APRIL 2018 by ICON Magazine

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APRIL Exclusive Interview Madeleine Peyroux | 20

Margaret Balzer Cantieni, String Ensemble, watercolor, 13.5”w x 20" (detail). Baum School.

Madeleine Peyroux was a wild child. Rather than attending school, Madeleine wanted to sing on the streets of the Latin Quarter in Paris. It wasn’t long before she dropped out of school, auditioned with Danny Fitzgerald’s Lost Wandering Jazz and Blues Band, and began touring throughout Europe at age 16. Atlantic Records signed her in 1996 and she recorded her debut album, Dreamland, a mix of jazz and blues standards. Her latest album, Secular Hymns, was recorded in 2016 with her trio at the rural St. Mary the Virgin Church in Oxfordshire, England. Madeleine Peyroux will appear at World Café Live on April 26.

ART 5 | Neighborhood 6 |

EXHIBITIONS I

33rd Annual Art Auction The Baum School of Art

Jim Rodgers, Late Summer Bouquet, oil on board. Silverman Gallery.

7th Annual Juried Show Artists of Yardley Art Center Morven in May Morven Museum & Garden

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EXHIBITIONS II

Hunterdon County Open Studios Tour The Hunterdon Art Tour Jim Rodgers Silverman Gallery of Bucks County SOTA Idea House Breinigsville, PA A Wrinkle in Time

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THEATER NIGHTLIFE FOODIE FILE

FILM 18 | Aardvark 22 | FILM ROUNDUP Let the Sunshine In A Wrinkle in Time You Were Never Really Here Zama

ON THE COVER: Madeleine Peyroux. Page 20. 4

24 | REEL NEWS Molly’s Game All the Money in the World Spettacolo Last Men in Aleppo

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FILM 26 | DOCUMENTARY Serpico 28 | FOREIGN A Fabrica de Nada

MUSIC 30 | SINGER / SONGWRITER Jimi Hendrix John Prine Kim Richey Sarah McQuaid Mary Chapin Carpenter 32 | JAZZ/ ROCK/CLASSICAL/ALT Mark Wade Trio Patti Cudd Hollie Cook Erin McDougald Franco Ambrosetti 34 | JAZZ LIBRARY Tadd Dameron 35 | POP LaBelle Mixes it Up

ABOUT LIFE 36 | Power Struggles

ETCETERA 37 |

Harper’s Findings

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Harper’s Index

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L. A. Times Crossword

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Agenda

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ART ESSAY & PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK

NEIGHBORHOOD

t the time I began pursuing an art career I was living in an old Italian neighborhood. Stoops were clean, kids were polite, and the afternoon air always held a trace of garlic and tomato sauce (this wasn’t a “gravy” tribe). The people were friendly and generous, and if they didn’t like you, you didn’t come around. It was pretty easy to figure out. Everyone took an interest in everybody else’s business. My studio was directly over the salon and the hairdresser was the mayor’s brother, which put me at ground-zero of all the news worth knowing. The locals were an expressive bunch to start with and the rowhouse walls provided a bountiful source of information and entertainment. Secrets didn’t keep long, but as an outsider they weren’t mine to share. There was a general respect in town for my efforts to make it as an artist and I received a few portrait commissions from some of the better-situated residents. Beyond that there wasn’t much of an art market and sales were infrequent. This was a low point in my economic journey and there was no clear path to better days. When my tires showed cord I’d go to the nearby Tire City and search through the piles of discards out back. I could usually come up with one or two the right size that had some tread left, and the guy in the office would be glad to get rid of them for a couple of bucks. Barter was a great way to get by but it was hard to connect with someone who wanted to trade for the things I really needed. I swapped a painting with a cardiologist for a stress test once, yet I never was able to work a deal with somebody who owned a grocery store or an auto repair shop. When I started having problems with my eyes from the rigors of painting I was very fortunate to find an optician a few towns away who made me glasses with progressive lenses in exchange for artwork that now hangs in his showroom. For years he did that. It’s a gesture I won’t forget. The pizza shop was two blocks down and over one from me. The small dining area had a checkerboard linoleum floor, and four worn Formica tables with chrome-legged, yellow vinyl chairs for those having their big night out. One wall had a Venetian gondola mural and the other the Leaning Tower. A doorway next to the counter led up a couple of steps to where the

owner’s family lived, and occasionally kids would tumble partially dressed into the store with a domestic issue for mom to deal with as she worked the register. The wall behind the counter had a pass-through to the fluorescent kitchen where Tony was in perpetual motion, stretching and slapping dough, sliding the wood pizza oar into the oven, clanging the metal door open and shut, and folding boxes. He never stopped moving except to wipe his face on the sleeve of his T-shirt when he paused at the oven, waiting those last seconds for a pizza to be perfectly done. The top of the pass-through was a smidge low for Tony to see out without bending over and he looked like a captive boiler-room worker casting plaintiff glances to the outside world. Tony called me Raphael. He’d see me come in the door but continue to work while deciding what to say. It would eventually be something like: “Hey Raphael, whatcha been painting?” I’d say, “Hey Tony, how you doin’.” He would plan his comeback as he swirled sauce on the dough with the bottom of the ladle and spread a couple of handfuls of mozzarella around the top. “You know who Raphael was?” he’d say, dealing pepperoni slices without looking up. “He did the most beautiful paintings.” A smile would cross Tony’s face as he wiped his hands on the sauce-stained towel tucked in his apron string. “You’re just a-like Raphael.” He’d chuckle and slide a pizza out the pass-through to the counter. That was pretty much the conversation every time. I suspected he actually preferred Giotto. We ended up doing a deal for a painting of his wife, which I did from a photo taken when they were married. She was very pretty. Tony was happy and I got something like twenty pizzas out of it, which was great. He made a delicious, old-school, thin crust, stains-on-the-box pie, that with a couple of extras took care of dinner and breakfast, and in those uncertain, austere days that’s exactly what I needed. n ICON, APRIL 2018 | ICONDV.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/ICONDV

EXHIBITIONS I

Paul Eshelmen, Elizabeth, IL, ceramics

“Vera (the Airstream)” by Lauren Kuhn, 60” x 48”, acrylic on canvas. Walter Emerson Baum, “View of the Canal Water House,” oil, 13”x 11"

7th Annual Juried Show 33rd Annual Art Auction The Baum School of Art 510 W. Linden St., Allentown, PA 610-433-0032 BaumSchool.org Silent Auction begins 5:30; Live Auction begins 8:00 Auction preview night, May 17, 6-8 The Baum School of Art’s 33rd Annual Art Auction will include over 300 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and more that will be up for bid that night in a silent and live auction, live auction led by Boris Wainio. Free admission for both auctions. There is an optional buffet dinner; $50 in advance, $60 at the door. The live auction consists of over 100 works of art by local and regional artists, including numerous pieces by Walter Emerson Baum, the school’s founder. Also featured this year are works by other highly collectible artists such as John Berninger, Raymond Gallucci, Hans Moller, and William Swallow, to name a few. View the items before they are up for bid at our Preview Night.

William Weldon Swallow, “PA Dutch Barn #2,” mosaic, 29”x30.5" 6

AOY Art Center 949 Mirror Lake Road, Yardley PA Hrs: Fri, Sat, Sun 12-5PM April 6-29, 2018 The Annual Juried Show is an exhibition and sale of art works in many mediums including oil, acrylic, watercolor, mixed media, ceramic, wood, leather and metal. This is the only exhibition that AOY holds in which non-members are able to participate. This year 302 pieces were entered for consideration by our juror; only 72 pieces were selected. Lorraine Glessner, our juror for 2018 has a love of surface, pattern, markmaking, image and landscape which has led her to combine disparate materials and processes such as silk, wood, wax, pyrography, rust, paper and more in her work. She is a former assistant professor at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, a workshop instructor and an award-winning artist. Among her most recent professional achievements is a Second Place award in Sculpture from Art of the State at the State Museum in Harrisburg, PA. Her work is exhibited locally and nationally in galleries, museums, craft centers, schools, libraries, universities, and more. (The show is sponsored in part by Penn Community Bank, Jerry’s Artarama of Lawrenceville NJ and the Artists of Yardley with cash prizes and gift certificates.)

“Steel Works #4” by Marc Schimsky, 36” x 48”, oil, wax, wooden board.

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Morven in May Contemporary Craft & Garden Morven Museum & Garden 55 Stockton St., Princeton, NJ 609-924-8144 Morven.org May 3-6 One of Princeton’s most anticipated spring rituals, Morven in May is a juried exhibition and sale of contemporary fine craft. Morven Museum & Garden welcomes a select group of 36 contemporary craft artists around the U.S. whose work in glass, ceramics, decorative and wearable fiber, jewelry, furniture, metal, and basketry are displayed in gallery-style booths under a grand tent on the museum’s Great Lawn. The four-day event kicks off with a Thursday evening preview party, then opens to the public for three days of art and garden treasure hunting. Proceeds from Morven in May help fund the museum’s exhibitions, historic gardens, and educational programs. Heirloom Plant Sale: Our popular heirloom plant sale offers a distinct collection of plants that include unique new varieties of annuals and perennials carefully chosen by Morven's horticulturist. Craft Show & Plant Sale: May 4 & 5, 10-5, May 6, 10-4; Craft Show Admission: $10, $8 for Friends of Morven, Children 12 and under, free; Plant Sale only: free. On-site Show Cafe provided by Jammin’ Crepes.

Robert Greene, Marshfield, VT, jewelry

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EXHIBITIONS II

SOTA Idea House 2018: HoudenHAL Peonies & Japanese Irises, 16” x 20”

Jim Rodgers 2nd Annual Hunterdon County Open Studios Tour The Hunterdon Art Tour (THAT) thehunterdonarttour.com May 5-6, 10-6; Opening Friday, May 4, 7-9 THAT is mindful of the influence that the art world exerts on shaping what art is regarded as “good” or worthy. This tour gives exciting, original artists greater access to a public eager to explore far from venues intended for art investors. More than 40 artists in all mediums will participate at over 30 locations. In addition to the open studios, various arts organizations and galleries are participating as destinations during. They will offer special experiences for tourgoers. A map of the open studios is online at The Hunterdon Art Tour (THAT). (Exhibit and sale benefit The Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ)

Silverman Gallery of Bucks County Impressionist Art 4920 York Rd., Holicong, PA In Buckingham Green, Rte. 202 215-794-4300 Silvermangallery.com April 21-May 27 Receptions April 21, 5-8 pm & April 22, 1-4 pm American Impressionist artist, Jim Rodgers presents an array of new work from his travels locally, regionally and abroad. A dedicated plein air painter, Jim is up before dawn to “catch the season’s light” and get in some good painting time, as seen in Morning Light, Phillips Mill. When weather makes that impossible, his studio in Millersville is alive with the color of his elegant florals. In his 2018 Solo Exhibition, the luscious brushwork of Rodgers is a treat for all your senses. You can hear violins floating as the ballerina looks on from In the Wings. Your taste buds awaken with the aroma and sizzle of something fabulous in the works from the Master Chef. You want to catch petals of delicate Peonies & Japanese Irises at the table’s edge.

Morning Light, Phillips Mill, oil on board, 24” x 30” 8

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9905 Old 22, Breinigsville, PA Tickets ($20) at the door or sotapa.org April 28-May 19 Wed., Fri., Sat., & Sun. 10-4; Thurs, Noon-8The Society of the Arts (SOTA) of the Allentown Art Museum is proud to announce their exciting biennial fundraising project: the 2018 SOTA Idea House at HoudenHAL, translated in Dutch means “sustainable home.” Featuring some of the area’s best interior designers, art galleries and home decor businesses, the 2018 Idea House house is powered by wind generation, solar energy, and geo-thermal wells. Owned by Hersh and Robin Ruhmel, HoudenHAL, home to Ruhmel Contracting, Inc and The Design Studio, has become the must-see model home for many Lehigh Valley new home and remodeling clients. HoudenHAL is both LEED certified and National Association of Home Builders Green Home Certified. As a way of saying thank you for supporting SOTA, the Ruhmels are generously offering their new 2018 “Making Room for Mom” collection of floorplans free to all attendees. Participating designers: Sharon Kimmerle Interior Design; Kelly Dunn Home; Scott Rothenberger’s PLACE; Creative Closets; House Splendid; WW Design;Kemble Richards Interior Design & Decoration; Love Your Roo; Oswald Paint & Paper; Bethlehem House Gallery; SpunDesign; La Petite Provence; Counter Culture by Allentown Appliance.

