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MAY ~ 2013

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW MUSIC, MAESTRO, PLEASE! | 28 Peter Nero was and is the reason the Philly Pops existed, the reason it did business, and the reason—quite simply—thousands of folks bought tickets for 34 years. Now, away from the podium, his focus is on a different kind of stage—a stage of life that holds the promise of an even more exciting and personally fulfilling career.

FEATURES THE TIBERINOS: USING ART TO ILLUMINATE SOCIETY’S FOIBLES | 26 The Tiberino’s massive garden acreage—treehouse and all—is a multi-studio grounds where live bands, film screenings, poetry readings, live nude modeling, chess tournaments, avant-garde goddess performances and the Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow’s burlesque dancers, clowns and fire-breathers happen.

THE MANY FACES AND STAGES OF THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH | 30 Totem, one of 22 active Cirque du Soleil productions, makes its way to Philadelphia this month. Where does the show fit in the Eugène Atget, 1857-1927, printed by Berenice Abbott. Mannequin, Avenue des Gobelins, 1927, printed 1930s. Gelatin Silver print.

grand scheme of the global, ever-evolving brand? It may, in fact, be Cirque's most telling, self-reflective creation.

COLUMNS

MUSIC

STAGE

City Beat | 5

The Jazz Scene | 34

Regional Theater & Dance | 53 Dreamgirls; North of the Boulevard;

Backstage | 5

Nick’s Picks | 36

About Life | 50

Giacomo Gates; Tomasz Stanko;

OPINION

Ehud Asherie with Harry Allen;

Bush’s Legacy Keeps Getting Worse | 6

Aaron Diehl; Jeremy Pelt;

Into the Woods; Next to Normal; Carnival of the Animals; Failure: A Love Story; Venus in Fur; Chicago; Booty Candy

Harry Allen & Scott Hamilton;

ART

Emilio Teubal

Depth of Field | 7

Keresman on Disc | 38 Swing Out Sister; Son Volt; Kim Richey;

Harper’s Index | 55

The Brush is Mightier Than the Sword | 10

Tony Bennett /Dave Brubeck;

Harper’s Findings | 56

Wayne Hancock; Ron Oswanski;

Agenda | 59

The Baum School of Art The Studio & Gallery of Materese Roche

The Snow Goose Gallery

Keresman on Film | 18 The Place Beyond the Pines

FOOD

WINE

At Any Price; Mud; Koch; To the Wonder

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Some Leading Ladies of Wine Opine | 46

ESSAYS And Then It Happened | 47

Film Roundup | 24

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Indian Rock Inn | 43 Hickory Lane | 44

Django Unchained; Happy People

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Midnight Oil; Deni Bonet;

Morgana King

The Impossible; Future Weather;

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Amy Speace; Duane Allman;

Jazz Library | 41

Reel News | 22

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Singer / Songwriter | 40

Cinematters | 16 What Maisie Knew

Bad Movie | 20 Olympus Has Fallen

Little Walter Jacobs / Various Artists

Doug MacLeod

FILM

Peter Nero.

L.A. Times Crossword | 54

1919: The Year of Modernism | 8

EXHIBITIONS | 14 The Tiberino Museum

ETCETERA

My Mother’s Things | 48

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ON THE COVER: Cirque du Soleil’s “Totem.” Page 30.

city beat

THOM NIICKELS

ThomNickels1@aol.com

backstage

BRUCE H. KLAUBER

drumalive@aol.com

DECADES AGO, WHEN YOU walked into a Philadelphia state store you had to tell the guy behind the counter what you wanted. They had state store catalogs with numbers; the customer would give the guy a number, he’d disappear into the back and come back with the bottle. The operation was run like a pawn shop. Not only that, but by law the guy behind the counter couldn’t give you any recommendations. While Pennsylvania Wine and Spirit Shops have made a lot of good changes since then, the fact remains that the state is still in the business of selling alcohol. As far back as 2003, a Hershey Philbin Associates Online Poll revealed that 75% of Pennsylvanians said they favored abolishing the LCB. The poll numbers since then have favored privatization even more, although politicians—in this case, Democrats—don’t seem to get the message. In March, the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives voted to end the legacy of Prohibition in the Keystone State. The House voted to privatize wine and liquor sales, a positive move that promises to push the state into the 21st Century. Since the vote, state store liquor clerks and their allies have launched a staunch defense of the system despite the fact that the vast majority of Pennsylvanians want privatization. In some ways it’s easy to understand why the clerks are up in arms: they want to save their jobs, an understandable albeit selfish sentiment that pretty much ignores the wishes of the majority. Unfortunately, the longer the state is involved in alcohol sales, the harder it will be to uproot that alliance. We are seeing the first effects of that rupture now. The fact that every Democrat in the Pennsylvania House voted against privatization is telling. Think about it: Democrats voting to retain an antiquated system with roots going back to the days of bathtub gin. Privatization, generally, is not a good thing. Privatization ruined the airline industry, it threatens to destroy the US Post Office (and replace it with expensive Fed Ex style deliveries) and it is always ready to pounce on Social Security. Yet, privatization in this case is very good, and the Democrats who voted against the measure stooped to a new low when they stated that privatization was “as bad morally as it was fiscally,” and that “increased access to drinking would lead to increased drinking and the social ills that come with it.” We don’t believe we’ve ever heard a Democrat say that something could be “bad morally.” That charge is usually reversed for right of center Republicans on any number of social issues. Democrats, at least in the abstract, are supposed to be moral relativists, so this “moral” thing is queer indeed. How is greater access to a bottle of wine for a dinner party “bad morally?” Civilization will not fall if a bottle of Merlot is sold next to Tastykakes in the supermarket. We would have had more respect for the Democrats who voted against privatization if they had said that they were concerned about the loss of union jobs or the loss of PLCB annual profits totaling some 170 million which wind up in state coffers. Instead, they blabbered on about “social ills” and that left us… cold.

The Musical Event of the Season: June 2, 2013 We’re calling it “the musical event of the season,” because it is. The ICON-sponsored gala benefit concert for Musicopia—featuring jazz singer Paula Johns and the James Dell’Orefice Jazz Trio, pianist Hanchien Lee for The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, The All-Star Jazz

We had every intention of catching a Royal Oak Foundation Lecture, “The Day Parliament Burned Down,” in the Grant Room of the Union League, until we were stopped by a UL overseer who asked, “Do you have jeans on?” We might have been carrying zip lock weed from Colorado, judging from her full frontal lunge in the direction of our shoes. “No, ma’am,” we said, respectfully, “In fact, our natural tendency is to overdress. We are wearing dress Levi’s from the Givenchy store in London to match this very hard-to-find Calvin Klein corduroy jacket.” “You are wearing jeans,” she said, ignoring our Ralph Lauren sweater, Italian shoes and Helsinki-made dress belt. A fashion debate then ensued at which point she mused, “So far this evening we’ve had to turn away 16 people.” “Sixteen?!” we exclaimed, happening to glance at a man on a UL lobby bench in the act of removing his jacket when, like a bolt of thunder, she targeted him with an extended finger. “Please do not remove your jacket, sir!” Two men standing behind us, also wanting to know why Parliament burned down, were in skinny (Pee Wee Herman) ties, tight jackets and a hybrid version of hipster painted-on casual slacks. To our astonishment, the overseer gave the men a pass, perhaps mistaking them for the A-list UL Gays featured in a recent edition of Philadelphia Magazine. When we (in good humor) subtly suggested that these men were wearing something questionable, she radioed the rear door UL guards to double check the men for… denim.

Cymbal Symbol Robert Zildjian In the year of 1623, a man named Avedis Zildjian began manufacturing cymbals in Istanbul, Turkey. The Zildjian story is one of the most incredible in manufacturing history, in that until 1981—you read it correctly—Zildjian cymbals were the only pro grade instrument used by marching bands, symphony orchestras, military brigades, ceremonial ensembles, jazz groups or by anyone who played a cymbal anywhere. But in 1981, after a legal dispute with the Zildjian company, Robert Zildjian, son of Avedis III, broke away from the Robert Zildjian. family and formed his own manufacturing company, called Sabian. It took some time, but Robert’s company became the second largest in the world, and in the process, opened the door for dozens of smaller cymbal manufactures all over the world. Robert Zildjian died recently at the age of 89, a true pioneer and cymbal symbol.

Pianist Hanchien Lee.

Quartet and host Bob Perkins from WRTI Radio—takes place on June 2 at the Philadelphia Ethical Society in Rittenhouse Square. This is one of the first times in recent memory that several music/arts organizations—in this case, ICON, Jacobs Music, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, WRTI Radio and DW Drums—have joined forces on behalf of another. Musically, it’s also one of the few times jazz and classical will meet on the same stage. For tickets, visit ICONDV.com or see advertisement in this issue.

Journalist Thom Nickels’ books include Philadelphia Architecture, Tropic of Libra, Out in History and Spore. He is the recipient of the 2005 Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Architecture Journalism Award. thomnickels.blogspot. com

Bruce Klauber is a published author/biographer, producer of DVDs for Warner Bros., CD producer for Fresh Sound Records, and a working jazz drummer. He graduated from Temple University and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Combs College of Music.

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opinion

EUGENE ROBINSON

The intersection of art, entertainment, culture, opinion and mad genius

Filling the hunger since 1992 1-800-354-8776 • 215-862-9558 fax: 215-862-9845

Bush’s Legacy Keeps Getting Worse

www.icondv.com Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

IN RETROSPECT, GEORGE W. BUSH’S legacy doesn’t look as bad as it did when he left office. It looks worse. I join the nation in congratulating Bush on the opening of his presidential library in Dallas. Like many people, I find it much easier to honor, respect and even like the man—now that he’s no longer in the White House. But anyone tempted to get sentimental should remember the actual record of the man who called himself The Decider. Begin with the indelible stain that one of his worst decisions left on our country’s honor: torture. Hiding behind the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Bush made torture official U.S. policy. Just about every objective observer has agreed with this stark conclusion. The most recent assessment came this month in a 576page report from a task force of the bipartisan Constitution Project, which stated that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.” We knew about the torture before Bush left office—at least, we knew about the waterboarding of three “high-value” detainees involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. But the Constitution Project task force— which included such figures as Asa Hutchinson, who served in highranking posts in the Bush administration, and William Sessions, who was FBI director under three presidents—concluded that other forms of torture were used “in many instances” in a manner that was “directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.” Bush administration apologists argue that even waterboarding does not necessarily constitute torture and that other coercive—and excruciatingly painful—interrogation methods, such as putting subjects in “stress positions” or exposing them to extreme temperatures, certainly do not. The task force strongly disagreed, citing U.S. laws and court rulings, international treaties and common decency. The Senate intelligence committee has produced, but refuses to make public, a 6,000-page report on the CIA’s use of torture and the network of clandestine “black site” prisons the agency established under Bush. One of President Obama’s worst decisions upon taking office in 2009, in my view, was to decline to convene some kind of blue-ribbon “truth commission” to bring all the abuses to light.

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It may be years before all the facts are known. But the decision to commit torture looks ever more shameful with the passage of time. Bush’s decision to invade and conquer Iraq also looks, in hindsight, like an even bigger strategic error. Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction still have yet to be found; nearly 5,000 Americans and untold Iraqis sacrificed their lives to eliminate a threat that did not exist. We knew this, of course, when Obama became president. It’s one of the main reasons he was elected. We knew, too, that Bush’s decision to turn to Iraq diverted focus and resources from Afghanistan. But I don’t think anyone fully grasped that giving the Taliban a long, healing respite would eventually make Afghanistan this country’s longest or second-longest war, depending on what date you choose as the beginning of hostilities in Vietnam. And it’s clear that the Bush administration did not foresee how the Iraq experience would constrain future presidents in their use of military force. Syria is a good example. Like Saddam, Bashar al-Assad is a ruthless dictator who does not hesitate to massacre his own people. But unlike Saddam, Assad does have weapons of mass destruction. And unlike Saddam, Assad has alliances with the terrorist group Hezbollah and the nuclear-mad mullahs in Iran. I do not advocate U.S. intervention in Syria, because I fear we might make things worse rather than better. But I wonder how I might feel—and what options Obama might have—if we had not squandered so much blood and treasure in Iraq. Bush didn’t pay for his wars. The bills he racked up for military adventures, prescription-drug benefits, the bank bailout and other impulse purchases helped create the fiscal and financial crises he bequeathed to Obama. His profligacy also robbed the Republican Party establishment of small-government credibility, thus helping give birth to the tea party movement. Thanks a lot for that. As I’ve written before, Bush did an enormous amount of good by making it possible for AIDS sufferers in Africa to receive antiretroviral drug therapy. This literally saved millions of lives and should weigh heavily on one side of the scale when we assess The Decider’s presidency. But the pile on the other side just keeps getting bigger. n

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Assistant Editor

Trina McKenna trina@icondv.com Raina Filipiak

ADVERTISING 800-354-8776

City Beat Editor Thom Nickels Backstage & Bruce H. Klauber Jazz Scene Editor Fine Arts Editors Edward Higgins Burton Wasserman Classical Music Editor Peter H. Gistelinck Music Editors Nick Bewsey Mark Keresman Bob Perkins Tom Wilk Theater Critic David Schultz Food Editor Robert Gordon Wine Editor Patricia Savoie Contributing Writers A. D. Amorosi Robert Beck

Jack Byer Peter Croatto James P. Delpino Sally Friedman Geoff Gehman Mark Keresman George Oxford Miller Thom Nickels R. Kurt Osenlund T. J. Reese Victor Stabin

PO Box 120 • New Hope, PA 18938 (800) 354-8776 Fax (215) 862-9845 ICON is published twelve times per year. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. ICON welcomes letters to the editor, editorial ideas and submissions, but assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited material. ICON is not responsible for claims made by advertisers. Subscriptions are available for $40 (shipping & handling). Copyright 2013 Prime Time Publishing Co., Inc.

a thousand words

THE DARKROOM IN MY family’s basement was a place of fascination. Actually, the entire downstairs was pretty neat. Along with general storage there was a work area with tools for making just about any home repair, an extensive electronics bench that included a state-of-the -art ham radio set-up, and a section with sinks, tanks, trays, and an enlarger where we performed photographic alchemy. What I learned from shooting, developing and printing black and white photographs is at the foundation of how I see things as a painter. My father moonlighted in the lab of a high-profile New York photographer in the 1930s. I was schooled from that perspective with emphasis on compositional balance, focus and depth of field, and creating an image that displayed a full range of values bracketed by one spot of pure black and one of white. But the most important requirement was content. You could take hundreds of photos before capturing the illusive image that revealed more than what you were looking at. That was a “good” photograph. The others never made it past a contact sheet. These days I seldom take photographs, preferring to pay attention to what is happening in front of me. My visual memory is fine. Sometimes better than reality. I do shoot my paintings and document some moments in my life, but for me the art of photography has been replaced by painting. I still appreciate a good photo, though. The field has changed enormously with the digital age. I get better images from my phone than I did with my first film camera. And a photography show is quite different today than

STORY AND PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK

depth of field it was a few decades ago; at least the one I went to recently. That visit left me, or rather I left it, with a few questions. There were some traditional film and darkroom pieces, but most of the photos were shot with a digital camera and printed on an ink jet. That’s fine—the quality can be excellent—but I could see in many of them the computer effects that were used to shift color, adjust value and boost saturation. My father impressed on me that things you do in the darkroom to enhance an image should be subtle. You want a photograph to whisper a truth—what Diane Arbus called “a secret about a secret.” Photographers would capture an image with some unique intimation and work all night in the red glow of the darkroom reducing noise so the secret could be heard more clearly. The better the initial observation the less manipulation you would need. It’s still true. As it is with painting, a good photograph has to do more than duplicate—it has to disclose. Some of the pieces in the show did that nicely. Some repeated familiar efforts. Some relied on the power of the subject to make up for pedestrian technique, and vice versa. There were pieces in the show I would call collage or mixed media that included photographs as part of the construction. They were very interesting, but there was nothing remarkable about the photos they employed, which were there largely to illustrate objects or places. It wasn’t an issue of content—they had plenty of that. Were I to superimpose old snapshots of dear deceased Uncle Ed on his bowling ball

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it would be a thought-provoking piece of art (the first time it was done, anyway). But it would still be a bowling ball, not photography. I really enjoyed seeing all that creativity and enthusiasm in one place and I’m glad those images and constructions had an opportunity for public view. It’s important. I remember some of the pieces now months after seeing them, which is a good measure of content, although revelations about the world we live in were few. The organizers of the exhibition obviously anticipated people like me when they wrote that many of the pieces were hard to categorize. The arguments contesting where one draws the line between photography, graphics, and mixed media have been around for a long time and parallel similar disputes that question the point where the art of drawing and painting becomes illustration. These squabbles are often just turf battles. Categories don’t matter as much as whether a piece of art connects personally in a way that is revealing and resonant. But the distinctions become useful when organizing and titling a curated show, including one that celebrates photographic excellence. I saw a lot of artistic, well-finished pieces in that one but not all of them fit my increasingly irrelevant notion of what makes up the art of photography. n

Robert Beck maintains a studio and academy in Lambertville, New Jersey. Email: robertbeck@robertbeck.net. n W W W. I C O N D V .C O M

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art

EDWARD HIGGINS

1919:

The year of modernism THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO many in the ruling class of the art world is that a fledgling Native American art was accosted by brilliant European art on February 17, 1913 and crushed by the likes of Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Duchamp, and Braque. The setting was the Armory of the 69th NY National Guard Regiment at 26th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City. The event, The International Exhibition of Modern Art, attracted some 80,000 plus visitors (4,000 the first day) over a 27-day run and became known simply as The Armory Show. It was, said the critics, the end of American art and the beginning of modernism. The show was put together by American artists, most notably Arthur Davis, and two-thirds of the art was by American artists. Still, it was the Europeans who instigated the public and press to spastic responses; particularly Duchamp’s, “Bride Descending a Staircase,” currently residing in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was sold for $324 and Duchamp was pleased. Matisse was called a “charlatan” and Duchamp’s picture compared to an “explosion in a shingle factory.” And Teddy Roosevelt had a fit. On the other hand, Barnes and Frick spent money and Mabel Dodge called it the most important event in United States history since the Declaration of Independence. Now, the Princeton University Art Museum has opened 1919: The Year of Modernism to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the show. The show has been put together by Efthymia Remtzou and Calvin Brown, French and Italian professor and a curator of prints and drawings respectively and it runs through June 23. They make it clear that the show is meant to be a teaching tool and that “seminars and exhibitions” are put together around the collection. The show, although

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Marc Chagall (1887–1985), The Poet, 1919

small, makes a large statement regarding European art back in 1913. The artists are not what the press called, “paranoiacs,” degenerates,” or “dangerous:” they are rather quaint and look a bit shopworn. The show also demonstrates that the art is intellectual rather than evocative, with combinations of copy and illustrations to make a point. Some of the more politically aimed art is heavy-handed and simplistic. Sam Hunter, emeritus professor of art at Princeton and modernist art historian, calls Eakins, Homer and Ryder, the only three American who constitute the “Usable Past” and simply dismisses other American moderns as having learned in Europe. This is despite the fact that prior to 1919 there had been some 60 exhibitions of modern art and that Stieglitz and his 291 Gallery were in the forefront of the modern movement. Stieglitz championed such Americans

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as Paul Strand, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, and Marsden Hartley. Among artists, I dare say, Stieglitz was far more influential than the Armory Show. Stieglitz also showed Europeans such as Picasso, Matisse and Brancusi. If anything, the Armory Show had impact on the group known as The Eight (or the Ashcan School) which was marketed as a movement that depicted the harsh realities of urban living. It was, of course, nothing of the kind and the eight artists involved were as different from one another as could be. The Princeton show has amazing riches, including works by Chaim Soutine, Picabia, Paul Klee, Man Ray, Marc Chagall, Braque, and Picasso. Sonia Delauney-Terk and Blaise Cendrars are represented by “Prose of the Trans-Siberian Express and of little Jehanne of France,” a collaborative

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work. The curators are showing this 14” by 80” illustrated manuscript as a benchmark of the modern movement and a prime example of the combination of poetry and art. There’s a wonderful sample of the photography of Atget, part of his documentation of Parisian street life and a striking portrait of Jean Cocteau by Modigliani. The show also provides context with books, periodicals, and posters from the era. The cartoons by George Grosz are frightening in their intensity. The real horror is a year away in 1914. That’s when the modern world began with World War I with devastation and its future forewarnings. ■

Edward Higgins is a member of The Association Internationale Des Critiques d’Art.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), Jean Cocteau, 1916-17.

