equality and a fair chance.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Steve Blazo

With the creation of the suburbs it became possible for a large number of voters to opt out of urban public education. It became a strong disconnect [between] where the

Polish, Italian but it got done.

Hasn’t it been government that has been unwilling to innovate in education?

It came from within.

There are people who believe in education who forced the change.

Citizens engaging in democratic behavior is inherently progressive.

Could you say that about the Tea Party?

Things are broken and someone needs to come in and work with the legislature and solve some of things that are broken

votes and the money was and where a large percentage of poor people were being educated.

Right now, teachers unions seem to be in the crosshairs. How does this work for those of you who have been their allies?

What we expect of schools — and what schools expect of children is starting to change. I’m no fan of George W. Bush, but in one area he moved us in an important direction. We no longer talk about failing kids; we talk about failing schools that’s where the focus should be.

We [need to be] very clear about issues of poverty and race, and the number of children who don’t speak English as a first language and our need to educate them.

We can’t say, “It’s hard to do that”. It was hard to do that when the students spoke 10

april 2010

I think there are other reasons why that’s not progressive. Opposing something with falsehoods while allowing hate mongers to participate is wrong. I do think there are conservative arguments that can in some circumstances win the day.

It seems with the schools enough people stormed the castle.

And we elected a President in this context, as they said only Nixon could have gone to China. [President Barack Obama] said there are changes we’re going to make to No Child Left Behind and we’re going to think about more things when we’re evaluating whether a school is successful. We had an era where people like [Achievement First founder] Dacia Toll and other activists were able to shine a light, and say this is wrong and it is not because of the kids. So decent people, honest people, said, ‘Okay, I’m willing to make a change.’ Then you had a President who said, ‘I will try to get you the resources.’

But he also said, ‘You have to make changes…

Unfortunately, statewide leadership in

Connecticut actually has been behind urban leadership. We haven’t seen the kind of reforms at the state level, while you have seen reforms in Hartford and New Haven. I think the teachers union response in New Haven [where as part of its new contract the union agreed to significant changes] ought to be given a lot of credit. And if there is success, they’ll be able to claim they were an important part of the reforms.

Is Third World culture holding people back from achieving more success?

From what I’ve seen of the immigrant community here, the fight is to get your child an education so they can be successful. What they believe is, the public school system is an important part of my trying to make my children’s life significantly better than my own, and that is a big part of the reason I came.

Progressives seem to have a big problem with Fox News.

We have a television [network] in Fox News entirely dedicated to convincing everyone that nothing in government works, you can’t make a difference and the best thing to do is yell and scream.

The Wall Street Journal is owned by the same company as Fox News, and it has advocated for open borders in terms of immigration. What do progressives want?

We need to address the 11 to 12 million who are here and undocumented, and find a path to legalization and to citizenship.

Don’t many of them just want to be guest workers?

There ought to be a path to legalization and citizenship. There needs to be a resolution of this reality that our economy demands a workforce, it comes from abroad and we ought to be able to find a way to offer jobs that have protections, the right to unionization, that doesn’t undercut American workers. But in doing so we shouldn’t allow that to be a flood of workers that in any way undermines American workers. The approach some labor economists have developed looks at identifying a set of economic indicators around employment and allowing for more visas at periods of lower unemployment in particular industries.

We don’t want an underclass; people do need labor rights, they do need the right to say, ‘I like this country, I’d like to stay,’ and they need the right to be able to leave a job and find another. The key piece is that the workforce not undercut American workers.

By the law of supply and demand, if you increase the number of workers you’re necessarily going to reduce wages.

Which is why you don’t increase the number of visas to the point that you drive down wages. But you increase them so that farmers are not plowing under apple trees in New York [state] because they can’t find a workforce.

What about incoming family members of current legal residents?

There is a huge backlog, particularly for folks who want to bring over family members. It’s a very large issue in the Asian community in this country. While there is a sizable undocumented Asian population, there’s also a large number waiting as a result of this backlog. There’s about one million undocumented Asians in this country.

There are also issues of due process. You have very limited rights when you are in the U.S. immigration system. This allows for the kind of chaos created in places like Arizona by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others who just step on what we would think of basic rights – rights to counsel, rights to be informed of your rights, rights of your loved ones to know where you are located.

Under President Bush an immigration-

reform package was drafted that was generally supported by progressives.

It was; there were concerns about some details. It got through the Senate once and it didn’t move in the House, and it was stopped in the Senate primarily

by Republican votes, even though it had some modest support. There is a wing of the conservative movement that is exceedingly anti-immigrant. There is a wing that is pro-immigrant. This is actually probably the most bipartisan issue of the major issues.

You recently wrote that the Democratic Party would risk Latino support if it didn’t move now on immigration reform.

One of the things that I do is analysis of voting trends and polling. What we’ve seen over the last six months is a major drop of Latino votes and support of the Democratic party.

Because of the immigration issue?

The large majority of Latinos know an undocumented immigrant personally.

The polling shows there is either a family member, a friend or a close business associate.

Is there unanimity on immigration reform with Puerto Ricans, since they already have

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full citizenship rights?

The polling shows there is very broad support among all Latinos, from the Caribbean or from Mexico or Central or South America. [In polls asking the question] ‘Do you believe that antiimmigrant sentiment is impacting all Latinos negatively?’ the large majority said yes.

So they think resistance to reform is antiLatino?

A million undocumented immigrants are Asian; that is never the face on the evening news about immigration. For the folks who are on the front lines of this battle opposing immigration [reform], the organizations that drive that are Numbers USA, Federation for American Immigration Reform [FAIR], Center for Immigration Studies. There is no question they were founded and funded by folks who opposed an increase of the number of people of color in this country.

FAIR was founded by a fellow named by John Tanton [who continues to serves on their board, [and] is a eugenicist. FAIR is the largest anti-immigration group in the country and very aggressive lobbying group. He got millions of dollars from the Pioneer Fund, and they are the last funder of eugenics [research] in the states.

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There isn’t much time before the next election, and U.S. Sen. John McCain [RAriz.], an immigration reformer, said he wouldn’t be supporting new Democratic initiatives this year.

There is a short calendar [for 2010]. We’ll either see a bill raised over the next 45 to 60 days or we won’t have a meaningful bill that we can move. [Republicans] can’t be seen as the party of no. [McCain] is in a primary fight against an anti-immigrant politician, J.D. Hayworth. There are [Republican] senators like Lindsey Graham [S.C.], Susan Collins [Me.], Richard Lugar [Ind.] [whose] history [shows] that they try to work across the aisle to solve real problems. [Immigration reform has] got a shot now. There is no other movement in the country that has demonstrated the ability to put 200,000 or more people in a march on Washington, like last weekend [March 21].

Did you go?

Yes, and there were 16 busloads from New Haven. The President spoke to the crowd and there were a dozen members of Congress who spoke. In the crowd was a desire for change and resolution. When we do polling, Americans believe that the undocumented are in the situation by

choice, that they don’t want to pay taxes, that they could be here legally. What most don’t understand that for most Americans that come illegally there is no line for them to get on. (People say), ‘why don’t they come like my family did?’. Families historically came illegally; there were ethnic slurs against Italians that were based on the acronym for ‘without papers’.

So you’re saying there is no getting in the ‘back of the line’?

If you were to [create] a very rigorous path to legalization, which I’m sure it will be, a path to citizenship, pay a fine, admit to wrongdoing, potentially pay additional taxes, virtually everyone will sign up for that.

You were in economic development for the city of New Haven, you ran Mayor John DeStefano’s statewide campaign for governor. What do you think of Connecticut’s budget impasse?

It’s a tough time to be a governor. A big part of the unemployment losses around the country are state [government] layoffs.

When you’re laying people off and the budget still doesn’t work, you have to lay more people off and you become unpopular. We do need new leadership.

So, it’s ‘Tax those rich people.’ How much money is there?

Fortunately, there is a lot of money in Connecticut. We do need to make the income tax more progressive so people are paying higher percentages when they make more money. It has the potential to take some of the burden off moderateincome families. The overreliance on the property tax diminishes wealth to a wide variety of families.

So, is there a good future for Connecticut?

One thing we probably agree on is I’d invest in public education, I don’t just mean money. I’d invest in things we know work, the kind of reforms New Haven is talking about. I don’t think we’re in a one-year budgetary problem; it’s a decadeslong set of decisions. I also think our community college system has to remain affordable, not just for people out of high school [but those returning to education after an absence]. We don’t know where our economy is going to be. As the economy changes people are going to need to retool at the certificate and degree level.

Tuition increases in [state colleges and universities] certainly has me worried.

So is Connecticut now a banana republic, Continued on 36

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A New Haven woman has devoted her life to rescuing wild creatures from the predations of human civilization

For Weiffenbach, saving animals from humans (and occasionally, themselves) involves much more than playing possum.

PHOTOGRAPH:

Priscilla Searles new haven 13

Rescuing baby raccoons from a tree in Meriden (top and bottom left). Weiffenbach (top right) with a recalcitrant swan. At bottom is Weiffenbach’s husband and partner, Adam Cartwright, who recently passed away.

H

umans and other creatures do not always coexist peaceably.

When conflicts occur, people in Connecticut often seek out

Jennifer Weiffenbach.

“Some days we get more than 200 calls a day,” says Weiffenbach, 44, a wildlife rehabilitator and educator who runs Statewide Wildlife Rescue (statewidewildliferescue.com), a wildlife conflict-remediation business specializing in “humane eviction and exclusion” of wild animals. She started the business in 2007 with her husband, Adam Cartwright, 37, who died recently.

The calls, to 877-572-2666, come at all hours, from law-enforcement officers as well as residents and business owners.

“We have cops that work with us directly, and they call us first because they don’t want to kill, and dispatchers call us first, before they call animal control,” Weiffenbach says.

She tries to answer all calls, regardless of the time of day.

14

april 2010

“Some are for help, where people are hysterical,” she says. “I know if you don’t answer and calm them down, they’re going to call somebody else and the animal is going to die, and the problem won’t be fixed.”

Laura Simon, field director for the urban wildlife program for Humane Society of the United States and president of the Connecticut Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, has high praise for Weiffenbach.

“What is so unique about her problem mitigation work is that she’s innovative, and she’s following the best and most humane model,” Simon says. “She doesn’t just go to a place and trap animals because that often will leave orphaned young behind. She evicts the families as a unit onsite, and takes care of the problem at its source, which is the kind of model that we are advocating.

“Most trappers come out and charge hundreds of dollars to relocate wild animals, which can separate mothers from young and is really bad for the

animals, which don’t do well in a foreign environment. Or they euthanize them.”

Weiffenbach’s desire to help animals began at an early age.

Her mother, Sally Weiffenbach, remembers the first critter she cared for was a bird with a broken wing, which she brought home in the basket of her tricycle.

Then came turtles and snakes and a multitude of others.

“I have a particular gift with animals, and they just kept coming to me,” says Weiffenbach, who was born in Huntsville, Ala. and grew up “up and down the East Coast,” where her father worked as a subcontractor for the U.S. military.

During her early years of rescue work, Weiffenbach volunteered at an animal shelter in Virginia Beach, where she learned to “how to do shots and worming.”

She gained expertise by reading books about wildlife and by hands-on experience, which has included reconstructing a turtle shell with fiberglass and using New Skin liquid bandage to save a frog bitten by a

by a en m ch th nt m hâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s d m ho ed ay.

dog and patch up a seagull wounded with a ďŹ sh hook. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing better than spending time with a broken little thing that lets you help it, or knowing a family of raccoons gets to live and have a decent life,â&#x20AC;? she says.

Weiffenbach has a bachelorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree in natural resource management from the University of Rhode Island, and has obtained licenses for wildlife rehabilitation in Connecticut and nuisance wildlife control ofďŹ cer in Connecticut and New York.

Her background also includes 14 years in the music business, in stage management and production supervisory jobs, at places like New Havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International Festival of Arts & Ideas, where she ďŹ rst met her husband, and Mohegan Sun casino.

training. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was running a hotline and needed someone to refer to who could handle nuisance calls effectively and humanely, and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have that,â&#x20AC;? says Simon, who recommended Weiffenbach knowing she was eager to take the course. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It gave me a completely different perspective,â&#x20AC;? Weiffenbach says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was used to physically retrieving animals and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the skill set to manage without touching an animal.â&#x20AC;?

Much of her current work involves ďŹ guring out how animals get into homes and other structures, using temporary oneway doors until theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve exited and sealing up the access points.

After the training, Weiffenbach and her husband started Statewide Wildlife Rescue as a for-proďŹ t business.

In 2007, Weiffenbach traveled to Ontario, Canada to study wildlife conďŹ&#x201A;ict remediation techniques with Brad Gates, whose humane eviction and exclusion work has been the subject of several National Geographic ďŹ lms.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;All the rest is pro bono â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the education, rehab and rescue,â&#x20AC;? she explains, adding she intends to follow through on plans she and her late husband were making to set up a 501(c)3 tax-exempt charitable organization for the non-proďŹ t part of The Humane Society of the United States, their work. which has sent some of its own people to The Statewide Wildlife Rescue Web study with Gates, paid for Weiffenbachâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s site contains information about birds,

Pick-Your-Own E-lert!

squirrels, bats and other creatures, and advice on when to seek help.

A petite, agile woman with a broad smile and piercing blue eyes, Weiffenbach always checks inside and around structures for holes, however, tiny, through which creatures can enter. Sounds such chirping birds in the walls generally means squirrels in the attic. They along with bats enter through high places, while â&#x20AC;&#x153;mice come in at ground level and work their way up.â&#x20AC;?

vvv Statewide Wildlife Rescue clients include Bobâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Discount Furniture, the United Illuminating Co., Shop-Rite, Wal-Mart and Yale-New Haven Hospital, where she recently evicted a sparrow from a threestory tall atrium.

The bird had been ďŹ&#x201A;ying around the cafeteria and was a â&#x20AC;&#x153;sanitation issue,â&#x20AC;? says Kent Zergiebel, director of environmental services for YNHH, whose regular â&#x20AC;&#x153;pest controlâ&#x20AC;? company didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t deal with birds, and was referred to Statewide Wildlife Rescue by the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Department of Environmental Protection. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was impressed with [Weiffenbach],â&#x20AC;?

Zergeibel adds. â&#x20AC;&#x153;She observed the sparrow,

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and once she figured out where it was going, she had a method for trying to catch it.”

Weiffenbach netted the bird, to the cheers of onlookers, and released it outside the hospital.

At Amity Bike Shop, Weiffenbach and her husband resolved a squirrel problem last winter.

One of the employees spotted the critter one morning, “sitting in the store, looking out very happily,” says bike shop co-owner Sue Aniello. “Then we started seeing halfeaten Power Bars. What he liked to do the most was sit up on the clothing rack and spread the Power Bar pieces all over.

[Weiffenbach and Cartwright] came over and did an inside and outside search for holes. Then we covered screens over the holes and it did not come in again.”

Before calling Weiffenbach and her husband about the squirrel, D’Aniello had known the couple for over a decade, for their other work — with inner-city kids on projects ranging baking cookies to fixing bicycles.

“The kids are in and out of our house all the time,” Weiffenbach says. “Adam was just amazing with the kids, and that was part of what we did. We also trained some of the kids to do the [animal remediation]

work — and it’s great having them see the magic you see.”