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THEATER VALLEY

CITY

Dictators for Dummies. Touchstone Theatre’s annual April original offers satirical, sometimes musical tips for running your very own depot of despotism. The mastermind behind this Karl Marx-meets-the-Marx-Brothers malarkey is Christopher Shorr, a Touchstone ensemble member who directs Moravian College’s theater program with an ambitious edge. His zany approach reminds me of what a Limerick man said of an upside-down Irish town from long ago: “It was a banana republic—everyone was bananas.” (April 5-8, 12-15, Touchstone)

Magdalene. Playwright Rachel Gluck tells the story of one of Jesus’ most influential followers. Magdalene has been called the only female apostle while others regard her as an “equal of the apostles” or a disciple. Curio Theatre member Colleen Hughes plays Magdalene. The play is derived from the Gnostic Gospels of Mary and Thomas from the 2nd or 3rd centuries that scholars consider to have been written by Gnostic proselytizers. The Thomas Gospel offers this zany quote: “Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human / And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human.” This not to be missed production is directed by Brenna Geffers. Tribe of Fools, Adrienne Theatre. April 5-22, 2018.

Brighton Beach Memoirs. Neil Simon launched an autobiographical trilogy with this side-splitting, heart-rending Depression-era saga of Eugene Morris Jerome, an impressionable teen crammed into a Brooklyn home with a bossy mom, a wiser older brother and an aunt with two ripe daughters. Matthew Broderick originated the role of Eugene, winning the featured-actor Tony three years before his career really took off with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. (April 6-7, 13-15, 19-22, Pennsylvania Playhouse) Act Like You Know. Kashi Johnson, an associate professor of theatre studies at Lehigh University, celebrates the 10th anniversary of her same-named hiphop-culture course with a new series of riffs on diversity, justice and other Trojan Horse issues. The Lehigh graduate has directed everything from The Crucible to her ensemble piece “gener8-tion Txt.” (April 13-15, 18-21, Zoellner Arts Center) A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Moravian College presents an outdoor reading of Shakespeare’s magical mélange of sexual power games and love potions, a hilariously bad acting troupe and a puckish fairy named Puck. My favorite production, directed in 1986 by Liviu Ciulei, featured a suspended translucent platform for spying on mortals and a gauzy wind tunnel for transforming foolish humans. (April 20 by Reeves Library. Rain venue: Haupert Union Building) Tuesdays with Morrie. Mitch Albom, a successful sports writer, attends a final class in dying and living taught by his former professor, Morrie Schwartz, who uses jokes, biblical challenges and inventive exercises (a graveside picnic). The Civic Theatre of Allentown production reunites director William Sanders with Will Morris and Barry Glassman, who played Mitch and Morrie ten years ago. “I think we all want to practice what Morrie teaches,” Glassman told me in 2008. “Giving makes me feel like I’m living.” (May 4-6, 11-13, 18-20, Alumnae Hall Auditorium, Cedar Crest College) Children of Eden. Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin) co-wrote this twisty musical about the twisty travails of Eve, Adam, Cain, Abel and Noah, who contends with a flood, an animal-filled ark and a son intending to marry a Cain-cursed descendant. The play is a hit among professional and amateur companies, even though it never hit Broadway or Off-Broadway. (Star of the Day Productions, May 4-5, 11-13, 18-20, McCoole’s Arts & Events Place, Quakertown)

Passage. With a title reminiscent of the Wilma’s (now gone) production, Passing Strange, this Wilma world premiere is a fantasia of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Directed by Blanka Zizka and written by U.C. Berkeley graduate and Obie award-winning playwright Christopher Chen, Passage is a modern day fable on the power struggle between two imaginary nation-states. Chen’s website states that his work combines “naturalism with the absurd.” Starring Wilma Hot House players Ross Beschler, Keith J. Conallen, Krista Apple and Sarah Gliko. April 18-May 13, 2018 Sing the Body Electric. Walt Whitman references and lightning from the sky come together in this Theatre Exile Michael Hollinger play. Directed by Deborah Block, this comedy drama is about the unseen forces that drive us together—and that tear us apart. Personal chemistry, drama, comedy and the subject of physics merge in this world premiere at the Latvian Society, 531 North 7th Street. Hollinger says that plays are like music and that characters are like instruments. About this play, he wrote: “I began to imagine a character who had been struck by lightning, and longed for the extremity of that experience to recur.” April 19-May 13. Small Mouth Sounds. The Philadelphia Theatre Company’s production of this Obie Award-winning play by Bass Wohl plunged viewers into the heart of New Age esoterica. We encountered six “fed up with life” young people on retreat who come together for a week of silence. Silence may work in a Trappist monastery but it doesn’t work on stage, as this Rachel Chavkin directed production proved. The six characters—a narcissistic yogaobsessed man, a lesbian couple on the verge of a breakup, a foreign-born deaf mute, a goofy college guy and a high maintenance ‘pretty girl’—seek enlightenment. But since they can’t talk to one another, what we get is endless mime and confusing sign language on top of zipper sounds of knapsacks opening and closing. The unseen voice of a Zen Master Overseer gives instructions to the group as the interminable silence on stage spreads like radioactive air into the audience so that it feels like everyone is on retreat. This torturous feeling is temporarily alleviated when the yoga narcissist dude strips nude and bends over exposing his bottom to everyone in the house. The retreat fails in teaching the six seekers anything about human compassion and empathy. Proof of this is made manifest when the deaf mute is left stranded at the center because nobody offers him a ride home.

Him & Jim. Did you hear the one about Jesus visiting an auto-parts shop? What sounds like a joke is the yoke of Charlie Barnett’s quirkily funny, touching piece about salvaging broken people, which Crowded Kitchen Players premiered last month at the Ice House in Bethlehem. Director Ara Barlieb and crew did a fine job of piecing a puzzle that pivots on Christ’s single-digit cell phone, which miraculously helps heal a wounded family, reunite a father with a long-lost pregnant daughter, and secure a teen girl’s prom date. Olivia Sullivan and Carolyn Taylor played precocious kids with snappy impishness. Brian Lichty, Scott VanNortwick and Ted Williams had a gas as the wise-cracking, skeptical car guys. Brian Wendt’s Jesus was a zesty mix of stoner hippie and drag saint who spouted common-sense wisdom (“I’m all about the real”) and winking wisdom (“I know some stuff ”). n

Tell Me On a Sunday. Looking for love in all the wrong places? So is a young English girl who moves to New York with big expectations and fantasies until she’s forced to drink the cold ‘pea soup’ of reality. Then she heads to Hollywood to see what Tinsel Town offers. This 90-minute, one-woman play with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black was first presented at the Sydmonton Festival in 1979. Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio on 3, April 10-June 10, 2018. n

— GEOFF GEHMAN

— THOM NICKELS

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APRIL

NIGHTLIFE CURATED BY A.D. AMOROSI

4 BILL MURRAY, JAN VOGLER AND FRIENDS There is no telling what could happen at this gig with cellist Fogler and singer Mur-

ray despite the fact that their joint album New Worlds is a fairly straight rendering of classically-inspired moments from George Gershwin & Leonard Bernstein. Academy of Music; academyofmusic.org 5 ALICE COLTRANE TRIBUTE there is no solid information on who the guilty parties are and what they will execute when it comes to Mrs. Coltrane song. However anyone who chooses to focus on her steady holy devotional brand of conscious jazz is in for a treat and a challenge. Underground Arts; undergroundarts.com 5 STEVE EARLE It’s the 30th anniversary of his raw countryblues hybrid Copperhead Road. Get rowdy but maintain sensitivity. Steelstacks; steelstacks.org 5 BETTYE LAVETTE The warm and weary R&B singer approach-

es the songs of Bob Dylan on her newest album as you would a burglar: with trepidation worry violence and victory. World Café Live Philadelphia; worldcafelive.com 6 VERNON REID The once-and-present Living Colour guitarist was a brusque innovator of avant-garde metal before hitting the big time with “Cult of Personality.” My guess is that he’s probably still a worthy vessel of noise and nuance. Milkboy Philly; milkboyphilly.com

11 ERIC B. & RAKIM Long before Kendrick Lamar and Talib Kweli made poetry out of rap and beats there were these twin towers of smart lyrical conscious hip hop. Theater of Living Arts; venue.tlaphilly.com

7 JERRY SEINFELD Larry David’s best creation and a guy who digs comedians in cars shows up for laughs. Academy of Music; academyofmusic.org

12 PUNKY MEADOWS FROM ANGEL Glam rock’s most forgotten boys still look and sound cute. The Trocadero; thetroc.com

7 DAVID LINDLEY Lindley incorporates an incredible array of stringed instruments including but not limit-

13 PINK The soulful Doylestown, PA-native she-devil is less acrobatic and more problematic and

17 GUIDED BY VOICES The prince of lo-fi Ohio returns with the hi-fi Space Gun. Union Transfer; utphilly.com 8 CARL PALMER’S ELP LEGACY The last of the original prog rock drummers raves on. Or progs on. Steelstacks; steelstacks.org 18 JOHN WILLIAMS Spielberg’s most noted musical collaborator is probably bowing out of live performances after this tour – just as he’s slowing his roll on Star Wars scores. See this. Kimmel Center; kimmelcenter.org 18 THE DARKNESS Does glam metal have a sillier campier face than these guys? Doubt it. The Trocadero; thetroc.com 20 ARJUN The three-piece instrumental band from New York, has been trailblazing their own hybrid of rock and improvisational jazz since 2003. Led by Eddie Arjun Peters, ARJUN fuses the power of rock with im-

ed to Kona and Weissenborn Hawaiian lap steel guitar, Turkish saz and chumbus, Middle Eastern oud, and Irish bouzouki. The eye-poppingly clad “Mr. Dave’s” uncanny vocal mimicry and demented sense of humor make his onstage banter a highlight of the show. Mauch Chunk Opera House; mcohjt.com 7 CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND LIVE W/ RACHEL BLOOM Comedienne and singer Rachel Bloom wraps the run of one of the cleverest musical-based television series in existence with a live production of the same. The Trocadero; the troc.com 7 FAB FAUX Phony Beatlemania will never bite the dust if these cats have any say. KeswicK Theatre; keswicktheatre.com 8 DAVID FOSTER Mainstream music’s most populist producer arranger and co-composer goes live for – what – maybe the first time? KeswicK Theatre; keswicktheatre.com

10 DAVID SEDARIS America’s finest, funniest and quietest smart ass is also an author and radio contributor. Zoellner Arts Center; zoellner.cas2.lehigh.edu

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family-driven on her new album Beautiful Trauma. Wells Fargo Center; wellsfargocenterphilly.com 14 DRACULA’S BALL WITH FRONT 242 Spooky outfits and industrial punk and it’s not even Halloween. The Trocadero; thetroc.com 14 US GIRLS If I said US Girls new album In a Poem Unlimited was tender but tough poetic moodpop you’d say I was just relying on its title for that summation. You’re an idiot. Johnny Brenda’s; johnnybrendas.com 14 JOHN PRINE Prine is nearly the last man standing of that 70s troubadour genre and John Prine for his first album in 13 years The Tree of Forgiveness he does a wordy emotional tour of love messiness and relationships. Merriam Theater; kimmelcenter.org

provisational alternative jazz. Mauch Chunk Opera House; mcohjt.com 20 JOE PERRY The Aerosmith co-founder and the Hollywood Vampires guitarist hasn’t done a solo album in a minute. The Johnny Depp-produced Sweetzerland Manifesto is a pretty handsome version of chugging boogie-andballadry. Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa; theborgata.com 21 WHO’S NEXT The Ultimate Tribute to one of rock’s greatest bands, The Who. Who’s Next has been mesmerizing fans for over twenty years per> 14

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< 12 forming nationally to be recognized as the best Who tribute band in the world. Mauch Chunk Opera House; mcohjt.com 21-22 NELLIE MCKAY Somewhere between Gil Evans and Doris Day exists the singing and piano