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Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (1878-1955), Sunday Boredom, ca. late 1930s, oil on Masonite, H. 26 x W. 34 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of George C. Benson in Honor of John Horton.

BURTON WASSERMAN

The

Brush is Mightier than the

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AS A RULE, THE lives of most artists don’t unfold in a vacuum. Avoiding a hermit-like existence, they are acutely responsive to both human events and the physical realities that surround everyone. Especially because they are often acutely sensitive people, they take note of a great deal that less perceptive individuals fail to see. Consequently, many of the artworks they make consist of highly personal reactions to their life experiences. This is also why their creative accomplishments often resonate with an unmistakable ring of truth. At the present time, the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA is offering an exhibition that addresses this issue with vivid clarity. It is titled The Brush is Mightier than the Sword: Works from the Museum Collection. Together, the selections on view provide a nostalgic interpretation of life in America from the days after the end of World War I to the early 1940s. As a group, they come to terms with a time when the United States was making its way from before and after a devastating stock market crash and the years immediately preceding the country’s entry into World War II.

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Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958), In the Courtroom, n.d., oil on canvas, H. 17 x W. 24 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of the John P. Horton Estate.

Brian Peterson, the Museum’s Chief Curator, commenting on the installation, has accurately said of the time period given voice by the show, “The entire fabric of American society seemed to be unraveling.” As a spectator, this sad fact of life can be felt to the the core of one’s nerve endings. The exhibition is scheduled to close temporarily on May 26, 2013 and open again next year, on July 27 in the Commonwealth Gallery of the Museum. An especially moving picture, expressing some of the economic difficulties of the era, is Julius Bloch’s “Apple Seller.” The artist was born in Austria and raised in Philadelphia. His composition presents a figure holding an apple in one hand. Next to him is a box of apples that are for sale. Unable to get more significant work for himself, the man has been reduced to a state of virtual beggary. In the process, he has lost all semblance of a personal need for meaningful human dignity. Ben Shahn’s family originally came from Lithuania. A deeply seated social realist philosophy influenced his approach to making art. His interest in themes drawn from the existing status quo of the contemporary world served to inspire a unique creative process. With brush and color, he explored themes of modern life, especially of the laboring classes, and always, with the sympathetic exercise of a compas-

sionate heart crying out for social justice. Shahn also identified himself as an artist anxious to communicate with responsible audiences for purposes of making practical efforts to redress inequities and suffering. For him, this premise was a sacred trust. It surely explains why he chose to only employ pictorial subjects and reject very pure non-representational forms. He was entirely convinced that this one approach led artists to discover significant truths about people-centered needs and to reaffirm the importance of positive human values. The exhibition includes a group of sketches by Shan for a mural originally intended for placement in the jail at Rikers Island in New York City. It sought to contrast the cruel penal practices imposed on prisoners in the past with the more enlightened methods of modern-day rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the placement of the proposed mural inside the prison walls never materialized. However, the sketches for the project, included in the exhibition set for display at the Michener Museum, are well worth a visitor’s desire to see them. Robert Gwathmey, a Virginian born early in the 20th century, was an eighth generation white man of Welsh extraction who made semi-abstract paintings based on African-American life in the agrarian South. Mostly, his figures are unsentimenW W W. FA C E B O O K .C O M / I C O N D V

tal images of farmers and laborers, given voice in broad, flat areas of color and dark outline. Typically, the men and women pictured in his painting, “End of Day,” are treated in a true-tolife manner, holding various tools in their hands and wearing plain, unpretentious clothing. The overall mood of the scene suggests the time for completing their work out-of-doors has arrived. Now, the hour for wrapping things up and getting some rest is finally at hand. By representing the people with a combination of grace and gravitas, Gwathmey avoids caricature and what could be misconstrued as unwarranted pity. Other notable artists of the period, represented by fascinating artworks in the exhibition, include William Gropper, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Guy Pène du Bois and Earl Horter. As a group installation, these paintings on paper and canvas add up to a well-defined reason for making a rewarding visit to the Michener. ■

Dr. Burton Wasserman is a professor emeritus of Art at Rowan University, and a serious artist of long standing. Dr. Wasserman’s program Art From Near and Far is on WWFM in Central and Northern New Jersey and Bucks County and WGLS in S. Jersey.

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Autumn Haze, Oil on Linen Linda Rossin, Pinkletoes, acrylic, 2 x 4

An Artist’s World The Studio & Gallery of Materese Roche 5113 Anderson Road, Buckingham, PA www.MatereseRoche.com Opening Reception: May 18, 4 -8 p.m. May 18 – June 9

Walter Emerson Baum, Locust Valley. Oil, 24 x 36.

28th Annual Art Auction The Baum School of Art 510 Linden Street, Allentown, PA Preview: May 16, 2013, 6–8pm Auction: May 18, 2013, 5:30 pm www.baumschool.org Good Food. Fun Company. Exquisite Art. These three phrases all describe the 28th Annual Art Auction at The Baum School of Art on Saturday, May 18, 2013. The night boasts a silent auction from 5:30 to 7:30pm and a live auction that begins at 8:00. Admission is free for both auctions. The night also features a buffet dinner catered by Karen Hunter, which is $50 in advance, or $60 at the door. The live auction consists of 100 works of art by local and regional artists, six of which are original paintings by Walter Emerson Baum, the school’s founder. Also featured this year are works by other highly collectible artists such as John Berninger, Clarence Dreisbach, Mildred Gehman, Edna Palmer Engelhardt, Conrad Roland, and William Swallow, to name a few. For an opportunity to view the items before they are up for bid, do not miss Preview Night, Thursday, May 16, 2013 from 6:00-8:00 pm.

Winter Canopy, Oil on Linen

Orlando Wales, Summer Farm. Oil, 16” x 20”

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This one-woman show presents viewers with a unique opportunity to see paintings in the setting in which many of them were created—an1850s Bucks County farm on 14 acres with panoramic views of field and sky which inspire much of the artists work. The dramatic, atmospheric landscapes in this show also include work from the artist’s travels to Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. Ms. Roche’s paintings have been shown in numerous group exhibtions, including Phillips Mill, Newman Galleries, Gratz Gallery and PAFA. She also had a onewoman show at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. Materese studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Barnes Foundation. In honor of the pristine land and history surrounding her studio and gallery, fifteen percent of all sale proceeds will be donated to Heritage Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving our historic and natural heritage; President Jeffrey L. Marshall will be attending the opening in honor of the occasion.

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The Art of the Miniature XXI The Snow Goose Gallery 470 Main Street Bethlehem, PA 610-974-9099 thesnowgoosegallery.com T, W, F 10-5: 30; Th 10-7; Sat 10-5; Sun 11-4 May 5 – June 16 Reception 5/5, 1–5 In The 21st Invitational Exhibition of Fine Art Miniatures from Around the World, sixty- eight renowned artists will have their work featured in what has become one of the most popular events in the area. These miniature works of art include oils, acrylics, watercolors, drawings, etchings, collages, mixed media and sculptures. Twent-four of the United States are represented, as well as Canada, England, Wales, Germany and South Africa. Exhibiting artists include: Beverly Abbott, Carol Andre, James Andrews, Chrysoula Argyros, Elizabeth Babb, Lyndall Bass, Rita Beckford, Brenda Berdnik, Jan Borgner, Jo Bradney, Susan Brooke, Elizabeth Brown, Nancy Coirier, Jean Cook, Carolyn Councell, Anita Cox, Viviane de Kosinsky, Shara Donohue, Paul Eaton, Wyn Foland, Beverly Fotheringham, Barbara Freeman, Patricia Getha, Sally Giarratana, George Gonzalez, Fred Gruizinga, Elaine Hahn, Diana Harvey, Richard William Haynes, Mimi Hegler, Luann Houser, Kimberly Jansen, Mary Jansen, Judith Johnson, Debra Keirce, Janice Knoll, Judy Lalingo, Rebecca Latham, Gerald Lubeck, Patricia McCandless, Jane Mihalik, Judy Minor, Brenda Morgan, Melissa Miller Nece, Linda Morgan, Jeanette Mullane, Paul Murray, Rosalba Negrete, Charles Nelson, Demaris Olson, C. Pamela Palco, Ruth Penn, Genevieve Roberts, Linda Rossin, Doug Roy, Ann Ruppert, Mary Serfass, Rachelle Siegrist, Wes Siegrist, Barbara Stanton, Narissa Steel, Shirley Tabler, Laura Von Stetina, Ellen Strope, Sue Wall, Akiko Watanabe, Hanna Woodring and Steve Worthington.

Chrysoula Argyros, Elpiniki’s Garden, watercolor, 2.25 x 3.75

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PETE CROATTO

What Maisie Knew

THE SIX-YEAR-OLD ENDURES the shouting and the name-calling. It goes on all day, so there’s no choice. Her options are few. She can’t leave. She can’t fight. So she observes and catalogues the slights. She looks up a lot, like she’s praying for a reprieve. What Maisie Knew, a contemporary take on Henry James’ 1897 novel directed by veterans Scott McGehee and David Siegel, is a stirring examination of a child stuck in purgatory. It captures the knee-high world of its title character (Onata Aprile) while illuminating the flaws of adults. Maisie’s parents, Susanna (the indispensible Julianne Moore) and Beale (Steve Coogan), are too busy engaging in a non-stop verbal battle to pay much attention to their daughter. The words no longer impact Maisie, who just makes a snack or grabs a tip for the pizza guy while mom and dad shout through closed doors. The one stable adult presence is Margot the nanny (Joanna Vanderham), whose warmth and enthusiasm provide protection from the storm inside. Predictably, Susanna and Beale part ways. Things, however, get worse for the most mature member of the family. Susanna, a fading rock star, is so consumed with getting custody that she hastily marries nice guy bartender Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård) to score points with the judge. It’s the desperate whine of an overgrown child who wants her doll back, and matrimony doesn’t quell Susanna’s shameless narcissism. When Lincoln bonds with Maisie at her recording session, a hurt Susanna intercepts the attention and asks Maisie to join her in the booth. Beale, concerned about his career momentum, marries Margot after a courtship of about five minutes. Susanna and Beale’s new spouses learn very quickly that they are around to do the unpleasant work: pick-ups and drop-offs and making meals and ostensibly raising Maisie. Margot and Lincoln, who don’t treat Maisie like an adorable prisoner shuffled between luxurious New York City confinements, grow to love the child, and she them. McGehee and Siegel, working from Carroll Cartwright and Nancy Doyne’s screenplay, proceed with no preciousness and tons of assurance. By having every scene focus on or around Aprile, who acts like a kid instead of a kid actor, we get a merciless, impartial judge who doesn’t miss a thing. A child doesn’t care about limitations or intentions. That’s adult stuff. Results matter. That observational frame means the filmmakers don’t have to traffic in obviousness, and we can see the characters’ shortcomings as flaws, not cartoonish traits. Aided by Moore and Coogan’s fine, measured work, Susanna and Beale’s biggest crime is that they love themselves more than their daughter. Meanwhile, Skarsgård and Vanderham’s ease with each other tells you more about their burgeoning relationship than any monologue could. What Maisie Knew doesn’t need to shout. It lays out the action and trusts you to put everything together. Still, there were times watching when I wished the movie were more cutting and more obvious. Too many couples are in Susanna and Beale’s situation, and they got there for the same set of stupid reasons. The baby was a must-have accessory or an item to be checked off the “I can have it all!” checklist. Or maybe, consumed by disappointment and unmet expectations, they thought a kid would fill the void or make them better people. Rants and self-righteous warnings rarely make for good movies. Besides, the message of the last, lovely scene in this quiet gem is, in its own way, very loud: The problems of adults belong to no one else. A child’s only responsibility is to be a child. [R] n Pete Croatto also writes movie reviews for The Weekender. His essays, features, and humor pieces have appeared in Philadelphia, New Jersey Monthly, The Christian Science Monitor, Grantland, Deadspin, and MAD. He can be reached at petecroatto@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter, @PeteCroatto.

Julianne Moore and Onata Aprile.

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keresman on film

MARK KERESMAN

The Place Beyond the Pines

AS SOMEONE ONCE SAID about author Henry James: “He chews more than he can bite off.” That’s how director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines feels. It’s an Epic, all right, a modern-day Greek tragedy—it felt epic, like I was reading Beowulf. While not a train wreck, Pines is the first movie in a long while that had me checking my watch, er, cell phone. Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) plops you right in the midst of things with his direction. Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a stunt rider in a circus—multi-tattooed, biker T-shirt, constant cigarette dangling from his lips, and a vacant facial expression. He’s tuff, and he (obviously) doesn’t care about much. (Jeez, I’m not expecting a movie about “carny folk” to have charac18

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ters that read Kierkegaard and make witty and erudite My Dinner With Andre conversation, but does every person working in a carnival/circus have to be so stereotypically lowrent and “dead-end”?) He runs into Romina (Eva Mendes), a gal with which he had a brief fling—but he learns that fling made him a daddy. Because this is the movies, a guy that acts like he cares about nothing has new feelings of paternal responsibility and wants to be part of Romina’s and son’s lives. So he quits the circus, and his skill-set—stunt-driving, smoking cigarettes, and mechanic—doesn’t make him the most employable guy in the thriving metropolis of Schenectady, the setting for this drama. So when he falls in (conveniently) with backwoods mechanic Robin (Ben Mendelson), he takes

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him up on his “Hey, bank robbery pays really well” concept—I guess it never occurs to Luke that the “fatherhood” role might be difficult to maintain from a prison cell. That’s act one—act two begins when Luke’s career path intersects with that of Avery (Bradley Cooper), a straightarrow cop with a young son of his own. This leads to Avery becoming a “hero” to the chagrin of his wife (Rose Byrne)— further, it brings Avery into direct contact with fellow police office Deluca (Ray Liotta), who, we all (including Avery) learn has a very enterprising approach to law enforcement. As anyone who’s seen almost any movie Liotta’s appeared in, it’s no surprise he is a dirty cop—Liotta plays this role well, but it’s one we’ve seen him play many times before. Avery is forced into a corner, one which puts him on a collision course with Deluca—the result of which propels him even further into… Act three: 15 years later, Avery is in politics. His son has grown into a surly, spoiled, somewhat neglected teen…and WHAT DO YOU KNOW? The paths of sons of Avery and Luke intersect, too. Is this the set-up for a sins-of-the-fathers-visited-on-the-sons story, one of Tragic Destiny? What do you think? Pines is not a bad movie, but Cianfrance’s ambitiousness nearly sinks it. There’s plenty of good acting to be had— Mendes, for one, displays vulnerability and range beyond her frequent sex-bomb roles. Liotta makes his scummy cop almost likeable, but he can switch gears and ooze menace effortlessly. Cooper displays ambiguity and inner conflict almost as well as he did in Silver Linings Playbook. Harris Yulin and Bruce Greenwood show up for small but meaty and memorable supporting roles. Even Luke’s baby is a charmer. But Pines might’ve been better served if it had lost the third act, which evokes Spring Breakers with an evocation of teenage decadence that has all the subtlety of, well, Spring Breakers and an ABC Afterschool Special. Cripes, I GET IT, kids are growing up too fast, they’re out of control, take drugs, and if they are white they try to act all “ghetto.” We’re shown lots of stuff happening and to an extent at the expense of character development. Also, not to give too much away, but a character seemingly does a moral 180-degree-turn that doesn’t seem all that consistent. (I get why he did it but he seemed less troubled about it as he should’ve been.) Also, did both sons have to be so dysfunctional in such predictable ways? Plus the police drama section of the movie contains nothing we haven’t seen done before (and done better) in many other films (especially those directed by Sidney Lumet). Pines is 140 minutes long but feels longer. It needed to be a miniseries where the characters could’ve been further developed and life-paths could’ve been less awkwardly connected. I get why many critics are enamored of this movie—it has several good actors doing good acting, impressive scope and concept (what our fathers do sets the stage for…), and it’s directed by the director of an indie favorite. But I couldn’t care much about the characters, it was predictable as any made-for-TV movie, and I was occasionally bored. n

In addition to ICON, Mark Keresman is a contributing writer for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Pittsburgh City Paper, Paste, Jazz Review, downBeat, and the Manhattan Resident.

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bad movie

MARK KERESMAN

AT LAST! AN US versus Them movie that makes Red Dawn (either version) seem like a documentary by comparison. In this world today it seems everybody is “against” the USA, and many Americans have no idea why. This movie may provide a clue—not so much regarding US foreign policy but in that it makes the USA look really, really dumb and spineless. Plot: “Rogue” North Koreans (isn’t that like saying “moist snow”?) attack the White House, taking the President hostage and threatening to do really bad stuff. But as luck would have it, a lone Secret Service agent named Mike Banning (ohh, come on)—one with something to prove, to redeem himself, or something—is the ONE MAN THAT CAN SAVE THE DAY. (Ever notice that the “disgraced” or in-thedoghouse agent/cop/etc. is always in the right place at the right time, instead of doing paperwork?) That’s pretty much it. It’s kind of offensive the way Olympus portrays the forces that protect the President as bumbling clods. Further, I guess it’s easy to invade airspace over the White House, even after 9-11. See our Secret Service agents nobly run into a hail of bullets! (Instead of, I dunno, taking cover!) See the North Koreans—when they make their move—fire bullets

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with built-in guidance systems at our boys! Their bullets must have guidance systems or use magic because they NEVER MISS our guys! The US government has a policy not to “make deals” with terrorists (at least not when anyone’s looking), yet that’s just what happens in this movie. Which would never happen, as it’d set a “precedent”—anyone that wanted US troops out of American Samoa or, say, South Philly would simply take some hostages someplace and make the demand—it’d get really messy, even if the Prez repeatedly says “no.” Yet the Prez [mild spoiler…like you care] actually TELLS an admiral and Secretary of State to share the mythic ICBM missile boom-boom codes with the terrorists. Pardon me? Also, one of the North Koreans cracks a computer with a launch code therein. If it’s that easy, either we’re all doomed, or the people of the world will think that the Secret Service and the White House is populated with Gomer Pyles and Barney Fifes and want us to be attacked. Either way, we’re all doomed. Olympus is so by-the-numbers it’s depressing as a romcom. Obligatory scenes of would-be rescuers arguing what to do, with one side advocating “Destroy everything!” and the other urging, uh, cautious response? Check. Morgan

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Freeman looking nobly concerned? Check. A hero (Gerard Butler, with a slightly inconsistent accent) who’s as nearly invulnerable in the second half of the movie as are the attackers in the first half? Check. The terrorist leader has a stereotypical moniker, such as Kang (as in Kang the Conqueror, a Marvel Comics foe of the Avengers from the 30th century)? Check. Is there a scene of heavy-handed flag-waving patriotism that would strike even an arch-conservative as John Wayne (who never served in the military) as corny? Check. Finally, is there a countdown scene to disaster? Double check. Why have a countdown scene when you can…oh, the heck with it, it’s a plot contrivance to give the good guy a chance to stop it by the number “1.” Well, one thing not so by-the-numbers: An attractive actress few people in Hollywood seem to like anymore (Ashley Judd, Google to see why) gets “sacrificed” in the first ten minutes of the movie. A usually fine lot of talent is there for a paycheck: Freeman, Aaron Eckhart as the rubber-spined Prez, Melissa Leo, and some guy named Lance Broadway. (Really—I couldn’t make that up.) Olympus Has Fallen is a jingoistic cheese food product for those that like to watch stuff get blown up good. n

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reel news

REVIEWS OF RECENTLY RELEASED DVDS BY GEORGE OXFORD MILLER ★=SKIP IT; ★★=MEDIOCRE; ★★★=GOOD; ★★★★=EXCELLENT; ★★★★★=CLASSIC

Naomi Watts in a scene from The Impossible.