Cheshire homeowner Ann Fusco found Statewide Wildlife Rescue through a referral from local police. “We heard noise in the ceiling between the first and second floors last year, just before Thanksgiving, and the animal control officer said, “Why don’t you call these guys? They’re going to help you get rid of it but they’re not going to kill it,’” Fusco recalls. The culprit, a flying squirrel, stopped coming once its access routes were closed up.

edge of the woods,” she says. “People think it warm enough, but when you can’t thermal-regulate, no, it’s not.”

Groundhogs “pretty much stay with the season, but you don’t want to do anything with them during May and June,” Weiffenbach says, “and you don’t Continued on 27

After discovering dead skunks under the porch killed by the Fuscos’ dog, Weiffenbach screened off the area.

She and her husband also helped the Fuscos resolve a subsequent rat problem.

“You have to know the species and take the time and have a little bit of patience,” Weiffenbach says. “In the last two years, the seasons are all off because of the weather. Coons and squirrels are having babies all the time, though not as many, and some deer were dropping babies late last fall.”

When evicting squirrels, Weiffenbach may set up a heated box so the young will survive while the mother is moving them to another location.

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WEIGHT

LOSS

The weight-loss industry becomes Fat City

Bariatric Associates’ Robert and Loretta Tafuri: ‘Preventative medical nutritional and weight management falls squarely and exclusively on a medical doctor.’

18

april 2010

By MELISSA NICEFARO

T

he concept of losing weight is easy: Burn more calories than you consume. Conceptually speaking, it’s a piece of cake. It’s the execution that leaves almost 70 percent of Americans overweight or even obese. If it were that easy, we’d all be smokin’ hot in our bikinis.

Hell, we’d be walking around naked all year long.

We know being overweight is unhealthy.

It is also unappealing. We also know that there are so many choices out there when the motivation kicks in and we want to lose weight. Go carb-free and you’re guaranteed to lose weight. Have Jenny Craig or NutriSystem deliver the food right to your door and you’ll lose weight.

Blah, blah, blah. It’s a matter of finding the right diet for you and sticking to it.

Berta Prevosti, a weight loss counselor from Stratford, had an issue with weight while growing up. After she had children — three boys — she finally lost weight, simply because she started eating three meals a day. She believes there is a strong emotional tie to overeating and once that tie is broken, weight comes off easier.

“There are a thousand diets and anyone can lose weight on each of them, but it’s amazing to me that in the year 2010, people still don’t understand the very basic facts about losing weight,” she says.

Prevosti owns a holistic center and if she looks familiar, she was one of NHM’s Coolest Singles of 2010. She’s a Reiki master and is certified in yoga and yoga therapy. After she helped a friend lose 100 pounds, she became more interested in helping others lose weight and started a weight-loss consulting business. This year she launched a new business called Just Lose It With Berta that has online and in-person components. She writes an ezine and a weekly blog and is working on a new Web site that will offer interactive forums and advice.

The first time she meets with a new client in person, she talks about the pragmatic way of losing weight.

“People can come up with a thousand different ways that chemistry works, all those combinations are a bunch of nonsense. There’s only one way to lose weight,” she says.

There’s that whole “burn more than you consume” thing again.

“Go to bed feeling a little hungry and never eat to fullness for three or four days in a row and you will lose weight. It’s impossible not to,” Prevosti says. Once

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emotionally and they understand themselves better.” She takes serious issue with the notion “comfort” food. “It’s just a silly term to say, ‘I’m going to eat because I don’t feel well,’” she says. “Rather than dealing with why they don’t feel well, they eat. Anyone can lose weight on a diet, but the second there’s an issue, it’s going to come right back up.”

With as many as 70 percent of Americans overweight or obese, that leaves most of us in what Prevosti calls a perpetual state of weight loss.

Loss leader: Prevosti helps her clients negotiate the psychological and emotional dimensions of weight-management.

“A lot of people will lose part of their weight, but never get to their goal weight,” she says. “I can help anyone to lose weight, but to keep it off is the big thing — to live feeling not deprived. People need to eat and enjoy. They go out and have dessert and enjoy guilt-free eating in their healthy, happy bodies.”

vvv the cravings for unhealthy food are gone, she deals with the emotional reasons for a client’s overeating.

During weekly meetings, Prevosti and her client will chart the food course for the week, taking into account meetings and parties.

“It’s not a diet — it’s a change in life and a change in your relationship with food,” she explains. “It’s an emotional journey that you happen to lose weight on.

“Then it comes to staying with it and maintaining it,” Prevosti adds. “The difference is that so much has changed

Being overweight or obese can lead to a slew of health problems including diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, arthritis and even certain types of cancer.

Robert Tafuri, a medical doctor who has

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a weight loss center in New Haven and Madison, likens obesity to a ticking time bomb.

He and his wife Loretta own a preventive medicine practice, Bariatric Associates of New England, which specializes in nutrition and medical weightmanagement. He treats patients who are very overweight or obese as well as those who are suffering from high cholesterol, diabetes and other health risks.

He says there is a plethora of wannabes who give the impression that they’re running a medical weight loss center, but buyer beware. Tafuri is an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital and teaches at the Yale School of Medicine. His wife is a nurse with a degree in psychology and a Ph.D in natural health and holistic nutrition. They know their stuff.

“We’re for real,” he says. “It’s a confusing market to work in. There are people who have sent patients to the hospital because they don’t examine patients or do proper blood work. It’s absolutely awful. There are some charlatans out there who take people’s money and it is criminal what they’re doing.” Tafuri says that many weight-loss centers advertise that they

are medically based, but they have no physician on staff.

“Don’t let the white coats fool you,” he says.

“That doesn’t mean they’re a doctor you can trust with your medical well-being.

pounds; a plan for those overweight with no medical problems and a BMIs between 25 and 29.9; and one for those who are obese with medical conditions and a BMI in excess of 30.

The initial weight loss phase takes between two and 16 weeks with an average weekly loss between two and six pounds.

Tafuri says. The program concludes with a four-week transitional phase that segues into a long-term maintenance program.

“There’s no magic in my field. It takes long hours and a medically responsible effort,” he adds.

Many people who come to see Tafuri are morbidly obese and have tried and failed serious weight-loss regimens as many as eight or ten times.

“They’ve tried and failed many times,” he says. “I believe that preventative medical nutritional and weight management falls squarely and exclusively on a medical doctor. Nothing substitutes for an MD. Two years after reaching their goal, 92 percent of our patients didn’t gain back more than 6.6 percent of what they’d lost.”

A newcomer to Tafuri’s practice will undergo blood work and a physical exam including a bariatric history, electrocardiogram, calculation of body mass index (BMI), body fat composition analysis, ending with a customized weight and lifestyle assessment. Each patient falls into one of three plans: the “Cruise Option” for those wanting to lose ten to 20

At that first meeting, health and weight goals are discussed and the newly motivated patient leaves armed with dietary supplements in the form of powder for shakes and snack bars for the week. Each patient’s progress is followed by the Tafuris and a physical therapist.

Loretta Tafuri handles the emotional component of the program and she agrees that there is no magic involved in weight loss.

“There’s usually an underlying current behind overeating,” she says. “The magic isn’t in the shakes and bars; it’s in understanding why you overeat and changing that emotional behavior.”

One of Tafuri’s patients, Stacey M., decided last August that she’d been Continued on 42

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april 2010

How an architect couple went against the grain in rehabbing their unpretentious house

By DUO DICKINSON

AT H O M E

I

t’s not easy being an architect. We are supposed to be the “cool” ones — thin, black-clad with the hippest of eyewear.

Reputedly we live in poignantly sculptural techno-homes, laughing at the absurd bourgeois banalities of typical American domesticity. You have to have real mud to need a mudroom, after all.

Then we have children. Besides the body issues created by mid-life larding up and the lack of budget for $750 eyeglass frames, parenthood makes all our pretensions seem, well, pretentious. When you have to create a home for the most precious of our creations — our children — the artsy affectations can get old. It’s hard to hold your home at arm’s length when you are holding your spawn close to your bosom.

So it was with Alan Organschi and Lisa Gray, co-principals of Gray Organschi Architecture, a seven-person New Haven firm. They are 40-something-year-old practitioners who happen to be married to each other and have won national acclaim for their extraordinary designs. Whether winning national awards for poignant outbuildings in Litchfield County or landing a commission to design a supergreen Jesuit center at Fairfield University, this couple are truly capital “A” Architects.

Renovated top to bottom, the original house (at right) features large-scale glass facing the open back yard. An exquisite new stone terrace fills the flattened area (right) and a new garage/shop/ playroom (left) allows for full architectural expression including a ‘living roof’ with an outsized scupper to fully drain the grass roofing.

PHOTOGRAPHS:

ANTHONY DECARLO

Organschi is an instructor at Yale’s graduate school of architecture, where he met Gray while both were graduate students there more than 20 years ago.

Together they created a firm whose work product has been celebrated in exhibits, publications, awards and lectures.

But if you asked either of them what collaborative effort means the most to them, it would be their children, Hanna and August. Given their High Modern design sensibilities, one would think that their most precious production would be housed in a creation of extreme innovation. But house design often defies obvious answers.

In 1995, with toddler Hanna in tow and Lisa great with August, Organschi and Gray happened upon one of those once-ina-lifetime opportunities — 4.5 acres of land in Guilford with a rocky knob overlooking vast coastal marshland at an affordable price. (This was 1995, after all.)

But there was a catch — the property had a house on it. An ambiguously new haven

23

Windows replace walls at the back side of the house — they fully capture the new and existing stone landscape walls and rock outcroppings. The view room (left) utilizes a standard set of sliding doors, pitched at a slight angle, to better bring the view back into the main living room (at right). Note Lisa Gray’s expressive furniture that plays off of the relatively traditional architecture.

A completely new kitchen wrought of traditional means and methods.

Full tile backsplash and stainless appliances make for a high durability and a bead board ceiling adds a layer of detail that truly is ‘at home.’

24

april 2010

aged “Foursquare” (a roughly square floor plan perimeter, with four roughly square rooms subdividing it). It had a cesspool septic system, a collapsing chicken coop and a lot of 1950s aluminum siding covering its stark exterior.

Its interior needed to be stripped of all antiquity — walls covered in classic plywood “paneling,” ceilings in acoustic tile, and a “3/4” room (short for three-season porch) set on dirt. Worse than what was there was what had been expunged in a 1959 scorched-earth renovation — the front porch.

You would expect that a High Modern couple like the GrayOrganschis would simply bulldoze the offending box and build their dream sculpture to live in. But that would betray a deeply green ethos that values the embodied energy of any viable structure over the environmental cost of creating more landfill.

And besides, their house was to be a place to live in and love as well as a piece of architecture — and lavishing their creative love on the old box suited their values. Extreme hipness in architecture gravitates to urban centers — New York, L.A., London have the preponderance of those thin, black-clad groover architects.

But Gray and Organschi were (and are) comfortable enough in their own skin to let their work speak for them, and to come home to a place that is soft about the edges, yet made into something that is uniquely theirs.

Upon buying the property the young couple stripped the land of all overgrowth of invasive plants, discovering a web of garden walls with plantings incorporated into them by the previous owners, long lost in the intervening generations that occupied the home. Those walls served as the design guide when they had to regrade to build a septic system that could accommodate a

growing family’s needs. But equally significant, when they grubbed out the overgrown landscape the couple discovered a mysterious turned wood column. Finding a old photograph that showed the column with its long-deceased brethren in the once-upon-atime front porch, they knew they had to redress their naked two-story, street facing façade and poured-concrete front door stoop with a rebirth of the original proper front porch.

If these talented designers followed the “correct” path for capital “A” Architects, they would have seen the absence of a porch as an opportunity to create their own counterpoint commentary — a result that would have tossed away any reference to that old column.

Similarly they might have invented some new garden wall system that proudly proclaimed a new sensibility.

But these architects knew that the public streetscape was a shared stewardship with their neighbors — and besides, there was room for overtly “new” pieces of building discretely away from the street view.

vvv Organschi’s and Gray’s embrace of a simple box as the seed for their home did not mean they left well enough alone — just the opposite.

After they fully rehabbed the original structure (integrating that “3/4 room” into the house by completely rebuilding it) over the intervening 15 years they designed several new additions to their Foursquare.

All the work was executed by a contractor the couple had grown to trust, Pat Lowe.

First, in 1998 they decided that with children fully mobile and growing, they needed some elbow room. So they razed the soon-to-collapse garage and created a two-level outbuilding.

Its lower level was for a shop and garage, the upper level accommodates musical practice space (drums!), workout equipment and TV/

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video game center. The orientation of this new building allows the upper level to dig into the existing rock knob hillside, affording upper-level access independent of the shop equipment and cars, as well as an overlook of the expansive salt marsh.

Rendered in mute simplicity facing the street (its gable end façade plays peek-aboo around the corner of the house), the free-standing addition is loosely connected to the house by a gate, and the rear of the upper level is completely glazed to fully open up to the salt marsh view.

Integrating the outsized television set into a custom built-in technology is ‘civilized.’ The eclectic furnishings play off the traditional trim and detailing that are in play.

All good enough, but what makes this a distinctly Gray-Organschi project are the elaborations that fully express the latent possibilities of this little construction.

Raw concrete, exposed timber and wood slats combine to form vibrant surfaces and details spice up areas in contrast to the starkness of the balance of the outbuilding.

But the jewel in the crown of this diminutive structure is the sod roof that caps the rakishly skewed one-story shop extension off its two story main body.

Even though it’s anything but architect-y, the new mudroom ‘is my favorite part of the house,’ Gray proudly proclaims.

In addition to the gate, the new building is attached to the house with rock terraces that are ruggedly expressive yet crisply simple, punctuated by local flat step stones. This civilized backyard development embraces the latest addition: a fully open glazed sun/view room that grabs the rock knoll view and brings it fully into the home.

It would be fine to bask in the full-throated and skillful expression of raw materials — stone, glass, wood, concrete. But this last bit of renovation was informed by a classic expression of family values. The view room replaced an existing space that served as an ad hoc mudroom. As any family with teenagers can tell you, creating a demilitarized zone to stanch the invasion of sports gear, recyclables, winter garb and the detritus of student life before it takes over the living space of your home is perhaps the most screaming need for any household to address.

Organschi and Gray created a new mudroom fully designed to organize chaos. The space is carved out of the existing home, freeing up the rear for the new view-room addition. Even though it’s anything but architect-y, the new mudroom “is my favorite part of the house,” Gray proudly proclaims.

crafty wood kitchen that feels at home in the Foursquare. Lisa often executes interiors for the firm’s projects and was the chief interior designer of her family’s home. “Like my other designs, I gravitate towards an eclectic approach,” she explains, here introducing some zesty new furniture that plays off the static Foursquare bones.

Set in a cluster of traditional homes that comprised a small enclave within this Guilford neighborhood, this modest home “fits” its immediate context — the typical home life of a family in full teenager embrace. And yet it allows the extraordinary skills of its owners to shine through in carefully calculated interventions and expressions.

The home’s interior is gracefully open, and carefully respectful of what was — all original trim reapplied following plywood/ ceiling tile removal. Wood floors and the It seems oddly appropriate that the old stairway were restored; walls were neighborhood has no cellphone coverage strategically removed to accommodate a — its old-school swamp Yankee sensibility 26

april 2010

underscored by the limits of technology to access every nook and cranny of the landscape. Down the road is a classic mid-century Modernist community (the Old Quarry section of town) filled with a couple of dozen “modern masterpieces” — most designed by or for Yale faculty.

Each of these homes evince the proudly abstracted vision of the “new” that is at the core of what Gray Organschi Architecture produces every day.