Man, found and accounted for and going strong.Keswick Theatre; keswicktheatre.com 23 HERB ALPERT/LANI HALL The swaggering trumpeter-driver behind the Tijuana Taxi and his wife from Brazil 66 bring back the Latin swinging 60s with ease and gentility. World Cafe Live Philadelphia; worldcafelive.com 26 THE RESIDENTS The top-hat-and-eyeball-wearing San Franciscan treat and toast of the Ameri-

22 RODRIGUEZ The almost lost Mexican singer/songwriter and star of Searching for Sugar

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27 CUT CHEMIST The synth-phonic maestro has a new album Die Cut and a show that promises to toy with cassette culture, new wave, rap demos, old funk 45s, and world beats. Milkboy Philly; milkboyphilly.com

28 THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS The quirkiest, cleverest sons of Brooklyn, John Linnell and John Flansburgh, return with the smiling new wave of I Like Fun and the good cheer of accordions and

playing queen of the Delaware River Water Gap. Nellie’s new album Sister Orchid! promises to be a doozy. Dino’s Backstage; dinosbackstage.com 21 BUILT TO SPILL AND AFGHAN WHIGS The underbelly of the late 80s/early 90s indie scene comes roaring back with this two-for-one tour. Electric Factory;electrifactory.info

album Runnin’ Wild: Songs from the Jazz Age that’s sure to mesmerize. The only thing better (and more charming) than any new record of his is seeing the dynamic singer and pianist in a live setting. Dino’s Backstage; dinosbackstage.com

can avant-garde play an insanely small venue for its newest release I Murdered Mommy. Foundry at The Fillmore; thefillmorephilly.com 27-28 MARK NADLER This modern-day Al Jolson has a new

guitars. Theater of Living Arts; venue.tlaphilly.com n

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FOODIE FILE BY A.D. AMOROSI

Chefs Charging Forward SOUTH TO NORTH Last month, I mentioned how South Philly’s East Passyunk Avenue rustic Italian meat ‘n’ pasta specialists

Ahmed Elsaka, Mohamed Abouelenein and Abdelbaset Elsayed.

Chef Joe Cicala.

Le Virtù and Brigantessa had retained the services of Chef Damon Menapace in lieu of those restaurants’ original exec chef Joe Cicala. From there, the Cicalas created Antico where they design and lead gastronomic tours of Italy throughout the year. Still, how is it that one of the city’s most innovative and traditional chefs didn’t have a steady solid locale? Well now he does, as Cicala and his wife/partner Angela (she handles baked goods) will be behind the stove at developer Eric Blumenfeld’s in-construction Divine Lorraine project on North Broad Street starting this autumn. With its name being some variation of “Cicala,” the new space will focus on a more elegant brand of serving Southern Italian cooking than we know of Joe—lots of operatic curtains, white linens, raw structuralism, and dining courtyards. That said, Cicala will continue to focus on rustic, tender pastas crafted by hand and salumi cured in house, and lots of succulent slabs of meat. The new North Broad spot is scheduled to be open by fall. HEY HALAL The Halal Guys Mohamed Abouelenein, Ahmed Elsaka, and Abdelbaset Elsayed have been sharing their food truck brand of Americanized Halal fare with the world since the 1990s, and for their smarts have been recognized by the American Muslim Consumer Conference, Time Magazine, The New York Times and The Huffington Post. Middle Eastern-style chicken, beef and vegetable dishes over rice or wrapped in pita—to say nothing of its white sauce, hot BBQ sauces, and sides of fries, hummus, baba ghanouj or tahini—The Halal Guys have 16

long made their own twist on traditional Middle Eastern fare. Coming at the beginning of April is the third Philadelphia Halal Guys franchise location, this one at 2550 Grant Avenue, following the Halal hot spots in Chinatown and King of Prussia. (EM)POWERED EATING The men behind June’s Alex’s Lemonade Great Chefs Event, Chef Marc Vetri and restaurateur Jeff Benjamin, celebrate the tenth anniversary of having founded Vetri Community Partnership by starting/hosting its first annual Eat to Empower Dinner Series & Food Festival at La Colombe Coffee Roasters (1335 Frankford Avenue) on April 21. All for the cause of quality school lunches and nutrition education programs in Philly, Eat to Em-

Restaurateur/Chef Marc Vetri.

power’s Dinner Series features some of America’s finest chefs (e.g. Tom Colicchio, Michele Forgione, Bill Telepan) and Philly area superstars (e.g. Michael Solomonov, Nick Elmi, Rich Landau, Chad Williams, Tod Wentz) raising money with private suppers and high-end auction featuring singular food and drink experiences. The after-hours Food Festival at La Colombe is

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more of a giant eat & booze bash with tickets going for $75 per person, and area food vendor contributors including Big Gay Ice Cream, Mike’s BBQ and Pizzeria Vetri, and liquor from Bluecoat Gin, Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey, Tito’s Handmade Vodka and Yard’s Brewing Co to start. While original live art will be created by Saeed Briscoe throughout the evening Philly rapper Moody and DJ Hank McCoy will serve as entertainment. Go to vetricommunity.org/eat-to-empower for all information and tickets. And yes, June’s Great Chef ’s Event is still happening for the Alex’s Lemonade charity, only now it’s rumored to be taking on more of a family component. Stay tuned. TOWNSEND’S OLOROSO OTHER With Tod Wentz’s East Passyunk Avenue French bistro Townsend already a classic of cool romantic vibe-iness, sensual seasonality and modern Op-to-Pop menu items—strangely searing takes on Parisian traditionalism—it’s the perfect time for the chef-owner to add a second taste to his catalog of flavors; something fresh and forward that maintains allure and culinary heft. And that would be his recently opened Spanish tapas joint on Walnut Street, Oloroso, a rustic, flavorful small-plate set of tastes that include mains such as sherry-glazed pig heads, simple wood over chicken, and huge toasty octopus-filled paellas, as well as minor masterpieces such as short rib croquetas, fabada asturiana (beans) and a bold, braised tripe with roasted peppers that will erase the memory of Shank & Evelyn’s famed South Philly stomach from your psychic innards-loving taste buds. IT’S AT THAT AGE Ten years as part of Old City’s gallery row and Art in the Age (a Steve Grasse-started tony liquor brand and hipster lifestyle boutique), the booze part of it (famed for Root and Sierra Fig) not only has developed an even brasher craft spirits line. Art in the Age has become its own bar room/tasting salon: a quiet cocktail space at the back of the display area guided by the new rules of limited-distillery licenses, here repping North Philadelphia’s New Liberty, which bottles AITA spirits from Grasse’s other concern, Tamworth Distilling in New Hampshire. Because the distillery is focused on a small-batch product, the test kitchen / tasting room is as good with drinks like a black walnut and Damson-plum cordial, or chicory liqueur or apricot whiskey. While my clean favorite is the New Liberty Powderhorn Rye Vodka their Cradle of Liberty White Whiskey is also a delight. So go. At a time when Old City is hurting due to a recent fire it could use new audiences and good cheer. n

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FILM BY PETE CROATTO

Aardvark RUNNING A GAUNT 89 MINUTES, Brian Shoaf ’s Aardvark draws us into the lives of its weary characters, but not long enough for us to emerge with something. An extra 15 minutes would have done wonders to define these people beyond the weight they carry. Emily ( Jenny Slate) is a young social worker whose new client, Josh (Zachary Quint), provides a bizarre set of challenges. He thinks that his older brother, Craig ( Jon Hamm), an actor he hasn’t seen in years, follows him around. According to Josh, Craig—“one of the great talents of his generation”—can take any form: a homeless lady who keeps asking for money, an African-American cop who goads him into stealing a kid’s bicycle. When Craig steps from the shadows and up her driveway, Emily is both confused and hopeful. She remains in limbo because Craig and Emily have real work to do. Emily, all tightly coiled professionalism, opens her home to her patients, but she’s closed off, ill at ease conversing with anybody where the rules aren’t her own. She leaves her book club when her choice of an Alice Munro anthology gets mixed reviews. “Put yourself in my shoes,” Emily tells the book club organizer, a middle-aged black 18

woman. When she seeks advice on Josh from a college professor, an old lover, Emily can’t comprehend why he’s so terse. “You’re not very good at reading people,” he snaps. “It hurts to see you.” A meet-up with an old flame on a running trail features two awkward almost-hugs. Josh doesn’t fit the textbook anything, and Emily’s time with Craig is bound to go wrong. It’s not steeped in logic. As for Craig, he addresses Josh’s difficulties by sending him money every month, while he maintains a successful acting career in Los Angeles. The beauty of Hamm’s performance is it’s the antithesis of the oblivious Hollywood smoothie. He employs earnestness and politeness to write off what Craig has left behind. Ironically, Josh is making the most progress: he strikes a friendship with a personable stranger (Sheila Vand) who appreciates his askew approach to life. He notices Emily’s brisk persona is amiss, while she flails for clues from the other side. I sense that Aardvark—which is all about facades— serves as a commentary for the three leads. Hamm, still basking in the Don Draper afterglow and quickly becoming America’s goofball; Slate, a terrific actress (Obvious Child), who’s perhaps best known as Captain

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America’s on-again-off-again paramour; Quinto, for resurrecting Mr. Spock. It’s a necessary project for us: celebrities are not the people they portray on screen or in the public eye. The actors are all captivating in different ways, but how I wish there was time for us to know their characters. Josh is fascinating—Quinto’s matted bowl haircut is a helmet from (or a house for) his demons—even when he’s increasingly used as a narrative device to promote closure. Aardvark’s resolution is rewarding, but lacking in scope. If we were given the time to see the psychological impact Josh’s mania has on his therapist and his brother, two people having pleasure despite his pain, that would have shoved the movie toward greatness. In his feature film debut, writer-director Shoaf ’s gentle touch only goes so deep with the muted dynamic between the three characters. Mood and essence only take you so far. The good news is Shoaf is an empathetic, smart filmmaker who makes us care about the inner workings of the quietly melancholy. I suspect that when Shoaf ’s next movie is released, Aardvark will be cited as the start of something great. [PG-13] n

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Madeleine Peyroux Keeps it Simple

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INTERVIEW BY A.D. AMOROSI

WHEN MADELEINE PEYROUX PLAYS World Café Live on April 26 it will not be just one jazzy woman’s smoky soliloquy on a life lived weirdly and romantically. It will be—through the magic personal politics of her upcoming album Anthem and the enlightened spirit within—a room’s eye view of the world as we’re living it; a feeling of wandering through the malaise and finding the good and the great on the way out. Only this time, and in opposition to the complex wordplay of Dreamland (1996), Careless Love (2004) or Bare Bones (2009), Peyroux’s mood-swinging wordplay complexity is brought down a tad to something simpler but twice as poetic and rich in character exposition. You’re known and loved for your affinity of and spin on Billie Holiday’s legacy and aesthetics. How have you carried that into Anthem and is the Holiday vibe ever a curse along with its blessings?

“

THE PROCESS TOOK ABOUT 18 MONTHS. DURING THAT TIME WAS THE RUN UP TO THE ELECTION, THEN THE ELECTION, THEN THE INAUGURATION—A PERIOD IN WHICH THE NEWER SONGS WERE GETTING DARKER AND DARKER. [LAUGHS] I HOPE IT’S NOT A DARK

Many listeners prefer comfortable rather than challenging new. Yes, they’re happiest in a world of hearing things that they’ve already heard before. And I think that for the longest time audiences believed that I would stay that way—a singer of torch songs, a type of artist in the style of the old days. I don’t think many artists are trying to find a new way into torch song. Artists and their hit tunes are classics for a reason… audiences respond to them. And torch song is a classic, beautiful medium. But it’s limiting Yes, it’s limiting and we’re going through a time of rethinking everything that a female artist can be—as well as having the need to reinvent ourselves. It’s important to know, though, the great artists of another era, like Holiday. And it would be a shame if people were listening to me instead of Billie, or not getting to know her. Bare Bones was your third album with producer Larry Klein and you collaborated in writing sessions with several musicians. How do Bare Bones and Anthem differ? Bare Bones was the first time that he and I got together to write its songs. I believe, though, that Anthem is denser and harder and more aggressive. We’re still mastering it so you can’t hear it now, but you’ll agree [when you hear it] that it sounds so much more different than Bare Bones.

lays all the cards on the table but a lot of them. It’s easier to deal with. Also Anthem was written with Larry and me and the musicians in one room all together rather than how I wrote Bare Bones which was with other songwriters but outside the studio. On the new album we just sat in a room and came up with music. We brainstormed it and then I added more lyrics and edits. Larry and I understand each other in a really weird way and have from the beginning. We have a language. I’m open minded when I chat with him. When we met to discuss the very first album we did together, Careless Love, I questioned what should we do. He told me that we should create a dream of the record rather than the record itself. What did that mean? I don’t know. But that did eventually make sense. There are ways in which we think about the world similarly. There is also the oddness of sound, that what is ugly could be beautiful—in working with Tchad Blake [record producer, audio engineer, mixer]. How long did this whole process take and how did that affect the album? The process took about 18 months. During that time was the run up to the election, then the election, then the inauguration—a period in which the newer songs were getting darker and darker [laughs]. I hope it’s not a dark record, but it’s what happened to me and the U.S., and the world in the most personal way.