The Impossible (2012) ★★★★ Cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor Genre: Drama Rated PG-13 for intense disaster sequences, brief nudity. Awards: Nominated Golden Globes, Oscar for Best Actress. On December 26, 2004, 240,000 people in 14 countries died in the tsunami. A 100-foot wall of water crashed over the resort island Khao Lak destroying everything in its path. But miraculously, a vacationing couple and their three sons survived the catastrophe. This is their story, dramatized but true to every hellish detail. The surge torpedoes Maria (Watts) into the collapsing hotel and sweeps her husband Henry (McGregor) and their three young sons a half-mile inland. Separated, they each think they are alone, lost, and their loved ones dead. The intense emotions of the human drama engulf the viewing audience as the family fights for their lives and to find each other. Instead of maudlin, the superbly acted story focuses on the courage, compassion, and determination that define humans in their darkest hours. Future Weather (2013) ★★★ Cast: Perla Haney-Jardine, Lili Taylor, Amy Madigan Genre: Drama Unrated but no offensive content. The problem with child prodigies is that they’re smarter than the adults in charge of their lives. Lauduree (Haney-Jardine), a 13-year-old, doesn’t win chess tournaments or write full-blown symphonies. She’s too busy trying to save the world, something adults have dismally failed to accomplish. The young genius clearly sees the problems of climate change and struggles to do her part, both personally and 22

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scientifically, to reduce the effects, with no help from her family. Her mother leaves her alone in their decrepit singlewide with $50 to cover expenses and heads for Hollywood. Laudree gets busted for shoplifting an energy-efficient light bulb and is forced to move in with her self-centered grandmother. Only her science teacher, Ms Markovi (Taylor), offers any support. Instead of a campy movie with a preachy message, this coming-of-age story focuses on an idealistic child with a dream. Her dedication to her convictions is the real take-home message. Django Unchained (2012) ★★★★ Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio Genre: Drama Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Rated R for vile language and excessive brutal violence. Awards: Won Oscars and Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor, Screenplay Two movies, two directors, two totally different takes on the traumatic events surrounding America’s abolition of slavery: Steven Spielberg’s somber epic Lincoln focuses on political subterfuge and back-room deals; Tarantino’s southernstyle spaghetti-western deals with horrific karma and bloodbath justice. When bounty hunter King Shultz (Waltz) offers to free Django (Foxx) if he’ll help him catch outlaws, the beaten and branded slave thinks killing white men for money is as good as it gets. After a string of blood-spattered bounties, Shultz helps Django find his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), kidnapped by the diabolic plantation owner Calvin Candie (DiCaprio). The alchemy of Tarantino’s masterful screenplay turns parody into a powerful allegory of racism and vengeance with inhumane violence and gore

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that mirrors the inhumanity of slavery. Expect to be grossed out but entertained. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2012) ★★★★ Genre: Documentary: adventure, endurance Directed by Werner Herzog and Dmitry Vasyukov. Narrated by Werner Herzog. Unrated but no offensive content. In English and Russian with English subtitles. Filmmaker Werner Herzog likes to take viewers on adventures where human endurance is tested to the breaking point (Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World). Extremes, he believes, define who we are. This adventure leads to the tiny village of Bakhta in Siberia. Isolated in the harshest climate and landscape on the planet, the 300 inhabitants live a traditional, self-sufficient lifestyle virtually untouched by technology. Accessible only by boat or helicopter, the village of trappers, farmers, and fishermen rely more on hand axes and dog sleds than the modern conveniences of chainsaws and snowmobiles. Herzog follows the yearly cycle of a trapper in the dramatic snowbound landscape where -30 F. is a warm winter day. But as the title implies, Herzog’s main interest is what makes a person happy. The villagers, with overpowering hardships in a barren, bleak, unforgiving environment, demonstrate that happiness is a state of mind independent of the material possessions and physical comfort we consider essential to our modern lives. ■ George Miller is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers and believes that travel is a product of the heart, not the itinerary. See his webmagazine at www.travelsdujour.com.

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film roundup

PETE CROATTO

Zac Efron.

★=SKIP IT; ★★=MEDIOCRE; ★★★=GOOD; ★★★★=EXCELLENT; ★★★★★=CLASSIC

At Any Price (Dir: Ramin Bahrani). Starring: Dennis Quaid, Zac Efron, Maika Monroe, Kim Dickens, Heather Graham, Chelcie Ross, Clancy Brown, Red West. The corn country of Iowa is the setting for this modern-day family drama. Henry Whipple (Quaid, looking pained and awkward) is a seed salesman and farmer who wants to pass down the family business but finds no takers. One son is out climbing mountains in Argentina; the other, Dean (Efron, finally shaking off his awkward teenage star blues), is the town hotshot. He’s more interested in pursuing a NASCAR career than sweating over soil samples. As Dean and Henry butt heads, both deal with a heap of personal and professional issues that seal their futures. Bahrani and Hallie Newton’s overwrought, clunky script may steer audiences’ eyes toward their watches—or the exits. Every character is presented as a problem, a font of prairie wisdom, or, in Graham’s unfortunate case, a slut. Bahrani so overwhelms the story’s strong emotional foundation with conflicts that he overlooks something important: we have no reason to care about anyone in this confounding, frustrating movie. [R] ★★ Mud (Dir: Jeff Nichols). Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepard, Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, Michael Shannon, Joe Don Baker. Grungy Mississippi River boys Ellis (Sheridan, The Tree of Life) and Neckbone (Lofland) head to a small island to claim their bounty, a boat nestled in a tree, only to find that a charismatic, shaggy-haired refugee named Mud (McConaughey) is living in it. Ellis takes a shine to the man and

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offers food. The rapport grows deeper. Eventually, the boys try to reunite Mud with his girlfriend (Witherspoon) before an angry Texas mobster (Baker) discovers him. Writer-director Nichols (Take Shelter) delivers a fugitive story with different spins, all of them pleasantly surprising and heart-warming. Occasionally, it’s a growing-up story with Sheridan’s Ellis providing a splendid example of how to be a kick-ass young adult. Then, it’s about how women can turn the most stoic men into emotional wrecks. At the heart of Mud, and what makes it a gritty treasure, is its exploration of male relationships. Every man needs another man to love. It could be your dad, an uncle, or a filthy fugitive with superior muscle tone. Sheridan and McConaughey are excellent. [R] ★★★1/2 Koch (Dir: Neil Barsky). It’s very easy to categorize Ed Koch, the three-time New York City mayor who died February 1 at age 88, as a borscht belt bully; a guy who was a little too in love with himself and his agenda. This touching documentary provides a heaping dose of perspective, and not just in defining Koch’s political legacy in New York, which includes affordable housing and starting Times Square’s renovation. Barsky provides context to Koch’s personality. He embraced the theatrics of politics. Whether it was staging a relationship to quell rumors of his homosexuality (never confirmed) or playing the role of heavy with the press or putting on his “how I’m doin'?” everyman shtick, Koch knew how to get the city’s attention. Love him or hate him—and Barsky finds plenty of sources in the latter camp—Koch represented the politician as schmoozer. The public life was his

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life. Away from the cameras and hellos, Barsky shows a man unfamiliar with the concept of solitude. Koch, a Jew, is buried at Trinity Church’s non-denominational cemetery. His reason? It’s bustling. A stellar directing debut from Barsky, a former journalist. [NR] ★★★ To The Wonder (Dir: Terrence Malick). Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams, Tatiana Chiline. Malick’s latest tone poem/meditation on the quotidian has Neil (Affleck) bringing paramour Marina (Kurylenko) and her child (Chiline) from Paris to suburban Oklahoma, where domesticity slowly poisons everything. She and the child leave. He stays and begins a new relationship with a childhood acquaintance (McAdams), one his taciturn nature can’t sustain. Marina returns. Resentment builds. And in the middle of all this the town’s priest (Bardem) finds his faith crumbling. Like he did in The Tree of Life, Malick uses cryptic, thunderous narration and Emmanuel Lubezki’s museum-worthy cinematography to present (to paraphrase Tennessee Williams) a haunting memory film. With intense relationships, we don’t remember the details. It’s the grandness of our feelings that lasts. Some will call Malick’s presentation pretentious; others will call it brilliant. Say anything you want; don’t say you’re not engaged. So many directors spoon-feed us the answers. Malick, bless his heart, never stops challenging us to think beyond concrete concepts. [R] ★★★1/2 ■

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feature

A. D. AMOROSI

Social commentators Giotto, Thomas Hart Benton, Banksy, and their counterparts: the

“THE MURAL—HISTORICALLY—FORCED the viewer to become a part of the composition; something where he is not just looking at it, but becoming a part of it.” Joseph Tiberino told me that very sentiment one late evening in his family’s sculpture garden, sipping wine and softly puffing a cigar while leaning back and staring in the night’s sky. For him, the mural is life and its truth, as stark as a photograph and as harmonious as a song. When muralist Joe Tiberino and his son Gabriele unveil their family’s radical new mural along the walls of the Municipal Services Building at 1401 JFK Boulevard, they’re not just thumbing their nose at the gentle convivial nature of Philly’s usual wall paintings…even though they are. Crafted over a two-year period, their five-panel Unifying the Neighborhoods and Cultures of Philadelphia mural had the two Tiberinos utilizing the same sort of social commentary style of the Mexican mural movement with the underpainting techniques of the Italian Renaissance masters. Add in the first murals, cave paintings in France, as well as a protest song, and the mural, as the Tiberinos see it, takes shape. From a man formulating the goals of the hunt up through the harshest political communique, the mural becomes the message.

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Tiberinos

“Together, these murals accent the diversity of the city and the harmony of its residents,” says Joseph Tiberino in a sort-of thesis statement of intent. “Serving as a statement that resonates through all ethnicities and backgrounds, these murals exude the goodwill and fellowship of common peoples.” Sometimes harmonies go sour. Sometimes common peoples aren’t quick to agree. That’s what makes the Tiberino mural aesthetic so potent. There’s a yin and yang at work, a push and pull. The Neighborhoods mural along JFK Boulevard, as focused and ferocious as it is, was a hard-won victory for the Tiberinos. Joseph Tiberino laughed as he spoke about the arduous process of public art decision-making: “Mural Arts has different people critiquing your work, some who are completely unqualified for that matter,” he says. “You have to go before a board, the Art Commission, that appraises every project. They’re like a Senate sub-committee. You have to satisfy the appetites of a hundred different people which is impossible. It gets to be ridiculous. Jane Golden is tough, too. She liked all of our work, then one month later thought it was all wrong. There were complications when there weren’t complications. Ultimately, it made for great work, but ■

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we really had to put our heads down and stick to our guns.” The Mural Arts’ back-and-forth allowed the Tiberinos to do the sort of mural that they wanted to do. “The Mural Arts usually don’t allow things that truly make a statement,” says the elder Tiberino. “This time they did.” The pair is continuing on with the maintenance of their own legacy and that of Joe Tiberino’s other working artist children, daughter Ellen, sons Latif and Raphael. The West Philadelphia-dwelling brood is also holding dearly to the memory of Ellen Powell Tiberino, the late, great AfricanAmerican painter, by hanging their work alongside hers at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum at 38th and Hamilton. The effect of having the father’s and children’s work next to hers, as well as that of family friends’ paintings

If A.D. Amorosi can’t be found writing features for ICON, the Philadelphia Inquirer, doing Icepacks and Icecubes (amongst other stories) for Philadelphia City Paper, he’s probably hitting restaurants like Stephen Starr’s or running his greyhound.

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exclusive interview

BRUCE H. KLAUBER

Music, Maestro, Please!

Peter Nero, the man who made the Philly Pops, the Maestro who reigned from the podium, contemplates what’s next. Interestingly, his next move could be a return to his first love—jazz. His focus is on a different kind of stage now—a stage of life that holds the promise of an even more exciting and personally fulfilling career.

PETER NERO IS A world-class pianist, composer, orchestrator, arranger, writer for motion pictures, bandleader, and Grammy Award-winner. In 1979, he founded the Philly Pops, and for 34 seasons has been its face, its voice, its conductor, its reputation, its trademark, and its principal drawing card. This will end on May 12, 2013, when he conducts his final Pops concert. It shouldn’t have happened in the way it did or at all. But the Pops’—and Philadelphia’s—loss is jazz’s gain as in his heart, Peter Nero was and is a jazzman. Beginning this fall, at the age of 79, he’ll return to his jazz roots, something he calls his “primary love.” After talking with the deposed Maestro for nearly two hours, the sense is that, despite the recent and much-publicized messiness surrounding his exit from the Pops, this might have happened anyway. And this is good. The jazz world needs someone like Peter Nero right now. First, as a musical prelude, a bit of editorializing: Peter Nero should not have been allowed to leave the Pops under any circumstances. Yes, Nero brought the Pops “concept” to Philadelphia, but more significantly, he was and is the reason it existed, the reason it did business, and Bobby [Rosengarden] had no chops whatsoever, but the reason—quite simply— thousands of folks bought he had fantastic time and ears. We were once runtickets for 34 years. The ning through a film score for the first time and he whole complicated matter of his departure was handled didn’t even look at the music. He missed everything. disgracefully. Every cue. After the first run-though, I had to talk to Nero would have every reason in the world to be him about it, and all he’s doing is mouthing the bugged or bitter about what words ‘I love you, tickle fingers,’ with saliva running happened and why, but his handling of the entire uncomout of his mouth. fortable matter is as deft, gracious and as thoughtful as his piano playing. “I haven’t had any contact with Michael Krajewski,” Nero says of his replacement. “But from what I understand from musicians is that he’s very well trained and that he has carved out a niche for himself in the Pops area. As for my closing concerts this month, I just want to make them memorable. I want them to sell out, I want to thank everyone for their support, and I want everyone to support the Philly Pops as it moves on. This is an orchestra that knows pop music. I loved them and they spoiled me. The orchestra was the reason I moved to Philadelphia.” Peter Nero did not always have a baton in hand and, in fact, first got a name in the music business by being among the few jazz players in history to appeal to an audience that may not have liked jazz before or since. Brooklyn born and classically trained via Julliard scholarship, his first national exposure was playing Rhapsody in Blue on a 1957 television special hosted by veteran band leader Paul Whiteman. Four years later, he recorded his first album for RCA and won a Grammy award for “Best New Artist.” By that time, he had become a full-fledged, full-time jazz pianist. “The first jazz album I ever bought was when I was about 19,” Nero remembers. 28

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“The name of the album was The Genius of Art Tatum and it was in the bargain bin. I bought it for a dollar. Tatum, of course, was Oscar Peterson’s inspiration, and I still go online and access Peterson. He’s just phenomenal and is the only pianist I know who can fill up all the spaces and still swing like crazy. What’s a shame is that the young people have forgotten about players like Tatum and Peterson. What we need is a revolution. We have to get the young people involved in terms of getting more advanced rhythmically and harmonically.” Maestro hopes to help foster such a revolution by way of a jazz tour, beginning this fall, with only a bassist in tow. “The Philly Pops has kept me so busy, that I’ve done less and less on the circuit,” he says. “But now, it’s starting all over. I’m going back to playing the piano again. People have always written to me during my years with the Pops, saying, ‘You don’t play enough piano.’ So that’s what I’m doing.” Perhaps the main reasons Nero was able to get to the “hearts” of Philadelphians—to say nothing of the hearts and minds of jazz lovers and non-jazz lovers—was his personality. Like the best of the improvising “entertainers” throughout history, which would include giants like Louis Armstrong, Erroll Garner, Dizzy Gillespie and a few others, Nero is not ashamed of being a showman. In the beginning, however, he was anything but. “Sure, I wanted to reach a wider audience,” he says, “but I came out of the classical and concert world where you never said a word. It’s only in the last 20 years that classical performers have started to turn around and talk to the audience. Engaging the audience is becoming more and more a part of things in the classical world and more orchestras are starting to do Pops. Remember that the tradition was that your personality came out only through the music. “I was on the jazz circuit beginning around 1957, first in the lounge of the Tropicana in Vegas, and later at places like Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit, Chicago’s London House and Mister Kelly’s, The Embers and Basin Street East in New York, and two years at Jilly’s in New York city, working for the best boss—Jilly Rizzo—I ever worked for. I learned a lot from audience reaction and what went over musically and what didn’t. And even though I was considered ‘an act,’ sandwiched between other acts like comic Mort Sahl and groups like The Limelighters, I was still scared to death to talk. I never announced anything and never talked to the audience. “Things started taking off for me when my first record for RCA came out in April of 1961. In February of 1962, I had my first concert at the University of Maryland. We were in the gym and I was scared to death. My manager at the time convinced me that it was time for me to start relating to the audience, and that maybe I needed someone to write some material for me. He sent me to Bill [‘Jose Jiminez’] Dana, who was a comedy genius and believe it or not, came from a family grounded in classical music. He listened to my albums and started coming up with some material. We both found that ultimately, I was making musical jokes, so the key was just in setting it up. And what I eventually found out was that, for me, just telling the truth is funny.” He recalled one of Dana’s first bits: “I’m now going to play an arrangement of Tea for Two. My left hand will be playing Tea for Two. My right hand will be playing Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sixth Symphony.’ My left foot will be tapping out the traditional rhythms of the ‘Tahitian Fertility Dance.’ And my right foot will not be doing too much. It will just be excited by my left foot. That was Bill.”

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Maestro Peter Nero conducting the Philly Pops.

In those years, he also began making his music more audience-friendly. And it paid off. “I was doing three albums a year on RCA,” he remembers. “It was a whole different era. There was no rock and roll. When the Beatles came in, it turned everything around. From then on, the record companies were looking for groups who wrote and performed their own material, and we ended up covering their stuff. But I never tried to imitate the record, I wanted to give the song its own dimension, which became my specialty, like taking a song like Over the Rainbow and combining it with The 1812 Overture.”

ne of the songs given its “own dimension” was something called Summer of ’42, recorded by Nero for Columbia Records in 1971. It sold, at last count, over a million records. This parlayed into a series of television specials, the first being ‘S Wonderful, ‘S Marvelous, ‘S Gershwin for NBC in 1972. It won an Emmy. At that point in his career, it seemed that everything was in, as they say, proper alignment for Peter Nero to get involved in the symphonic Pops arena. The rub at that time was, other than The Boston Pops, the idea of a full-time orchestra devoted to playing symphonic interpretations of popular music was a rarity. “In 1967, when I did my second album with Arthur Fieldler, many of the symphony orchestras were doing Pops concerts here and there,” Nero explains. “And there’s no doubt that he was the father of what we know as ‘Pops.’ He set the

formula, and in the beginning, that formula was one-third classical, one-third featured soloist and one-third Pops. That was his formula. It grew from there. “In Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra actually engaged Henry Mancini to do a couple of Pops-type recordings in the early 1970s, but the idea never got off the ground. In 1977, I got a call from the Orchestra to do a Pops concert. We decided on a Gershwin program. That’s how [the late impresario] Moe Septee got the idea of asking the Orchestra to do more frequent Pops concerts. We had a test concert in November of 1979, and it was such a smash that things kept expanding. Every concert we did was a sell-out. The Philly Pops became ‘official’ in 1980.” Like the best of the jazz improvisers, Maestro’s conversation and comments were often series of spontaneous themes and variations. Here are a few: On the beginning of his career in jazz: “I was playing cocktail piano, sometimes called ‘intermission piano,’ at a place called the Hickory House in New York city. I was just background music between soloists like Marian McPartland and Billy Taylor. It was a noisy place, but the noise was a shield and I could experiment. I learned how to work without a bass player.” On drummers and time-keeping: “Music is not metronomic. Good time and tempo is not always metronomic time, and some drummers have a hard time playing with me, because I think the time should bend, imperceptibly. Two of the best drummers were Shelly Manne and Bobby Rosengarden. When I did the film score for Sunday in New York in 1963, I asked for Shelly. There must have been 100 players in the orchestra and everyone put headphones on. Except Shelly. He didn’t need them. In New York, I’d use Rosengarden [best W W W. FA C E B O O K .C O M / I C O N D V

known as the band leader on the Dick Cavett program from 1969 to 1975] whenever I could and whenever he was between jobs. Bobby had no chops whatsoever, but he had fantastic time and ears. We were once running through a film score for the first time and he didn’t even look at the music. He missed everything. Every cue. After the first run-though, I had to talk to him about it, and all he’s doing is mouthing the words ‘I love you, tickle fingers,’ with saliva running out of his mouth. Then he says, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ve got everything under control.’ Then he played the first ‘real’ take and it was perfect. He heard everything. Just like Shelly Manne.” On pianist Marcus Roberts, with whom he performed in February: “We had a ball playing together. This guy is just phenomenal. And his rhythm section, with the youngest Marsalis, Jason, on drums, was to die for.” On frequent collaborator and “informal” Philly Pops cofounder Mel Tormé: “Mel knew the lyrics to 4,000 songs. I toured with him and we did 35 concerts in 35 days. We had a full band and singer Leslie Uggams, who opened the show. We had two busses for traveling, and the only way we got a day off was because we had two shows on Saturday. It was grueling. But Mel was fascinating.” On touring: “I’ve played every state in the Union except one, and that was Vermont. Don’t ask me why.” And on the immediate future: “I’m coming back to jazz, without a doubt. And I’m going to record. And I just want everyone to know that I ain’t dead.” Dead, he ain’t. And thankfully for the world of music, Peter Nero will again be happily and soulfully swinging away on a 2013 version of Tea for Two, hopefully replete with interpolations of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth, The Tahitian Fertility Dance, and maybe a line or two from Jose Jiminez. ■