In expressing their art and values for their own family, Lisa Gray and Alan Organschi have followed subtler, and perhaps richer, inspirations than the showcase homes down the road. Having history, landscape and mudroom combined in one vision may complicate the perfected notions of Architecture, but it fits this family. v

Wild Kingdom

ST. BERNADETTE SCHOOL

Continued from 16

want to fill in a hole in the winter, when the animal is hibernating.”

Weiffenbach has shared her knowledge with various groups including garden clubs, schools, police departments and the coastal Connecticut chapter of American Society of Home Inspectors.

She also would like to obtain federal stimulus money to train people in her methods. “No one thinks of pest control as a ‘green’ job but we do ‘no kill’ with no chemicals,” she asserts.

At Weiffenbach’s house in New Haven, several cats size up then cozy up to a visitor. An English springer spaniel named Daisy barks furiously at first.

Weiffenbach retrieved her from a house where she had been abandoned, and without food and water for at least five days before the local police called for help.

A wild turkey, unsteady on swollen feet, eagerly gobbles peanuts and Cheerios, then closes its eyes and nearly falls asleep on the living room floor when Weiffenbach scratches the base of its neck.

She suspects the bird, which she rescued, had a human owner. Thus it can’t be released into the wild and will instead live with one of her friends.

Upstairs, Weiffenbach’s two-and-a-halfyear-old daughter, Jenna Lee, is napping.

So is a 12-foot Columbian red tail boa constrictor, in another room under lights atop the wiring covering its tank.

Weiffenbach says most calls to Statewide Wildlife Rescue come in during spring and summer, and the main category are about “the scary noise I can’t identify, which is usually accompanied by a great deal of fear about something in their home and they didn’t invite it.”

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She tries to reassure callers, by “teaching them a lot of do it yourself stuff, or telling ’em what’s normal.

“We spend a lot of time educating people about the wildlife in their backyard, and turning all the energy they have fearing something into empathy.”

Says the Humane Society’s Simon: “Jen takes care of the problem in a long-lasting and effective manner, and educates people why animals are doing what they’re doing, so it’s not this destructive animal trying to get into a home, but just a mother raccoon trying to raise her young. And she does a good job helping people understand and appreciate wildlife better.” v

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E The Two Faces of

Eero Saarinen A bifurcated exhibition celebrates the Modernist master

Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, through May 2 at the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale School of Architecture, New Haven.

203-432-0600, artgallery.yale. edu, architecture.yale.edu.

Eero Saarinen, Side Chair, 1956. Yale University Art Gallery, Mabel Brady Garvan Collection.

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april 2010

ero Saarinen was a Finnish architect who would have turned 100 years old this year. Although he long ago left this mortal coil (he died in 1961), he lives on before us in his built work.

New Haveners know Saarinen primarily for Ingalls Rink (a/k/a the Yale Whale, Yale’s hockey venue), beautiful in its expression of so many different intentions — sculptural, structural, material and institutional. His other New Haven work is far harder to appreciate: the twin Yale residential colleges of Morse and Ezra Stiles.

His client for those commissions, Yale University, has sponsored an extraordinary homage to the man, his work and the movement that he was so deeply a part of — the “cause” of modern architecture. The exhibition Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future is split between two exhibit halls. The “public” portion involving furnishings and a personalized look at the people involved is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery. Across York Street in the Yale School of Architecture gallery, the other half of the exhibit is geared to architects and aficionados of architecture.

Yale was one of mid-century Modernism’s great patrons, and the two venues for this exhibit are part of that portfolio. The original Art and Architecture building was designed by Paul Rudolph, and Louis Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery is across the street from his other Yale commission, the Center for British Art. A serendipitous aspect of seeing this visually compelling exhibition is that you can actually see the interior of what are now “old” buildings that have become silent foundations of the New Haven streetscape so many people take for granted.

The YUAG exhibition houses furnishings, personal effects and other materials reflecting the zeitgeist that created the climate for Saarinen’s career of thoughtful craftiness and inventive form-giving (he can be seen as a conceptual godfather of Frank Gehry).

The Art and Architecture Gallery houses a more “inside baseball” exhibit, appropriately displaying huge models, blow-ups of drawings and classic blackand-white photographs that put Saarinen’s built product on full display in the belly of Yale’s architecture community.

Ensconced in “modern masterpieces” and celebrating the Modern movement’s heyday it’s rewarding to understand how Saarinen fit the time. He was part of a

group comprising mainly white European males who saw a decaying, outdated and perhaps even venal world of historicist building and boldly spoke truth about the disingenuity of the dominant presence of historicist architecture in an age of exploding social and technological change.

Saarinen’s 1963 Dulles Airport Termindal is one of the monuments of Modernist architecture.

It is a mark of the “settled law” of architectural aesthetic judgment that Saarinen and the creators of the buildings that house this exhibition comprise a veritable “Pantheon of Heroes” for the profession (some call it the “starchitect” phenomenon) — so much so that the rarest of things has happened: an architect’s design was renamed for him post-mortem: What was the “A&A Building” is now Paul Rudolph Hall.

If there was ever a philosophical selfcelebration this is it.

The dynamic between idea and reality is at the core of all design, and architecture is no different. Modernism was a revolutionary effort, so the prosaic realities of durability and use could get short shrift in the building of these architects’ ideas. Both of Saarinen’s New Haven masterpieces have had to be extensively renovated — most aggressively the Morse/Stiles complex where an “intervention” by Yale was needed to detox their inherently depressing qualities. Intentionally rendered as Modernist interpretation of medieval village architecture, the Morse/Stiles complex captured the worst aspects of both: the scalelessness of Modernism with the ad hoc brutality of medieval construction.

Saarinen’s c. 1953 sketch of what would become the iconic Ingalls Rink, a/k/a the ‘Yale Whale.’

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Saarinenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Wombâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Chair and Ottoman, 1956.

Yale University Art Gallery, Mabel Brady Garvan Collection.

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The seductive qualities of modern expressive design are fully and effectively offered up in this exhibit. The huge models of Dulles Airport and the TWA Terminal at what is now John F. Kennedy (nĂŠe Idlewild) Airport are astonishingly real, and yet are abstractly rendered in pure white.

Like present-day computergenerated renderings that can be as seductively believable as the movie Avatar, Saarinen sought to make the compelling reality of his work fully evident before construction, both to sell the buildings to patrons, but also to wrest control of the designs he wrought.

These startling models exude allusive qualities that are uncontrollable in even the most venerating context.

You are either under age 30 or pop culture-illiterate if you cannot see the parallel contemporary universes of Stanley Kubrickâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2001: A Space Odyssey or the Jetsons TV series in these otherwise starkly rendered models.

The photographs in this exhibition convey the very essence of the architecture as â&#x20AC;&#x153;art mindsetâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; most often composed with no humans within or without the structures they depict.

Such insights are why we have exhibitions. But the depth of subtext, the internally referencing commentary of a great

university producing an exhibit about the recipient of its great patronage and its presence in a little New England city is also inescapable.

Every public building is designed by an architecture ďŹ rm, and any building of any size has a signiďŹ cant construction budget, but so many buildings are inherently â&#x20AC;&#x153;backgroundâ&#x20AC;? affairs and serve as the backdrop when the fashion-model buildings by â&#x20AC;&#x153;starchitectsâ&#x20AC;? strut down any given streetscape.

Given its undeniably dynamic and enriching presence, Yale itself effectively renders the surrounding context of New Haven its background, virtually the deďŹ nition of the town/gown dynamic.

Pearls are not the beloved offspring of oysters â&#x20AC;&#x201D; quite the contrary. Pearls are the exquisitely beautiful product of an irritating speck of sand that causes just enough discomfort that it cannot be ignored.

This exhibit offers rich insight into how modern architecture â&#x20AC;&#x153;irritatedâ&#x20AC;? the ďŹ rst 50 years of the 20th century before it conquered the consensus of what now constitutes aesthetic legitimacy. Yale may be New Havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pearl, but its irritations seem fairly insigniďŹ cant when its presence in our midst creates exhibits like this one. v

ART GALLERY TALKS/TOURS Michael Anderson, Peabody preparatory and creator of the Fossil Fragments exhibition, hosts a talk on The Art of the Diorama about the history of Peabody dioramas and the artists responsible for creating them. 5:30 p.m. April 8 at Yale Peabody Museum, at Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven. $7 ($6 seniors, $5 children). 203-432-5050, peabody.yale.edu.

The Ethics of Dust. At one time pollution on buildings was thought to be intrinsically valuable. Jorge OteroPailos, architect and assistant professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture in Preservation, has made castings of architectural residue and suggests a different way of looking at architectural history. 5:30 p.m.

April 8 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203-4322800, ycba.info@yale.edu.

Revealing the Process of Painting: John Flaxman Modeling the Bust of William Hayley. A 30-minute gallery talk led by British Art Center students guide Samantha Gale. Part of the Art in Context Series. 12:30 p.m. April 13 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-2800, ycba.info@yale.edu

EXHIBITIONS SCC Student Arts Expo. The Southern Connecticut Conference, consisting of 21 high schools in Greater New Haven, present a student art exhibition featuring outstanding visual arts in a variety of media. April 19-23 at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St., New Haven. Open 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-noon Sat. Free. 203-5624927, creativeartsworkshop.org.

Varieties of Romantic Experience: Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ryskamp.The first exhibition of its scope dedicated to northern European drawings — British, German,

French, Danish and Dutch. It treats Romanticism (1789-1848) as an international phenomenon by including British artists as well as Continental artists. Through April 25 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.–5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m. Sun. Free. 203-4322800, ycba.yale.edu.

A Diorama Takes Shape: Bringing the Genius of James Perry Wilson to Life.

Watch and learn the art of the diorama as sculptor Michael Anderson and other local artists prepare elements to accompany the painting “Sand Dunes at Point Pelee” by James Perry Wilson, the grand master of diorama art. Through April 25 at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, noon-5 p.m. Sun. $7 ($6 seniors, $5 children). 203-432-5099, peabody.yale.edu Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the first major exhibition to examine the early years of one of the most prolific and controversial architects.

The exhibit features drawings, models, furniture, photographs, films and ephemera. Through May 2 at Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St. and Yale School of Architecture, 100 York St., New Haven. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.Sat. (until 8 p.m. Thurs.). Free. 203-4320600, artgallery.yale.edu Compass and Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500-1750. The first exhibition of its scope in North America provides a new prospective on the emerging role of the architect and the transformational impact of math on architecture.

Showcases the work of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren. Featuring drawings, paintings, rare books, maps and unique mathematical instruments.

Through May 30 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Open 10–5 p.m. daily except Mon., noon-5 p.m.

Sun. Free. 203-432-2800, ycba.yale.edu.

The Branford Artists Cooperative hosts a Mother’s Day Celebration of the Arts. Works by four artists are on view: Guilford painter Molly McDonald simplifies nature and puts the memory of a moment on canvas with striking color and articulate brush strokes.

Branford’s Kristin Merrill creates pieces from natural materials from

Live Better

Tula Telfair’s ‘Within the Reality of Ideas II’ from the exhibition Landscapes in Counterpoint, opening this month at the Florence Griswold Museum. Image courtesy Forum Gallery. the sea and land, with sterling jewelry and wood and mixed media sculpture.

Owen Sea Luckey is a Branford textile artist who pushes the boundaries of knitting and sewing with her whimsical holes, sumptuous textures and embellishments on scarves and recycled garments. And Guilford potter David Frank creates timeless works of utilitarian art. 6-9 p.m. May 7 (artists reception), 10 a.m.-4 p.m. May 8, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tues., Thurs. through May 31 at Branford Artists Cooperative, 211 Montowese St., Branford. 203-589-6995, branfordartistscooperative.com.

Paula Billups and Meredith Miller at Gallery 195. Painter Paula Billups earned her BFA from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and subsequently studied at the Grand Central Academy of Art in New York. Billups’ work has been exhibited in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island and is represented by the Ruggiero Gallery in Madison. Photographer Meredith Miller earned her BA from the University of

Chicago and her MFA from the Yale University School of Art, where she was awarded the Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize. Miller’s work has been exhibited in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nebraska and New York. Through June 4 at Gallery 195, NewAlliance Bank, 195 Church St., New Haven. 203-772-2788, newhavenarts.org.

Tula Telfair: Landscapes in Counterpoint pairs new paintings by the artist with her selection of works from the Griswold Museum collection. Telfair’s poetic landscapes seem strangely familiar, their grandeur recalling the picturesque panoramas captured by artists of the Hudson River School. Yet unlike artists who record what they see, Telfair composes her romantic scenes from memory, drawing partially upon the vistas of her youth in West Africa. April 24-June 27 at Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Mon., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $9 ($8 seniors, $7 students, free under 12). 860-434-5542, flogris.org.

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O F N OT E S PHOTOGRAPH: Jennifer Lester

A Night at Two Operas Yale Opera offers up Bizet and Stravinsky at Sprague

By MARGARET A. LITTLE

(L-r) Chrystal E. Williams (seated) as Cherubino, Tyler Simpson as Figaro and Mireille Asselin as Susanna in Yale Opera’s February production of Mozart’s ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ at the Shubert.

La Tragédie de Carmen, opera in one act by Georges Bizet (adapted by Marius Constant). Le Rossignol, opera in one act by Igor Stravinsky. Stage direction by Mark Streshinsky. Musical preparation and accompaniment by Douglas Dickson and Timothy Shaindlin. Produced by Yale Opera, Doris Yarick Cross, artistic director. 8 p.m. April 16-17 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

I

n February, Yale Opera presented three sold-out performances of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at New Haven’s Shubert Theater. The Hartford Courant’s Jeffrey Johnson described the production as “a fine and funny Figaro…thoughtful, charismatic and great fun to hear.”

Figaro is demanding. Its performers must have not only the vocal chops for some of the most glorious music ever written, but it requires versatile acting, physical comedy, sung dialogue (recitative) and dance — to say nothing of conveying farce, poignancy, ebullience, bravado, defeat, irony, intrigue, foolishness and forgiveness. In short, Figaro is an exquisite

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exploration of love and all the complex passions it stirs.

Yale Opera is a graduate-level program (not to be confused with the undergrad Opera Theater of Yale College) dedicated to attracting and training up to 16 young opera singers each year. Begun in 1983, when its first performance drew an audience of all of 15 people (three of whom included the director or faculty otherwise involved in the production) in recent years it has played to full houses at the 1,600-seat Shubert. Artistic Director Doris Yarick Cross is thrilled with that trajectory. “There is something so exciting about having a full house — a really

responsive full house — for our singers,” she says.

Following on the success of Figaro, Stage Director Mark Streshinsky will bring to New Haven audiences a double bill of one-act opera productions of Bizet’s Carmen and Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol.

This pointedly renamed one-act Carmen — more properly known as La Tragédie de Carmen — is an adaptation of Bizet’s classic by Marius Constant and Peter Brook, the much-heralded theater innovator, reorganized and recomposed for a smaller cast in a smaller venue. It runs only about an hour and 15 minutes.

This Carmen has all of Bizet’s familiar arias, but is not to be mistaken for the original; it is a thorough reimagining.

According to Streshinsky, who has directed many Carmens, including the Cincinnati Opera’s recent production that featured 150 performers on the stage, “The full opera Carmen is really Don Jose’s

story: the story of his obsession with this incredible figure, Carmen.” This version, by contrast, “focuses on Carmen and what happens to her as she moves from one lover to another, beginning and ending with Don Jose as the chief one, and the one who ends her life.”

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Streshinsky says he is looking forward to staging this Constant/Brook version with its clever focus on the femme in the femme fatale. Douglas Dixon will be the accompanist and musical coach.

Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol is a one-act operatic telling of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale “The Nightingale,” with accompaniment by Timothy Shaindlin, a renowned opera veteran of such productions as War and Peace at the Metropolitan Opera. For readers unfamiliar with the tale, the story is of a nightingale whose song is so sublimely lovely that the Emperor of China sends his minions to capture her for his palace entertainment. Covetous of this prize, the Emperor of Japan offers his Chinese counterpart a bejeweled mechanical nightingale, in a feat of imperial oneupmanship. The nightingale happily returns to her home in the wild, since the Emperor’s entertainment can now be provided by her glittering replacement.

But, as machines do, the mechanical bird starts to sputter and then goes silent, no longer able to provide comfort to the dying emperor. A Greek chorus, represented by a single tenor voice, helps to complete the retelling of this story, which like all of Anderson’s work, brings mythic power to the deceptively simple art of the fairy tale.

Cross chose Carmen because, like Figaro, it demands and rewards a young cast. So does Le Rossignol, a favorite of Cross’, who as a young singer sang the part of the Cook in a production with Stravinsky.

The casts for the two nights will alternate, so that all of the young artists will be earn performance experience.

For New Haven-area music lovers, Yale Opera affords an opportunity to see some of opera’s most promising young artists developing not only their voices, but the stagecraft of opera under the tutelage of acclaimed professional directors and faculty. It’s sort of like having our own minor-league baseball franchise in town where, as sports fans know, the thrill of watching young players hone their craft may be more rewarding than what you find in the majors. v

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MUSIC Classical Yale Opera presents a double-bill of one-act operas: Bizet’s La Tragedie de Carmen (adapted by Marius Constant) and Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol. Stage direction by Mark Streshinsky. Musical preparation and accompaniment

by Douglas Dickson and Timothy Shaindlin. 8 p.m. April 16-17 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $12$8 ($5 students). 203-432-4158, music. yale.edu.

Men and Baker’s Dozen. WTNH-TV’s Chris Velardi emcees the affair. 7:30 p.m. April 18 at the Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $18 ($10 students). 203-562-5666, shubert.com.

There’s always room for cello — especially if they are the renowned Yale Cellos under the musical direction of Aldo Parisot. 8 p.m. April 20 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $20$10 ($5 students). 203-432-4158, music. yale.edu.

Pianist Anton Kuerti performs the final concert of Yale’s 2009-10 Horowitz Piano Series. MOZART Fantasy in C minor, K. 475; HAYDN Sonata No. 62 in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI/52; SCHUMANN Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22;

Verdi Requiem. Few (if any) works in the Western musical canon approach the size, scope and power of Giuseppe Verdi’s monumental Requiem, performed by the massed forces of the Yale Camerata, Yale Glee Club and Yale Symphony Orchestra. Toshiyuki Shimada conducts. 8 p.m. April 24 at Woolsey Hall, Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. $15-10. 203-562-5666, shubert.com.

Organ students of Jeffrey Brillhart have an opportunity to show what they’ve learned this academic year as part of an Organ Improvisation Showcase. 2 p.m.

April 27 at Battell Chapel, 400 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music. yale.edu.

The Chamber Music Society at Yale presents the Hagen String Quartet in recital. BEETHOVEN Quartet in C Major, Op. 59 No. 3; WEBERN Five Pieces, Op. 5; and GRIEG Quartet in G minor, Op. 27. 8 p.m. April 27 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $34-$27 ($14 students). 203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Penderecki Conducts Penderecki.

One of the most important composers of our time, Krzysztof Penderecki conducts the Yale Philharmonia in works that span his career. Program includes the groundbreaking Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima; Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra with soloist Syoko Aki; Concerto for Horn and Orchestra; Winterreise with soloist William Purvis; and the Adagio movement from Grawemeyer Award-winning Symphony No. 4. 8 p.m. April 29 (repeated 4/30 at Carnegie Hall, New York) at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Free. 203432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara helms a quintet of young NYC all-stars for two April 30 shows at Firehouse 12.

Kol Ami Congregation presents world-renowned violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman in concert, with accompanist Rohan DeSilva, piano. Sponsored by the Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven and Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven. 4 p.m. April 18 at the Palace Theater, 100 E. Main St., Waterbury. $125-$55. 203-346-2000, palacetheaterct.org.

The Aulos Ensemble is Christopher Krueger, flauto traverso; Marc Schachman, baroque oboe; Linda Quan, baroque violin; Myron Lutzke, baroque cello and Arthur Haas, harpsichord. 3 p.m. April 18 at the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, 15 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven. $20 ($10 students). 203-4320825, music.yale.edu.

Music for Life is a benefit concert on behalf of the Connecticut chapter of the National MS Society, the International Help of Missionaries and One Laptop Per Child. Headlining is violin virtuoso Jourdan Urbach, whose cousin has a progressive form of multiple sclerosis.

Also, SIC InC, a contempo-classical music ensemble of Yale undergraduates that matches rock concert lighting and video projections with chamber music, and Yale a cappella groups the Duke’s

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april 2010

MENDELSSOHN Fantasie in F-sharp minor, Op. 28; BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110. 8 p.m. April 21 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $25-$15 ($8 students). 203-4324158, music.yale.edu.

Beethoven & Beyond. On December 12, 1808 an extraordinary event took place at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien — the premieres of both Symphony No. 5 and Symphony No. 6

by Ludwig van Beethoven. Music director William Boughton and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra recreate this momentous musical event. Punctuating these masterpieces is a recent composed work by KoreanAmerican virtuoso performer and composer Jim Hi Kim, Monk. 7:30 p.m.

April 22 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. $65-$10. 203-865-0831, newhavensymphony.org.

New Music New Haven offers Yale faculty composer Ezra Laderman’s new Nonet for Mixed Ensemble, plus music

by Yale graduate composers. 8 p.m.

April 22 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-4158, music. yale.edu.

The New England Guitar Society presents a performance by Students from the Juilliard School Guitar Depart. in a fundraiser for the Milford Fine Arts Council. 8 p.m. May 1 at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. $15. 203878-6647, milfordarts.org.

Ode to Joy. Beethoven’s redemptive Symphony No. 9, Op. 125 (Chorale) reached cult status as long ago as the end of the 19th century. “Here a great man has created his greatest work,” said Robert Schumann. Added Igor Stravinsky: “The Ninth is sacred, and it was already sacred when I first heard it.” Join the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and the Hartford Chorale under the direction of William Boughton. Also, the composer’s Symphony No. 8, Op. 93. 8 p.m. May 13 at Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. $65-$10. Also 8 p.m. May 15 at Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University. $45-$35. 203-865-0831, newhavensymphony.org.

The Renée B. Fisher Piano Competition Winners’ Concert features performances by gifted young pianists from throughout Connecticut, including the premiere of works commissioned for the 2010 competition. 7:30 p.m.

May 15 at Neighborhood Music School, 100 Audubon St., New Haven. Free. 203624-5189, nmsmusicschool.org.

Celebrate musical Americana with Orchestra New England’s Memorial Day Tribute concert, presented by the city of New Haven and the Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee. Broadway show tunes, jazz pieces and a flagwaving Sousa finale, all under the baton of ONE music director James Sinclair. 5 p.m. May 30 at the Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven.

Free (reservations recommended). 203946-8200.

Popular A homecoming of sorts for members Noah Baerman (piano), Wayne Escoffery (tenor sax) and guitarist Amanda Monaco, who first met while studying music at New Haven’s Educational Center for the Arts, this performance by the quintet (with bassist Henry Lugo and Vinnie Sperazza, drums) Playdate will celebrate its self-titled debut recording on Posi-Tone Records. 8:30 & 10 p.m.

April 16 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $18, $12. 203-785-0468, firehouse12.com.

The music of Gandalf Murphy & the Slambovian Circus of Dreams has been variously described as “hillbillyFloyd,” “folk-pop,” “alt-country, roots-rock” and “surreal Americana.”

Whatever you want to call it, the music is uplifting, empowering — and tons of fun. 8 p.m. April 17 at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $25. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org.

Feed your rockabilly psychosis when Heavy Trash rocks the Nine. Jon Spencer (Pussy Galore, Jon Spencer Blues, Boss Hog) has destroyed and rebuilt American roots music with such ferocity and wild abandon, it’s hard to believe that there’s anything left. Matt Verta-Ray (Bo, Madder Rose, Speedball Baby) grew up in the loving arms of left-wing parents who would take him to folk and blues shows long before he sprouted sideburns. Matt is also the mad scientist behind the jungle of tube amps and old-school echo machines that form the mutated nucleus of his analog cave, world-class recording studio NY Hed. 420 Blackbirds opens. 9 p.m.

April 17 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $10. 203-789-8281, cafénine.com.

Get hopping (but not hopping mad!) with the Taj Motel Trio, an eight-piece ska/punk band from Georgia. Formed in 1997, they have performed alongside Streetlight Manifesto, the Pietasters, Mustard Plug, Big D and the Kids Table, the Planet Smashers and more. 9 p.m.

April 17 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $5. 203-789-8281, cafénine.com.

It’s pan-demonium as the St. Like’s Steel Band performs music by Liam Teague, Debby Teason, and Andy Akiho, plus Fire Down Below by Len (Boogsie) Sharpe. Part of Yale’s Ellington Series. 8 p.m. April 23 at Sprague Hall, 470 College St., New Haven. $20-$12 ($7 students).

203-432-4158, music.yale.edu.

Firehouse 12’s Spring Jazz Series presents the Armen Donelian Group. A

preview of the music veteran pianist/ composer Armen Donelian and his new quintet will record later this year for its debut release. 8:30 & 10 p.m. April 23 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $18, $12. 203-785-0468, firehouse12.com.

From Top 40 hits “I Will Be in Love with You” and “I’ll Come Running,” to “I Can Dream of You” and “Boatman,” Livingston Taylor’s creative output has continued unabated. His musical knowledge has inspired a varied repertoire, and he is equally at home with a range of musical genres — folk, pop, gospel, jazz — and from upbeat storytelling to touching ballads. 8 p.m. April 24 at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $40. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org.

A supernova with five Grammy nominations in 1975 for “At Seventeen,” Janis Ian quit the music business in 1983, but returned in 1992 with Breaking Silence, an album that garnered her a ninth Grammy nomination. Since that record she’s been as prolific as ever, continually reinvigorating her loyal fans and making new ones the world over. 8 p.m. April 25 at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $40. 877-503-1286, katharinehepburntheater.org.

Join Backyard Tire Fire with openers the Backyard Committee for a night of backyards! Backyard Tire Fire, which emerged from a fertile Midwest music scene that’s introduced America to

some of its greatest new rock bands over the last decade, fully embrace the best characteristics of their generation’s genre-bending, influencemelding approach to creating music.

The varying methodologies, however, only serve as means to a greater end for Ed Anderson, the sublime songwriter who’s the voice and vision behind BTF. 9 p.m. April 27 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $10. 203-789-8281, cafénine.com.

Who’s Bad. Get an opportunity to live up to their hype as “the ultimate Michael Jackson tribute band.” All ages. 9 p.m. April 29 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $15. 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com.

The Elm City-based Parker’s Tangent play blues as well as “roots-based original art rock.” 8 p.m. April 30 at Milford Performance Coffeehouse, 40 Railroad Ave. South, Milford. $10. 203878-6647, milfordarts.org.

Tomas Fujiwara & the Hook Up. Drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara helms a quintet of young New York all-stars that will perform brand new music as well as selections from its forthcoming debut, Actionspeak (482 Music). 8:30 & 10 p.m. April 30 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $18, $12. 203-785-0468, firehouse12.com.

Bennie Maupin Trio. Maupin is best known for his atmospheric bass clarinet playing on Miles Davis’ classic Bitches Brew album and other Davis

recordings, and as a founding member of Herbie Hancock’s seminal band the Headhunters. Rounding out his trio is Buster Williams on bass and drummer Billy Hart. The Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra will open the concert. 8 p.m. May 1 at Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $18 ($16 seniors and Wesleyan staff, $6 students). 860-6853355, wesleyan.edu/cfa Manic Productions presents Murder

By Death in a super-rare small-club appearance. Indiana’s MBD layers the vocal sounds of an old saloon with the haunting strings of a Hungarian folk dance and the hard-driving rhythms of pure rock ‘n’ roll, producing what Stuff magazine has called “lush, orchestrated songs,” somehow simultaneously reminiscent of Johnny Cash and Radiohead. Added to that thick and intriguing sound are a series of dark and ironic lyrics, combining the mood and tone of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds with the narrative force of the Decemberists or a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ha Ha Tonka and Linfinity open. 9 p.m. May 1 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $14. 203789-8281, cafénine.com.

Gregory & the Hawk is a project led by the captivating vocal talents of native New Yorker Meredith Godreau, who has been performing under said moniker to massive DIY success for five years. In a rather staggering accomplishment for an artist without a label, manager or booking agent, she’s sold over 15,000 self-released

singles, bringing about a groundswell of support on the Internet that has resulted in over 17 pages of fans covering her songs on YouTube. 8 p.m.

May 2 at The Space, 295 Treadwell St., Bldg. H, Hamden. $10 ($8 advance). 203288-6400, thespace.tk.

Jay Mankita’s concerts for children and families promote kindness and respect, sustainability, healthy, choices, literacy and appreciation of the natural world.

His newest CD, Eat Like A Rainbow, is a “Parents’ Choice Approved” awardwinner. 4 p.m. May 7 at Neighborhood Music School, 100 Audubon St., New Haven. $10 ($5 children). 203-624-5189, nmsmusicschool.org.

Dan Weiss Trio. Drummer Weiss’ Firehouse 12 debut as a bandleader, after three previous appearances as a sideman, celebrates his new release Timshel (Sunnyside Records), a showcase for his ability to juxtapose the standard jazz piano trio with influences ranging from North Indian music to heavy metal to contemporary classical.

8:30 & 10 p.m. May 7 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $18, $12. 203-7850468, firehouse12.com.

Following an eight-year hibernation, “third-wave” ska-meisters Spring Heeled Jack return to the fray on York Street.

All ages. 9 p.m. May 7 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $23 ($19.98 advance). 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com.

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Erin McKeown is a multi-instrumentalist and folk-rock singer/songwriter. She released her first album, Monday Morning Cold, on her own label (TVP Records), traveling throughout New England while still a student at Brown in order to promote the record.

McKeown’s music touches upon pop, swing, rock, folk and electronic music, as well as many other genres. She cites The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as an influence on her music. 8 p.m. May 8 at the Space, 295 Treadwell St., Bldg.

H, Hamden. $14 ($12 advance). 203-2886400, thespace.tk.

Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3. California native (now based in NYC) Wynn is a songwriter who led the influential band the Dream Syndicate from 1981 to 1989 and afterward began a solo career. For this show he will be playing with his band the Miracle 3. 9 p.m. May 8 at Café Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. $10. 203789-8281, cafénine.com.

Saxophonist Marcus Strickland, who has performed at Firehouse 12 in past years with groups led by Dave Douglas and Ben Wolfe, returns this season with his own trio to perform music from his latest release, Idiosyncrasies (Strick Muzik). 8:30 & 10 p.m. May 14 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $18, $12. 203-785-0468, firehouse12.com.

Pink Floyd tribute band The Machine will perform The Wall in its entirety, followed by a second set of PF favorites.

All ages. 9 p.m. May 15 at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $15 ($12 advance). 203-624-8623, toadsplace.com.