RECORD, BUT IT’S WHAT HAPPENED TO ME AND THE U.S., AND THE WORLD IN THE MOST PERSONAL WAY.

“

Great question because I don’t have a clue [laughs]. I felt as if I was able to deal with melody and lyric in a new way with her… and any time that I write a character that is introverted or a situation that calls for that. If the lyrics are giving us a glimpse of someone’s inner emotional life, I have to go back to everything that I learned from Billie Holiday. That’s most of the material that you do. Yeah, true. But on the new record not every song is like that. There’s mostly a naked feeling on Anthem. A lot of time the characters are more vulnerable people and I suppose working with those characters is something she taught me. This album is definitely a bit more aggressive though. Then again I haven’t strayed so far— no one has told me yet to go back to Billie. And it’s totally plausible you know?

What’s so different? There’s more sound processing and a variety of instruments. The songwriting strikes me as having different intentions than Bare Bones. I think I was trying to be too cute on Bare Bones—as if I was trying to be overly complicated. That was ten years ago and that was me believing that I needed to give my audience something meaty to bite into. So I wanted all my lyrics to be rich in their meaning, and I tried too hard. Some of those songs were too much about themselves. That makes total sense—writing about writing becomes its own vicious cycle. It sounds so much more simple, what you’ve done on Anthem. See, you’re a writer so it makes sense. I don’t get it. So I was trying to do a better job this time around—up my game. What comes through then on this new record is that it’s not preachy or too demanding of the listener to think about what I’m saying. It’s funny— there’s a lot of dark humor. The lyrics are simple so that they’re easier to sing for the most part—the wordiness is all about telling a story. I’m not saying it

Do you feel that you’re writing to textures with this record and its programmability more than you have on previous records? That’s an interesting way of looking at that. We wrote it with five guys—some facile players—and were working in a mostly acoustic world when we started. Because of the pop sensibility of the songs, however, there was lots of room. And that lead to additional instrumentation and solos and sweeping sounds. It’s not the first time you’ve covered Leonard Cohen, but it’s the first time you’ve named an album for him and his intent. Why Anthem? It has a lot to do with my connection with what is personal and what is political. The record lives in that space—all of its songs are one-person’s story rooted in everybody’s observance of what is going on in the world. A song such as “Lullaby” might not seem apparent in its subject matter—a refugee travelling alone in a boat—or “On a Sunday Afternoon,” about stoner culture and the present. I want to make those connections with the world and how it exists now. n

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FILM ROUNDUP

Zama

BY KEITH UHLICH

Let the Sunshine In (Dir. Claire Denis). Starring: Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Gérard Depardieu. The tempestuous romantic life of Parisian artist Isabelle ( Juliette Binoche) is alternately dissected and luxuriated in as only Claire Denis (Beau Travail) can do. The overall mood is woozy, beguilingly narcotic, with a character at the center who is both surrogate and specimen. We live in her head and heart even as we clinically scrutinize (not unlike the book, Ronald Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, on which the film is loosely based) each of her choices in lovers. From a boor of a banker (Xavier Beauvois) to a gorgeous actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle) with a number of issues, there doesn’t seem to be a single person who can fully satisfy Isabelle’s ever-shifting sense of the ideal beau. Binoche takes to Denis’ swooning style with sensual ease. Finest scene: Her long, luscious slow-dance with a potential partner to Etta James’ “At Last.” Though Isabelle’s climactic encounter with an inexpert (or is he?) psychic played by Gérard Depardieu ranks a very close second. [N/R] HHHH 22

A Wrinkle in Time (Dir. Ava DuVernay). Starring: Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Chris Pine. The gulf between conception and execution is wide with this one. It’s clear director Ava DuVernay (Selma) has much love for Madeleine L’Engle’s popular young adult novel about teenager Meg Murry (Storm Reid) who travels across space and time to reconnect with her long-lost father (Chris Pine), learning plenty of life lessons in the process. Unfortunately, DuVernay’s actual filmmaking abilities aren’t up to her abstract ardor. Scene for scene, this $100+ million would-be blockbuster astonishes with its visual inexpressiveness. Blame the overreliance on extreme close-ups or the frequent ineptitude of the editing (few of the performers ever seem like they’re inhabiting the same space). And still the movie manages to effectively pluck at a heartstring or two because of its progressively colorblind casting and Reid’s appealing central performance. Also, any film featuring a twenty-foot tall, aphorism-spouting Oprah Winfrey can’t be all bad. [PG]

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You Were Never Really Here (Dir. Lynne Ramsay). Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alessandro Nivola. Disorienting in the extreme, the latest film from Scottish writer-director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) turns a lurid avenging-hitman plot, concocted by novelist Jonathan Ames, into an impressionistic free-forall. Joaquin Phoenix is the unkempt, introverted assassin Joe, whom Ramsay treats like a void made flesh. Whatever insight we get into his life and mind comes in jagged flashes, the line between past and present often obliterated. Then a young girl (Ekaterina Samsonov) who has been forced into sex slavery enters his orbit and Joe becomes obsessed with saving her. There is an abstract quality to every moment, especially when Joe fells his antagonists with a ball-peen hammer (we rarely see the killing blow, just the skull-caved aftermath). Is Joe’s quest a redemptive or hollow one? Ramsay provocatively leaves her audience to ponder whether her protagonist is a soulful being or empty vessel. [R]

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Zama (Dir. Lucrecia Martel). Starring: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas, Matheus Nachtergaele. Multi-awardwinning Argentine writer-director Lucrecia Martel (The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman) brilliantly adapts a period novel by Antonio Di Benedetto about a 17th-century Spanish officer, Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), who is awaiting transfer from a remote South American outpost. The first section follows his routine as a “civilized” colonizer left to ineffectually lord over natives and wile away the fetid days (you can practically feel the overwhelming humidity). In the second part, Zama becomes a broken-down, bearded itinerant seeking out a mysterious enemy of the state, though his obsession with the expedition takes a back seat to his own existential fervor. Filled with surreal touches (best in show: a llama that stands, unacknowledged, over Zama’s shoulder during a meeting with a bureaucrat), this is a hypnotic movie about a man slowly losing all sense of judgment and of self. [N/R]

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REEL NEWS

Molly’s Game

DVDS REVIEWED BY GEORGE OXFORD MILLER

Molly’s Game (2017) HHHH Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner Biography, Drama/R, 140 min. Based on Molly Bloom’s memoir. Molly Bloom (Chastain) had a ski accident that radically changed her life. But not who she was—the all-consumed high-achiever. When she couldn’t prove her worth to her demanding father (Costner) by winning an Olympic gold medal, she drops out of ever-so-mundane law school and moves to Los Angeles (LA-la land). She soon discovers another high-risk competition where she can bust ass in a male-dominated world. She takes over operation of a high-stakes poker game where very powerful men drop millions of dollars. Chastain creates a Molly who perfectly uses her sex appeal to manipulate the gentlemen, while easily outwitting them with her superior intelligence. She flies downslope propelled by the gravity of power until she once again hits a snag, this time her self-identity as an ethical person—not to mention the fully-armed FBI team who eventually raids her game. Director Aaron Sorkin infuses the real Molly Bloom’s memoir with his signatureintelligent, witty, machine-gunrapid dialogue and a charged relationship with her by-the-book attorney (Elba). 24

All the Money in the World (2017) HHHH Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg Drama, Thriller/R, 132 min. In 1973, kidnappers took J. Paul Getty III, the 16-year-old grandson of the richest man in the world. His mother Abigail (Williams) was divorced from both Getty Jr. and the family fortune, so she is helpless when she receives the ransom call. She turns to Getty Sr. (Plummer), best known for soul-devouring greed. Getty refuses to pay a cent. The high-voltage tension of the true story plays between Getty and Abigail. Plummer and Williams, along with Wahlberg, the security specialist in charge of getting the boy back, rocket the plot toward its uncertain ending. The film’s classification as Drama and Thriller also describes the action behind the scenes. Kevin Spacey originally played Getty Sr., but his alleged improprieties got him fired after the movie finished shooting. Plummer replaced him for the remake. Then Mark Wahlberg pocketed $1 million for the reshoot while costar Michelle Williams earned $80/day (negotiated by the same agent). While recent Hollywood scandals obliterate careers, the PR launched this blockbuster, especially when Plummer received an Oscar nomination.

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Spettacolo HHHH

Last Men in Aleppo HHHH

Documentary/NR, 90 min. In Italian with English subtitles. Every summer for 50 years, the townsfolk of the Tuscany village of Monticchello have produced a play in the town plaza written and performed by locals. The factual "Spettacolo," Italian for spectacle or play, dramatizes the medieval town’s history, significant events of the past year, and the hopes and fears of the future. Now, the Teatro Povero di Monticchiello may have outlived its tradition. With many of the original cast members passed, the youth absorbed in a digital reality, and the economy dominated by hordes of tourists and millionaire real estate speculators, the town’s lifestyle is radically changing. Filmmakers Chris Shellen and Jeff Malmberg spent a year (2012) living with and filming the cast and rehearsals. They establish the deep roots of the art-imitates-life production by interweaving past footage, interviews, and town’s provincial but authentic lifestyle. Aptly, the subject for the coming play focuses on the end of the world as they know it. The looming question is can an indigenous way of life centered on traditional values and cultural heritage survive the overwhelming influences of tourism and global economic pressures?