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Cirque

Soleil:

The Many Faces and Stages of the Greatest Show on Earth

Totem, one of 22 active Cirque du Soleil productions, makes its way to Philadelphia this month. Where does the show fit in the grand scheme of the global, ever-evolving brand? It may, in fact, be Cirque's most telling, self-reflective creation. Continued on page 32

exclusive feature

“THEY SAY YOUR FIRST Cirque experience is always your favorite,” says Kathleen “Kati” Renaud, senior artistic director of four resident Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas: KÀ, Zarkana, The Beatles LOVE, and the upcoming Michael Jackson: One, which salutes the King of Pop just as LOVE pays tribute to the Fab Four. My first Cirque experience was Koozå, which I saw in Philadelphia roughly five years ago. It was a “big top” show, performed within a massive tent that’s carted from city to city with the traveling performers, and, true to the Cirque tradition of employing multiple cultural influences, it incorporated Indian-inspired music and a bit of voodoo funk, resulting in the kind of unique tone every Cirque show aims to create. The superhuman spectacle of it all was dazzling: pint-sized contortionists who could bend themselves backward and “run” their legs around their upper bodies like spiders; uncannily fit and steady gymnasts who could balance themselves, impossibly, atop a precarious tower of chairs; and acrobats keenly mastering the Wheel of Death, a ubiquitous Cirque act marked by an apparatus that spins on a central axle, and features two (or more) artists performing feats in massive rings at either end. As an art patron, I was wowed; as a human, I was humbled; and as an instant fan, I soon followed the experience with two more: the Spanish- and Italian-inspired Alegría, and the East-meets-West extravaganza Dralion. Now, on a midMarch afternoon, within the cavernous Zarkana offices inside Vegas’s Aria Resort and Casino, I’m chatting with someone integrally linked to this vast, global purveyor of dreams, exploring the ways in which it’s thrived and evolved. The interview follows backstage tours of, and VIP access to, the epic KÀ and the lushly aquatic O, and precedes a perWhat’s most impressive about the shows formance of Zarkana, a surreal themselves…is that they don’t lose a adventure that follows a magician sliver of their sweeping, transporting and his interactions with four mutant temptresses. As I look at power. Due in part to the god-like abiliRenaud, one thought keeps ties of the artists themselves, whose rolling over and over in my mind: shocking physicality and unfathomable “How could anyone pick a favorite?” discipline can make a wee writer feel A native of Montreal, which downright lazy, Cirque productions are continues to serve as Cirque du Soleil’s ever-bustling headquarmysteries immune to demystification. ters, dreaming up and distributing props and costumes to locations far and wide, Renaud has a history that nearly runs parallel with Cirque’s continuing development. A dancer since age six, the svelte, thickly-accented brunette lived and studied in Cannes, France in her early- to mid-teens, then returned to Canada to continue her training. It was 1984, the same year Cirque bloomed from a collective, grassroots street performance in Quebec to an operation poised to become the world’s preeminent circus company, all under the guidance of performer Guy Laliberté and his cohort, Gilles Ste-Croix, who both remain attached and heavily involved as co-founders. In 1992, when Cirque launched Mystère, its first (and now longest-running) resident Vegas show, Renaud landed a gig as a lead dancer, performing on stage for the next four years. She then toured the world as artistic coordinator for Dralion, helped create LOVE during its launch in 2005, and finally rose to assume her current role. The ebb and flow of Renaud’s career isn’t far from how she views the brand. “I think this company is very open,” Renaud says. “Very open-hearted. I hate to use the word but I will anyway: it’s organic. It’s open to a lot of different ideas and concepts that really help define and support what the next project’s going to be. I like to use the analogy of how, as human beings, we’re sensitive—it’s like we have antennae that are always moving because we’re always feeling and sensing what’s happening, around us and within us. I sometimes think of this company like that. There’s never a sense of, ‘Oh no, we don’t do it this way.’ It’s always been open to feedback and criticism, and it’s always been a collaborative environment.” Cirque’s first collaborative environment was Baie-Saint-Paul, a small village near Quebec City that played host to Les Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul, or The Baie-Saint-Paul Stiltwalkers, a performance group that also included jugglers, dancers, and firebreathers, and counted Laliberté and Ste-Croix among its members. The group founded 32

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a club and an annual street fair, and their growing prominence gave hope to their ultimate dream: the establishment of an international traveling circus. It was a dream that got its official start during 1984’s 450th anniversary of Canada’s discovery, at which point the newly-minted Cirque du Soleil, or Circus of the Sun, became the celebration’s chief entertainment, comprised of 73 employees and performers. Through the remaining years of the ‘80s, Cirque struggled to secure its footing, contending with equipment troubles, shifts in control behind the scenes, and ongoing financial strife, despite continued aid from the Canadian government. But, in the plucky spirit of its bohemian roots, the company soldiered on, premiering its first themed touring show, Saltimbanco, in 1992, the same year it joined forces with legendary magnate Steve Wynn, who helped Cirque shift its Vegas presence from a big-top production in the parking lot of The Mirage (a production known as Nouvelle Expérience) to an exclusive theater show in the Treasure Island casino. It was the beginnings of Mystère, and Renaud was there to see it. “Back then, what [Steve Wynn and Cirque] did was such a risk,” Renaud says, “decid-

Cirque du Soleil Totem.

ing to build this incredible theater. In 1992, it was really ahead of its time, with the automation cues and the moving lifts and things. It’s fantastic to think back on those days and reminisce.” Renaud reminisces often with Terry Bartlett, a former Olympic gymnast from England who was also part of Mystère at the start, and then migrated to O as an acrobat before retiring. He has since returned to the O production in the role of a clown. Today, Bartlett and Renaud are two of more than 5,000 worldwide Cirque du Soleil employees, a total that includes more than 1,300 performers, or “artists,” as they’re always called within the Cirque family. The workers represent more than 50 nationalities, and since those humble beginnings in 1984, they’ve entertained more than 100 million spectators. Last year alone, roughly 15 million people witnessed the magic of Cirque du Soleil, sitting in the audience of any one of 22 simultaneous shows. In Las Vegas, there are currently seven resident productions: Mystère, KÀ, O, Zumanity, Zarkana, LOVE, and Criss Angel: BeLIEve. The eighth, Michael Jackson: One (which Renaud promises will be “a celebration of how the artist touched people, and, of course, his hits”), is poised to debut at the end of this month. Seeing the specifics of what makes a Vegas Cirque show tick is a bit overwhelming. For example, the theater for KÀ, which is housed within the MGM Grand, has 1,950 seats, each with its own speakers built in. The architecture surrounding the performance space is breathtaking, stretching toward the ceiling in a series of vaulted catwalks, in a style that calls to mind an industrial cathedral (before and during showtime, the awe-

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R. KURT OSENLUND

some assemblage is crawling with artists). KÀ boasts 86 artists and more than 300 crew members, as well as the world’s largest airbag, which serves as a landing pad for all who descend amid the performance. KÀ is the rare Cirque show that has no actual stage, but rather two massive, shifting “decks,” one of which moves from horizontal to fully vertical while still supporting the artists, each of whom is bound to tethers via his or her own unique harness. The makeup and costume department is equally awe-inspiring, with 10,000 total “active” pieces (including one to six backup costumes for each artist), and a veritable arsenal of artfully modified Asics wrestling shoes, which were chosen for their exceptional grip, and are kept up religiously to fend off any sign of wear. Says assistant head of wardrobe Lisa Chapman, “The goal is to have everything look the same as it did on opening night. Every time.”

eanwhile, O, which resides at the Bellagio, plays out on an immense stage that can be submerged in up to 15 feet of water, its rear machinations and entry and exit of swimming artists invisible to the 1,834-seat audience. Considerably complex and arduous to sustain, O spends $3 million per year in the replacement of costumes, whose constant exposure to water gives them an approximate six-week shelf life. It’s a production wherein everyone undergoes scuba training and certification, from the 78 artists in the cast to the public relations specialists. Starring opposite Bartlett are 11 additional former Olympians, including divers and synchronized swimmers, who can wait up to 15 minutes underwater between sets, their waterproof, self-applied MAC makeup still retaining its bold, exquisite detail. What’s most impressive about the shows themselves, from the perspective of someone gifted the privilege of seeing the nuts and bolts, is that they don’t lose a sliver of their sweeping, transporting power. Due in part to the god-like abilities of the artists themselves, whose shocking physicality and unfathomable discipline can make a wee writer feel downright lazy, Cirque productions are mysteries immune to demystification. They are wonders at once raw and seemingly supernatural. And they have such varied personalities to express. With an unhurried narrative and rotating platforms that act as obelisk-like screens, KÀ is unmistakably cinematic, its players toying with gravity like suspended sorcerers. With its signature elemental quality, O exudes an inherent vitality, and its energy, both playful and commanding, is best expressed when its amphibious artists are operating in fast, fluid succession, diving, jumping, splishing, and splashing like animate dominoes. And Zarkana, which is less thematically concrete, but includes such showstoppers as a woman who can make and unmake artworks with sand in mere seconds, is a triumph of multimedia, pairing stagebound performances with an imaginative LED backdrop, upon which anything from rose petals to spiderwebs can be seen. The newest of the seven shows currently stationed in Vegas, Zarkana speaks to the formidable growth of Cirque, which is continuing to incorporate more state-of-the-art technology into its creations, and expand its brand at an appar-

ently unstoppable rate. In addition to coloring the aughts with Emmy and DVD Excellence Awards for the recorded and televised presentations of its shows, Cirque partnered with Paramount Pictures last year to release Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, a 3D fantasy movie that wove bits of the seven Vegas productions—which, during filming, still included the now-retired Viva Elvis instead of Zarkana—into a story about a circus patron who, fittingly, gets carried off to another realm to experience Cirque-ian majesty. Cirque has partnered with Reebok, Desigual, and Google, and created charitable endeavors like Cirque du Monde, which reaches out to marginalized youth, and One Drop, a foundation that fights to provide access to clean water in struggling, developing countries. More recently, Cirque has extended its influence by impacting the worlds of hospitality and nightlife, collaborating with partners to develop establishments like the Revolution Lounge at The Mirage, and LIGHT, a nightclub set to open Memorial Day weekend at Mandalay Bay and regularly feature such world-renowned DJs as Skrillex, Zedd, and Sebastian Ingrosso. The development is an apparent extension of the pop sensibilities explored in shows like LOVE and Viva Elvis, which help to rope in the non-Cirque buffs and expand the horizons of traditionalists. “It’s interesting to see who goes,” Renaud says of shows like LOVE. “You’ll have Beatles fans who don’t really know much about Cirque, and who go because of the wonderful soundtrack, and they walk out as fans of Cirque du Soleil. And there’s the opposite too: Cirque fans who might only know a few songs by the Beatles leave the show loving the band. It’s really about reaching people not just visually, but through audio too. And it’s experimental. The nightclub thing is something Guy has talked about for years. He always wanted to branch out into that scene. It will be interesting to see how it goes, because from what I’ve heard, it sounds like it’s going to be very cool. It’s unique and different from what many nightclubs are offering right now. In Las Vegas, there were nightclubs, and then suddenly dayclubs came around and they were the next big thing. Hopefully [LIGHT] will be the beginning of the next trend of nightclubs in Vegas.” On May 30, Totem, a superlative traveling Cirque show, will set down in the Philadelphia area, pitching its tents at the Camden Waterfront through June 23. The show debuted in Montreal in 2010, and before heading to Philadelphia, it will complete its two-month stay in New York. I had the pleasure of catching it just after returning from my Vegas Cirque adventure, and it proved the ideal capper. Featuring cavemen, spacemen, and even Charles Darwin, Totem carries the theme of evolution, and it was impossible to watch it without considering Cirque's own evolving nature. Remarkably cohesive, the production is as simple as it technically advanced, a streamlined merger of minimalistic stage design and Zarkana-style LED embellishments (its key feature is a curved, stage-topping screen that depicts bodies of water and includes an unfolding midsection, which curls out like a tongue as it unveils each new attraction). Whereas some Cirque shows can suffer dips in momentum, with certain grand acts proving very hard to follow, Totem is thrillingly consistent, each artist giving his or her all in a set that ably stuns. A Native American number, for instance, W W W. FA C E B O O K .C O M / I C O N D V

sees a hoop dancer create small miracles with five twirling rings, while a pair of foot jugglers wield skills that will forever change the way you look at pizza chefs. Both classic in its restraint and surprising in its modernity, Totem reflects where Cirque’s been and where it's going. Best of all, it takes place under the big top, which adds priceless atmospheric value. For all the glorious pomp and circumstance of Vegas's theatrical Cirque productions (which, for the record, might be your best reason to hop a plane to Sin City), there's no beating the intimacy of the tent setting, which brings you closer to the art in terms of both proximity and history. After all, this whole monumental enterprise can be traced back to humble, intimate beginnings, when a few artists performed great feats for the awestruck masses.

Cirque du Soleil KA.

“When we work on specific scenes at many of our shows, there’s a moment that just, internally, makes you go, ‘Wow,’” Renaud says. “It’s the moment when what you see, what you hear, and what you feel all jell into one—the wow moment. But it’s different for everybody. It’s great to witness that in public. When I’m watching one of our shows, I always take a moment to look around me and see how people react, because it really is very telling of how we reach different people with what we do. There are always so many stimulants, so everyone is going to have different ones that they latch onto, which is why people come back to see our shows over and over again. Every time they come back they’ll see something different. And feel something different.” ■

R. Kurt Osenlund is the managing editor of The House Next Door, the official blog of Slant Magazine. He is also the film critic for South Philly Review, and a contributing writer for ICON, Slant, Details, Filmmaker Magazine and IndieWire. Follow him on Twitter @AddisonDeTwitt. Email: rkurtosenlund@gmail.com.

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the jazz scene

BRUCE KLAUBER

This is Chris Grammy winner Philadelphia bassist Christian McBride has made the cover of the international jazz journal of record, Jazz Times, in conjunction with the upcoming release of his new CD for the Mack Avenue Jazz label, People Music. This superb outing, the first featuring the bassists’ Inside Straight Group since 2009, will be released on May 14. One of McBride’s teachers and mentors, Lee Smith—who just happens to be McBride’s dad—is also busy as Christian McBride. ever, and will be one of those accompanying singer Barbara Montgomery for one of the final Jazz Bridge events of the season, May 2 at the Collingswood Community Center. Will Big Bands Ever Come Back? They Never Left! In the jazz world these days, leading a big band—be it for a month, week or night—is one of those things considered to be next to impossible. However he does it, area drummer Phil Giordano has managed to lead a swinging, 16-piece strong ensemble here, there and elsewhere on and off for close to three decades. Though he’s been off the radar for a bit, Giordano and the boys are on the comeback trail via recent engagements at La Stanza Restaurant, 2001 West Oregon Avenue, in the heart of South Philadelphia. On May 7, the Phil Giordano Jazz Orchestra will be backing another world class, Philadelphia-based jazz performer, singer Joanna Pascale, at La Stanza. For those of a certain age who have never heard a real, live, big jazz band in person, there is but one piece of advice for you: go. It is, in its way, a wall of sound unlike anything ever heard, and Phil Giordano’s crew, comprised of this area’s finest jazz soloists and ensemble players, continue to, as they say, “lay it down.” For more information on this mustsee concert, contact La Stanza at 215-271-0801. “Booking” Jazz Maria Judge’s wonderful work about her uncle, the late and legendary drummer, Jake Hanna, The Rhythm and Wit of a Swinging Jazz Drummer, is one of the funniest and most touching books about jazz to come along since Bill Crow’s Jazz Anecdotes. Ms. Judge has let us know that the work, a Meredith Music publication, is now available in a Kindle edition from Amazon.com and other appropriate outlets. Musically, Jake Hanna stood for what can only be described as “the integrity of swing.” And relating to his legendary humor and wit, let the following story speak for itself: Hanna was once the drummer in the house band of the Merv Griffin Show, and Mervin’s guest one day was Shirley Bassey, best known for her overwrought rendition of Goldfinger, theme for the 1965 James Bond film. Ms. Bassey, quite full of herself at the time, treated musicians as no more than hired lackeys, Jake Hanna included. At an afternoon rehearsal, she was quite specific in what she demanded from the percussion chair, saying, “Drummer! Just follow me and swing like mad.” Jake, bless his soul, replied, “Missy…I can either swing, or follow you. I can’t do both.” Bassey walked out and Hanna was fired. His parting words? “I was going to quit anyway. I couldn’t stand playing bad music with great players.”

now, the legend of the gypsy jazz guitar has rarely been given his due as a modern player and as an electric guitarist. To order, go to Halleonard.com. Take the Coltrane Norman Gadson was the owner of the Strawberry Mansion home where legendary saxophonist John Coltrane lived from 1952 to 1958. Gadson purchased the home from Trane’s cousin Mary in 2004, and had big plans for it, including rehabbing it and opening it as a jazz venue. Gadson died in 2007, but his widow, Lenora Early—official owner and founder of what is called the “John Coltrane House”—is trying to follow through with her late husband’s wishes. She is renovating the house, and has hooked up with an organization called the “Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.” This group is said to be putting together a panel of experts to mull over suggestions for the future of the house. They had best work quickly. Though the home is a National Historic Landmark, and also on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, the building is in terrible shape. Jazz in a Jam The ubiquitous, always-on-the-scene writing machine named A.D. Amorosi, has informed that two jazz jam sessions have “gone south.” Those would be Time Café’s “Back in Time Sessions” headed by pianist Luke Carlos O’Reilly, and Tavern on Broad’s Sunday jams run by guitarist Greg Davis. Why? One reason, perhaps, is that no one in the city and beyond knew that such sessions existed. Times, business and life has changed for those in the jazz community, and those without self-promotion skills need to learn them quickly. The success of any gig, jazz or otherwise, involves a variety of factors and, ideally, all need to be in alignment. If one of those elements is out of alignment or otherwise not attended to, the plug, such as it is, will be pulled. For instance, what you now hold in your hands is the only—repeat, only—regularly published column solely devoted to regional jazz. At last count, ICON has 70,000-plus readers who are ready, willing and able to spend their hard-earned money on hearing live jazz. That means you. So the big question is, why aren’t you a part of this column? Following through with this is easy: Contact us directly at DrumAlive@aol.com. In line with this diatribe, a venue called “Kennett,” located at 848 South 2nd Street, is advertising a jazz brunch every Saturday and every other Sunday from 11 a.m. It would be nice to know who is playing.

“The Jazz Scene” recently received a note from, believe it or not, Serbia. The communication was from drummer Dusan Milenkovic, whohas just written an extraordinary new book, The Magnificent 7, drum solo transcriptions of, as Dusan calls them, “drummers of our time,” including Brian Blade, Bill Stewart, Antonio Sanchez, and others. This valuable work, the first of its kind, is available from DusanMilenkovic.com.

Pianistic Kicks with Chick It could be said with some accuracy that Chick Corea is the most influential pianist to come along in the jazz world since Bill Evans. He has opened and explored—and continues to open and explore—new vistas and frontiers as a acoustic soloist, fusionist, and small group leader. There is likely no one of a certain age playing any type of keyboard today who has not been influenced by Chick Corea. It is a particular joy to hear him as a soloist, in that he has the rare ability to convey virtually the entire tradition of jazz, and its future, on the piano. Audiences and his many fans will have the rare opportunity to hear this master in solo, May 22, at Musikfest Café within ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA. Making this stint even more special is that fact that there’s not a bad seat in the house at the Café. No seats are further than 60 feet away from the stage. To purchase tickets online, visit ArtsQuest.org.