Darren Litzie Trio. Bandleader Litzie was keyboardist for the 2009 North American tour of singer Andrew Strong (of The Commitments fame). 8 p.m. May 21 at Center for the Arts, 40 Railroad Ave., Milford. $15. 203-878-6647, milfordarts.org.

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april 2010

with four Greenwich multimillionaires leading the major races?

It’s problematic. I don’t know if it’s a banana republic, because we can choose among them. I saw a study that if the [U.S.] Senate matched the [demographics of the] country, 52 senators would be women and only two would be millionaires. I think people in Connecticut and across

Paris-born pianist/composer JeanMichel Pilc and his trio come to New Haven on their CD release tour for True Story (Dreyfus). 8:30 & 10 p.m. May 21 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $18, $12. 203-785-0468, firehouse12.com.

Innovative vocalist/composer Fay Victor’s longstanding quartet will perform music from its acclaimed 2009 release, The FreeSong Suite (Greene Avenue Music), which introduced the world to her new eclectic, stream-ofconsciousness style. 8:30 & 10 p.m.

May 28 at Firehouse 12, 45 Crown St., New Haven. $18, $12. 203-785-0468, firehouse12.com.

World Spring Taiko Showcase. The thunderous and exhilarating rhythms of Taiko, Japanese drumming, performed by students. Several dynamic styles rooted in cultural tradition will be demonstrated as well as more contemporary Taiko featuring unison drumming and modern rhythms. 4 p.m.

May 1 at World Music Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $3 ($2 students).

860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa Dragon Music, Tiger Sound. Formed

by Wesleyan students, faculty members and friends, the Wesleyan Chinese Music Ensemble will present a variety of music styles from China and Taiwan, including both folk and contemporary repertoires. 7 p.m. May 2 at World Music Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $3 ($2 students). 860-685-3355, wesleyan. edu/cfa West African Drumming & Dance presented by Wesleyan’s dance and music departments to showcase the vibrancy of West African cultures through their music and dance forms.

Choreographer Iddi Saaka, Wesleyan’s world dance artist-in-residence, performs with students in his West African dance courses accompanied by students of the West African Drumming Ensemble under the direction of visiting instructor Brian Parks. 3 p.m. May 7 at CFA Courtyard (rain site Crowell Concert Hall), Wesleyan University, Middletown.

Free. 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa

the country think we have problems. Things are broken and someone needs to come in and work with the legislature and solve some of things that are broken, the tax structure, pubic schools in terms of the achievement gap, these require systems change. I believe voters in Connecticut understand it’s broken, but you have to speak to real solutions.

You’re likely to have very different views on how you fix it. The way you win is by winning that argument. v

Photograph: T. Charles Erickson

Without benefit of sets, props or costume changes, Nilaja Sun brings to life a Bronx classroom in No Child...

School Daze Sun also rises in LWT’s estimable (if flawed) onewoman show No Child…, written and performed by Nilaja Sun. Directed by Hal Brooks. Through April 18 at Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, New Haven. 203-787-4282, longwharf.org.

By BROOKS APPELBAUM

N

ilaja Sun’s No Child… contains anger, humor, irony — and one heart-stopping moment. Sun has constructed this one-hour whirlwind of a play around her experiences as a teaching artist in the impoverished high schools of New York City. The script is an indictment of the public school system as impacted by George Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education initiative.

As an energetic and idealistic young actress, the character of “Miss Sun” enters what is thought to be the worst class in “Malcolm X High School, A Fictional High School in the Bronx.” She endures weeks of disrespect and chaos as she attempts to transform these alternately angry, bored, wise-cracking and rebellious tenth-graders into “thespians” (“Lesbians!?”), and at the denouement — well, you can guess, but I won’t be the one to tell you.

The heart-stopping moment, though, doesn’t come from Sun’s script. Instead it comes when we suddenly hear a young man (played by Sun, as all the characters are) speak the words of the script “Miss Sun” has been trying to teach her students: Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good. Wertenbaker’s play tells the story of 18th-century Australian convicts who stage a version of a Restoration comedy. The man in charge of them, 2nd Lt. Ralph Clark, believes that

theater will elevate these criminals to a higher moral state. What transpires is more complicated, remarkably provocative and “tough,” in all the best senses of the word.

By choosing this particular play for her students, “Miss Sun” has an obvious agenda: the kids surely feel like convicts — at home and especially at this school with its “two metal-detecting machines, five school guards, two armed police officers and seven metal-detecting wands.” So, she thinks, they will identify with convicts, right? At the same time, she has a very funny moment riding the subway home after her first class in which she realizes the possible trap in her plan: might the kids feel that she is telling them they are convicts? Why didn’t she choose another play — any other play?

However, the real trap for Sun the playwright is that no matter how clever and touching her script is (and it is both, in great measure), few scripts can stand up to Wertenbaker’s, which explores in such depth, and with such complexity, a number of the same issues that Sun’s play confronts. I came away wishing I had seen Sun the actress (she is terrific) in Wertenbaker’s play, or seen real students stretching themselves to act in Wertenbaker’s play.

Yes, I laughed and yes, there were tears in my eyes throughout the evening. But every time it was because I was either hearing the language of Our Country’s Good (however massacred by a shy or literally tongue-tied student). The language of Sun’s script is pyrotechnical, as the actress transforms instantly from new haven

37

ONSTAGE Opening Miracle on South Division Street

by Tom Dudzick. A hilarious, heartfelt play about old family legends and deathbed confessions that shake the faith of Clara and her children. April 8-May 2 at Seven Angels Theatre, 1 Plank Rd., Waterbury. $29-$37.50. 203-757-4676, sevenangelstheatre.org.

What do you get when you take a British lord and his wife, two servants, a bloodthirsty mummy, an Egyptian expert and a vampire all portrayed by only two actors?

The Mystery of Irma Vep, a thrillingly funny night of theater. 8 p.m. April 9 at Patricelli ’92 Theater, Wesleyan University, Middletown.

Free. 860-685-3355, wesleyan. edu/cfa.

other’s eyes and struggle to see themselves. With each failure, the stakes are raised. Devin Brain directs. 7:30 p.m. April 15, 7:30 & 11 p.m. April 16-17 at Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. $15 ($10 students). 203-432-1566, yalecabaret. org.

Set in a remote corner of Africa, Battle of Black and Dogs is a politically, sexually and culturally charged tale of psychological warfare that erupts at an isolated construction compound. When a hired man mysteriously dies, his brother arrives at the compound to collect the body — and the site manager, his fiancée and an engineer all become embroiled in the coverup of the worker’s death. Haunting thriller by French writer Bernard-Marie Koltès, directed by Robert Woodruff,. April 16-May 8 at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven. $67$35. 203-432-1234, yalerep.org

Ana Reeder stars as Nora in Gordon Edelstein’s present-day recasting of Ibsen’s classic A Doll’s House at Long Wharf Theatre.

The Speckled Bull is an Irish folk tale with storyteller Tom Lee. Explore the dark side of fantasy and the emotional power of rebirth and renewal. Not suitable for young children. 2 p.m. April 11 at Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. Free. 203432-2800, ycba.info@yale.edu.

Some Enchanted Evening: The Songs of Rogers & Hammerstein.

Enjoy an evening of theater celebrating the music of one of the most successful partnerships of Broadway musical history. April 14-May 2 at Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main St., Ivoryton. $38-$15. 860767-7318, ivorytonplayhouse.org.

The Maids is the first play by seminal French writer Jean Genet.

Based on the lives and crimes of the infamous Papin sisters, this challenging and titillating drama has been raising hackles since its first production. A frank exploration of sexual power games as a path to knowing oneself, three women stare into each

38

april 2010

Saddle up for a Wild West adventure with Annie Get Your Gun. Ride along with Annie Oakley, the backwoods babe with the sure shot and quick wit, as she challenges dashing marksman Frank Butler to be the star of Buffalo Bill’s traveling show. Featuring some of Broadway’s most memorable songs: “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Anything You Can Do,” “ I Got the Sun in the Morning,” and “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun.” This Irving Berlin classic hits the bulls-eye.

April 16-June 27 at Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam. $70.50-$35. 860-873-8668, goodspeed.org.

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by LWT Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein. In this world premiere, the classic 19th-century drama has been thrust into modern-day suburbia. Nora is a vibrant young woman who

has surrounded herself with the trappings of the “perfect” life. She takes pride in her three beautiful children, a big comfortable house, and a handsome husband who has a new job at a large investment bank. But the illusion of her success is about to fade as the secret that hold her family together is exposed for all to see. April 28May 23 at Long Wharf Theater, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $47-$27.

203-787-4284, longwharf.org.

Disney’s Beauty & the Beast is the classic story of Belle, a young woman in a provincial town, and the Beast, who is really a young prince trapped in a spell placed by an enchantress. If the Beast can learn to love and be loved, the curse will end and he will be transformed to his former self. Based on the Academy Award-winning film, this show magically introduces the same characters and brings them to life on stage, accompanied by an elaborate set and costume design, enriching the original story and exhilarating audiences with a stage performance that ignites the air with enchantment and splendor.

7:30 p.m. May 14, 2 & 7 p.m. May 15, 1 & 6 p.m. May 16 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $68-$15. 203-624-1825, shubert. com.

Popular songs from the film, such as “Be Our Guest” are mixed with new songs in this musical adaptation to recreate this classic and enthralling story. Characters are back with more gusto and humor than ever before, and magnificent, award winning costumes light the stage. Special effects are included to create thrilling images of life inside the world of Belle and the Beast.

This re-creation of one of Disney’s most beloved tales is sure to inspire and delight audiences of all ages, providing viewers with a highly musical and picturesque show of fairy-tale proportions.

Don’t miss the chance to see this magical tale ignite the stage with charm and delight!

Continuing In her revelatory solo show No Child, writer/performer Nilaja Sun draws from firsthand experience as a teaching artist in New York City’s public schools, portraying 16 characters in 70 minutes to illuminate the trials and triumphs in America’s public-education edifice. No one — teacher, student, janitor, principal or security guard — is overlooked by Sun’s hilarious and heartbreaking exposé, which has been a smash hit offBroadway and across the nation.

Hal Brooks directs. Through April 18 at Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. $65$30. 203-787-4382, longwharf.org.

one character to another. The language of Our Country’s Good is genius.

It might be argued that Sun the playwright employs a kind of genius in using this great play to tell her story.

She certainly could have done worse in terms of challenging her students and her audiences. “No,” she tells the class in her role as new teaching artist. “We’re not doing A Raisin in the Sun.” Her choice of play gives her own somewhat thin play its teeth; but at the same time, if audience members haven’t seen or read Our Country’s Good, they are missing a great deal. During the performance I attended, many audience members laughed at moments intended to be double-edged daggers.

Beyond these problems with the script, though, there is no question that Sun herself is a remarkable performer. On a stage bare of any setting or props other than three chairs and a push broom and bucket (most often off to the side), she inhabits the roles of numerous students from numerous ethnic backgrounds; the old-school janitor, who tells the story; the tough-as-nails lady school principal; the pinched, frightened new teacher, Miss Tam; and many others. There are no costume changes; Sun is dressed as the janitor throughout in a short-sleeved men’s buttoned-down shirt and plain man-tailored trousers. The off-Broadway set was designed by Narelle Sissons; the costume was designed by Jessica Gaffney; the subtle and effective lighting was designed by Mark Barton. This stark quality of set and costume is one of the production’s strengths—the better to focus on Sun and her many human creations.

That Sun’s transformations are so vocally and physically instantaneous and pitchperfect is one of the wonders of the show, but it also poses a problem. Because nearly all the scenes take place in the chaotic classroom, it doesn’t take long before one begins to feel a bit battered. I came away wondering what it would have been like had Sun chosen to construct her experience as a storyteller would, using voices where needed but remaining herself.

In this familiar schoolroom success story, the unique, complicated and potentially fascinating element is Nilaja Sun. No Child… implicitly and explicitly asserts that teaching is sacred and transformative, as is theater. If Sun and her director, Hal Brooks, had chosen to give Sun the role of “teaching artist” alone, we in the audience might have laughed a bit less — but learned even more. v

and My Life in the Nineties. Part of the Yale Collection of Literature Reading Series. 4 p.m. April 13 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-2977, beineckelibrary@yale.edu.

New members are welcomed to the Blackstone Library Second Tuesday Book Club. The group meets on the second Tuesday to discuss a preselected book. Books available for loan in advance of discussion. 6:45-8 p.m.

April 13 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-488-1441, ext. 318, blackstone.lioninc.org/booktalk.htm.

Craig Hotchkiss, education program manager for Hartford’s Mark Twain House & Museum, will present Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: An American Story as part of National Library Week. 6-7 p.m. April 14 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. Free. 203-946-8835, huckfinn.eventbrite.com.

We’re not exactly sure about the ethnic provenance of Tommy and Dickie Smothers. But we do know that when they play Waterbury’s Palace Theater March 17, everyone is Irish that whole day long.

BELLES LETTRES Classic Novels Re-envisioned, a four-part discussion series led by Yale Associate Dean Mark Schenker.

April’s book is The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which re-imagines Woolf’s novel. 7:00p.m. April 1 at The Woodbridge Town Library, 10 Newtown Rd., Woodbridge. Free. 203-389-3433, woodbridge.lioninc.org.

The Mystery Book Club meets the first Wednesday to discuss a pre-selected book. This month’s title is Maigret and the Pickpocket by Georges Simone.

Books are available for check out prior to the meeting. 3-4 p.m. April 7 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-483-6653, blackstone. lioninc.org/booktalk.htm.

Listen Here. Actors from the New Haven Theater Co. read short stories selected by the New Haven Review.

Readings take place on rotating basis at four New Haven coffeehouses.

“Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea, 194 York St. (4/6); “Something’s Not Right” at Lulu: A European Coffeehouse, 46 Cottage St. (4/13), “L’Etranger” at Bru Cafe, 141 Orange St. (4/20); “For Shame” at Manjares Fine Pastries, 838 Whalley Ave. (4/27). 7-8 p.m. Free. 203-772-2788, newhavenarts.org.

Writers Out Loud: Open Mic A night for writers to share works-in-progress and get constructive comments. Readings limited to prose, short stories or excerpts with a ten-minute time limit.

6:30-8:45 p.m. April 8 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $5, $3 for members, students, seniors. 860685-7871, wesleyan.edu/greenstreet.

Poetry Reading by Lyn Hejinian, poet, essayist and author of The Fatalist

Elm Street Book Club will meet to discuss Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult. A mother’s determination to blame someone for her child’s genetic disorder endangers everything she loves. 6 p.m. April 21 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven.

Free. 203-946-8835, handle.eventbrite. com.

Contemporary Book Discussion People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, a thrilling mystery and vivid history lesson centered around a rare-book expert and the Sarajevo Haggadah. 3 p.m. April 26 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 222 Main St., East Haven. Free.

203-468-3891, hagamanlibrary.org.

Shocking Cases from Dr. Henry Lee’s Forensic Files. Meet legendary forensic investigator Henry C. Lee at an author talk and book signing. 6-9 p.m. April 29 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 222 Main St., East Haven. Copies $25. 203-4683891, hagamanlibrary.org.

Release your inner poet. Time Out for Poetry meets third Thursdays and welcomes those who wish to share an original short poem, recite a stanza or simply to listen. Ogden Nash, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss and even the Burma Shave signs live again. 12:30-2 p.m. every Thursday at Scranton Library, 801 Boston Post Rd., Madison. Free. 203-245-7365.