Genre: War doc./NR, 104 min. Awards: Oscar nomination Best Documentary Feature Premieres on PBS July 10. In Arabic with English subtitles. Forget what you read in the newspapers about the ongoing civil war in Syria, or the sound bites you hear on the evening news (unless you watch BBC). The real human drama in war isn’t the politics but the people, and this documentary takes us into the streets where life and death are a daily uncertainty. The White Helmets, volunteers who rush toward, not away from, bombedout, collapsing buildings, are the real heroes and this film gives them a voice, a face. Every story, every interview, every scene of destruction transcends the politics of who’s right or wrong and focuses on the real issues of war—devastating human tragedy versus the uplifting human sprit not only to survive, but to help others survive. It likens the unending civil war to a bar fight where everyone jumps in swinging until a peaceful resolution becomes impossible. But as long as the suffering continues, the White Helmets continue to risk their lives to save their neighbors. As a conscious-raising social commentary, the film hits hard, but its message needs to be heard, and internalized. n

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DOCUMENTARY BY MARK KERESMAN

Frank Serpico (2017) WHILE HE’S PERHAPS BEST known by the Sidney Lumet-directed 1973 film, Serpico, Frank Serpico is a true legend. A stubbornly honest and idealistic New York City cop in the 1960s and early ’70s, Serpico almost single-handedly took on the concept of the city’s police corruption. Note the operative word “concept”—Serpico didn’t inform on corrupt colleagues, he tried to fight institutionalized corruption, to expose it so it could be rooted out and eliminated. For his trouble he was vilified as a rat by fellow officers, and was shot in the face by drug dealers (with a little passive help from the NYPD). Director Antonino D’Ambrosio manages a truly substantial feat: Frank Serpico is leisurely paced, yet often has the somewhat gritty impact of a film drama. Through archival footage, friends and admirers, and the words of Serpico himself, the viewer is taken almost chronologically from his beginnings as the son of immigrants through the development of his moral compass. At the time of filming, Serpico resembled an aging bohemian—which to an extent he truly is, though the Sidney Lumet-directed film details this more than the current film—Instead of Little Italy, Serpico chose the West Village and was a fan of ballet and opera. Lots of this movie is told from a you-arethere point of view. Serpico shows us the site of his father’s shoe repair store, in which as a lad he shined the shoes of a uniformed officer who after the shine left without paying, or even saying thanks. There are many photos that vividly convey the NYPD that was—a harsh, unforgiving environment that had elements of an old (Irish) boys’ club that treated corruption with a casualness that horrified Serpico. He wouldn’t take money to look the other way or a kickback, which made him suspect to his fellow officers and superiors. (The Lumet film also reenacted events of police brutality, not mentioned herein.) Frank Serpico delineates the living hell he endured—remaining honest and trying 26

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to expose the widespread dishonesty in the NYPD in the hope of curbing it and the personal cost he paid for it. But while he was looked upon as a turncoat and rat by fellow officers, he was not. Serpico never wore a wire to incriminate a cop. He hoped to initiate change by conferring with his superiors—when that failed (the Lumet film shows an increasingly frustrated Serpico) he reached out to the press. Eventually there was a very public commission to investigate his charges. (Imagine how in those days of relative social naivete such public, shocking revelations in print and on television made the mayor and city officials look to the people of the city.) So Serpico made powerful enemies too. One night, he was one of the officers assigned to a drug bust. As shown here in a re-enactment, and more tensely in the Lumet film, the whole thing went sideways very fast and very bad. Instead of assisting him, his fellow officers pretty much let him bear the brunt—and that’s when he was shot in the face. The combination of injury and the resulting trauma had effectively ended Serpico’s career with the NYPD. He went into a self-imposed exile in Europe, and later in rural Northeast of the U.S. Frank Serpico has every right to be embittered, and while he’s shown to have achieved some measure of peace, he still conveys an unambiguous message: Don’t let it continue, don’t turn the other way. As a documentary, Frank Serpico ably, palpably conveys all the facts via talking-head interviews and walk-throughs by Serpico himself. The only downside is D’Ambrosio’s use of slow-motion shots; it seems melodramatic and unnecessary. One nice touch, also a bit melodramatic but in this context it works: actor John Turturro reads an excerpt from Bertold Brecht’s “Life of Galileo.” Galileo in his time brought unwelcome facts to light. It’s both a bit much, yet in the Serpico context, haunting and lingering. Highly recommended. n

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FOREIGN BY MARK KERESMAN

A Fabrica de Nada (The Nothing Factory/2017) TRUTH MAY BE INDEED stranger than fiction but neorealism is more boring than either. With The Nothing Factory Portuguese documentary filmmaker Pedro Pinho tries his hand at narrative/reality-inspired fiction and the results are, to put it kindly, mixed. A factory in Lisbon, Portugal manufactures elevators—“lifts” to our Euro-cousins. For presumably economic reasons—cheerfully referred to as “restructuring” (that’s layoffs in plain English)—the factory is being phased out, the equipment shipped out without the employees (hopefully) noticing. But notice they do and decide to strike/occupy their factory to convince management to not do what they’ve planned. With a documentarian’s flair Pinho chronicles the anger, frustration, and conflict of the workers—do they take a severance package or take on the management directly (well, semi-directly) and occupy the factory? Pinho generously captures all sides of the issue—dignity is important but you can’t feed a hungry child with it—among the slightly diverse crew. Most are male, some in their 20s and their 50s, a person or two of color, and these folks run the gamut of Everyman/Everywoman worker-dom. Most are not really given a character per se except for Ze ( Jose Smith Vargas), a Josh Duhamel-type hepcat married to Carla (Carla Galvâo)—for some reason we get glimpses of their married life even though it has nothing to do with, basically, anything. (It’s almost as if someone was checking off a box: ‘boy/girl relationship with cute child’ and conflict to appeal to the date-night viewers.) The pros: Pinha’s docu-like approach really makes 28

one feel practically one of the workers, who actually look like (real) workers in a (real) factory (they’ve not been “scrubbed” to within an inch of their lives as in mostly Hollywood films, plus most of them are rather average-looking). We get to live the tedium of their occupation instead of a character saying “Gosh, I’m bored” and the conflict of the workers’ meetings/arguments generate heat. I’m sure Lisbon has its lovely side as well, but Portugal’s Tourism Board is not going to recommend this film as its focus is on the city’s gloomy/glum industrial side (and its decay thereof ). A great opening shot: A factory is slowly being torn down and from a distance the giant machines doing the tearing resemble Godzilla-type monsters. Pinho knows how to pace most scenes, as some practically zip through the movie. The cons: Pacing is good but alas there are too many scenes—the movie’s running time is nearly three hours. There are too many scenes of characters engaging (seemingly endlessly) in socialist-based economic theories— and even though these are (presumably) working class types at the factory, many are very well based in Marxist lore and The Dignity of Labor/O Holy Working-Class blather. (Funny how that worked out. Meanwhile I grew up in a very working-class area and most of the people in that milieu were very conservative or apolitical.) After a while I almost felt like shouting at the screen: “Okay, I get it, capitalism is flawed and often sucks!” One character that seems fairly laid-back (slight spoiler) takes a character to a cache of weapons—was this person serious about using them to spill blood?

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That would’ve been a concept to explore, but instead that scene got played for cute laughs courtesy of some ominously lingering ostriches. There’s a musical sequence that occurs so late in the movie (and against what turns out to be a beacon of false hope) that depending on one’s taste and/or mood, it can be seen as charmingly elating or heavy-handed as an episode of Glee written by an earnest young Marxist with a Message. (In case I didn’t make it clear earlier: There are many windy, didactic conversations about how the beast of capitalism is lumbering to extinction, etc.) There is a disjointedness to the movie’s structure— for some unknown reason, the working-class types end up in a punk rock bar and a band doing a mediocre imitation of Black Flag churns out silly Socially Aware Songs. (I got the feeling that someone connected with this movie was not really that familiar with political punk rock.) Then there is a strong dose of what this writer refers to as The Quirk Factor—for no reason or relevance (except to be Delightfully Quirky) one of the workers that looks and sounds like a combination of Allen Ginsberg and Orson Welles is chatted-up by a sultry punk rock gal (they go for guys like that, really) and the conversation turns to Danish sperm banks and the English women that use them. It’s great that a film gives a workers’-eye view of toiling in and for a system (for lack of a better term) that views them as expendable. But at three hours, this Factory often feels ceaseless, interminable. This Pinha fellow has talent but he needs to be edited—seriously. n

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SINGER | SONGWRITER REVIEWED BY TOM WILK Jimi Hendrix HHH Both Sides of the Sky Experience Hendrix/Legacy Recordings Jimi Hendrix’s musical afterlife continues nearly a half century after his death at 27 in 1970. Both Sides of the Sky, his latest posthumous release, features alternate versions, works in progress and previously unheard tracks from his archive of studio recordings. The CD offers a fascinating glimpse of a master musician at work that’s akin to reading early drafts of a writer’s short stories. The album opens with a spirited “Man-

nish Boy” that’s less intense vocally than Muddy Waters’ version. “Things I Used to Do” has the feel of a jam session with Hendrix and Johnny Winter exchanging guitar licks on the blues standard originally done by Guitar Slim. Hendrix adds razor-sharp guitar work to “Lover Man,” which is enlivened by the propulsive drumming of Buddy Miles. An April 1969 recording of “Hear My Train A Comin’” that features the original lineup of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, provides a showcase for Hendrix to stretch out and improvise on guitar. The studio also served as a laboratory for Hendrix to experiment with his sound. He plays sitar on “Cherokee Mist” to give the instrumental a spacey feel and tries out an early version of “Sweet Angel” without the lyrics. Hendrix yields the spotlight to Stephen Stills for a driving cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” with Stills on organ and vocals and Hendrix on bass. (13 songs, 65 minutes) John Prine HHHH The Tree of Forgiveness Oh Boy Records John Prine released seven albums in the first decade of his recording career from 1971 to 1980. Since then, the output has slowed for the 71-year-old-singer. The Tree of Forgiveness is just his second album of original songs since he turned 50, but the new CD shows he hasn’t lost his creative spark. Prine’s songs deal with mortality, aging and love with a mix of seriousness and his trademark humor delivered in his down-home voice. The yearning “Summer’s End,” which features Brandi 30

Carlile on vocals, captures the melancholy feel of the change of seasons and the desire for the return of a loved one. “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)” is a lively tall tale that’s classic Prine with its word play. “When there’s hell to pay, put the truth on layaway,” he advises. On “Lonesome Friends of Science,” Prine good-naturedly laments that Pluto is no longer a planet as he tries to find his place in the world. The joyous “Boundless Love” finds him expressing his gratitude for his wife. “I was drowning in a sea/Lost as I could be/When you found me,” he sings. “When I Get to Heaven” ends the album with a fanciful depiction of the afterlife as Prine outlines his plans which include opening a nightclub called The Tree of Forgiveness. “I’m gonna get a cocktail/Vodka and ginger ale/Gonna smoke a cigarette/That’s nine miles long,” he sings in a celebratory tone backed by a cheerful chorus. (10 songs, 32 minutes) Kim Richey HHH1/2 Edgeland Yep Roc Kim Richey has defined Edgeland as “a place where the country and the town meet, that middle ground, no man’s land.” It’s a fitting title for her first studio album in five years with its mix of folk, country, and pop that plays to her strengths as a writer and vocalist. “The Red Line,” the CD’s opening track, insinuates itself into the listener’s mind with its melody and tale of a missed train and the narrator musing about the lives of fellow travelers. Richey and co-writer Mando Saenz turn the song into a short story set to music with lines about a man “who had trouble with the razor in a rush to meet the train.” “Chase Wild Horses” find Richey confronting her demons and the cost of wisdom earned the hard way. “Things I’ve done I ain’t proud of/I can’t even stand the sound of,” she declares. “The mid-tempo “Pin a Rose” captures the differing viewpoints of the same person that can occur between friends. The emotionally intense “I Tried” details the end of a love affair, while “Not For Money or Love” is sung by a character from beyond the grave and recalls the murder ballad “Long Black Veil” and Neil Young’s “Powderfinger.” (12 songs, 42 minutes) Sarah McQuaid HHH1/2 If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous Shovel And A Spade Records From her garden to the solar system, Sarah McQuaid goes beyond the norm in finding subject matter for her songs on If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous, her fifth solo album. The title track was inspired by a hole dug by her son in a garden at their home in Great Britain. McQuaid transforms the song into an in ecological warning against fracking. “Some things are

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better left buried down under the crust,” she sings in a cautionary tone. “The Tug of the Moon,” which features just her vocal and a solitary electric guitar, has its roots in the addition of a leap second at the end of 2016 because of the moon’s gravitational pull and its effect on time. “We count up the lengthening hours/That remain until the end comes too soon,” McQuaid observes of the intersection of mortality and science. Mortality also is the theme of “One Sparrow Down,” a tale of survival of the fittest involving a sparrow and her family cat. “Break Me Down” is a wry ode to the virtues of decomposition over burial or cremation. Producer Michael Chapman and McQuaid opt for a stripped-down, folk-based instrumentation that puts her expressive vocals front and center in the mix. (12 songs, 45 minutes) Mary Chapin Carpenter HHH1/2 Sometimes Just The Sky Lambent Light Records A retrospective can offer a fresh perspective on an artist and that’s the case for Princeton native and fivetime Grammy winner Mary Chapin Carpenter. She went into the studio last year to record new versions of songs from a dozen of her studio albums for Sometimes Just The Sky and also includes one new song, the title track. Concepts emerge in hearing songs written over a 30-year period. The call of the road is the underlying theme of “What Does It Mean to Travel” and “One Small Heart,” while “I Have a Need for Solitude” suggests an interior journey of the mind in the joys of getting away from it all. Reflections on romance—both new and failed—are featured on “Rhythm of the Blues” and “This Is Love” and display Carpenter’s literate and engaging style. “Love is a labyrinth,” she sings on “Jericho” and Carpenter explores the intricate network of winding passages inherent in the subject. Carpenter avoids reinterpreting her biggest hits (“I Feel Lucky,” “Down at the Twist and Shout”) in favor of quieter, reflective songs, such as “This Shirt” and “The Moon and St. Christopher.” At 60, she remains a strong vocalist with a purity of tone that producer Ethan Johns showcases throughout the album. (13 songs, 61 minutes) n