One could call Scott Yanow the “McDonald’s of Jazz Journalism,” in that he has “served” thousands of players with his ten, all-inclusive books about jazz trumpeters, swing players, bopsters, singers, recordings, films, et al. Yanow is a tireless, dedicated researcher, and his works have proved to be a significant addition to jazz scholarship. His latest work, The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide (Backbeat/Hal Leonard) is no exception. The book gives biographical info, CD choices and other pertinent data on hundreds of players, past and present. Of interest to those within ICON’s area of readership, are legends that include Eddie Lang, Billy Bean, Pat Martino, Thornel Schwartz, Jimmy Bruno, Steve Giordano, Monette Sudler and likely some others we’ve missed. Scotty’s entry on Django Reinhardt is particularly incisive. Until

Ready for Freddy Having Nat “King” Cole for an older brother must have been both a blessing and a curse, but pianist/singer Freddy Cole has followed his own musical path for more than six decades. Sure, there’s some pianistic and vocal resemblance to Nat—how can there not be?—but this conservatory-trained artist is pretty much his own man. Cole is making a rare area appearance this month, on May 4, at Chris’ Jazz Café. And on May 18, look for a return visit from Philadelphia’s very own All-Star Jazz Quartet. For information on all of Chris’ attractions, log on to ChrisJazzCafe.com. For advance tickets to this special show, visit Seatengine.com/Event/1914. ■

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nick’s picks Giacomo Gates ★★★★ Miles Tones Savant Fresh off the success of his much admired 2011 Gil Scott-Heron tribute recording The Revolution Will Be Jazz, vocalist Giacomo Gates may have paused at the idea of following up with another themed album, but when you have a chance salute Miles Davis, especially one with lyrics written by Oscar Brown, Jr., Eddie Jefferson and Jon Hendricks, the choice was a no brainer. Miles Tones reunites Gates with his Heron trio (bassist Lonnie Plaxico, drummer Vincent Ector and longtime pianist John di Martino) and features a classic combo sound that dovetails perfectly with his wonderfully grizzled baritone. The other key roles are filled by trumpeter Freddie Hendricks and guitarist Dave Stryker who give Miles Tones a club-ready feel. The album leads with the timeless composition “All Blues,” where the band locks in a lilting groove to best serve Gates’ distinctive croon. Pianist Di Martino comes close but never outshines the leader and the same needs to be said about the marvelous Stryker whose fretwork slips in a surprise or two (the sly Monk quote on “So What.”) Pulling tunes from throughout Miles’ discography, bookended by his Birth Of The Cool period (“Boplicity”) and Tutu (“’Long Come Tutu”) Gates swings like the best in-the-tradition vocalists, which is not too shabby for a guy who toiled on Alaskan oil pipelines in a prior life before pursuing his true calling and stepping up to the mic at a gig. With Miles Tones, Gates springboards into the big league of great jazz singers with solid material and in-the-pocket musicians that underscores the leader’s intrinsic hipness and gift for a song. (10 tracks; 49 minutes) Tomasz Stanko NY Quartet ★★★★1/2 Wislawa ECM The music on the two-disc Wislawa, inspired by the female poet Wislawa Symborska, a Polish essayist and Nobel Laureate who died in 2012, has a modern veneer that’s frequently beguiling due to its improvisational daring, yet it’s a highly listenable experience as guided

Tomasz Stanko and NY Quartet. Photo: Nick Bewsey.

by the accomplished hand of its composer, trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, one of the most accomplished jazz musicians to come out of Poland. After many albums on ECM with various

Nick Bewsey has been writing about jazz for ICON since 2004. A member of The Jazz Journalists Association, he blogs about jazz and entertainment at www.jazzinspace.blogspot.com. Twitter: @countingbeats 36

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bands, Stanko leads a definitive group he calls his NY Quartet—the dynamic 30-year-old pianist David Virelles, bassist Thomas Morgan and veteran drummer Gerald Cleaver. As a group, they can be precise and probing. The title track, which is reprised at the end of the second disc with an entirely refreshed architecture, begins with a cinematic introduction by Virelles, whose phrasing is gently emotive and stirring. Stanko fades into focus and plays at a deliberate pace with a nearly conversational playing style that’s streaked with a melancholy hue. Brushes slide over cymbals and the bass notes are stout and supportive, the band plays as an organic whole without a wasted note. Stanko’s style incorporates a heady mix of free jazz, post bop and a kind of outsider swing. At their March appearance at Birdland in NYC, the trumpeter, now 70, sounded inspired and revitalized with his new band. Playing many of this album’s tunes to a standing room only crowd, you could see audience members leaning in toward the trumpeter to hang on every phrase during his arresting solos. Wislawa has a mesmerizing program of tunes with audacious dialogue between bassist and drummer, and astoundingly beautiful solos by the Cuban-born Virelles, highlighted by the elegiac “Dernier Cri,” a tune that comes closest to a genuine standard. On disc two, “Oni” is steeped with a Bill Evans-like lyricism, while “Tutaj – Here” is a triumph of shifting tempos and feelings, ending with a flurry of notes as if Stanko is chortling through his horn. If you’ve not had the reward of hearing Tomasz Stanko’s work, the recording is a sumptuous starting point. Wislawa is a deeply expressed recording with consummate interplay and superb improvisation, and it cogently fulfills Stanko’s celebration of Symborski’s work and life with honorific grace. (2 discs; 12 tracks; 48 minutes/50 minutes) Ehud Asherie with Harry Allen ★★★★ Lower East Side Posi-Tone One of the enduring pleasures of instrumental duet recordings like Lower East Side, featuring pianist Ehud Asherie and saxophonist Harry Allen, is their commitment to melodic standards and as natural improvisers steeped in the art of swing, this joyful effort is a genuine standout. An established player on the NY scene, Asherie’s nimble efficacy as a stride pianist is jaw-dropping on tracks like “Hallelujah!” and Richard Rodger’s “Thou Swell.” On first listen, the agile musical conversation between Allen’s growling tenor and Asherie’s virtuosic playing style, informed by his passion for Erroll Garner and Monk, pulls you into their one-of-a-kind harmonic convergence. Sure, the duo are at their best when rubbing shoulders on tunes you’d associate with a Woody Allen film (“Deed I Do” and Irving Berlin’s “Always” are among the cocktail gems) but together they elevate the material in both charming and substantial ways. With six titles as a leader on the Posi-Tone label, Asherie’s gifts as Ehud Asherie. Photo: Tony Williams. a pianist register vividly, perhaps none more so than on “When I Grow To Old To Dream,” which closes the album and gives each of these accomplished musicians plenty of room to indulge their affection for songs from another era. Lower East Side is an artful and irresistible effort. (11 tracks; 62 minutes)

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NICK BEWSEY ★=SKIP IT; ★★=MEDIOCRE; ★★★=GOOD; ★★★★=EXCELLENT; ★★★★★=CLASSIC

Aaron Diehl ★★★★ The Bespoke Man’s Narrative Mack Avenue

still present, but his post-bebop-style rhythms and acoustic blues have collapsed into a reshaped agenda that’s particularly effective on top-shelf grooves like “Mystique,” and especially “Pieces Of A Dream,” a dazzling collision of Pelt’s past and present style that shows his love for both. (9 tracks; 56 minutes)

Since winning the coveted Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz Competition of the American Pianists Association in 2011, Aaron Diehl has been stirring up a lot of enthusiasm among those lucky enough to hear him in person or on his two hardto-get independent releases. That’s satisfied with his major label debut recording for Mack Avenue, The Bespoke Man’s Narrative, a formal reckoning of contemporary jazz piano drawn from Diehl’s training—he studied at Julliard—and his absorption of works by the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ellington, Ahmad Jamal and McCoy Tyner. But the luxurious sound on this album proves Diehl is something of a visionary, too. The album leads with a brief but gorgeous theme wrapped in the delicious harmonics that Aaron Diehl. MJQ pianist John Lewis was known for creating. Then Diehl ushers in the present with back-to-back originals—a swift post-bebop composition “Generation Y” comingles provocative interplay with effusive solos, followed by “Blue Nude,” a multi-layered ballad with big beats by drummer Rodney Green, the cool modernistic styling of vibes player Warren Wolf and ripe walking bass lines by David Wong. “Blue Nude” also spotlights a magnificent solo by Diehl, his best on an album full of triumphant moments. Tying these tunes together is an ultra-sophisticated style of swing, lubricated by Diehl’s supple playing and a disciplined rhythm section. Diehl’s has an urbane sophistication (the novel arrangement of “Moonlight In Vermont” blooms with confidence) and, thanks to the precision of his quartet, the tracks flow easily. Whether in a club or your living room, it’s like Ellington said, “There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind,” and I’ll declare that The Bespoke Man’s Narrative is among the good kind—the very good kind. (10 tracks; 64 minutes)

Harry Allen & Scott Hamilton ★★★★ ‘Round Midnight Challenge Records

Jeremy Pelt ★★★★ Water and Earth HighNote Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt sports a confident, almost larger-than-life presence on stage. He blows with certainty and an abundance of style, attributes that have served him well in clubs and nine solo recordings with a style that has been likened to the mid-‘60s Miles Davis, yet his recent recordings for HighNote (especially Men Of Honor and Soul) place Pelt decisively in the present. For his 10th record, Pelt says goodbye to all that. Water and Earth is Pelt’s impressive recording that replaces his longtime acoustic band with fresh talent that jumps head first into Pelt’s vision of digital jazz. Electronic keyboards and bass weave throughout, but it’s the young drummer Dana Hawkins (whose recorded collaborations with electric bassist Evan Marien are off-the-hook) and Roxy Coss, a rare and solid female saxophonist, that gives this effort a worthy buzz. Pelt’s smooth and tasty tone is

Two warmly expressive traditionalists, tenor saxophonists Harry Allen and Scott Hamilton have hundreds of credits and dozens of solo albums between them. They even have their own solo Christmas records. Joining forces for the uplifting and unapologetically swinging ‘Round Midnight, these chums rally a superb rhythm section comprised of pianist Rossano Sportiello, bassist Joel Forbes and drummer Chuck Riggs on a tasty set list of jazz standards and pop tunes inspired by the music that Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins and Illinois Jacquet played in the ‘40s. For Allen and Hamilton, this is their third recording together; they’ve often been likened to the duo of Al Cohn and Zoot Sims whose playing styles are less boastful and more supportive of one another. From the outset, the blended horns of Allen and Hamilton have an energizing fluidity and when underscored by their sizzling rhythm section, you’ll be hardpressed to sit still. Having played with Johnny Hodges and Benny Goodman prior to establishing an esteemed solo career, Hamilton has chops and an established tone that’s among the smoothest in the swing style, and it’s heard to great effect on his countless recordings for the Concord Jazz label in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Along with the estimable Harry Allen, very much Hamilton’s equal, the pair has performed together for many years to hone a blended sound with meticulous precision that’s played to perfection on tracks by Eddie Davis (“Hey Lock!”) Bill Pott’s upbeat “The Opener,” and a sterling Allen original, “Great Scott.” It’s easy to appreciate the lush harmonics and classic styling on display—even the hoary melody of “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” receives an endearing bossa nova arrangement filled with dazzlingly counterpoint and complemented with finger snapping accompaniment by the masterful Italian pianist Sportiello. Notably, recordings released by Challenge Records are engineered to perfection and this one sounds just as spectacular. (9 tracks; 66 minutes) Emilio Teubal ★★★★ Musica Para un Dragon Dormido BJU Records Strong writing and an exemplary band make for rewarding interplay and a worthwhile engagement for listeners who press play on keyboardist Emilio Teubal’s Musica Para un Dragon Dormido. Translated to mean “Music For A Sleeping Dragon,” it’s a grand presentation for the boldly talented Argentinean leader who, on his third album, folds musical elements and native rhythms from his homeland into a soundscape of sonic grooves, electric bass and attenuated percussion that gives this recording a fresh and contemporary feeling. The passionate music relates to specific stories from Teubal’s life and experiences and evolves from strong melodic themes, which gives the recording a cinematic vibe. There’s a raw beauty in the melodic yearning in tunes like “The Constant Reinventor” and the spirited interwoven bass and percussion that inflates “Nikko” (inspired by ECM artist Nik Bärtsch.) Teubal is a confident composer and kick-ass keyboardist ("El Tema de Ludmilla”) with a generous spirit—he shares plenty of space with his band that includes the up-and-coming saxophonist Sam Sadigursky, percussionist John Hadfield, electric bassist Moto Fukushima, cellist Eric Friedlander (“El Acrobata”) and alternating percussionist Satoshi Takeishi. More encompassing than a traditional Latin jazz album, Emilio Tuebal takes to a world stage, composing tunes peppered with novel sounds and earthy textures, all of which makes Musica Para un Dragon Dormido uplifting and fully involving. The album is beautifully recorded and mixed—each instrument is vividly distinguished across a wide soundstage. (9 tracks; 64 minutes) n

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keresman on disc

MARK KERESMAN ★=SKIP IT; ★★=MEDIOCRE; ★★★=GOOD; ★★★★=EXCELLENT; ★★★★★=CLASSIC

Swing Out Sister ★★★★ Private View Shanachie

ist—has this ring-a-ding world on a string, letting loose with some giddy, Sinatra-like abandon. The two together wing it with the aplomb of masters, striking sparks as they go. legacyrecordings.com

Tony Bennett/Dave Brubeck ★★★★1/2 The White House Sessions, Live 1962 Columbia/Legacy

Son Volt ★★★★★ Honky Tonk Rounder

In the UK and Europe, there’s a bit less of a “division” between pop and jazz styles—performers from the “pop” side of the fence are a little more eager to mix-up the two than here. Witness the cross-pollinations of Amy Winehouse, Sade, and, of course, Swing Out Sister. The UK combo, essentially singer Corrine Drewery and Andy Connell (the two remain-

Wayne Hancock ★★★★ Ride Bloodshot Call it Americana or roots music, or whatever, but there are performers putting their own spin on classic American sounds based upon/inclusive of country, folk, rock & roll, blues, etc. Son Volt, birthed by the dissolution of proto-roots-punk outfit Uncle Tupelo, is far

Swing Out Sister.

ing original members), has made their first studio set since 2008 and like jazz performers of yore, they’ve decided to interpret their back catalog. Private View finds SOS revising their songs in a subdued, predominantly acoustic setting, at times evoking an un-plugged Steely Dan, albeit with more R&B flavor (and less sarcasm). Breezy, classy, and urbane (sans any smugness), View is like an offering of fine wine in a marketplace overstocked with generic soda. shanachie.com At one time, though, jazz—real jazz (pardon my smugness)—was pop music. Fellows such as Dave Brubeck and Tony Bennett topped the charts without a hint of compromise. White House Sessions catches both on a rare night— they’d each play with their respective groups, then Bennett and Brubeck would have at it together (and without rehearsal, at that). The Brubeck Quartet featuring alto sax icon Paul Desmond is, as you’d expect, aces—singularly swinging, with that wonderful contrast between Brubeck’s gregarious, slightly percussive 88s (with classical music echos) and Desmond’s lithe, dry-martini alto. These cats get to stretch out (more than their studio platters), strutting their stuff with no overindulgence. Bennett—his voice looser, wailing like an instrumental-

Son Volt.

more “country” than most Nashville products, but that’s not saying much. Son Volt’s Honky Tonk, however, says lots—like the title implies, there’s a strong leaning toward the classic Bakersfield country style of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. A set of mid-tempo waltzes (with a hint of Cajun overtones), shuffles, and dirges framed by the yearning whine of pedal steel guitar and moonshine-sharp fiddles, singer Jay Farrar spins tales of stubborn resilience, weariness, and hangdog hope, mixing Dylan-esque poetics and Waylon Jennings grit, singing about “honky tonk angels” and “equilibrium” both. Farrar’s vocals, too, evoke those gents (also Neil Young in ballad mode). If Dylan in his youth had gone to Bakersfield instead of NYC, he might’ve made music like this. rounder.com Wayne “The Train” Hancock is another matter—without any trendy retro sheen or posing, he sounds as if he could be leading a combo at a Texas oilfield tavern circa 1954. With a yowling, whiskey-potent voice like a young Hank Williams Sr., Hancock’s sonic stew includes raw, Williams-style country, the rowdier side of Western swing (country + jazz fusion), rockabilly, roadhouse blues, and even hints of jazz and pre-rock-era pop. While not sloppy, Hancock’s stripped-down approach seems to be telling the world to take assembly-line and reality-TV slickness and shove it. Regardless of how you’re feeling, Ride will treat you like a Saturday night, jovial barroom, vibes and all. bloodshotrecords.com

shemp@hotmail.com

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I C O N Don’t miss a single issue!

To find out where ICON is delivered in your town, go to www.icondv.com

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singer / songwriter Amy Speace ★★★1/2 How to Sleep in a Stormy Boat Wind Bone Records

TOM WILK ★=SKIP IT; ★★=MEDIOCRE; ★★★=GOOD; ★★★★=EXCELLENT; ★★★★★=CLASSIC

Miles Davis on his approach to guitar, while the soaring “Statesboro Blues” could serve as a textbook on playing slide guitar. Skydog, compiled in part by his daughter, Galadrielle, is a testament to Allman’s musical vision and passion.

In the booklet that comes with How to Sleep in a Stormy Boat, Amy Speace prefaces the lyrics of her 11 songs with a quotation from a play or poem by William Shakespeare. It’s an indication of her inspiration and aspiration as a songwriter. Speace’s folk-based songs are lyrically rich while using basic language. A good example is the chorus of the title track, a song about personal survival. “Show me how to fly in a starless sky/Help me to hold on when there’s no guiding light/Teach me how to sleep in a stormy boat.” It’s a prayerful plea eloquently stated with just three words of more than one syllable. “The Sea and the Shore” features Speace and John Fullbright trading verses in a duet of lost love and chances missed, using water and land as symbols of star-crossed lovers, akin to “Romeo and Juliet.” The bittersweet “Perfume” deftly explores how a missing loved one can be felt by the one left behind. Vocally, Speace recalls Mary Chapin Carpenter and Nanci Griffith in her expressive phrasing and delivery that conveys a sense of soul baring and intimacy. (How to Sleep in a Stormy Boat is also available in a bonus edition with an EP featuring six additional songs.)

Midnight Oil ★★★1/2 Essential Oils Columbia/Legacy Like the Clash in England and Bruce Springsteen in the U.S., Midnight Oil in Australia mixed powerful music with the political and social concerns of their times that catapulted the band to international stardom. Essential Oils is a twoCD, 36-song anthology that documents the band’s recording

Deni Bonet.

Bonet, a classically trained violinist who was an original cast member of the Mountain Stage radio show, displays her instrumental talents on the sprightly “Pineapple Rag.” She’s adept at capturing the frustrations of daily life on “Get Over It” and the desire to leave a comfort zone and break out of her shell on the joyous “Loud.” As an interpreter, she turns the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” into a Gypsy jazz workout, replacing the original version’s guitars with ukulele, accordion and violin. The arrangement breathes new life into a classic tune. Her reworking of “The Glory of Love” ends the album on a high note and provides an emotional lift.

Duane Allman ★★★★1/2 Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective Rounder Records With his death in a motorcycle crash in 1971 at age 24, Duane Allman left behind an impressive body of work as a sideman and co-founder of the Allman Brothers Band. Skydog, a seven-CD, 129-song anthology, demonstrates his versatility and creativity as a guitarist. The box set traces his career from his earliest groups (Allman Joys, Hour Glass) to his session work, solo performances and the formation of the Allman Brothers Band. Allman initially made his mark backing up such soul singers as Clarence Carter (The Road of Love) and Wilson Pickett with his sizzling slide guitar work. Skydog illustrates that Allman could adapt his skills to artists across the musical spectrum, be it jazz (Herbie Mann), singer/songwriters (Laura Nyro), blues (Otis Rush, John Hammond) and country (Cowboy). Allman’s pairing with Eric Clapton in Derek and the Dominos, resulted in such classics as “Layla” and “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad.” With the Allman Brothers, Allman incorporated blues, rock, jazz and country styles into his playing. “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” reveals the influences of John Coltrane and

L-R: Rob Hirst, Martin Rotsey, Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie, Bones Hillman.

career between 1978 and 2002. Presented in chronological order, the compilation shows the group’s evolution. The first CD illustrates the band’s punk roots from Run by Night in 1978 to the political confrontation of U.S. Forces and Power and the Passion. The second CD shows the band refining its sound without sacrificing its message. “Put Down That Weapon” addresses the issue of nuclear disarmament. “Beds Are Burning” and “The Dead Heart” highlight the band’s concerns about the treatment of Australia’s aborigines by the national government. The explosive “Blue Sky Mine” examines the plight of miners and the working class, highlighted by Peter Garrett’s fiery vocals. It’s a song that Woody Guthrie could have written, updated with a modern sonic approach. Deni Bonet ★★★1/2 It’s All Good M-R2 Records It’s All Good, the third solo CD from Deni Bonet, is a

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mostly upbeat effort designed to leave listeners with a good feeling. It succeeds due to Bonet’s impressive violin work and her artistic vision. The spirited “Girl Lover” kicks off the album with a jolt of high-energy pop, enhanced by Richard Barone’s duet vocal. “Girl Party” is a good-time romp, thanks in part to former B-52 member Fred Schneider who contributes backing vocals and co-wrote the song.