BENEFITS AIDS Walk New Haven, an annual 5K walk to benefit the nine member agencies of The New Haven Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS. The 2010 Walk starts on the New Haven Green and features performances along the route.

1:00 p.m. registration, 2:30 p.m. walk April 11 at New Haven Green. $25-$11.

857-205-0326, aidswalknewhaven.org.

Fun and elegance! The 11th annual “dream gala” Carousel of Dreams For a Cure benefiting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International.

Honoree WTNH-TV meteorologist Geoff Fox. John L. Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University, will receive

the Community Partnership Award.

Cocktail reception, dinner, live and silent auction and entertainment round out the evening. 6 p.m. April 24 at Carousel Lighthouse Point Park, 2 Lighthouse Point Road, New Haven. $200. 203-248-1880, jdrf.org.

Save the date for New Haven Home Recovery’s 11th annual Celebration Auction. Hors d’oeuvres, silent and live auction benefiting NHHR, which turns homelessness into hope for women and children. 5:30-9 p.m. April 28 at Anthony’s Ocean View, 450 Lighthouse Rd., New Haven. $50 ($90 couple). 203492-4866, nhhr.org.

CINEMA The Horse Soldiers (1959, USA, 120 min.) is based on a true story of a Union cavalry unit sent behind Confederate lines to destroy a rail center. John Wayne and William Holden co-star. 3:15 p.m. April 6 at Wasch Center Butterfield Room, Wesleyan University, Middletown. Free. agertz@wesleyan.edu.

With the arrival of this Doris Day Tribute, our long national nightmare is over. Author, documentary filmmaker and DD friend Pierre Patrick of New Haven discusses the iconic American actress, followed at 11 a.m. by screenings of Love Me Or Leave Me (1955, USA, 122 min.), with Day portraying singing great Ruth Etting, and at 2 p.m. Pillow Talk (1959, USA, 102 min.) co-starring Rock Hudson. 10 a.m. April 10 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven, Free.

203-946-8835, dorisdaytribute.eventbrite. com.

Woody Allen sends up the influences of his filmmaking in Love & Death (1975, USA, 85 min.). A slapstick satire of a Russian soldier and his distant cousin’s plot to kill Napoleon. Introduction

by Michael Kerbel, director of Yale Film Studies. An informal discussion follows the screening. 6 p.m. April 22 at Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-436-4668, yale. edu/filmstudiesprogram/events.

View it. Discuss it. The World Film Series presents A Call Girl (2009, Slovenia). The story of an English student by day, callgirl by night whose life becomes a nightmare after a client dies of a heart attack while with her.

Slovenian with English subtitles. 2-4:30 p.m. April 30 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. Free.

203-946-8835, wfscallgirl.eventbrite.com.

COMEDY Second City 50th Anniversary Tour features some of the best sketches, songs and improvisations from Chicago’s legendary comedy theater.

Explore a half-century of funny from a company that has been the launching pad for comedy superstars and a leading voice in cutting edge satire. 8 p.m. April 15 at Shubert Theater 247 College St., New Haven. $42-$15. 203624-1825, capa.com/newhaven.

CALENDAR One of the premiere comedians in the country, Brian Reagan has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Comedy Central. Now, he’s making a stop in the City of Elms. 8 p.m. April 30 at John Lyman Center for Performing Arts, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. $39-$15.

203-392-6154, tickets.southernct.edu.

CULINARY Chef’s Table Tastings. Chef Denise Appel and the culinary team discusses techniques and ingredients over a light dinner and wine selection. Tastings run monthly and feature a unique menu.

Wine is the special this month. April at Zinc, 964 Chapel St., New Haven. $35 ($125 series). Reservations. 203-624-0507, elizabethciarlelli@zincfood.com.

Consiglio’s Cooking Class Club.

Chef Maureen Nuzzo explains and demonstrates how to prepare mouthwatering southern Italian dishes that have been passed down from generation to generation. This month’s menu features sweet and spicy sausage, veal scaloppini and crepe Consiglio.

Are you hungry yet? 6:30 p.m. April 8, 15, 29 at Consiglio’s Restaurant, 165 Wooster St., New Haven. $65. Reservations. 203865-4489, consiglios.com.

City Farmers Markets New Haven.

Eat local! Enjoy seasonal fruits, vegetables, and herbs from local farms including seafood, meat, milk, cheese, handcrafted bread and baked goods, honey, and more. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. April 3 & 17 at Wooster Square Russo Park, corner Chapel St. and DePalma Ct. 203773-3736, cityseed.org.

Cook the Book. Cook, taste, sip, read and blog your way through Barcelona’s cookbook. Find out what it takes to go behind the bar and into the kitchen to whip up the tasty tapas this restaurant is known for. Takes place every second Tuesday. 7 p.m. April 13 at Barcelona Wine Bar and Restaurant, 155 Temple St., New Haven. $25. 203-848-3000, barcelonawinebar.com.

Lyman Orchards’ sixth annual Connecticut Day. A tasting of Connecticut’s best specialties and delicious foods prepared at the farm.

9 a.m.-6 p.m. April 17 at Apple Barrel Market Lyman Orchards, 32 Reeds Gap Rd., Middlefield. Most events are free.

866-349-1793, lymanorchards.com.

DANCE Learn how to Ballroom Dance from master dance instructor Sharyn Farrell from Dancealife Productions.

Tango, waltz, swing and partner dance lessons for all ages on three Thursdays in April. 7 p.m. April 8, 15, 22 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 222

new haven

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Main St., East Haven. Free. 203-468-3891, hagamanlibrary.org.

Critic’s Pick: Hot Cuisine

Collaborations Spring Faculty Dance Concert featuring Wesleyan dance department faculty and students in a program of progressive, sexy and delightful pieces. 8 p.m. April 9-10 at Center for the Arts Dance Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $8 ($6 Wesleyan students). 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group brings The Good Dance — Dakar/Brooklyn, his latest project with Congolese choreographer Andréya Ouamba. A piece based on rhythms of Africa, the Caribbean and African-American music to create a theatrical world of connections. 8 p.m. April 23-24 at Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $24 ( $19 seniors, $8 Wesleyan students). 860685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.

Connecticut Dance Theatre & the Arts annual student recital. Experience a delightful evening of song, dance and musical entertainment. 6 p.m. April 24 at Palace Theater, 100 East Main St., Waterbury. $25-$20. 203-346-2000, palacetheaterct.org.

Spring Dance Concert featuring Wesleyan student compositions after one full year of study. 8 p.m. April 30 at Patricelli ’92 Theater, Wesleyan University, Middletown. $5 ($4 students). 860-6853355, wesleyan.edu/cfa An American cultural institution, the Philobolus Dance Theatre brings its imaginative and athletic exploration of movement to the Shubert Theater.

Its collaborative creations are a treat for any dance lover. 8 p.m. April 30 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $45-$15. 203-624-1825, shubert. com.

Shared Abilities Dance Project brings students with disabilities and dancers from the New Haven Ballet Co. together for a series of workshops, culminating in a performance at the Shubert Theater. Conducted by Brad Roth, founding director of Dancing Day Inc. 4-5:30 p.m. Saturdays through June 5 at New Haven Ballet Studios, 70 Audubon St., New Haven. 203-782-9038, administrator@newhavenballet.org.

FAMILY EVENTS Out of Thin Air, a magic show starring internationally acclaimed Bradley Fields.

Fields creates a world filled with poetry and wonder while taking the audience on an amazing journey of magic. 3 p.m.

April 10 at Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven. $25-$15. 203-624-1825, shubert.com.

A new musical based on the childhood favorite Harry the Dirty Dog. A white dog with black spots hates to take baths so much that he runs away, gets dirty and becomes a black dog with white spots! 3 p.m. April 10 at Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook, $18-$12. 860-510-0473, katherinehepburntheater.org.

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april 2010

Childhood hunger is on the rise both in Connecticut and the nation. Since 1990, Taste of the Nation has awarded more than $370,000 to New Haven organizations working to alleviate childhood hunger.

City’s most distinguished eateries, with 100 percent of proceeds supporting Share Our Strength’s efforts to end childhood hunger. WTNH-TV air personalities Desiree Fontaine and Chris Velardi emcee.

This year celebrity chef Jacques Pépin will be joined by renowned children’s author Judi Barrett (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) and WNPR-FM’s personality Faith Middletown (The Food Schmooze) for the 2010 event, to benefit the Connecticut Food Bank, Christian Community Action, End Hunger Connecticut and CitySeed.

5-9 p.m. May 19 in Yale Commons, Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. $75 ($125 VIP). 877-268-2783, strength.org/newhaven.

Come sample ambrosia and elixirs from some of the Elm

Spring Vacation Camp is filled with games and hands-on activities. Learn about caring for Coastal Center creatures and explore invertebrates, plants, animals and birds. 9 a.m.noon April 13-16 at CAS Nature Center at Milford Point, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. $35 ($120/week) CAS members; $45/$160 non-members. 203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org.

Menunkatuk Audubon presents a Bat Chat: Getting to Know Our Most Misunderstood Allies. Gerri Griswold brings her friend Theo, a big brown bat, to discuss the biology and ecology of these extraordinary creatures. 7 p.m.

April 14 at James Blackstone Memorial Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203488-1441, blackstonelibrary.org.

Earth Day Beach Clean-up & Celebration. Help the nesting piping plovers, American oystercatchers, black skimmers and other shorebirds by removing invasive plants. Please bring work gloves and clippers. 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

April 17 at CAS Nature Center at Milford Point, 1 Milford Point Rd., Milford. Free.

203-878-7440, ctaudubon.org.

A musical based on the beloved story of a little girl and her beloved stuffed rabbit, Velveteen Rabbit will pull your heartstrings as you remember your favorite childhood toy. 10:00 a.m. April 22-24, 29-30, May 1 at Seven Angels Theatre, 1 Plank Rd., Waterbury. $8$10, $32/family package. 203-757-4676, sevenangelstheatre.org.

LECTURES Seiko Goto, a professor of landscape architecture at Rutgers, will discuss The Aesthetics of Japanese Garden Design, a talk focused on philosophy, aesthetics, usage and forms. 4:30 p.m.

April 1 at Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University, 343 Washington Terrace, Middletown.

Free. 860-685-2330.

The sixth Enzhen Tong Memorial Lecture is On Memory and Objects

by Professor Gideon Shelach, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He will focus on the Neolithic and Bronze ages in China as building stones in creating cultural identity and the invention of memory. 4:30 p.m. April 8 at Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University, 343 Washington Terrace, Middletown. Free. 860-685-2330.

Vision of Hard Times. New Britain Museum of American Art educator Fred Biamonte delivers a talk about the Works Project Administration and how it helped American artists survive the Great Depression. 7 p.m. April 13 at James Blackstone Memorial Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-488-1441, blackstonelibrary.org.

Nature and Landscape in the Chinese Tradition is the subject of the 35th annual Mansfield Freeman Lecture presented by Zhang Longxi, professor of comparative literature and translation at City University of Hong Kong. 4:30 p.m. April 22 at Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University, 343 Washington Terrace, Middletown. Free. 860-685-2330.

Live from New York’s 92nd Street Y: Food on the Tube: How TV Shapes the Way We Think About Food. Broadcast live via satellite, Padma Lakshmi, co-host of Top Chef, and food writer Amanda Hesser discuss the world of cooking shows and what they tell us about ourselves. 8 p.m. April 26 at Shubert Theater 247 College Ave., New Haven. $12-$10. 203-562-5666, shubert. com.

The third annual Greater Hartford Women’s Conference is a day of professional development, education and networking with luncheon keynote speaker Joan Lunden. Event also features humorist Gina Barreca and Kara Sundlun of WFSB-TV as well as panel discussions, workshops, lunch and exhibitors. 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. April 28 at Maneeley’s Banquest

There may be no brighter star in Connecticut’s culinary firmament than Jacques Pépin, who headlines Taste of the Nation May 19 at Yale Commons.

& Conference Center, 65 Rye St., South Windsor. $149. 860-644-9442, greaterhartfordwomensconference.com.

Bookishness & Digital Literature.

Jessica Pressman, assistant professor in Yale Department of English will speak about her book Digital Modernism: Making it New Media, which charts the relationship between electronic literature and literary modernism. 4 p.m. April 29 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-2977, beineckelibrary@yale.edu.

CO2 Rising: The World’s Greatest Environmental Challenge. Tyler Volk, professor of biology at New York University, discusses the global carbon cycle, the rising rate of greenhouse gases and how to predict its outcome.

5:30 p.m. April 29 at Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Ave., New Haven. Free with admission. 203-432-5050, Peabody.yale.edu.

MIND, BODY & SOUL Led by Nelie Doak, Yoga promotes a deep sense of physical, mental and emotional well-being. Classes are designed to help cultivate breath and body awareness, improve flexibility, strengthen and tone muscles, detoxify the body and soothe the spirit. All levels welcome. Bring a yoga mat. 56:15 p.m. Fridays at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. $10. 203-4881441, ext. 313, yogidoakie@earthlink. net or events@blackstone.lioninc.org, blackstone.lioninc.org.

Good for the mind, body and soul.

Gia Khalsa leads the Restorative Yoga Workshop to relax your nervous system, restore your adrenals and build Ojas, your vital reserves. Class ends with a healing guided yogic sleep with awareness and meditation. 3 p.m.

March 21 at Your Community Yoga Center, 39 Putnam Ave., Hamden. $25/prepaid, $30. 203-287-2277, yourcommunityyoga. com.

Positive Thinking for Negative Times.

Trainer Fern Tausig presents a hypnosis seminar to help maintain a healthy mind and reduce stress. 7:30 p.m.

March 17 at Case Memorial Library, 176 Tyler City Rd., Orange. Free. 203-891-2170.

De-stress during tax season with a therapeutic session of Tai Chi with instructor Kathleen Brenner. No experience necessary — just wear comfortable clothing. Classes meet Thursdays for six weeks. 5:30-6:30 p.m. April 15-May 20 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. $10. 203-946-883, taichispring10. eventbrite.com.

SPORTS/RECREATION Cycling Elm City Cycling organizes Lulu’s Ride, weekly two- to four-hour rides for all levels (17-19 mph average).

Cyclists leave at 10 a.m. from Lulu’s European Café as a single group; no one is dropped. 10 a.m. Sundays at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203-773-9288, elmcitycycling.org.

The Little Lulu (LL) is an alternative to the long-standing Sunday morning training ride. The route is usually 20-30 miles in length and the ride is no-drop, meaning that the group waits at hilltops and turns so that no rider is left behind. The LL is an opportunity for cyclists to get accustomed to riding in

groups. Riders should come prepared with materials (tubes, tools, pumps and/or CO2 inflators) to repair flats. 10 a.m. Sundays at Lulu’s European Café, 49 Cottage St., New Haven. Free. 203773-9288, paulproulx@sbcglobal.net, elmcitycycling.org.

Tuesday Night Canal Rides. Mediumpaced rides up the Farmington Canal into New Haven. May split into two groups based on riders’ speed but no one will be left behind to ride alone.

Lights are essential. 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays at Café Romeo, 534 Orange St., New Haven. Free. william.v.Kurtz@gmail. com.

Elm City Cycling monthly meeting occurs on the second Monday. ECC is a non-profit organization of cycling advocates who meet to discuss biking issues in New Haven. Dedicated to making New Haven friendlier and more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians.

7 p.m. April 12 at City Hall - Meeting Rm. 2, 165 Church St., New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org.

Critical Mass. Participants meet at the flagpole on the New Haven Green on the last Friday for a slow-paced ride throughout New Haven streets.

The ride ranges from 30 minutes to over an hour, depending on weather.