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JAZZ, ROCK, CLASSICAL, ALT REVIEWED BY MARK KERESMAN

Mark Wade Trio HHH1/2 Moving Day Self-released This is Michigan-bred, Queens, NY-based bassist Mark Wade’s second album as a leader. (Also a bass teacher part-time in Bethlehem.) Wade has an assertive style on acoustic bass—rippling and sinewy as befitting Buster Williams and Mike Richmond (under whom he studied); you can practically see the strings vibrating as he plucks them. Stylistically, Moving Day is melodious,

swinging, straight-ahead post-bop jazz, the kind of meat-and-potatoes stuff that connects with the listener without pandering to that lowest common denominator. The surging “Wide Open” is an insistent somewhat modal-sounding piece, a distant cousin of Miles’ “So What”—here pianist Tim Harrison swings up a storm in a rich, two-handed, brisk manner of (acoustic) Herbie Hancock. Wade’s rapid, dexterous solo practically dances in your head (and doesn’t overstay its welcome). “Something of a Romance” is, as you may’ve gathered, is the stately, lovelorn ballad (think “One For My Baby,” mood-wise) of this set, but what makes it rise above the routine is a subtle tension in the trio’s playing, counterbalancing the tune’s wistfulness. “Midnight in the Cathedral” is something of a game-changer—dense, ominous, and ruminating, it evokes the open-ended, questing character of Chick Corea’s acoustic trio work (especially Now He Sings Now He Sobs). Scott Neumann’s crisp drumming maintains a sense of motion (a sort-of subtext of this album), especially with his shimmering cymbals. The recording quality is excellent, making each member equally front-and-center without being overbearing—what’s more, while all get to shine there’s no water-treading or noodling-about. Watch this fellow (and his trio). (9 tracks, 59 min.) markwademusicny.com Patti Cudd HHH1/2 Eos Innova The human voice may well have been the “first” in32

Astrud Gilberto & Stan Getz. The Sade sound was (is) sleek, exotic—while some female singers over-emoted, she under-emoted, as if she was inviting you to lean in and listen more closely. Without being imitative, singer Hollie Cook, of British and West Indian extraction, has some of that same magicality. Vessel of Love is her third album and it’s a semi-rough gem, a melodious hunk of roots reggae, rocksteady (the predecessor of modern reg-

strument but the “second” was likely when some human introduced stick to stone. Ever since, percussion bangs, storms, simmers, and so on, driving music or “being” it. Patti Cudd is a classically-trained percussionist, a member of the group Zeitgeist, an ensemble dedicated to modern/contemporary classical/notated composers and teacher at the U of Wisconsin-River Falls. Here she takes on 16 works on three discs of music composed for percussion alone (and in some cases, for percussion and electronic media. This is not an album for people that want to hear dramatic, highly rhythmic drum beatdowns ‘n’ hurrahs. Some highlights: “Still Life with Vibraphone and Computer” by Eric Lyon shimmers in a manner both serenely quasi-tropical and mirage-like; “Cut” by Paul Elwood is whimsically mysterious and quirky, mixing metallic tones and whines with prerecorded voice—this could almost be an outtake from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and the stark, moody, and seemingly explorational “King of Denmark” by Morton Feldman. Other composers represented include Christian Wolff, Cort Lippe, Barry Moon, and Pamela Madsen. Some pieces explore (or seek to redefine) rhythm(s), others are like a Jackson Pollock painting with sound instead of paint. Inconsistent (as a whole), yes; fascinating, most definitely. If you are open to the music of Harry Partch, John Cage, etc., dive in. (21 tracks, approx. 4 hours). innova.mu Hollie Cook HHHH1/2 Vessel of Love Merge Years back when Sade hit the airwaves it was like a blast of not only fresh but soft air—her approach was truly cool, evoking the jazz/pop/bossa nova breezy sophistication of the ’60s hit “The Girl From Ipanema” by

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gae, a bit smoother and overtly romantic—think Ken Booth, Bob Andy, The Paragons), and tropical pop with a smidgen of dub. Cook’s voice is superficially similar to that of Sade but where she sounded worldly Cook has a bit of the starry-eyed innocence-soon-to-be-lost lilt of ’60s girl groups The Chiffons and Marvelettes in her distinctive warble. Vessel is joyously overflowing with cushy keyboard sounds, echoing horns, cracking drums, limpid textures, twanging & chunky guitars, and insidiously catchy rhythms and choruses. This set seems to emanate from a lost time yet sounds curiously timeless—a tonic for these unsettling times and one of the most persistently playable platters I’ve heard in months. (10 tracks, 40 min.) mergerecords.com Erin McDougald HHHH Outside the Soiree Miles High Originally issued in 2010, Outside… is the fourth set to bear the distinctive voice of Erin McDougald, a Chicago-bred singer with a cabaret background that she makes work for her (as opposed to stylistically dominating her). She’s performed with aces of Windy City jazz—Von Freeman, Ira Sullivan, Johnny Frigo, and Paul Wertico, and she’s got some notable heavy cats accompanying her herein: trumpeter Tom Harrell, sax wizard Dave Liebman (who graced the ’70s ensembles of Miles Davis and gets in some nifty, succinct Coltrane-like runs herein), and vibraphonist Mark Sherman. McDougald has got a slightly husky yet clear warble not unlike that of Anita O’Day with just a touch of theatricality—the way she essays “Ballad of All the

Sad Young Men” sounds like a stage play unfolding before your very, uh, ears. She charges “Avalon” with plenty of quirky sassiness, bending words/phrases like an instrumentalist without forsaking the weight of the words (as opposed to using song as a basis/excuse for showoffy flights of fancy). “The Man With the Horn” intro is breathtaking, just the bittersweet muted Miles-ish (think early ‘60s Miles) playing of Harrell and her voice, gently rising like wisps of smoke before it embraces the words. Her musical backing swings with economy and ease. Like Lotte Lenya, Sinatra, and precious few others, McDougald is a singing storyteller, and what’s more, a fine, musicianly jazz-singing storyteller. (13 tracks, 80 min.) mileshighrecords.com

Barron, Buster Williams, John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette, and local luminaries Uri Caine and Greg Osby on his team, all of whom have recorded with Ambrosetti on past Enja albums. Behold “I’m Glad There is You”— ballad; playing rarely gets better. True, Ambrosetti may remind you some of Miles Davis (imagine a jazz hornperson NOT impacted by him) because of his sophisticated and mellow phrasing but he’s built upon that influence (notice the slightly dissonant ripples in his solo). Barron is so poetic as per usual. Toward the other end of the mood spectrum there’s the lanky mid-tempo Horace Silver-like “Midnight Voyage” in which Ambrosetti mixes it up with none other than Randy Brecker (no slouch on the horn himself ). Herein Scofield lets loose with an ear-opening solo wherein he seasons a bluetoned Wes Montgomery-esque approach with a bit of aggravated distortion. Things mostly on the mellow side overall, but it’s a high-level-of-excellence-kind of mellow that’s hard to beat. (9 tracks, 67 min.) enjarecords.com n

Franco Ambrosetti HHHH Cheers Enja Some things age like fine wine, some, simply, do not. Swiss flugelhornist Franco Ambrosetti fortunately goes in that former category. Since the mid-1960s he’s been the toast of the Italian/Swiss jazz scene. This fellow turned 75 late last year and so celebrated with a Brooklyn recording session with some American and European colleagues and the results is a rather swell set of hard bop. Of course, it helps to have hepcats Kenny

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JAZZ LIBRARY BY BOB PERKINS

Tadd Dameron

his piece has to do with a very talented musician named Tadd Dameron, who came close to becoming a jazz legend in his limited time on earth, and a jazz pioneer and certified legend, in death. Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron (Tadd for short), was born February 21, 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother taught him to play the piano by ear. Various articles about him list no other tutoring on the instrument. His older brother got him interested in jazz, and Dameron, hardly out of his teens, not only become a fine pianist, but was writing arrangements for a band he’d joined. Tadd was on the road and playing in several bands by 1940—including one led by Blanche Calloway, the older sister of Cab Calloway. During this period, he was writing pure swing arrangements. He landed a job writing for the much respected band of Jimmy Lunceford, and went on to write charts for the bands of Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie. He loved to write for large ensembles. But perhaps Dameron, like Charlie Parker, was playing and writing in one style of jazz, but all the while was thinking about another way of expressing himself more creatively, and he, like Parker, finally began to put into practice

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the elusive musical progressions and chord changes he’d been trying to capture. Not only did he include the new approach that Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and a few others were pioneering in small bands, Dameron incorporated this new found sound—which some had identified as be-bop—into his big band arrangements. In 1947, Esquire magazine noticed his work and named him “Best New Jazz Arranger.” When not arranging for others, Dameron fronted his own small bands, which included Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt and Blue Mitchell, to name a few. He garnered quite a bit of attention when he introduced the ballad “If You Could See Me Now.” It was sung by Sarah Vaughan in 1946, with Carl Sigman writing the lyrics. Dameron continued to compose and his fluid pen produced the jazz standards “Good Bait,” “Lady Bird,” Hot House,” “Our Delight,” and “On a Misty Night.” But there was another side of Dameron to which few if any were privy; musician and educator Paul Combs spent many years gathering whatever information he could about Dameron. He questioned friends and associates, but he never got a complete profile of Dameron, of whom he said was “mysterious and secretive, almost to the point of paranoia.” There were said to be four or five important women in his life and he may have fathered five children, but no one seemed to have a truthful count of either number. And, as it was with so many outstanding jazz artists of Dameron’s era, he became acquainted with drugs and they took their toll. He spent close to three years of his short life in a federal prison hospital in Kentucky, being treated for drug addiction. He was released in 1961. A couple of years later his health began to fail. In 1964 he was hospitalized in New York City, where he met and married a nurse who had attended him. They married and lived together until he died of cancer in 1965. Tadd Dameron was only 48. Following his death, two musician-admirers, “Philly” Joe Jones and Don Sickler, founded a jazz nonet, which they dubbed “Damernia,” in tribute to Dameron’s legend and legacy. The group recorded his compositions and performed in clubs and concert halls around the country. Paul Combs, mentioned earlier in this piece, authored a biography on Dameron, titled, The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron. n Bob Perkins is a writer and host of an all-jazz radio program that airs on WRTI-FM 90.1 Mon. through Thurs. night, from 6–9 and Sunday, 9–1.