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Doug MacLeod ★★★1/2 There’s a Time Reference Recordings There’s a Time, Doug MacLeod’s 19th studio album, has the feel of a concert recording. Cut live at Skywalker Sound in California with no overdubs, the CD has an intimate living room feel featuring McLeod’s acoustic guitar and the unobtrusive rhythm section of bassist Denny Croy and drummer Jim Bott. Over 13 original songs, MacLeod runs the gamut of human emotions. The good time feel of “Rosa Lee” evokes the spirit of Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago.” MacLeod’s stark guitar work and vocals create a feeling of desolation on “Black Nights.” “My In-Laws Are Outlaws” lightens the mood and shows his gift for word play. “St. Elmo’s Rooms and Pool” offers a sketch of a watering hole where everything is not as it seems. On “Dubb’s Talking Religion Blues,” MacLeod details a literal vs. figurative interpretation of the Bible. “The Up Song” is structured to recall Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn” as MacLeod advises “there is a time to loosen up” but that “there’s never a time to give up.” It’s advice that he has followed in a musical career of more than 30 years. ■

jazz library

BOB PERKINS

MORGANA KING

THERE ARE MANY FANS of time-honored standard popular music around today, and they favor such material sung by those female singers who know how to do justice to the songs fashioned by the storied writers of the melodies and lyrics of yore. But some of these lovers of great music, and of female singers who know what to do with these standards, are not familiar with Morgana King. When I play King’s recordings on my radio program, I often get calls from people who seem to know great music and singers when they hear them but surprisingly ask about the identity of the lady with the great voice. This is somewhat understandable, considering, King had something of a cult following. She had a voice that ranked with the top vocalists of the middle part of the previous century. But even though it was a time when standard pop and jazz were In their heyday, she didn’t get much airplay. Dedicated fans, however, would travel many miles to hear her rangy, operatic-trained, four-octave voice, a voice that gave a new twist to the songs of Porter, Ellington and Berlin. She had her detractors. Perhaps some thought such a voice was too operatic to sing standards and jazz. King was not a complete jazz singer, in that she did not scat, but she was attractive, had a warm stage presence and—despite the great voice—still sang in a cool, laid back manner, which jazz fans loved. When she wasn’t in a recording studio with a thirty-five piece orchestra backing her, she was usually accompanied by a small group of jazz musician when she worked clubs and concerts. She married twice—both times to jazz musicians. She was married to first husband, trumpet player Tony Fruscella at the age of 17. The couple frequently had dinner with Charlie and Chan Parker. Her second husband was trombonist Willie Dennis, who was killed in an auto accident in 1965. So, no question, King was a standard pop singer who knew what to do with a ballad…and she also knew, and could sing jazz. Morgana King was born June 4 1930, in Pleasantville, New York, but grew up in New York City. Before she changed her name for professional reasons, her handle was Maria Grazia Morgana Messina. Her parents were originally from a province in Sicily. She loved to sing, and by her early teens, it was soon discovered that she had a fine singing voice. She received a scholarship to the Metropolitan School of Music. By age 16, she had changed her name and was singing professionally. She began to get bookings and sang in some popular clubs, like Scullers, Fat Tuesdays, The Rainbow Grill, Sweet Basil’s and a host of others, and began to make appearances on TV variety shows, including The Dean Martin Show, The Mike Douglas Show and The David Frost Show. Her recordings, though, were heard sparingly on radio—even though she recorded three albums for Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label in the mid-1960s. Still, she was accumulating an ever-growing following that supported her in clubs, concert halls and hotels. King began her acting career in the two Godfather films of the 1970s playing Carmela Corleone, wife of Don Vito Corleone. She subsequently appeared in several other films over the years, but nothing major. She recorded 30 albums during her career. In my humble opinion, her best was A Taste of Honey, which includes the song by the same name, along with “How Insensitive,” “Meditation,” “Easy Living,” and several other standards. The LP, now on CD, is still around, but kind of pricey, which sometimes happens when an artist of King’s caliber passes away or retires, and King retired from singing and acting more than 20 years ago. If you get the CD you may find her voice easy to remember… and very hard to forget. ■

[ERRATUM: The photo that ICON identified as organist Shirley Scott in April’s Jazz Library was not Scott. Right: Shirley Scott on the cover of one of her CDs. ]

Bob Perkins is a writer and host of an all-jazz radio program that airs on WRTI-FM 90.1 Mon-Thurs. 6 to 9pm & Sunday, 9am–1pm.

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HOTEL Modern Cuisine h Classic Comfort Corner of Swan & Main Lambertville, NJ 609-397-3552

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dining

ROBERT GORDON

Indian Rock Inn IN RECENT TIMES, FLOODS have battered towns along the Delaware River, nowhere more, perhaps, than along the Palisades portion of the River’s run. In one stretch of time, River Road was closed for essentially four years because of flood damage. Indian Rock Inn owners Tom and Beverly Schhweder had to face three monster floods in their first two years of operation. But in life and in business as well, it’s not how often you get knocked down. It’s how you get back up. The Schweders and Indian Rock Inn have gotten up splendidly. They’ve been reopened uninterrupted now for more than a year. Their kitchen cast has remained pretty much intact. Most importantly, Chef Val Roy Gerischer still rules there. Val Roy is an undersung talent I’ve appreciated for years. His style is rooted in the German and French traditions. New Zealand lamb, glazed with mustard, garlic, and rosemary is tried-and-true French. The lusty tastes of German cuisine ooze from deep-fried pork loin sided with mashed potatoes. But Val also veers off the Franco-Prussian path with tasty detours, many of which titillate the sweet-toothed. The Pernod he douses on the escargots tucked inside puff pastry with scallions adds dulcet undercurrents to the classic French butter-garlic recipe. As for the aforementioned deep-fried pork, Val serves it with apricot horseradish that not only sweetens but cuts the richness of the meat. His menu, I suppose, can be accurately described as American contemporary. Cajun, Mideast, Italian, and Mediterranean touches appear here and there. Quail redolent of orange zest and slathered with Chinese five-spice tastes bright and exotic. Tomato tartar sauce tanged with lemon juice lifts lightly breaded, golden brown Lobster Cakes. Veal scaloppini is light, prepared with a Mediterranean quartet of lemon, garlic, capers and parsley. For Yankees, there’s a $12 Chicken Pot Pie, jam-packed with chicken, peas, and thick broth. Pecan Crusted Sea Bass is a one-inch-thick filet clad with pecans in a lightly breaded crust. It sits next to a steaming mound of rice pilaf, haricots verts, and carrots coated with melted butter perfumed with tarragon. New Zealand venison is two large chops crisscrossed over mashed potatoes. Gerischer’s best work emerges when he’s fussing with French and German ideas. I love the spunky blue cheese sauce he puts on Rib Eye Steak and the bistro-perfect hand-cut pommes frites that accompany it. But his pièce de résistance has always been warm bacon dressing and spinach salad. Although it’s rarely seen these days in these parts, the hearty dish hasn’t lost any of its gusto. Roy Val is also the Pastry Chef. He rotates his slate of goodies. If it’s available, try another of his old reliables, Raspberry Almond Frangipane Tart, a sensibly sweetened pairing of almond

paste and raspberry in a chewy but firm pastry. Chocolate Chip Cake has smooth buttercream icing and a pleasing moist texture. Desserts cost $7. The 200-year old Inn is pet friendly, in case you’re traveling with your little pals and need to stay the night. The owners organize several pet events. Check out the website for coming evens. The Inn’s bar is busy and attractive. Alfresco dining is also lovely on a deck that faces out across the Delaware Canal to the River. It’s that idyllic location that keeps Val Roy up in those lovely hinterlands, happily removed from the higher-profile, albeit frenetic, city scene. ■ Indian Rock Inn, 2206 River Rd., Upper Black Eddy, PA (610) 982-9600. indianrockinn.com

Please send comments or suggestions to r.gordon33@verizon.net

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ROBERT GORDON

HICKORY LANE I’M NOT REALLY A burger fanatic myself, but with enough visits to Hickory Lane, I could become one. Executive Chef Matt Zagorski at Hickory Lane elevates the till-recently inelegant burger to haute cuisine. I praised the elegance of Zagorski’s burgers to some foodie friends recently. Their reaction was, “Really? A burger?” Yes, a burger. Zagorski logged some impressive stints in highend kitchens like the Striped Bass, LaCroix in the Rittenhouse Hotel, and Rouge, where he earned seven “Best of Philly" Awards. Given that honor, burger-making brilliance wouldn’t seem to be a pillar of his repertoire. But his burgers are serious creations. And burgers happen to be the stuff of gastronomic dreams for many red-blooded Americans, including many chefs I know who wouldn’t voice it publicly but, in unguarded moments, talk about a “burger addiction.” If Wimpy set out on a search for the Perfect Burger, he would throw in the towel once he wolfed down Hickory Lane’s $15 MPZ Hickory Burger. Ditto for the stunningly rich $12 Pork Belly Sandwich. MPZ, by the way, stands for Matt Philip Zagorski. If biologists and astronomers get to name their discoveries, then why not chefs? MPZ is Zagorskis’ own nomenclature for the painstaking formula he cooked up from brisket, filet tips, and deckle. The latter is a well-marbled and under-celebrated portion of the prime-rib cut that is mouth-wateringly flavorful and tender. In France, the cut is called calotte. When you order the Hickory Burger, your server will steer you toward a medium-rare preparation. Heed the suggestion. Zagorski has brainstormed every aspect of his delicacy and cooking it medium-rare mines the full potential, rendering it juicy and sinfully flavorful. The meat is covered with Bibb lettuce, aged Cheddar, garlic aioli, and tomato slices. In fact, surfing around some Philly visitor sites, I found that some sites have already anointed the MPZ Hickory Burger as must-have Philly fare for tourists. It is not by burgers alone that Hickory Lane succeeds. The rest of Zagorski’s oft-changing menu presents a trove of comfort food that’s grounded in solid concepts and executed with precision. Don’t look for flights of fancy. Do look for snappy, soulful flavor combinations. A good case can be made that the risottos, soups and polentas on the menu are the true stars at Hickory Lane. Portabella MushEmail comments and suggestions to r.gordon33@verizon.net 44

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room Soup—a dynamite bargain at $6—has a rich, buttery, texture with shallots and chives swirling within to give a simple dish uncommon depth. Butternut Squash Risotto is sublimely thick, creamy, and hearty. A mound of crumbled Danish blue cheese atop the squash enlivens each spoonful. Soft Polenta ($13) with Asiago cheese combines delectably, golden beets bolster the texture, and pine nuts and fried oregano leaves stipple the surface. Hickory Lane Salad ($10) a lusty arrangement of baby spinach, bacon, potatoes, and poached egg, is visually appealing. Red-wine vinaigrette dresses the ensemble and sea-salt focaccia croutons give salty, crispy punch. Notwithstanding the signature burger, the traditional entrées are the main attraction for me. They’re high quality, low price, and they show off some of the upscale chops Zagorski learned in other fine kitchens. They also show Hickory Lane’s commitment to establishing itself as a neighborhood fixture. Recently, a slab of succulent Atlantic salmon over a bed of sweet potato confit and cauliflower purée was outstanding. A colorful pool of corn and port wine gastrique circled the plate—an elegant dish priced at only $20. Ditto for $20 Herb-Roasted Chicken Breast: a busy, yet coherent mélange of green garlic potato purée, asparagus, pearl onions and white wine chicken jus. Hickory Lane enjoys a lovely neighborhood bistro setting, occupying a corner berth at the intersection of Fairmount Avenue and Corinthian St. The castle-like walls of old Eastern Penitentiary loom impregnable and impressive on the opposite side of the street. The massive walls in the backdrop bestow a European air to alfresco dining. Inside dining, particularly in winter, is cozy and warm. The two exterior walls have a contiguous series of elongated, foldout windows, reminiscent of New Orleans. Tear-shaped, low-wattage light bulbs dangle from a high ceiling where fans spin easy as Sunday morning. The cozy main dining room divides seamlessly into an attractive barroom area. There’s an open kitchen directly behind that pumps out order upon order of Hickory Lane’s signature dish—the one Wimpy would love. But don’t forget that all the fare here is anything but wimpy. ■ Hickory Lane, 2025 Fairmount Ave., Philadelphia PA (215) 7692420 hickorylanebistro.com

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PATRICIA SAVOIE

Some leading ladies of wine opine

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SOMMELIERS ARE THE PEOPLE who sell and serve wine in restaurants. Not all restaurants have them—usually only those that are focused on better food. In the trade, they are often called “Somms.” The Somm’s job is to help you enjoy your meal more by adding a wine (or beer) that will complement the food and take the whole dining experience to another level. I always ask the Somm for recommendations, because they are the people who know the list best and know where the values are. I asked three of my Somm friends for some advice on wines and wine trends in their restaurants. They are: Brooke Sabel, Certified Specialist of Wine, Certified Sommelier, is Wine Director, Ninety Acres Culinary Center at Natirar in Peapack, NJ; Marika Vida-Arnold, Certified Sommelier, Certified Specialist of Wine and Advanced Certificate in Wine and Spirits, is Wine Director at The Ritz-Carlton Central Park, New York; and Jill Roberts, ASA Certified Sommelier, is Wine Director at the new Harold Dieterle restaurant, The Marrow in New York City. The Restaurants Ninety Acres Culinary Center at Natirar, 2 Main St., PeapackGladstone, NJ www.natirar.com Auden Bistro & Bar, The Ritz Carlton Central Park, 50 Central Park South, NYC www.ritzcarlton.com The Marrow, 99 Bank Street, NYC www.themarrownyc.com What are the most popular red and white wines on your list? Sabel: Our most popular categories are: Sancerre, white Burgundy, domestic Pinot Noir, Rioja. At least one person at the table is having fish, so any of these categories are a great complement to those dishes. Vida-Arnold: Brands are still really the big sellers at The Ritz— such as Caymus, Silver Oak and Cakebread. Oregon Pinot Noirs. French whites like Chablis and Sancerre (not necessarily producer specific). I’m happy to say some of my smaller traditional Barolo and Brunello houses are moving, too...Aurelio Settimo from La Morra and Donatella Cinelli Columbini in Brunello di Montalcino. Roberts: Most certainly German and Austrian whites and Italian reds. These wines go hand in hand with The Marrow’s German/Italian focused cuisine. The most popular white is the Josef Ehmoser Hohenberg Gruner Veltliner 2011 (Austria). Two of the most popular reds are Trinchero Vigna del Noce Barbera d'Asti 2004 (Italy-$38 retail) and Castello di Neive Santo Stefano Barbaresco 2008 (Italy-$45 retail). Number of wines on your wine list. Ninety Acres: 1,492 Auden Bistro at Ritz-Carlton: 500-plus The Marrow: 400 What do you recommend—a favorite from your list—and why? Sabel: Cabernet Franc 2011, “Lieu Dit” from Santa Ynez Valley (about $36 retail). It’s elegant, food friendly and drinks like a Saumur-Champigny. Vida-Arnold: If you want a “deal” at the Ritz go high end and older...red and white Burgundies, Rhone wines. Think “Vintage Value” like Chambertin Denis Mortet 2000 ($480 on the list) or Cote

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Rotie Jamet Cote Brune 1988 ($400 on the list). It's hard to find these wines in the first place, and if you do find them, you won't get these prices. Roberts: I love to recommend a German Kabinett Riesling from the Mosel. These wines are so versatile and pair with our cuisine. One bottle can take you from a meat plate with Jagerwurst and cotechino (a cooked salami) all the way through the pan-fried duck schnitzel. Carl Von Schubert Maximin Grunhauser Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett 2011 ($36 retail) is perfect for this. The vibrancy of the fresh vintage along with the earth and acid that this wine generously offers really makes for wonderful food pairings. What are some wine trends you have noticed recently? Sabel: People being more open to trying new regions and varietals. It’s exciting to see and makes my job fun. Vida-Arnold: Rosé is now hot all year round! And biodynamic wines are getting much more popular. I’m seeing more and more producers selling some of their older vintage. It’s such a great education on how wines age, and you get to buy them—and then pair and sell them!—when they’re ready to drink. Roberts: It’s exciting to see people really embracing wines from the Italian areas of Valtellina (Lombardy), Corsica, and Mt. Etna. I’ve always been a fan of these wine regions. The balance and energy of the well-made wines of these regions really make for great food pairings. What is a favorite current pairing from your menu and list and why? Sabel: The Essential Rosé and Poached Natirar Egg with Castle Mills Grits, Pancetta, Maple, Sasparilla & Asparagus. My Essential is the newest project for Master Sommelier Richard Betts ($15 retail). Provencal in style, it makes one ask ‘what is better than eggs and Rosé?’ It’s what we at Ninety Acres call a Sommelier’s breakfast. Vida-Arnold: Duval Leroy “Cuvée Femme” 2002 (about $140 retail). I have a Women & Wine theme at the Ritz, so this Champagne, in addition to being a beautiful pour is also aptly named—with Chef Mark Arnao’s crisp fried oysters with creamed spinach and chili hollandaise. The chili is a little deceiving because there’s only a tiny bit of heat in this dish, so you can serve a dry wine. Champagne with fried foods is a match made in heaven. The acidity and bubbles cut through the fattiness and the full-bodied creaminess of this vintage marries well with the spinach and hollandaise. Roberts: We have an on-going special that is my current favorite pairing. Chef is presenting a house-ground polenta with grilled ramps, Parmesan cheese and a Calabrian nduja [a spreadable sausage made with pork and Calabrian chili] topped with a steamed hen egg. I love serving regional food with wines from the same region. Our 2009 Librandi Duca Sanfelice Ciro Riserva Gaglioppo ($18 retail) from Calabria is a vibrant pairing with this dish. The wine has bright fruit and firm acid but a nice smokiness that lends itself perfectly to this dish. ■

Patricia Savoie is a wine and culinary travel writer. Email: WordsOnWine@gmail.com

t. j. reese

And then it happened I DIDN’T SEEK IT. I didn’t want it. My life, constructed carefully, sculpted and manicured into being just so, a refuge, a comfort zone, a place that was for so long only mine, a place that was always safe and warm. Alone. So what? Millions of people are alone, and happily alone, because nesting for one isn’t so bad, being surrounded by things, hard and soft, big and small, valuable and not so valuable, and worthless but sentimental things, and flea market finds, all of which you don’t have to wonder if someone else will like, will allow, only yourself, your self is the only person who matters. I’d been through it before, the ups and downs, the disappointments and sadness, the surprises and good times, mostly bad times, though, looking back and remembering. If it were mostly good times they wouldn’t have ended. If the surprises were all good, or mostly good, they wouldn’t have ended. What was it that didn’t work? All those times. Not so many come to think of it, only a few, so why does it feel as though I’ve been here a dozen times. Was, is, there a common thread? There weren’t that many after the divorce, only a few really. After the divorce there was Dick, not his real name, who was an artist of sorts, cynical, self-absorbed, distant, needy. Then there was Joe, not his real name either, who was self-absorbed and needy, terribly needy, sucking whatever comfort I could give him right out of me, vacuuming it up even out of the room. And then there was Oliver, not his real name, who was a Vietnam vet, figuratively still in the Mekong Delta, self-absorbed, ensconced in the past which was always present in every conversation, all conversations led to Vietnam and his exploits there being a black beret and all, and needy and suffocating. Then there was Bailey, not his real name, a born salesman, good with words, but needy and self-absorbed and energy-draining and confoundingly exasperating. And then, last, most recently, just yesterday actually, there was John, not his real name, who was, is, sweet and loving, nurturing and so, so loving, and needy, so needy, so laden with baggage, a cargo container, an airplane hangar full of baggage, of childhood stuff, terrible childhood stuff, stuff that is relived every day, every night, in every conversation, every action, every cry for attention, silently between words and thoughts and bed sheets. The best of them all, John. The one, the only one I hoped would last. So late in life John happened.

at, but for some reason I lack whatever it is that some, not many, but a precious few people have, maybe a love compass that points to a healthy, fulfilling north star that magnetically, mysteriously, metaphysically attracts the one soul in the universe to the one other soul in the universe that is the last piece, the final piece that complete’s life’s puzzle. I’m just not good at it, never was, never will be, so why try when you know you’re going to fail. I mean, really. Instead of finding that last piece of puzzle, I find puzzles, but no missing pieces, I find Gordian Knots that are impossible for a mortal to untie, except for Alexander, who found the solution when he encountered it by slicing through with one clean stroke of his sword. When I can’t untie the knot, or find the puzzle piece, or unpack someone else’s baggage, John’s baggage, I resolve the conundrum with one clean stroke. Over. Done. I didn’t seek it. I certainly didn’t want it. I didn’t even wish for it. And then it happened. What began with perfect strangers communicating about business matters, slowly, slowly developed into a sort of friendship. Over months. Then it happened. He flirted. Or I flirted. Someone flirted. And it happened. We had to meet and we did, and it was perfect. It seemed to be perfect. Beware of perfect. Stars are perfect, some peach pies are perfect, a song can be perfect, but people are not perfect. You can’t unpack other people’s baggage, they have to unpack it themselves, they have to put the things that hurt somewhere they won’t hurt anymore. John hasn’t unpacked his baggage. It’s all there, tightly folded, rolled, squished, tons of it, crowding out everything else, stuffed together so hard that you can’t tell one hurt from another, they’re all tied and knotted in one huge mass. It’s a slow and painful process to unknot everything that’s been squished and squashed for decades. They graft into each other like skin grafted on a wound grows on top but the wound may still be there, biding its time until infection makes the area so tender to touch attention must be forced upon it, lance it, make it bleed, make it ooze the pus, make it hurt. Make it hurt in order to make it better. Some infections fester and never hurt, just stay there and make the heart and soul sick, but not sick enough, or hurt enough to lance. Some people just don’t feel the pain, or if they feel the pain they don’t know from where it originates, so don’t explore, because exploring itself can be very, very painful. I wish his infection healed before I met him.