Critical Mass is not an organization; it’s an “unorganized coincidence” — a movement of bicycles in the streets as traffic. After the event, everyone is invited to a potluck dinner at the Devil’s Gear Bike Shop. 5:30 p.m. April

30 Temple and Chapel streets, New Haven. Free. elmcitycycling.org.

Drive, Danbury. $38-$25. 203-481-5933, jbsports.com.

Hikes History of the Giant Hike. Join the Sleeping Giant Park Association for walks to special points of interest and learn all about the history of the Giant.

Hikes leave from the bulletin board at the park entrance. Wear comfortable shoes and bring snacks and water. Be ready for any kind of weather condition.

No pets. 1:30 p.m. April 11 at Sleeping Giant Main Entrance, 200 Mt. Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. 203-789-7498, sgpa. org.

Spring Wildflower Hike. Look for early blooming corydalis, bluets, columbine, anemone and wild geranium. Hikes leave from the bulletin board at the park entrance. Wear comfortable shoes and bring snacks and water. Be ready for any kind of weather condition. No pets. 1:30 p.m. April 25 at Sleeping Giant Main Entrance, 200 Mt. Carmel Ave., Hamden. Free. 203-789-7498, sgpa.org.

Julia’s Run for Children, a four-miler, commemorates the life of Julia Rusinek, who died at age 21 in 1999 of an undetected heart condition. Proceeds benefit select children’s charities. 10 a.m. April 18 at Cross Campus, Yale University, New Haven. $16 ($12 students, $5 kids’ fun run) advance; $20/$15/$6 race day. juliarun.org.

The Connecticut Autism Spectrum Resource Center (ASRC) is the beneficiary of the 2010 ASRC Run/ Walk for Autism, a 5K race/2.5-mile walk event. 8:30 a.m. May 2 at Choate Rosemary Hall School, 333 Christian St., Wallingford. Race $30 ($35 race day), $15 students. 203-265-7717, ext. 14, ct-asrc.org.

Spectator Sports

Road Races/Triathlons

With Coach John Stuper in the dugout, the Yale Bulldogs host historic antagonists the Harvard Crimson for back-to-back baseball doubleheaders.

1 & 3:30 p.m. April 24, noon & 2:30 p.m.

April 25 at Yale Field, 252 Derby Avenue, West Haven. Free. yalebulldogs.com.

Greater Danbury Half-Marathon & 5K will benefit the American Red Cross in Western Connecticut. Scenic run loops through Danbury, Bethel and Redding.

New this year: half-marathon finishers’ medals. Post-race party with pizza and music. Entry fee waived for those raising $100 or more. 10 a.m. April 11 at War Memorial Rogers Park, Memorial

Please send CALENDAR information to CALENDAR@conntact.com no later than six weeks preceding calendar month of event. Please include date, time, location, event description, cost and contact information. Photographs must be at least 300 dpi resolution and are published at discretion of NEW HAVEN magazine.

JB London Ltd an eclectic selection of gifts & gift baskets for every occasion

Independent Coed Day School • Preschool – 8th

glass pottery handmade quilts

create

fabric creations designer jewelry bath & body ne chocolates cards 

THIS SUMMER - HAVE AN ADVENTURE IN ART! Enroll now in summer programs for young people.

CREATIVE ARTS WORKSHOP 80 Audubon Street | New Haven | 203.562.4927 www.creativeartsworkshop.org

something for everyone 1209 Chapel St, New Haven

203.787.4496 (between park & howe)

new haven

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and My Life in the Nineties. Part of the Yale Collection of Literature Reading Series. 4 p.m. April 13 at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-432-2977, beineckelibrary@yale.edu.

New members are welcomed to the Blackstone Library Second Tuesday Book Club. The group meets on the second Tuesday to discuss a preselected book. Books available for loan in advance of discussion. 6:45-8 p.m.

April 13 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-488-1441, ext. 318, blackstone.lioninc.org/booktalk.htm.

Craig Hotchkiss, education program manager for Hartford’s Mark Twain House & Museum, will present Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: An American Story as part of National Library Week. 6-7 p.m. April 14 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. Free. 203-946-8835, huckfinn.eventbrite.com.

You know her, you love her, you can’t live without her: The Ives Memorial Library hosts a day-long Doris Day Tribute April 10, including screenings of Love Me Or Leave Me and 1959’s Pillow Talk, with Rock Hudson.

BELLES LETTRES Classic Novels Re-envisioned, a four-part discussion series led by Yale Associate Dean Mark Schenker.

April’s book is The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which re-imagines Woolf’s novel. 7:00p.m. April 1 at The Woodbridge Town Library, 10 Newtown Rd., Woodbridge. Free. 203-389-3433, woodbridge.lioninc.org.

The Mystery Book Club meets the first Wednesday to discuss a pre-selected book. This month’s title is Maigret and the Pickpocket by Georges Simone.

Books are available for check out prior to the meeting. 3-4 p.m. April 7 at Blackstone Library, 758 Main St., Branford. Free. 203-483-6653, blackstone. lioninc.org/booktalk.htm.

Listen Here. Actors from the New Haven Theater Co. read short stories selected by the New Haven Review.

Readings take place on rotating basis at four New Haven coffeehouses.

“Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea, 194 York St. (4/6); “Something’s Not Right” at Lulu: A European Coffeehouse, 46 Cottage St. (4/13), “L’Etranger” at Bru Cafe, 141 Orange St. (4/20); “For Shame” at Manjares Fine Pastries, 838 Whalley Ave. (4/27). 7-8 p.m. Free. 203-772-2788, newhavenarts.org.

Writers Out Loud: Open Mic A night for writers to share works-in-progress and get constructive comments. Readings limited to prose, short stories or excerpts with a ten-minute time limit.

6:30-8:45 p.m. April 8 at Green Street Arts Center, 51 Green St., Middletown. $5, $3 for members, students, seniors. 860685-7871, wesleyan.edu/greenstreet.

Poetry Reading by Lyn Hejinian, poet, essayist and author of The Fatalist

Elm Street Book Club will meet to discuss Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult. A mother’s determination to blame someone for her child’s genetic disorder endangers everything she loves. 6 p.m. April 21 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven.

Free. 203-946-8835, handle.eventbrite. com.

Contemporary Book Discussion People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, a thrilling mystery and vivid history lesson centered around a rare-book expert and the Sarajevo Haggadah. 3 p.m. April 26 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 222 Main St., East Haven. Free.

203-468-3891, hagamanlibrary.org.

Shocking Cases from Dr. Henry Lee’s Forensic Files. Meet legendary forensic investigator Henry C. Lee at an author talk and book signing. 6-9 p.m. April 29 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 222 Main St., East Haven. Copies $25. 203-4683891, hagamanlibrary.org.

Release your inner poet. Time Out for Poetry meets third Thursdays and welcomes those who wish to share an original short poem, recite a stanza or simply to listen. Ogden Nash, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss and even the Burma Shave signs live again. 12:30-2 p.m. every Thursday at Scranton Library, 801 Boston Post Rd., Madison. Free. 203-245-7365.

BENEFITS AIDS Walk New Haven, an annual 5K walk to benefit the nine member agencies of The New Haven Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS. The 2010 Walk starts on the New Haven Green and features performances along the route.

1:00 p.m. registration, 2:30 p.m. walk April 11 at New Haven Green. $25-$11.

857-205-0326, aidswalknewhaven.org.

Fun and elegance! The 11th annual “dream gala” Carousel of Dreams For a Cure benefiting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International.

Honoree WTNH-TV meteorologist Geoff Fox. John L. Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University, will receive

the Community Partnership Award.

Cocktail reception, dinner, live and silent auction and entertainment round out the evening. 6 p.m. April 24 at Carousel Lighthouse Point Park, 2 Lighthouse Point Road, New Haven. $200. 203-248-1880, jdrf.org.

Save the date for New Haven Home Recovery’s 11th annual Celebration Auction. Hors d’oeuvres, silent and live auction benefiting NHHR, which turns homelessness into hope for women and children. 5:30-9 p.m. April 28 at Anthony’s Ocean View, 450 Lighthouse Rd., New Haven. $50 ($90 couple). 203492-4866, nhhr.org.

CINEMA The Horse Soldiers (1959, USA, 120 min.) is based on a true story of a Union cavalry unit sent behind Confederate lines to destroy a rail center. John Wayne and William Holden co-star. 3:15 p.m. April 6 at Wasch Center Butterfield Room, Wesleyan University, Middletown. Free. agertz@wesleyan.edu.

With the arrival of this Doris Day Tribute, our long national nightmare is over. Author, documentary filmmaker and DD friend Pierre Patrick of New Haven discusses the iconic American actress, followed at 11 a.m. by screenings of Love Me Or Leave Me (1955, USA, 122 min.), with Day portraying singing great Ruth Etting, and at 2 p.m. Pillow Talk (1959, USA, 102 min.) co-starring Rock Hudson. 10 a.m. April 10 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven, Free.

203-946-8835, dorisdaytribute.eventbrite. com.

Woody Allen sends up the influences of his filmmaking in Love & Death (1975, USA, 85 min.). A slapstick satire of a Russian soldier and his distant cousin’s plot to kill Napoleon. Introduction

by Michael Kerbel, director of Yale Film Studies. An informal discussion follows the screening. 6 p.m. April 22 at Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St., New Haven. Free. 203-436-4668, yale. edu/filmstudiesprogram/events.

View it. Discuss it. The World Film Series presents A Call Girl (2009, Slovenia). The story of an English student by day, callgirl by night whose life becomes a nightmare after a client dies of a heart attack while with her.

Slovenian with English subtitles. 2-4:30 p.m. April 30 at New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., New Haven. Free.

203-946-8835, wfscallgirl.eventbrite.com.

COMEDY Second City 50th Anniversary Tour features some of the best sketches, songs and improvisations from Chicago’s legendary comedy theater.

Explore a half-century of funny from a company that has been the launching pad for comedy superstars and a leading voice in cutting edge satire. 8 p.m. April 15 at Shubert Theater 247 College St., New Haven. $42-$15. 203624-1825, capa.com/newhaven.

CALENDAR One of the premiere comedians in the country, Brian Reagan has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Comedy Central. Now, he’s making a stop in the City of Elms. 8 p.m. April 30 at John Lyman Center for Performing Arts, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. $39-$15.

203-392-6154, tickets.southernct.edu.

CULINARY Chef’s Table Tastings. Chef Denise Appel and the culinary team discusses techniques and ingredients over a light dinner and wine selection. Tastings run monthly and feature a unique menu.

Wine is the special this month. April at Zinc, 964 Chapel St., New Haven. $35 ($125 series). Reservations. 203-624-0507, elizabethciarlelli@zincfood.com.

Consiglio’s Cooking Class Club.

Chef Maureen Nuzzo explains and demonstrates how to prepare mouthwatering southern Italian dishes that have been passed down from generation to generation. This month’s menu features sweet and spicy sausage, veal scaloppini and crepe Consiglio.

Are you hungry yet? 6:30 p.m. April 8, 15, 29 at Consiglio’s Restaurant, 165 Wooster St., New Haven. $65. Reservations. 203865-4489, consiglios.com.

City Farmers Markets New Haven.

Eat local! Enjoy seasonal fruits, vegetables, and herbs from local farms including seafood, meat, milk, cheese, handcrafted bread and baked goods, honey, and more. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. April 3 & 17 at Wooster Square Russo Park, corner Chapel St. and DePalma Ct. 203773-3736, cityseed.org.

Cook the Book. Cook, taste, sip, read and blog your way through Barcelona’s cookbook. Find out what it takes to go behind the bar and into the kitchen to whip up the tasty tapas this restaurant is known for. Takes place every second Tuesday. 7 p.m. April 13 at Barcelona Wine Bar and Restaurant, 155 Temple St., New Haven. $25. 203-848-3000, barcelonawinebar.com.

Lyman Orchards’ sixth annual Connecticut Day. A tasting of Connecticut’s best specialties and delicious foods prepared at the farm.

9 a.m.-6 p.m. April 17 at Apple Barrel Market Lyman Orchards, 32 Reeds Gap Rd., Middlefield. Most events are free.

866-349-1793, lymanorchards.com.

DANCE Learn how to Ballroom Dance from master dance instructor Sharyn Farrell from Dancealife Productions.

Tango, waltz, swing and partner dance lessons for all ages on three Thursdays in April. 7 p.m. April 8, 15, 22 at Hagaman Memorial Library, 222

new haven

39

W O R D S of MOUT H

By Liese Klein

EDITOR’S PICK: Sustainable Sushi at Miya’s Lai showcases mackerel in his Happy Together roll, marrying the strongflavored fish with a delicate, sustainably sourced yellowfin tuna.

Escolar, a sustainable species often sold as white tuna, is also taking more of a starring role in Miya’s sashimi plates, crusted with spices or roasted chilies. Escolar’s dense texture Vegetable-based sushi is the most eco-friendly of all, and Miya’s Charlie Chan roll features broccoli, roasted garlic and black beans and mild flavor will appeal to in showcase for Chinese flavors. fans of genuine tuna, although the fish’s high oil content can upset some stomachs. Lai’s t’s hard to ignore the attention and proved popular winning ways with shrimp drumbeat of bad news with his customers, Lai says.

— tempura-fried and flavorful about the oceans: Changing Switching to more sustainable at the center of many rolls climate and overfishing species like mackerel and — continues with sustainable have devastated populations sardines is also good for sushi- varieties sourced from the of many marine species — eaters, as the endangered West Coast. especially those that are good species tend to be higher Those who choose to avoid to eat. Now an innovative up on the food chain and seafood altogether can enjoy local chef has teamed up with concentrate toxins like Miya’s ever-growing list an environmental activist to mercury in their flesh. Farmed of vegetarian rolls, salads offer the East Coast’s first species like eel, salmon and side dishes like a tender sustainable sushi menu — and and some shrimp are often artichoke served whole with it’s right in our backyard. pumped full of antibiotics and a jalapeno-spiked green Bun Lai of Miya’s Sushi in many aquaculture operations sauce. And don’t miss Lai’s New Haven is used to getting overseas befoul the oceans sake infusions: Chili-hot attention for his take on and endanger the marine Firecracker sake and citrusy sushi, using ingredients like ecosystem, Trenor says. The Emerald Witch’s Lips go well potato, cheese, dried fruit activist stopped by Miya’s with every course. and Ethiopian spices to craft in March as part of an East Miya’s Sushi, 68 Howe St., New his rolls. This year, inspired Coast tour for his book, Haven (203-777-9760). by sustainable sushi activist Sustainable Sushi.

Casson Trenor, Lai has taken So what does some species like eel off his sustainable sushi menu and sought sustainable taste like? True sources for tuna and other fish lovers will species. welcome more Lai has substituted tilapia attention to the for red snapper in several humble mackerel, dishes and has dedicated a which offers a portion of his menu to rolls deep, briny flavor made with invasive species and tender texture Catfish is the sustainable base of the like lionfish, European green beautifully offset Greatest Sushi South of the Mason-Dixon crabs and kudzu, a vine that by a slight pickle Line roll, which pairs the fish with okra, grits and cheddar and cornmeal in one of has devastated Southern in the traditional Lai’s riffs on soul food. ecosystems. His new menu Japanese has attracted national preparation.

I

Make Your Sushi Sustainable The next time you dine out for sushi, look for what Casson Trenor calls “The Four S’s”: small, seasonal, silver and shellfish. Stay away from all eel and tuna and be skeptical of salmon, as most restaurants may not know — or will fudge — about whether the fish is sustainably sourced.