POP BY A.D. AMOROSI

LaBelle mixes it up From her acting stint on American Horror Story to her own show on the Cooking Channel, to a new foray into jazz, Patti LaBelle shows she is no stranger to change POWERHOUSE VOCALIST PATTI LABELLE has been an R&B musical icon for so long (55 years since her debut single) that, even when she’s veered into entertainment territory and business opportunities beyond sound, they have soul. “Now you know that’s just how I roll,” LaBelle said with a sly laugh from her Wynnewood home in the suburbs of her native Philadelphia. From good-girl group pop to wanton pre-disco funk (The Bluebelles trio which eventually became LaBelle, the women behind “Lady Marmalade”), from her role as the silken matron of Gamble & Huff’s Sound of Philadelphia to synth-pop goddess (“New Attitude”), from R&B balladeer to Broadway belter (After Midnight and Fela!), LaBelle has sung it all and wrung out every emotion. Her last album in 2007 was even a holiday one, Miss Patti's Christmas (Def Soul Classics). The only sound LaBelle has never recorded—her first and deepest love—during this long career? Jazz. She handled that nobly when she released Bel Hommage last year. The jazz standards album was produced by her ex-husband Armstead Edwards (“He’s known me and my voice for over 30 years, so why not?” she says) on a new label, GPE Records, that she coowns with their son and her manager, Zuri Edwards of Edwards Entertainment. “I’ve been telling people, press, friends about my jazz album for so long with nothing to show for it, I’d bet they thought I was lying.” She’ll perform songs from Bel Hommage as well as from the entirety of her career when she hits the Academy of Music on April 5 (academyofmusic.org). Anyone who has tracked LaBelle’s actions in the last decade knows that she’s had other work and career opportunities. “That’s exactly what they were—opportunities that came my way. I’m too shy to hustle or push. I am, however, smart enough to know what’s good, right and of high quality. My son is sharp and intuitive and he knows, too, but he can only push me so much. If and when I want to do something, I do it.” Music, jazz in particular, though, remains her first and truest love; so much so that when her ex-husband suggested that she record her jazz favorites, she jumped at the process, even though (at the time) she wasn’t confident in her vocal abilities. “I just didn’t like how I sounded. My voice wasn’t being kind to me. I knew I could be better. I didn’t think I could do it, but Armstead said Blanche!—that’s his nickname for me and my drama—I know you have it in you. So I did it, and was in it to win it. Now it sounds more beautiful than I ever imagined.” LaBelle goes on to say that she fought with Edwards throughout the entire Bel Hommage recording process, “…even when I knew he was right, just to stir thing up. There are lots of laughs, joy and pain in that album.” Bel Hommage allows the singer to be more nuanced and intimate than she normally gets the chance to be on the tender likes of the Tony De Vita/Giorgio Calabrese love ballad, “Softly as I Leave You,” Shirley Horn’s quietly theatrical “Here’s to Life,” and the brassy big band tones of “The Jazz in You.” Most particularly haunting, though, are several signature songs from the late Nina Simone’s songbook: “Don’t Explain,” “Wild is the Wind,” and “Go to Hell.” LaBelle says that Simone taught her to “be a lady” and a more dramatic songstress. “I loved her and could have made this album all Nina songs. Maybe next time.” LaBelle assures there will be a next time, as she claims to have several albums finished for GPE, including a gospel album, a dance music album, and an album featuring the new first songs penned by fellow Philadelphians Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff (the principles behind Philadelphia International Records) in decades, a fact confirmed by Gamble himself. “When Patti calls, I listen,” he said on the 2016 occasion of Gamble, Huff and LaBelle winning the prestigious Marian Anderson Award. “This is like a new beginning for me,” says LaBelle of Bel Hommage, “new, but still an old friend.” n ICON, APRIL 2018 | ICONDV.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/ICONDV

ABOUT LIFE BY JAMES P. DELPINO, MSS, MLSP, LCSW, BCD

Power Struggles POWER IS A VARIABLE in practically every relationship in life. Who’s in charge? The doctor is in charge of prescribing medicine. The boss is in charge of assigning and monitoring work. Many times the distribution or assignment of power can deeply affect the quality of a relationship. Sometimes there are conflicts, an we know them as power struggles. A classic example would be the power struggle between a parent and a child. When is bedtime? Some children seem to understand that when it’s time for bed there’s no negotiation. Other children push and test the limits of bedtime; parents who are consistent in this area tend to fare far better early in life. When a parent negotiates or allows limits to be stretched he’s giving away power in the relationship. When a young child has too much power things can go awry. Over time, the power dynamic between parent and child shifts and the child gains more power. In adolescence, testing limits is normal and power struggles are more frequent. Some power distributions are assumed and other times they’re explicitly stated: “I expect you to be home by midnight.” A parent who ignores a teen who pushes past midnight often gives non-verbal, tacit approval to this behavior. To confront a teen who is excessively late is the parents’ way of reasserting authority. When an adolescent is defiant it’s often an attempt to gain more power and autonomy. The best course is to discuss the power struggle and then the parent must decide whether discipline or extending the curfew is the best course of action. Some power exchanges are conscious, discussed, or negotiated; other power dynamics are left assumed and 36

unspoken. It’s better to have a conscious working understanding of power so that expectations are clearly delineated between individuals. In adult couples, misuse of power can lead to the destruction of a relationship. One can err on the side of too little or too much power. An abusive person attempts to over-control. The overly possessive or physically abusive partner can become dangerous, and in extreme cases involve serious injury or death. The healthy use of power involves self control and respect. If a person is unable to apply the use of their power in positive ways, the decline of the quality in any relationship is inevitable. Compromise is always preferable to over-control as each party is satisfied with the power distribution. Compromises don’t always appear fair. If a partner has a problem making it to work, the other partner may have to take on a more active role in promoting work attendance, or risk a partner losing a job. This also applies to school attendance for children and teens. When a partner asserts too much power, the other may have to set limits on unhealthy words and behaviors. Power can also be as-

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serted by defiance, a lack of cooperation or withdrawal. Defiance is common even in adult relationships. If a partner has had an over-controlling parent, any attempt to assert power may be seen as negative even if it comes from a good place and is good for that person. In adult couples the dynamics are multi-layered and much more complex than in any other relationship. There are financial, work, child rearing, intimacy, and sex variables involved. Balancing all these areas in a healthy fashion is a major difficulty. Considering that half of all marriages fail and the average marriage lasts 6.5 years—not to mention all the alternative configurations between people that do not last—establishing healthy dynamics is a task too difficult for most people. A wife who wants more communication is attempting to have more power and influence. The husband that wants more sex is trying to assert power in the bedroom. The parents who disagree about how to raise a child are actively involved in a power struggle, too. In everyday experiences we deal with power issues: the salesperson who wants a commission tries to be the one in the power in the sales process; two business people who are trying to negotiate a deal experience a dance of power in their attempts to finalize the transaction; in many criminal activities the perpetrator uses power to hurt someone with intimidation or physical force; and in war, the more powerful side gains victory for better or worse. In short, power distribution is evrywhere. n

Jim Delpino is a psychotherapist in private practice for over 38 years. jdelpino@aol.com (215) 364-0139.

harper’s FINDINGS

INDEX

Storybooks for Chinese children emphasize purpose, while American storybooks emphasize happiness. Monolingual children who hear multiple accents at home have a greater capacity for enjoying nonsense words. New pregnancies in Christian countries spike around Christmas. Republican presidential candidates have an 82 percent chance of winning neighborhoods with more pickup trucks than sedans; Democratic candidates have an 88 percent chance when the majority is reversed. African-American women with central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia have higher odds of uterine fibroids, and African-American children are twice as likely as children of other races to be misdiagnosed as disruptive before they are diagnosed as autistic. Female nurses who work night shifts are three fifths more likely than other women to get breast cancer. Psychosis is nearly eight times as prevalent in Paris and southeast London as in parts of rural Spain. Plants respond to anesthetics. Callous emotionlessness manifests in teen boys but not girls. Male virgins can contract HPV. Honest and humble adolescents have less sex.

Percentage of Belgium’s army that is actively deployed domestically: 13 Pages of shredded files that the Stasi Records Agency in Germany has reconstructed by hand since 1990: 1,500,000 Hours last year for which Germans were paid to use power because supply outstripped demand: 331 Number of other European Union countries that experienced negative power prices last year: 7 Minutes each day in Finland by which fathers spend more time than mothers with their school-aged children: 8 Number of other developed nations in which fathers spend more time than mothers with school-aged children: 0 Percentage by which millennial US men are likelier than women to be willing to expatriate for better parental leave: 44 Amount offered by the Indian government to caste Hindus who marry Dalits: $3,925 Number of such marriages the government plans to incentivize each year: 500 Percentage of US news stories about poverty that feature black families: 59 Of US families living under the poverty line that are black: 23 Min. # of companies and recruiters using Facebook to keep older workers from seeing job ads: 125 Staff the Zimbabwean gov’t. has guaranteed to Robert Mugabe as part of his retirement package: 25 Of new cars every five years: 3 Acres of land owned by John Malone, the largest private landowner in the US: 2,200,000 Factor by which that is larger than Rhode Island: 3.3 Est. number of NYC apartments for which tenants can pay rent in a cryptocurrency: 400,000 Number of tenants who have actually done so: 41 Date that Long Island Iced Tea Corp. changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp.: 12/21/2017 Percentage change in its share price that day: +183 Date Anheuser-Busch sent barley into space to explore possibility of brewing on Mars: 12/15/2017 Chance that an American would be more likely to buy a beer if it were brewed there: 1 in 10 Portion of Maryland’s licensed medical-marijuana dispensaries that ran out of product within a week of opening: 5/7 Number of US states that plan to use fentanyl for executions: 2 Percentage by which Americans overestimate the number of US prisoners who are foreign-born: 27 Est. number of accidental gun deaths attributable to surge in firearm purchases after Sandy Hook: 60 Number of hand grenades seized by Ukrainian police from civilians in 2013: 120 Last year: 2,200 Ratio of snake-removal to fire-alarm calls that Bangkok’s fire department responded to last year: 9:1 Portion of Cabinet departments whose permanent staff shrank over the first nine months of the Trump Administration: 4/5 Net change in permanent staff at the Department of Justice: −1,737 At the Department of Homeland Security: +1,190 Estimated number of Homeland Security employees stationed abroad: 2,000 Est. % of Russians who don’t think they have enough info. to have an opinion on Donald Trump: 46 Total amount donated by lobbyists registered as foreign agents during the 2016 election: $4,574,661 Percentage of this money donated to Democrats: 54 Number of write-in votes for U.A. football coach Nick Saban in state’s Nov. special election: 414 Est. number of US private schools receiving public funding that teach a Christian curriculum: 5,071 That teach an Islamic curriculum: 70 That teach a curriculum inspired by L. Ron Hubbard: 5

The world’s oldest funerary fishhooks were found decorating the face of a woman buried on Alor Island 12,000 years ago. A new species of orangutan was found to have been created by the eruption of a volcano 75,000 years ago. Male woolly mammoths were twice as likely as females to fall into a trap and die. Meteorites are responsible for all the iron in artifacts from the Bronze Age. The world’s oldest winemaking site was found in Georgia. English wineglasses have grown sevenfold over the past 300 years. Vole couples get along better if both drink alcohol or neither drinks than if only the male drinks. Mutant female mice who mutilate the genitals of male mice stop doing so when given gene therapy. The Mouse Biology Program at the University of California, Davis, created mice with chronic bad breath. Entomologists created a three-eyed wingless mosquito. A study found that, for pigeons, procrastination is more rewarding than precrastination. Rats will work harder for the same amount of mashed potatoes when it is flattened rather than balled. Chimpanzees hesitate before eating food presented to them atop fake feces. Cats do miss you.

Female Japanese macaques have been observed sexually mounting sika deer; the macaques also bite the deer, pull their antlers, and fight over them. Vets removed a six-pound tongue from a young Burmese moon bear who had been dragging it on the ground, a Vietnamese bile bear whose paws were amputated to make wine had learned to walk again, and the last dancing bears of Nepal were rescued. A gibbon couple who escaped from captivity had a wild baby. An Amur leopard cub whose mother had a history of cannibalizing her children was given to a golden retriever foster mother. The Indonesian Navy rescued 101 smuggled pangolins. The US Coast Guard rescued a sea turtle from floating cocaine bales. After blood came out of her blowhole, a Korean bottlenose dolphin died. The heaviest bony fish ever caught is a Mola alexandrini, not a Mola mola. A new snailfish was found living five miles underwater. Sharks can be monitored from their DNA drifting in seawater. One plastic bag can turn into 1.75 million shreds when eaten by marine organisms. Scientists discovered how the midshipman fish can hum for so long, and that the humming sound Earth makes comes from the bottom of the ocean.