I didn’t seek it. I certainly didn’t want it. I didn’t seek it. I certainly didn’t want it. I didn’t even wish for it. But it happened. n When friends said they wished I’d find someone and be in a relationship, the word almost literally sent goosebumps up my spine, and my answer always was, oh god, no, I’m happy, content, why would I want to start again with my history, why would I want the drama, the ups and downs, the god forbid games, I don’t need it and don’t want to be in a relationship, not again, not any more. That part of me is over. I will die alone. I know that. Some things are not meant for me and a relationship is one of them. I know what I’m good

T. J. Reese is a peripatetic essayist whose writing is governed by whim, and meanders from politics to love to cultural criticism and social commentary. Female Model on Eames Stool, by Philip Pearlstein, 1978. (American, born 1924) [Gordian Knot not part of original painting.]

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sally friedman

My mother’s things THE FIRST TIME I walked into my mother’s apartment after she died, I turned and bolted. The smell of her perfume, the sight of her eyeglasses, her magazines, her comb—and the absence of her—were just too much. I couldn’t go back for days. But no matter how much I wanted to avoid it, there was the inevitable sad work of clearing out the place where she had lived for 37 years. And nobody can prepare you for going through the personal effects of a mother you’ve loved and lost. If grief is an ambush, this sorting out is its handmaiden. The first challenge: where to start. I knew it wouldn’t be the kitchen, where everything had some association with a woman who cooked the best brisket in the universe. No, the kitchen was too hard. The bedroom felt too private and personal. So I headed for what I thought was neutral turf: a hall closet where mom had kept the miscellaneous stuff every household has—the vacuum, light bulbs, trash bags, extra paper toweling. But behind some of that, I found a shoe box filled to the brim with every card we’d ever sent her, ordinary cards I’d picked out in a moment without even deliberating over the message. Why hadn’t I sent her nicer ones? No matter where I went after that closet, there was something destined to stop me in my tracks and make me sob. The yellowing, neatly clipped newspaper announcement from 1960 of my engagement. A letter I’d sent her during my sophomore year of college complaining about a killer course in James Joyce. And a spelling paper from second grade with one of those archetypal gold stars stuck to the corner. There would be other emotional ambushes in the inanimate objects. Something scribbled in Mom’s handwriting. A photograph of her as a very young woman in the back of a dresser drawer. A tiny change purse. At last, I tackled the most daunting spaces. As I’d predict-

ed, the kitchen was the toughest. I couldn’t throw out my mother’s aprons. Not the organdy one she used to wear when she had people over, and fluttered around, delighting in playing hostess. Not the flowered one with the missing tie. Her ancient flour sifter, probably a collectible by now, went to Jill, mom’s oldest granddaughter. The tray she loved was handed over to Amy, her middle granddaughter. And Nancy, the youngest, chose her grandmother’s favorite glass bowl. I carried off the enamel pot in which she made soup. It took a day to go through my mother’s stash of jewelry, little of it of any value, all of it priceless to those of us who remembered her in this or that necklace or pin or bracelet. And the clothes. Oh my, the clothes that still carried her scent, or a strand of blonde hair clinging to a collar. One day, I piled all the skirts and blazers and blouses on the bed, then plopped down on top of them and cried. They seemed so small, and so forlorn. In the end, my sister and I packed up whatever we could bear to part with and were ready to donate to charity. I scooped up the wonderful hot pink dress that my mother had worn to the last family party just weeks before her death. I also pulled my mother’s blue flannel bathrobe out of the Goodwill pile at the last minute. “As old as the hills,” my mother used to say, “but it’s warm.” The rest of my mother's life was carted off by a dealer or given to charity. And the apartment yawned empty. Every cabinet, every closet, every surface…bare. On that last day, I wandered through the emptiness, touching the walls that had enclosed my mother’s life. I deliberately opened the pale yellow curtains left hanging on her windows so that the light would still come in. And I couldn’t stop sobbing. Soon, somebody else moved into Apartment 2513. The endless real estate details wrapped around death had been settled. I just wonder how long the wonderful smell of my mother’s perfume and her essence lingered. ■

Sally Friedman contributes to the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, AARP Magazine and other national and regional publications. She is the mother of three fierce daughters, grandmother of seven exceptional grandchildren and the wife of retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Victor Friedman. Email: PINEGANDER@aol.com. 48

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about life

JAMES P. DELPINO, MSS,MLSP,LCSW,BCD

Expanding AWARENESS

EVELOPING AWARENESS IS A gift that we give to ourselves. Being more aware enriches the whole of life. Increasing awareness can free us from issues and reduce our suffering by replacing dysfunctional thoughts, feelings and behaviors with wisdom. Being able to understand others as well as ourselves enables us to move from “existing” to really being alive. Becoming more optimal in our functioning via awareness is accessible to all of us in at least the following six areas: Hindsight; Insight; Foresight; Depth; Breadth; Height. Hindsight refers to our ability to look backward and learn the lessons from what we’ve already experienced. We live in the past in the sense that our decisions in the present are based upon our experiences of the past. Having 20/20 hindsight requires reflection on our mistakes, successes and patterns of thought, feeling and behavior. Understanding where we have come from gives us a richer context for processing how we have become who we are thus far in life. Insight represents our awareness of ourselves as we go through life. Although insights may come after the fact, it is the state of our insight in the present that guides us in making decisions about our future. Insight blends the wisdom of hindsight with our current awareness in the present to help us know ourselves well enough to navigate the sometimes rough and turbulent waters of life. Without the benefit of insight we’re most often left with repeating old and non-helpful patterns of thinking, feeling and behaviors. While insights are necessary for growth and expanded awareness they’re not sufficient on their own. Many of us have good insights that we ignore. Making good choices and decisions is partly based on listening to accurate insights we have about life, ourselves and others. Foresight is about being able to project the outcomes and consequences of our words, actions and decisions into the future. In short, while living in the present with current insights we use the hindsight of our past to create a future that we desire. When foresight is compromised, it’s because of poor hindsight and/or poor insight, which then beget poor choices. Our unlearned lessons from the past cloud our ability to see circumstances, relationships and ourselves clearly. Foresight often tells us that we need to search our thoughts and/or feelings in order to make a good decision or choice. Depth is yet another dimension into which we can expand our awareness. Knowing our joys and sorrows and those of others helps us to realize more about our intuJim Delpino is a psychotherapist in private practice for over 30 years. jdelpino@aol.com (215) 364-0139. 50

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Alice Neel, Nancy and the Rubber Plant, 1975. Oil on canvas, 80 x 36 in. The Estate of Alice Neel.

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itions and in that knowledge we can become more compassionate, deepen our understanding and increase our ability to forgive. Another byproduct of plumbing our own depths is a better understanding of our place in the world. When we know our abilities and capacities both internally and externally we can find the places, people and circumstances that need what we have to offer. This kind of alignment is seen in the world in avocations, deeply meaningful careers and volunteerism. It is also seen in the deep and abiding kind of love that can be shared by two people who use the love they share to help deepen each other. The power in love is that it can drive us to become better for the sake of another and in so doing become better for ourselves. And we become better to the people around us. Breadth. Expanding the breadth of our existence offers us opportunities to become more alive at every turn. As Shah, a spiritual master put it: To see the ordinary as extraordinary and to see the extraordinary as ordinary. Each moment we are experiencing something. With experience comes a chance for learning and insight. When we generate positive and uplifting experiences in life we are teaching ourselves how to recreate them in the future. In the future we can reflect and remember these uplifting times as a source of sustenance and guidance when things are difficult or challenging. Travel shrinks the world and expands the person. Going to new locations externally teaches us about our cultural biases and judgments. When we reduce our biases and judgments we can think more objectively. Being clear and more objective in our thinking is always an advantage. By nature we humans are a curious lot. Feeding our curiosity with puzzles, mysteries and journeys to be solved, explored and taken enriches our awareness in profound and multitudinous ways. Internal journeys widen our awareness in the way that a brighter light illuminates more of a previously dimly lit basement. Height. Expanding our awareness in the direction of heights can be understood in various ways. Sometimes heights are known as peak experiences or being in the flow or being in the zone or even as spiritual. The heights of awareness speaks to the very highest and most integrated moments in our lives. These can be experiences of deep stillness and peace—they can also be moments of exuberance. They can be the heights of passion, they can be musical, they can be visual, they can be shared, or they can happen alone and they can even be the absence of all thoughts and feelings. These heights are so uncommon for most of us that they really stand out in our memories. So chipping away at the roadblocks in our awareness is homework for us all. Even if the pace is slow it’s better than no movement at all. Small changes can make very big difference over time. ■

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38 / KERESMAN ON DISC

Ron Oswanski ★★★1/2 December’s Moon Palmetto There are jazz organ discs and then there’s this Ron Oswanski’s debut platter. Whereas most jazz organists take their cues from the soul-jazz style exemplified by Jimmy Smith and Charles Earland, Oswanski takes his from pianists most closely associated with the ECM label—Keith Jarrett, Bobo Stenson, those cats, applying their spare, sometimes enigmatic approaches to the organ. And it works— instead of “cooking” like most jazz organists (not that there’s anything wrong with that), RS is moodier, more reflective, but still knows how to stoke the fires. The opener roils and seethes as such that it wouldn’t be out of place on Santana’s Abraxas; Led Zeppelin’s “Rain Song” (you read right) gets transformed into a restless midtempo number evoking late ‘60s/Blue Note-era Wayne Shorter (especially with Tim Ries’ bittersweet Ron Oswanski. soprano sax soaring/singing therein), albeit with distant jangly folk overtones. Jay Azzolina and John Abercrombie alternate contributing tasty and varied guitar. While this Moon is definitely in the jazz orbit, Oswanski judiciously employs rock-style dynamics (but not bombast) and melodiousness. This isn’t organ jazz inspired by the 1958-1972 epoch, but by sounds and inspirations of more recent vintage. Rock- and fusionbred novices to jazz might do well to start here. palmetto-records.com Kim Richey ★★★1/2 Thorn In My Heart Yep Roc Ohio-born Kim Richey is a hard one for the marketing types to, uh, market—she first established herself in country music but grew beyond it, now dwelling in that gray area between “singer-songwriter,” “Americana,” and “adult album alternative.” Her “problem” is she has a winsome, honey-and-lemon voice and sings exquisite songs about affairs of the heart and the gray (again) areas therein in a style that draws almost equally between country, folk, rock, and mature pop. Richey is melancholic and introspective but she never comes across as whiny or a capital-V victim. “London Town” has a dandy Burt Bacharach-evoking French horn motif, and “Breakaway Speed” is a shimmering, twang-laced mid-tempo rocker about, well, breaking away. The pensive, blues-tinged “I Will Wait” is Richey’s own “Fever,” a beat-ballad with haunting steel guitar sounding like a midnight wind cutting through the woods. The only downside of the otherwise very fine Thorn is it could’ve done with a few truly up-tempo tunes—but as this writer sees it, a new Kim Richey opus is a good thing in and of itself. If you value Dar Williams, Rosanne Cash, and/or Mary Chapin Carpenter, hear her. yeproc.com Various Artists ★★★★1/2 Remembering Little Walter Blind Pig Little Walter Jacobs was one of the primo movers of blues harmonica—he emerged from the Chicago electric blues scene with a unique, innovative style that impacted nearly every blues or blues-rock performer whether s/he played harmonica or not (Eric Clapton, for one). Remembering finds five harmoni-cats paying tribute to Little Walter in a live setting: Charlie Musselwhite, Billy Boy Arnold, Mark Hummel, Sugar Ray Norcia, and James Harman. (Musselwhite and Arnold knew and were friends with LW.) Enumerating the particular high points is a waste of print, as there are so darn many—suffice it to say this platter brims over with electrifying, serrated harmonica playing and hearty, from-the-gut vocalizing. True, the lyrics are mostly of the “You’re so fine/How I wish you were mine” variety—Jacobs wasn’t Cole Porter, so what? It’s the feeling of late-night, embrace-that-catharsis-and-STROLL blues, ladies and germs! Pick up Remembering Little Walter and turn your abode into a South Side bar that transcends Time and Place, pilgrims. blindpigrecords.com ■ 52

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regional theater

EDITED BY DAVID SCHULTZ

Dreamgirls 5/3 (One Night Only)

North of the Boulevard Through 5/19

A sensational new stage production of Dreamgirls is filled with onstage joy and backstage drama. This classic tuner tells the story of an up-and-coming, 1960s singing girl group, and the triumphs and tribulations that come with fame and fortune. With music by Henry Krieger and book

From the razor-sharp wit of Bruce Graham comes a blue collar comedy about a decaying garage in a declining neighborhood. Three childhood friends and a cantankerous old man struggle to make sense of their dead-end lives. Living on pipe dreams, they seek the opportunities lying dormant

her own interpretation of what has just happened. Philadelphia Theatre Company, The Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 So. Broad St., Phila. (215) 985-0420. www.PhiladelphiaTheatreCompany.org Chicago Through 5/5 Kander and Ebb’s musical has aged like a great bottle of wine. In this ever-timely satire on corruption and the era of celebrity it sparkles with each new viewing. Chorus girls Velma and Roxie, accused of murder, team up with a slick attorney in search of fame and fortune. Act 1. DeSales University Theatre, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, DeSales University, Center Valley,PA. (610) 282-3192. Into The Woods 5/3-6/2

and lyrics by Tom Eyen, Dreamgirls features unforgettable hit songs. This Tony and Academy Award-winning musical sparkles and moves like a rocket out of control, with intense pacing and energy. State Theatre, 453 Northampton Street, Easton PA. 1-800-999-STATE. www.statetheatre.org Next To Normal Through 5/12 One of the most talked about new American musicals of the past decade, Next To Normal is a critically acclaimed and groundbreaking rock musical that captured three 2010 Tony Awards (including best book and score) and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The Goodmans are an American family who are living as close to normal as they can. Matriarch Diana Goodman, a bipolar, suburban housewife, is in a constant battle with her own mental demons while her family, husband Dan and daughter Natalie, must deal with a constantly shifting dynamic in the household. Next To Normal is a remarkable musical about a family struggling to take care of each other and themselves as they cope with loss, life and defining what it means to be “normal.” Civic Theatre of Allentown, 527 N. 19th St., Allentown, PA. (610) 432-8943. Carnival of the Animals 5/9-5/12 Let your imagination soar with this whimsical and charming ballet with Christopher Wheeldon’s take on Carnival of the Animals. The story follows the dream of a boy, asleep in the American Museum of Natural History. Wild creatures emerge, and hilarious antics ensue. With witty narration written and performed by Tony-Award winning actor John Lithgow. Carnival unfolds to the well-known Camille Saint-Saens score. Two Balanchine masterpieces open the evening: the joyous allegro of “Ballo della Regina” and “The Four Temperaments.” Academy of Music, Broad St., Phila. (215) 893-1999. www.paballet.org

Revisit this beloved musical in an inventive new production of Stephen Sondheim’s spellbinding and romantic ode to children’s fairytales.This deliciously wicked musical asks: what happens after happily ever after? Fresh from their sixactor Cymbeline (a runaway off-Broadway hit), acclaimed just over the boulevard. But when a chance event gives them the opportunity to get out of their crumbling neighborhood, morality may have to take a backseat to prosperity. Featuring Scott Greer, Brian McCann, Bill Rahill & Lindsay Smiling. Directed by Matt Pfeiffer. (For Mature Audiences) Theatre Exile, @ Studio X, 1340 S. 13th St, Phila. (215) 2184022. www.theatreexile.org Failure: A Love Story 5/8-5/26 members of Fiasco Theater team up with McCarter to conjure this enchanting tale into being with whimsy, theatrical invention, an ensemble of ten actors, and a single piano. With dazzling lyrics and sumptuous melodies, this clever tale takes the classic children’s fables and makes a bold statement about standing alone against all odds. McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton N.J. (609) 258-2787. www.mccarter.org

Meet the Fail sisters: Nelly, Gerty, and Jenny June. Enter their world of talking clocks, cock-a-toos and catastrophe. When a young man named Mortimer Mortimer stops by their clock shop on a Sunday drive none of their lives will ever be the same. Full of music and magic and set in thriving 1928 Chicago, this funny and moving fable reminds us that, in the end, love is the only thing that matters. Written by Philip Dawkins. Directed by Allison Heishman. Azuka Theatre, Off-Broad Street Theater, 1636 Sansom St., Phila. (215) 563-1100. www.azukatheatre.org

Booty Candy 5/15-6/16

Venus in Fur 5/24-6/16 This wicked and demented play is subversive and a wildroller coaster of emotions. Playwright David Ives (All in the Timing) tells a darkly seductive tale introducing us to Vanda, an unusually talented young actress determined to land the lead in Thomas’ new play based on the erotic novel, Venus in Fur. Vanda’s emotionally charged audition for the gifted but demanding playwright/director becomes an electrifying game of cat and mouse that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, seduction and power, love and sex. In a mere ninety minutes tables are turned and reality shifts in kinky ways that leave audiences stunned. This play is not unlike a Rorschach Test, which leaves each theatergoer with his or

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Behind a tall church pulpit, a fire-and-brimstone preacher delivers a shocking sermon to his congregation. On the tropical sands of a deserted island, two lesbians come together. And at the home of a young Sutter, his mother scolds him for reading Jackie Collins romance novels. This is just a taste of playwright Robert O’Hara’s wildly imaginative anthology of sassy lessons in sex ed, a kaleidoscope of sketches that interconnect to portray growing up gay and African-American. With variety-show vivacity, outrageous humor, and real heart and soul, it tests how we talk about human desire and racial stereotypes at home, in church, and on the corner. The Wilma Theater, 265 So. Broad St., Phila. (215) 893-9456. www.wilmatheater.org n

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The Los Angeles Times SUNDAY CROSSWORD PUZZLE

HACKER By Jean O’Conor Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

101 102 104 107 109

ACROSS 1 Roasting aid 7 Monopoly token introduced in 2013 10 Preserve, in a way 14 Hardly eye-catching 18 Fifth-century plunderer 19 Woodcutter Baba 20 Venice’s La Fenice, for one 23 Oatmeal? 25 Smooth con man’s tool? 26 Bridge 27 Building sites 28 Roman statesman 29 Refer (to) 30 Bit of climbing gear 32 Words before DVD 33 Celebrity entourages 34 Victoria’s Secret ad? 38 People at the supermarket counter? 39 Fifth of a century 40 Fictional barber Sweeney 41 Leeds leave-taking 46 “Don’t reckon so” 47 New member of the faith shaking things up? 52 Pisa’s river 54 Exhilarating 55 Makes better 56 “You’re looking at her” 57 Queen dowager of Jordan 59 Unstable particle 60 Felicity 61 Soup kitchen scene? 68 Jordan’s only port 69 Award-winning 2012 film thriller 70 Token replaced by 7-Across 71 Hill of “Psych” 72 Tickle 74 One to ten, say 77 German one 81 Skewed priority? 84 Soft slip-on 85 Bee student 86 Wave to from the curb, maybe 87 Courtmate of Elena and Ruth 89 Drying-out problem 90 Foot pain location? 94 Café 98 Orly arrival 99 Subject of the 2008 biography “The Man Who Made Lists” 100 Kutcher of “No Strings Attached” 54

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Marathon prep run “Wuthering Heights” setting Befuddled Edam? Tired of watching “Downton Abbey”? Good thinking Diplomatic VIP “Katie” host Diamond datum Stag, e.g. Spot markers? Collectible Fords DOWN Cries from Emeril On Attach to the luggage rack, say Less resonant Hillary Clinton, e.g. Dwindled alarmingly Cook, for one: Abbr. “Ah, me!” Handicapper’s help Beethoven’s “Pathétique,” e.g. “Bridesmaids” co-producer Judd Show you know 1989-’90 Broadway one-man show American Girl collection Chaka Khan’s original band Remark to the audience Nice infants Wyoming natives Chlorine or fluorine Used up Like cottage cheese III, in modern Rome “You’d never guess, but ...” Pres. Carter’s alma mater Cape Fear’s st. Congratulatory contraction Place for a hog? Mid-century year Archfiend Send in Gaeilge, to its speakers Baseball’s Mel and Ed Bok __ Flying prefix Clunk cousin The “I” in I.M. Pei “Pleeease?” Seaman’s 12:30 “Chopsticks __ fork?”