The four S’s: • Smaller fish tend to be fished responsibly and also contain fewer neurotoxins.

• Seasonal fish can often be found on the specials board and will be fresher and more likely to be local and sustainable.

• Silver species like mackerel and sardines live in colder water and are at lower risk of overfishing.

• Shellfish on sushi menus is often harvested from American waters and buying it helps support local fisheries.

— L.K.

new haven

43

Thomas Cain

SOUTHEAST ASIAN/KOREAN

JUST A TASTE: Donovan’s Reef

Bentara Restaurant, 76 Orange St., New Haven (203-562-2511). Supersized noodle soups and spicy curries are good bets at this Ninth Square Malaysian/fusion hotspot.

The stylish interior and extensive cocktail list also make it an excellent pre-nightlife stop. Open for lunch.

PHOTOGRAPH:

At Donovan’s Reef, more than the food is green — it’s the first area eatery to become ‘Green Restaurant

Pot-Au-Pho, 77 Whitney Ave., New Haven (203-776-2248). Great for a quick bowl of pho or Vietnamese soup, and features tasty noodle dishes and affordable Asian specialties. Limited hours, so call ahead.

good quality photos?

At

Oriental Pantry Grocery & Gifts, 486 Orange St., New Haven (203-865-2849). A foodie favorite for its home-style Korean dishes like soups and bibimbap. Takeout sushi, breakfast sandwiches, Asian drinks and sweets.

I

f Greg Bozzi has his way, a “Green Restaurant Certified” seal will become as common as a Zagat’s sticker on the doors of local restaurants. Bozzi, owner and executive chef at Donovan’s Reef in Branford, was the first area restaurateur to obtain the seal, from the Green Restaurant Association. That group awards the seal for meeting standards for cutting water use, waste, energy use and pollution, while investing in recycling, sustainable food and green furnishings.

At first glance, Donovan’s seems an unlikely trailblazer on the green front. A weekend evening crowd in the bar area was prosperous, middle-aged and boisterous, enjoying cocktails and trading flirtatious glances from across the room. With its exposed brick, high ceilings and casual vibe, it might remind some diners of Fitzwilly’s, a New Haven favorite from a few decades back.

44

april 2010

But the menu shows an eye toward sustainability with shellfish and nonthreatened fish species like tilapia prominently featured. Local produce shows up in many dishes and the Brattleburger features organic, grassfed beef from Four Mile River Farm in Old Lyme.

The eatery’s connections to top seafood purveyors were evident in an impeccably fresh scampi over linguini, the shrimp plump and fresh over al dente pasta. Stonington scallops starred in another entrée, their toothsome texture complemented by a rich butter sauce.

Donovan’s Reef became the first officially certified restaurant in 2008, after years of gradual eco-friendly changes by owner Greg Bozzi. In order to qualify, he had to start composting the eatery’s food waste, which at an average restaurant totals more than 100,000 pounds a year. Now servers sort leftovers into bins and a local company coverts it into compost.

Bozzi also switched to nontoxic cleaners, biodegradable takeout containers and more efficient lighting. Next he plans to covert to non-toxic paints and add more efficient lighting throughout the restaurant.

“The goal is over time you get greener and greener,” Bozzi explains. “They raise the bar every year.”

The changes will take about three years to pay for themselves, but Bozzi says customers have been appreciative of the switch.

“We’re making a choice that most people would make,” Bozzi says. “In some ways, it’s harder at home to do these things.”

Bozzi expects that more restaurants will go green in response to pressure from customers.

“It’s not as hard as people think,” he notes. “Your customer will vote with his dollar, and the more consumers look for this, the more changes will follow.”

Donovan’s Reef, 1212 Main St., Branford (203-488-5573).

Midori, 3000 Whitney Ave., Hamden (203-2483322). Big flavors in a small space are the hallmark of this Korean/fusion restaurant, tucked away in a strip mall. Best bets are soups, the fresh-tasting bibimbap and spicy bulgogi.

Basil, 142 Howe St., New Haven, (203-8654000). Malaysian curries and noodle dishes stand out at this student favorite, where the menu ranges from Vietnamese soups to Chinese stir fries. Cool the fires on your tongue with one of the many bubble tea flavors on tap.

THAI Thai Taste Restaurant, 1151 Chapel St., New Haven (203-776-9802). A standout on Chapel’s “Thai Row,” with toothsome basics like pad thai, drunken noodles and green curry.

Bangkok Gardens, 172 York St., New Haven (203-789-8718). Tasty Thai in a charming, bright dining area with great service. Wide range of classics and vegetarian options.

Rice Pot Thai Restaurant, 1027 State St., New Haven (203-772-6679). Great spot for a romantic dinner and some truly tasty Thai food. Try the impeccably fresh spring rolls, delicately flavored soups and assertive curries.

Thai Awesome, 1505 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203-288-9888). Tangy curries and rich soups make this Thai eatery worth the drive from downtown, but leave time to find parking on this busy stretch of Dixwell.

The Terrace, 1559 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203230-2077). The chef’s French training shows in this Thai eatery’s above-average plating and seductive flavor combinations.

Ayuthai, 2279 Boston Post Road, Guilford (203453-2988). Quality Thai in a casual setting.

Excellent duck and curry plates, along with above-average papaya salad and desserts.

CAFFÉ BRAVO

Mother’s Day Special

CHINESE/TAIWANESE Iron Chef, 1209 Campbell Ave., West Haven (203-932-3888). Unusual Taiwanese specialties and well-executed classics shine at this student favorite.

OPEN 12 – 7

Fine Italian Cuisine and Assorted Wines

House of Chao, 898 Whalley Ave., New Haven (203-389-6624). This Westville institution draws diners from across the region for its bright flavors and eclectic menu.

Lao Sze Chaun, 1585 Boston Post Rd., Milford (203-783-0558). You don’t get much more authentic locally than this outpost of Szechwan delicacies and tasty dim sum.

Shanghai Gourmet, 533 Boston Post Road, Orange (203-891-8788). Fill up after shopping at this Post Road outpost of superbly done classics like a crispy General Tso’s chicken and tangy hot-and-sour soup, made all the more enjoyable by friendly service and a clean, bright dining room.

Great Wall of China, 67 Whitney Ave., New Haven (203-777-8886). Its location near downtown’s best Asian market and an affordable, high-quality buffet attracts a multicultural clientele to this Yale-area spot.

Call for Reservations

..

794 Orange Street, New Haven , CT 06511 | 203.772.2728 | www.caffebravo.com

A

pecialP lace S forS pecial M oments

FUSION CUISINE Mickey’s Restaurant & Bar, 2323 Whitney Ave., Hamden (203-288-4700). This eatery’s sophisticated interior and artful blend of Israeli and Italian flavors bring big-city flair to downtown Hamden. Sip a Mickey’s margarita with your Marrakech salmon and Israeli couscous, and you’ll swear you’re on the beach in Tel Aviv.

Bespoke, 266 College St., New Haven (203-5624644). High-end Latin fusion with flair, wit and excellent service. Try the lobster arepa and duck-confit empanada upstairs at Sabor, the in-house Latin lounge. Now open for lunch under new owners.

Tengda Asian Bistro, 1676 Boston Post Road, Milford (203-877-8888). Big-city style and flavors in a cavernous setting off the Post Road. Try the exotic cocktails and seafood winners like lemongrass shrimp.

Formosa, 132 Middletown Ave., North Haven (203-239-0666). Creative and beautifully presented dishes with pan-Asian panache.

Don’t miss the Szechwan “ravioli,” tender chicken dumplings in a delicate peanut sauce, or Taiwanese seafood specialties.

Kudeta, 27 Temple St., New Haven (203 562-8844). Every major cuisine of Asia is represented on Kudeta’s menu, with something for every taste in an evocative interior. Generous and inventive drinks along with good sushi and noodle dishes.

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new haven

45

What’s Hot & Cookin’ in Guilford

By SUSAN E. CORNELL

D

ebbie Harris, now owner of Cook’s Kitchen, a mix of a gourmet cooking supplies store and cooking classes in Guilford, was having a dinner party and wanted to whip up one of her favorites for the guests — tarts. The native New Yorker was accustomed to having numerous choices of specialty stores nearby, but living along the Connecticut shoreline is not the same as Manhattan. Not a tart pan to be found.

She would have to drive to Hartford or Providence, R.I. to procure the item.

“I said to my husband, ‘This is ridiculous.

We live a bedroom community of Yale.

There are people here who like restaurants and like to cook and are educated. We have to open a kitchen store. Will you back me on this?’” Harris recalls.

Two weeks later, in April 2003, the lease was signed and off went the Harrises to trade shows and every “highly respected” kitchen store in New England.

“I wanted something with great atmosphere but not overpriced,” she says.

“I would rather spend a dollar more at Nordstrom than to shop at Macy’s and not be able to get customer service. That was my paradigm for Cook’s Kitchen.”

46

april 2010

On the New England road trip, Harris received unanimous feedback from the owners of gourmet kitchen stores that she should not install a kitchen and start a cooking school. “It’s too much money to put it in and it never works,” she was told.

But Harris is a people person and could never just sit in a retail store and sell. “I didn’t want it to be a still place,” she says.

“I wanted it to have life.”

What she has discovered is that by going to shows and restaurants and meeting chefs, Cook’s Kitchen has become a great forum for chefs to advertise.

She’s had everyone from local chefs to international chefs to Food Network chefs.

“Everybody has their own reason to come,” says Harris. “Some are earning extra income; some restaurant chefs come for the extra publicity.”

Today Cook’s Kitchen is in its seventh year, and Harris has discovered that the cooking-school side of the business does indeed work. The naysayers were wrong, probably, because the cooking classes were too much work and it took too many years to develop a repertoire of chefs.

Product sales are an educational function.

Harris says she can’t hire anyone with a straight retail background. “They have to know the product, use the product, cook with the product, experience the product,” she explains. “We never have to push the product; we let it speak for itself.”

This means pulling potatoes or carrots from the refrigerator with a variety of knives and peelers for customers to test.

Another reason for Harris’ success is the discontinuation of hobbyist classes at the Connecticut Culinary Institute. “They became a feeder to us for when people are looking for a recreational school,” she says.

The cooking program was developed by Patrick Boisjot, the original owner of Le Petit Café in Branford, nephew of Jacques Pépin, and former director of the Institute of Gastronomy & Culinary Arts at UNH. “We were really blessed to have him,” Harris says. “Even though he’s living in France now, it’s always the structure and the outline that Patrick set up.”

Just one more ingredient for the recipe for success: BYOB classes.

Cooks Kitchen, 620 Boston Post Rd. (Suite 2), Guilford, 203-533-4325, cooks-kitchen.com.

v

Photographs courtesy of Bob Cornell

Friends warned Harris that cooking classes would never fly. Instead they proved a signal success.

Thomas Cain

SOUTHEAST ASIAN/KOREAN

JUST A TASTE: Donovan’s Reef

Bentara Restaurant, 76 Orange St., New Haven (203-562-2511). Supersized noodle soups and spicy curries are good bets at this Ninth Square Malaysian/fusion hotspot.

The stylish interior and extensive cocktail list also make it an excellent pre-nightlife stop. Open for lunch.

PHOTOGRAPH:

At Donovan’s Reef, more than the food is green — it’s the first area eatery to become ‘Green Restaurant

Pot-Au-Pho, 77 Whitney Ave., New Haven (203-776-2248). Great for a quick bowl of pho or Vietnamese soup, and features tasty noodle dishes and affordable Asian specialties. Limited hours, so call ahead.

At

Oriental Pantry Grocery & Gifts, 486 Orange St., New Haven (203-865-2849). A foodie favorite for its home-style Korean dishes like soups and bibimbap. Takeout sushi, breakfast sandwiches, Asian drinks and sweets.

I

f Greg Bozzi has his way, a “Green Restaurant Certified” seal will become as common as a Zagat’s sticker on the doors of local restaurants. Bozzi, owner and executive chef at Donovan’s Reef in Branford, was the first area restaurateur to obtain the seal, from the Green Restaurant Association. That group awards the seal for meeting standards for cutting water use, waste, energy use and pollution, while investing in recycling, sustainable food and green furnishings.

At first glance, Donovan’s seems an unlikely trailblazer on the green front. A weekend evening crowd in the bar area was prosperous, middle-aged and boisterous, enjoying cocktails and trading flirtatious glances from across the room. With its exposed brick, high ceilings and casual vibe, it might remind some diners of Fitzwilly’s, a New Haven favorite from a few decades back.

44

april 2010

But the menu shows an eye toward sustainability with shellfish and nonthreatened fish species like tilapia prominently featured. Local produce shows up in many dishes and the Brattleburger features organic, grassfed beef from Four Mile River Farm in Old Lyme.

The eatery’s connections to top seafood purveyors were evident in an impeccably fresh scampi over linguini, the shrimp plump and fresh over al dente pasta. Stonington scallops starred in another entrée, their toothsome texture complemented by a rich butter sauce.

Donovan’s Reef became the first officially certified restaurant in 2008, after years of gradual eco-friendly changes by owner Greg Bozzi. In order to qualify, he had to start composting the eatery’s food waste, which at an average restaurant totals more than 100,000 pounds a year. Now servers sort leftovers into bins and a local company coverts it into compost.

Bozzi also switched to nontoxic cleaners, biodegradable takeout containers and more efficient lighting. Next he plans to covert to non-toxic paints and add more efficient lighting throughout the restaurant.

“The goal is over time you get greener and greener,” Bozzi explains. “They raise the bar every year.”

The changes will take about three years to pay for themselves, but Bozzi says customers have been appreciative of the switch.

“We’re making a choice that most people would make,” Bozzi says. “In some ways, it’s harder at home to do these things.”

Bozzi expects that more restaurants will go green in response to pressure from customers.

“It’s not as hard as people think,” he notes. “Your customer will vote with his dollar, and the more consumers look for this, the more changes will follow.”

Donovan’s Reef, 1212 Main St., Branford (203-488-5573).

Midori, 3000 Whitney Ave., Hamden (203-2483322). Big flavors in a small space are the hallmark of this Korean/fusion restaurant, tucked away in a strip mall. Best bets are soups, the fresh-tasting bibimbap and spicy bulgogi.

Basil, 142 Howe St., New Haven, (203-8654000). Malaysian curries and noodle dishes stand out at this student favorite, where the menu ranges from Vietnamese soups to Chinese stir fries. Cool the fires on your tongue with one of the many bubble tea flavors on tap.

THAI Thai Taste Restaurant, 1151 Chapel St., New Haven (203-776-9802). A standout on Chapel’s “Thai Row,” with toothsome basics like pad thai, drunken noodles and green curry.

Bangkok Gardens, 172 York St., New Haven (203-789-8718). Tasty Thai in a charming, bright dining area with great service. Wide range of classics and vegetarian options.

Rice Pot Thai Restaurant, 1027 State St., New Haven (203-772-6679). Great spot for a romantic dinner and some truly tasty Thai food. Try the impeccably fresh spring rolls, delicately flavored soups and assertive curries.

Thai Awesome, 1505 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203-288-9888). Tangy curries and rich soups make this Thai eatery worth the drive from downtown, but leave time to find parking on this busy stretch of Dixwell.

The Terrace, 1559 Dixwell Ave., Hamden (203230-2077). The chef’s French training shows in this Thai eatery’s above-average plating and seductive flavor combinations.

Ayuthai, 2279 Boston Post Road, Guilford (203453-2988). Quality Thai in a casual setting.

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