SOURCES: 1 Consulate General of Belgium (NYC); 2 Stasi Records Agency (Berlin); 3 European Power Exchange (Paris); 4 European Commission (Brussels); 5,6 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Washington); 7 EY (Washington); 8,9 Indian Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (New Delhi); 10,11 Travis Dixon, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; 12 Communications Workers of America (Washington); 13,14 Zimbabwe Permanent Mission to the United Nations (NYC); 15 The Land Report (Dallas); 16 US Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.); 17,18 ManageGo LLC (Brooklyn, N.Y.); 19 US Securities and Exchange Commission; 20 Nasdaq (NYC); 21 Anheuser-Busch (NYC); 22 Rasmussen Reports (Asbury Park, N.J.); 23 Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission (Linthicum); 24 Death Row Penalty Information Center (Washington); 25 Ipsos (London); 26 Phillip Levine, Wellesley College (Mass.); 27,28 International Centre for Policy Studies (Kiev, Ukraine); 29 Bangkok Fire and Rescue Department; 30–32 US Office of Personnel Management; 33 US Department of Homeland Security; 34 Gallup (Atlanta); 35,36 MapLight (Berkeley, Calif.); 37 Office of the Alabama Secretary of State (Montgomery); 38–40 HuffPost. ICON, APRIL 2018 | ICONDV.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/ICONDV

The Los Angeles Times SUNDAY CROSSWORD PUZZLE

LOW FLOW By Jeffrey Wechsler

ACROSS Humanities degs. Dangerous thing to fall in with Enhances Exiled, with “away” Nonconforming Kitchen gadget Eponymous reader Interfaith service attendees? Conquered after being lost, as territory 26 Part of it is on L.I. 27 __ food 28 Arsonist’s alibi? 32 __ resources 34 Ornamental shrub 35 Gurus’ retreats 37 Ill-gotten gains 42 Sheep group 44 Pre-adulthood stages 46 Venerable retailer 49 Even once 50 Reliable sort 52 Glitzy rock genre 54 Goliath, to David 55 Levelheaded 56 Cause of business failure? 59 State requiring “Stat!” 61 Enterprise bridge figure 62 Distinguished screwballs? 64 More than not 67 Unrefined 70 “The Goldbergs” airer 71 “House” actor Epps 72 Uproar over a controversial win? 76 Eponymous salad creator 79 “That is my intention” 80 Niche market for airport bookstores? 87 Emulate a condor 88 Spherical organ 90 “Star Wars” saga fixture 91 Equanimity 92 First word of “Send in the Clowns” 93 WWI battle river 95 Stop on the briny 97 S.F. commuting system 98 16th-century Sorrento-born poet 100 Cape user 102 SALT subject 103 Barely bested, with “out” 106 Dumpster hoverers? 111 Like Stephen King’s Pennywise 114 Medium power? 1 4 12 18 19 20 21 22 24

116 Golden quality? 117 Hygiene product for very big teeth? 122 Yawn-inducing 123 One changing lines, perhaps 124 End of an ultimatum 125 98-Across’ lang. 126 Yes 127 Manhattan region 128 Sardine catcher 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 23 25 29 30 31 33 36 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 47 48 51 53 57

DOWN Stimulating nut Women’s fashion chain Really angry Bombers’ home? Radius location Young socialite Pixar output, briefly Track competitor Brand including Regenerist products Defiant reply to a dare Soft & __: deodorant Sleep disorder Make less dangerous, as a snake Acer rival Vending machine opening Acer employee TV planet Banzai Pipeline feature Frozen drink brand Omega, to a physicist London’s __ Gardens Ruth wore one What kilowatt hours measure Knickknack perch Its Space Command has HQ in Colorado Capital of Eritrea Alter, as a tailor might First Family name Dueling party Low cards Consumer protection org. Conquistador’s treasure Pacific Rim nation Eurasian border river Opposite of a squeaker Lowly worker Tom of “Newhart” Math subj. Grounds crew concern

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58 60 63 64 65 66 68 69 72 73 74 75 77 78 81

Information source, with “the” All over the world Bookkeeping no. Champagne cocktail Hurricanes form over them Embarks Furry TV ET License holder? Stop by GPS data Foolish one Food in a humility metaphor Spheres Vanquish Hall of Fame chef De Laurentiis 82 Wreaked state 83 Tinkered with 84 “Soon” 85 ATM giant 86 Procure 89 Full-figured model born Melissa Miller 94 Archipelago with an eponymous wine 96 Storied vessel 99 Big weight 101 Java creation 102 Workers’ org. formed in 1886 104 Vasarely’s genre 105 Word for word?: Abbr. 107 Actor Davis

108 Raised symbol of resistance 109 Brilliant display 110 Market 111 They’re chewed in pastures 112 Wrigley Field stats 113 Sunrise dirección 115 “Do the Right Thing” pizzeria 117 “Many fresh streams meet in one salt __”: Shakespeare 118 Little piggy 119 Sol preceders 120 CXII halved 121 20-volume ref.

Answer to March’s puzzle, PT EXERCISE

AGENDA FINE ART

tHrU 4/10 Katya grokhovsky: system Failure. performance, 4/10, 5-6pm. Martin Art gallery, Baker center for the Arts, Muhlenberg college, 2400 West chew street, Allentown, pA. muhlenberg.edu/gallery tHrU 4/29 Aoy Art center 7th Annual Juried show. Artists reception April 6, 6-9. Hours F, s, s 12-5. Aoy Art center, 949 Mirror lake road, yardley, pA artistsofyardley.org tHrU 5/20 the particular past. Martin Art gallery, Baker center for the Arts, Muhlenberg college, 2400 West chew street, Allentown, pA. Muhlenberg.edu/gallery 4/15-5/27 Jim rodgers, 2018 solo exhibition. receptions 4/21, 5-8 & 4/22, 1-4. silverman gallery of Bucks county impressionist Art, 4920 york rd., Holicong, pA (in Buckingham green, rte. 202.) 215794-4300. silvermangallery.com 5/6-6/10 the Art of the Miniature. the 26th invitational exhibition of fine art miniatures from around the world. opening reception 5/6, 15. view online opening weekend. the snow goose gallery, 470 Main st., Bethlehem, pA. 610-9749099. thesnowgoosegallery.com ART FESTIVALS / TOURS

5/4-5/6 Morven in May. contemporary craft & garden. thirty-six craft artists. Morven Museum & garden, 55 stockton st., princeton, nJ. Morven.org 5/5-5/6 the Hunterdon Art tour: selfguided tour of Artists’ studios. Meet artists, 10 -6. exhibition & party 5/4, 7-9. the Hunterdon Art Museum. info: thehunterdonarttour.com. 5/12-5/13 Bethlehem Fine Art & craft. over 80 regional, national & local artists. Art projects for kids, fun

for the family. Historic Main st., Bethlehem, pA. Bfac-lv.org 5/19 33rd Annual Art Auction, silent Auction 5:30; live Auction 8:00. the Baum school of Art, 510 W. linden st., Allentown, pA. 610433-0032. Baumschool.org 5/19 Quakertown Alive! presents the 18th Annual Arts Alive! Fine Arts & craft event. 10-4. downtown Quakertown, pA. rain date 5/20. 215-536-2273. Quakertownalive.com THEATER

4/5-4/15 World premiere of “dictators 4 dummies,” a satirical send up of tyranny in this biting new musical comedy. 321 east Fourth street, Bethlehem, pA. 610-867-1689, x 321. touchstone.org 4/10 david sedaris, notations. Zoellner Arts center, lehigh University, 420 e. packer Ave., Bethlehem, pA. 610-758-2787. Zoellnerartscenter.org 4/22 Machine de cirque. Zoellner Arts center, lehigh University, 420 e. packer Ave., Bethlehem, pA. 610-758-2787. Zoellnerartscenter.org 4/25-5/6 into the Woods, Music and lyrics by stephen sondheim, book by James lapine. Act 1 performing Arts, desales University, 2755 station Ave., center valley, pA. 610-282-3192. desales.edu/act1 4/26-4/28 For colored girls Who Have considered suicide When the rainbow is enuf., by ntozake shange. Muhlenberg college theatre & dance, 2400 chew st., Allentown, pA. 484-664-3333. Muhlenberg.edu/theatre 5/31-6/10 philadelphia international Festival of Art, piFA. eleven days of gaspinducing goosebumps. info: Kimmel center.org

CONCERTS

4/7 pennsylvania sinfonia orchestra, "sonic transformations." pianist Michael gurt, full chamber orchestra. Beethoven, Franck, shostakovich, Wagner. First presbyterian church, 3231 W. tilghman st., Allentown, pA. 610-4347811. pAsinfonia.org 4/10 Jonathan clark, principal horn. the Allentown symphony. Arts at st. John’s, st. John’s lutheran church, 37 so. Fifth st., Allentown, pA. 610-435-164. stjohnsallentown.org/arts-at-st-johns 4/17 rick Bashore, principal oboe. Arts at st. John’s, st. John’s lutheran church, 37 so. Fifth st., Allentown, pA. 610-435-1641. stjohnsallentown.org/arts-at-st-johns 4/21 Jesse cook, Beyond Borders tour. state theatre, 453 northampton st., easton, pA. 610-252-3132. statetheatre.org 4/24 Abdullah ibrahim & ekaya, and special guest Freddie Hendrix in tribute to the Jazz epistles. Zoellner Arts center, lehigh University, 420 e. packer Ave., Bethlehem, pA. 610-758-2787. Zoellnerartscenter.org 4/27 An evening of Baroque Music. the Allentown symphony chamber orchestra, Arts at st. John’s, st. John’s lutheran church, 37 so. Fifth st., Allentown, pA. 610-4351641. stjohnsallentown.org/artsat-st-johns or phone 4/27 Westminster concert Bell choir, 40th Anniversary concert. cathedral Arts, cathedral church of the nativity, 321 Wyandotte st., Bethlehem, pA. 610-865-0727. nativitycathedral.org 4/28 spring concert: israel in egypt. camerata singers, First presbyterian church, 3231 W. tilghman st., Allentown, pA. 610-434-7811. pAcameratasingers.org

4/28 the Muhlenberg college choir and string orchestra: gabriel Faure’s requiem. Arts at st. John’s, st. John’s lutheran church, 37 so. Fifth st., Allentown, pA. 610-435-1641. stjohnsallentown.org/arts-at-st-johns 5/11 & 12; 5/18 &19 Bethlehem Bach Festival. Baroque music performed in glorious settings throughout the town. presented by the Bach choir of Bethlehem, celebrating 120 years. Bethlehem, pA. 610-866-4382. Bach.org. KESWICK THEATRE 291 n Keswick Ave, glenside, pA 215-572-7650 keswicktheatre.com APRIL 6 cry cry cry (dar Williams, lucy Kaplansky, richard shindell) 7 the Fab Faux 8 david Foster 12 iyanla vanzant 13 one night of Queen 15 Jeanne robertson 21 dweezil Zappa 22 rodriguez 25 steven Wilson 28 ruben studdard luther vandross tribute MUSIKFEST CAFÉ 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem 610-332-1300 Artsquest.org APRIL 5 steve earle & the dukes 6 Freekbass 15 tommy emmanuel 18 carl palmer’s elp legacy 19 Here come the Mummies 20-21 southside Arts & Music MAUCH CHUNK OPERA HOUSE 14 W. Broadway, Jim thorpe, pA mcohjt.com 570-325-0249 APRIL 5 Billy cobham crosswinds project 6 Mipso w/ tom Brusseau 7 david lindley 8 dangerMuffin with serene green 12-15 the 2nd Annual

19 20 21 27 28 28

Jim thorpe indie Film Fest premiere of Molly Maguires Movie Arjun Who’s next Martin carthy/ John doyle KicK:the inXs experience Mrs. o’Brien’s guide to the golden rule

EVENTS 4/15-4/22 Allentown restaurant Week. info: downtownallentown.com 4/28-5/19 sotA ideA House 2018 at Houdenhal. 9905 old 22, Breinigsville, pA. info: sotapa.org. 5/5 38th Annual Historic easton House tour. six historic Homes and three public spaces from 104. tour begins at riverside park, easton. eastonhousetour.com 5/5 earthfest, 25th Anniversary celebration includes local environmental groups, live music, beer garden, local vendors, food vendors, raffles and giveaways. Fun for the entire family. 10-6. dvoor Farm, 111 Mine st., Flemington, nJ. 5/12-5/20 new Hope celebrates presents, pridefest—15 years of community pride. events: 5k run & the rainbow Flag event, parade and Fair, the United colors of love. newhopecelebrates.com. 5/20-5/21 Brunch & Music in the park. tango lessons & dancing. Bring your favorite brunch items and enjoy great music and dancing, including tango instruction. West park, Allentown, pA. 610-4349034. Westpark-ca.org 5/25-5/27 Mayfair Festival of the Arts at cedar crest college. Food, craft vendors, artists, music and live performances. 100 college dr., Allentown, pA. 800-360-1222. cedarcrest.edu n

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