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Phone button letters Fella Provide with gear Triple-meter dance, in Dijon Suffix with 48-Down Language that gave us “clan” Like much wine and cheese Houseplant spot Raised on a farm Totals Flammable solvents Bar in a brown wrapper Snowboarding gold-medalist White Bit of change Word sung after midnight “Can’t really say” “The Third Man” genre Digitize, in a way Antique grayish-pink shade Trembled Part of a line: Abbr. Father of the river gods Reluctant Lookalike Enterprise counselor Ancient odist Baroque musical dynasty Has sex appeal He-Man’s twin sister Statistical tool first used to monitor the quality of stout

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98 102 103 105

Hum __ Cultural idea that may go viral Round bodies First Best Actor Oscar winner Jannings 106 Basics

108 Soil holder 109 Adderley’s instrument 110 City close to Ben-Gurion Airport

Answer in next month’s issue.

Answer to April’s puzzle, SUBWAY SERIES

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HARPER’S M

INDEX Facts compiled by the editors of Harper’s Magazine

Percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born : 13 Percentage that was foreign-born in 1913 : 15 Change in the number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States since 2007 : –900,000 Portion of Republicans who supported a “path to citizenship” in a February Washington Post poll : 3/5 Who supported the same policy when President Obama’s name was included in the question : 2/5 Amount the Obama Administration spent on immigration enforcement last year : $18,000,000,000 Amount the Justice Department spent on all law enforcement : $12,400,000,000 Percentage of U.S. Hispanics who “strongly disagree” with the statement that racism is “by and large a thing of the past” : 32 Of U.S. whites who do : 34 Of U.S. blacks : 58 Number of Alabama jury-sentencing recommendations in capital cases that have been overturned by judges since 1976 : 110 Number of those cases in which judges imposed the death penalty after juries recommended life in prison : 100 Number of Egyptian police officers charged for attacks against civilians during the country’s revolution : 172 Number convicted : 2 Portion of American gun deaths in 2011 that were suicides : 2/3 Factor by which the NRA outspent all gun-control activist groups combined on lobbying in 2012 : 10 Minimum number of people accidentally shot at gun shows on “Gun Appreciation Day” in January : 5 Factor by which energy drink–related emergency-room visits have increased in the past eight years : 14 Number of reports of record-high temperatures by U.S. cities in 2012 : 362 Number of reports of record lows : 0 Estimated weight in pounds of debris left on the moon by NASA : 36,600 Rank of Canada among the largest producers of garbage per capita in the industrialized world : 1 Date on which Canada began withdrawing its penny from circulation : 2/4/2013 Estimated amount the withdrawal will save the government annually : $11,000,000 Estimated amount Sarah Palin was paid per word she spoke on air during her two-year Fox News contract : $15.85 Chances that a U.S. worker doesn’t get paid sick leave : 2 in 5 Percentage change since 1969 in the portion of U.S. schoolchildren who walk or bike to school : –76 Pounds of candy given to each North Korean child in honor of Kim Jong Un’s birthday, according to state media : 2 Chance a North Korean child suffers from stunting due to chronic malnutrition : 1 in 3 Percentage increase in the number of college students in China since 1989 : 700 Factor by which a recent college graduate in China is likelier than a peer with only elementary education to be unemployed : 4 Pollution level recorded on January 12 in Beijing on the Air Quality Index, a scale of zero to 500 : 755 Projected sales of “e-cigarettes” in the U.S. in 2013 : $1,000,000,000 Percentage change since 1992 in the portion of U.S. women who diet : –32 Percentage change since 2007 in the number of parenting books published annually in the United States : +27 Percentage of U.S. women who believe they have a personal responsibility to help the worse off : 42 Of U.S. men : 27 Amount of pay increases the U.S. Treasury approved last year for executives at firms that received federal bailouts : $6,162,208 Rank of chief executive officer among occupations most likely to attract psychopaths : 1

Index Sources 1–3 Pew Hispanic Center (Washington); 4,5 Princeton Survey Research Associates International (Princeton, N.J.); 6 Migration Policy Institute (Washington); 7 U.S. Department of Justice; 8–10 Environics Research (Toronto); 11,12 Equal Justice Initiative (Montgomery, Ala.); 13,14 Human Rights Watch (Cairo); 15 National Center for Health Statistics (Hyattsville, Md.); 16 Center for Responsive Politics (Washington); 17 Harper’s research; 18 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Rockville, Md.); 19,20 Weather Underground (Oakland); 21 Johnson Space Center (Houston); 22 Conference Board of Canada (Calgary); 23,24 Department of Finance Canada (Ottawa); 25 Eric J. Ostermeier, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis); 26 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 27 U.S. Federal Highway Administration; 28 Yonhap News Agency (Seoul); 29 World Food Programme (Kabul); 30 UNESCO (Montreal); 31 Chinese Household Finance Survey Center (College Station, Tex.); 32 U.S. Department of State; 33 Wells Fargo (N.Y.C.); 34 NPD Group (Chicago); 35 Bowker Books in Print (Novi, Mich.); 36,37 Environics Research (Toronto); 38 Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Washington); 39 Kevin Dutton, University of Oxford (Oxford, England).

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FINDINGS Compiled by the editors of Harper’s Magazine

MATHEMATICIANS DISCOVERED A NEW prime number, 257,885,161 – 1, and the existence of a pseudoprime that is the sum of 10,333,229,505 known primes and contains roughly 295 billion digits but cannot be represented precisely because the mathematician who found it lacks sufficient RAM. A Reader in Artificial Life at the University of Hertfordshire unveiled a new system for evaluating informational redundancy in systems. Darkness lets stressed green algae produce hydrogen, restores the vision of amblyopic kittens, and makes dogs four times as disobedient. Rats who waken to an induced sodium hunger will consent to taste the usually disgusting saltiness of the Dead Sea. Phosphorus starvation was indicated in cases of huanglongbing, UV fluorescence in carnivorous plants was observed in Thiruvananthapuram by a team under phytochemist Sabulal Baby, and an inexplicable jelly appeared at a bird reserve in Somerset. Researchers discovered how owls crane their necks. “Brain-imaging specialists like me,” said a neuroradiologist, “have always been puzzled as to why rapid, twisting head movements did not leave thousands of owls lying dead on the forest floor from stroke.” The Rinjani scops owl (Otus jolandae) was judged a distinct species from the Moluccan scops owl (Otus magicus). Carotenoids enrich the plumage of young male hihi birds. Barn swallows supported the idea that human redheadedness may combat high uric-acid levels. Male Eurasian jays kept from their monogamous partners will on reuniting offer them novel larvae. The obscuration of the ocean’s infrasonic rumblings in Jersey Hill, New York, may cause homing pigeons to lose their way. Dung beetles in a planetarium will, in the absence of a moon, navigate their balls by orienting themselves to the glow of the Milky Way. Humans’ skin color may no longer be appropriate. DNA FROM A MAN’S kiss was found to remain in the mouths of Slovak women for up to an hour, cyberstalking was found more expensive for its victims than traditional stalking, and doctors finally induced fear in a fearless woman, SM, by partially suffocating her. Humans are unaffected by the misinformation of robot interrogators. Scientists turned a dead sparrow into a robot that provoked living males to fight with it, and reanimated the jaws of dead carp to a maximum bite strength of 700 newtons. The spiritual risks of lowland tapir meat do not deter non-Christian Makushi and Wapishana from its consumption. Conservativeness strongly correlates with a preference for name-brand mayonnaise. Disasters make Sichuanese nine-year-olds more selfless and six-year-olds more selfish. Biomedical engineers conducted a study of freshly failed human hearts. Narcissists tend not, as was previously assumed, to be envious. The hearts of straight couples beat together. A spaceship is better steered by two brains than by one. A FLORIDA MAN WHO claimed to have been bitten by a black mamba was exposed as merely having been bitten by his pet cobra. Embryonic banded bamboo sharks hold their breath in the presence of predators. The Princess of Lake Tanganyika is likelier, under threat of predation, to accept immigrant helper fish who assist with the care of offspring. Dolphins were found to call the names of other favored dolphins from whom they become separated, a misshapen dolphin was reported to have been adopted by a pod of sperm whales, and Chromodoris reticulata sea slugs were found, on disposing of their penises, to produce new ones from an internal spool. Marine biologists worried about the picky eating habits of herbivorous reef fish. The world’s largest crocodile died of chronic diarrhea. The NIH announced the retirement of its hepatitis-C chimpanzees, and a loggerhead turtle in a Kobe aquarium at last achieved swimming success with her twenty-seventh set of prosthetic fins. “When her children hatch,” said the aquarium’s director, “well, I just feel that would make all the trauma in her life worthwhile.”

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5 / BACKSTAGE

Franklin’s Folly? The idea was a good one: Build a museum devoted to the life and contributions of Benjamin Franklin. It did happen, and when it opened in 1976, was said to be among the most technologically advanced museums in the country, even though their “Princess Phone” set-up that enabled visitors to “call” historic figures from Franklin’s time, rarely worked. The museum closed in 2011 and was set to reopen this summer after more than $20 million in renovations, but that opening may be delayed because of Federal spending cuts. Even Ben, it seems, is not immune from the concept of “sequestering.” A Prince of a Theater James E. Hines, one-time Artistic Administrator of the Mann Center, has been named Chief “Staffer” of the now out-of-bankruptcy Prince Theater. The theater has a 25-year lease on its 1412 Chestnut Street locale under an agreement signed with an ownership group headed by businessman Herb Lotman.

Lotman hopes to “reestablish the Prince as a premier destination in the city’s performing arts, contemporary music and film scene.” Look for Prince attractions, mainly booked via outside promoters, beginning in September. Boardwalk Beat The vultures are already circling the now-in-bankruptcy Revel casino in Atlantic City. Our colleague from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Suzette Parmley, recently wrote: “Should Revel end up on the auction block post-summer, among those circling and reportedly expressing interest are Penn National Gaming (also competing for Philadelphia’s second gaming license), and Sugar

House’s Neil Blum.” Revel has brought in a new interim CEO from the Mohegan Sun Casino Resort in Connecticut, and plans a smoking area, beach bar and more reasonably priced restaurants by the end of this month. Entertainment cutbacks, as of this writing, are also evident, as only Il Divo and ZZ Top are booked for May. The A.C. city fathers can’t be faulted for trying, and as Ms. Parmley recently reported, “The resort needs all the help it can get.” A group called the A.C. Alliance has partnered with the Casino Reinvestment and Development Authority to put together a $20 million ad campaign called “Do A.C.,” depicting, among other things, glamorous images of gamblers at poker and blackjack ta-

bles. Hey, here’s an idea: How about tearing down the burned out crack houses that are still standing, often just yards away from many of the casinos? For Art’s Sake Clay Studios has honored Ruth Snyderman at its annual gala, celebrating 48 years of her presence in the world of Philadelphia crafts. Since 1982, Snyderman’s Works Gallery and Synderman Gallery—they merged in 1996—have mounted landmark exhibitions by artists and designers that have helped her gallery become one of the most prominent in the country and at the forefront of the nation’s crafts movement. At 30th Street Station, a 16-foot high fiberglass and metal sculpture of what can best be described as “a cartoon-like seated figure with its hands over its face” will be on display until May 14. This impressive piece of work, obviously attracting a good deal of commuter attention, is

Philadelphia to focus on the performing arts, will open in the former Glaxo office at 16th and Vine. Philadelphia Performing Arts Center, among others, will buy the $29 million venue, which will formally be called String Theory High School for the Arts and Sciences. Plans are to finance the property via tax-free bonds issued by the Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development (PAID). “It’s the most exciting high school this city has opened in a generation,” says Angela Corosanite, String Theory CEO. Really Big “Shews” Those concerned about the whereabouts of those veteran entertainers who once appeared on television programs like The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show and the Tonight Show, no longer have to be concerned. Recent attractions at the Sellersville Theater included impressionist Rich Little and guitar wizard Roy Clark. This month, look for rockers Carl Palmer and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, country star Ricky Skaggs, country swingers Asleep at the Wheel, and on Memorial Day weekend, none other than the Monkees’ Peter Tork. For up-to-date schedules, access St94.com. He once said: “Even now I know what you’re thinking.” This quote came courtesy of George Joseph Kresge. Oh, George’s professional name is The Amazing Kreskin, and TAK is not only not dead, but he’s busier than ever. L-R: Ed Sullivan and Rich Little. He recently paid a visit to these parts by way of an April 24 show at the Levoy Theater in Millville, NJ, and comes to the State Theater in Easton on June 28. Vaudeville is not dead. And neither is Kreskin. This is “Whar” The Wharton Business Foundation, with locations in Blue Bell, PA and Beverly Hills, CA, bills itself as The Internet Marketing Experts. Whatever they do, their name is apparently too similar to another Wharton, that being the University of Pennsylvania’s 132-year-old Wharton School of Business. The old Wharton is taking the newer Wharton to court, “barring the misuse of its trademark,” saying that “use of their name creates a likelihood of confusion in the marketplace.” There is no truth to the rumor that plans for a Wharton Cheesesteaks have now been tabled. ■ Join me Backstage and send your items to DrumAlive@aol.com.

called “Companion (Passing Through),” and was fashioned by a former street artist and Disney animator who works under the professional name “KAWS.” For those interested in such things, KAWS is actually Brian Donnelly, a native of Jersey City. Frankly Speaking There wasn’t much middle ground when it came to opinions about the late, larger-than-life Philadelphia mayor, Frank Rizzo, who passed away at the age of 70 in 1991 in the midst of his fifth campaign for mayor. Former Inquirer reporter S.A. Paolantonio’s book about Rizzo, published in 1993, was optioned as a film five years later, but nothing came of it. But the South Philadelphia-based Theatre Exile is resurrecting the project as a play, to be written by the awardwinning Bruce Graham. The project is still in the early stages, with hopes for a 2014 premiere. In other “Frank news,” get this: There’s yet another Sinatra impersonator out there by the name of—and we’re not kidding—Sean Sinatra, billed as “Just Like Ol’ Blue Eyes.” He’s actually Sean Reilly and he’s as busy as all get-out, frequently performing at The Golden Inn in Avalon, New Jersey. Just like Ol’ Blue Eyes? Before you start “spreadin’ the news,” hear him on the web at SeanSinatra.com. Classical Gas Longtime Philadelphia Daily News classical music writer Tom DiNardo has reported a classical music “first” for Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Orchestra and Opera Philadelphia will team up to present Richard Strauss’ Salome. The two performances, set for May 8 and 10 of next year, will be conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin. Salome, which requires four major voices to be heard over the enormous instrumental scoring, will be highlighted by full staging and costuming, and the orchestra will be seen on stage throughout. According to DiNardo, “This collaboration wouldn’t be practical for an opera with a large cast and chorus, but the relatively small number of major characters in Salome makes it an ideal choice, especially because the performances will take place during the 150th anniversary of Strauss’ birth.” String Theory School, a new performing arts charter high school that will be the first in

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Though we never did find out why Parliament burned down, we knew that our love affair with faux/dress/casual/hybrid Levi black “slacks” was over. Escaping the grit of the city for the ivy-draped tapestry of the Penn campus always gives us the feeling of a small vacation or even of slipping into Grimm’s Fairy Tales. At the Kelly Writers House (which somehow reminds us of Hansel and Gretel) we watched as KWH director Al Filreis introduced The New Yorker’s Janet Malcolm, called the most dangerous woman in journalism, to a cramped crowd of mostly (bagel munching) grad students. Malcolm’s demure countenance— she could blend in easily with a pack of ladies looking over an Entenmann’s display—was countered by steely eyes that held hits of a Scorpion’s Den. As a speaker, Malcolm has none of the exterior thunder of a Susan Sontag or a Camille Paglia, even if Robert S. Boynton, in The New Journalism, warned potential Malcolm interviewees to beware. “Don’t ever eat… or show her your apartment; or cut tomatoes while she watches. In fact, it probably isn’t a good idea even to grant her an interview, as your every unflattering gesture and nervous tic will be recorded eventually with devastating precision. You most likely won’t be happy with the results; you may even want to sue.” Part of Malcolm’s talk focused on The Journalist and the Murderer, Malcolm’s book about former Inquirer columnist Joe McGinniss’ book, Fatal Vision, about Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, M.D., convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife and two daughters in 1979. But the real reason we like KWH events is because they remind us of our own student days, when the “good” students sat up front and asked the most questions, even if the woman of the hour, as a writing student in college herself, only earned a C grade. “In college—the University of Michigan—I took a creative-writing course with the novelist Allan Seager, who gave me a C for the term. It was mortifying, but probably helpful. I never tried to write fiction again,” Malcolm told The Paris Review. Theresa Rebeck’s play, Seminar, at the Suzanne Roberts Theater, about a group of grad student types learning how to write from a pricey sadistic writer instructor, should never be seen by beginning writers. Leonard, the teacher (Rufus Collins), is a caricature of the impossible-to-please critic who gets his students so wound-up that when they sit down to create they’re barely able to get the words out despite Hemingway’s admonition to “Just get to the typewriter and bleed.” There was plenty of onstage bleeding, however, in terms of hurt feelings after Leonard excoriated the prose of all present. The end result of these autopsies had us thinking of a literary companion called Rotten Rejections, where the Leonards of the world panned works that later went on to become classics. To wit: Lolita: “It will not sell, and it will do immeasurable harm to a growing reputation’; Valley of the Dolls: “Dreadfully dull and endless talk”; The Fountainhead: “Badly written”; James Purdy’s Malcolm: “Incomprehensible”; Madame Bovary: “Utterly superfluous”; The Time Machine: “Not interesting enough for the general reader.” After the play, we chatted with Sara Garonzik, Lisa N. Heyman and Christopher Munden (Philly Fiction) and then headed over to Fergie’s bar to forget the whole excoriating experience. We lowered our trousers, dusted off our bling and baseball cap and headed over to the Ten Six Club on Walnut Street for the Smirnoff vodka-sponsored VH1 “Master of the Mix” party with Philly’s own DJ Royale. Though as out of our element as Mayor Nutter at a Westboro Baptist church protest, once we got the finger symbols down pat we had to contain a passion to jump on stage and scratch some LPs. In the 1980s, DJs were called record spinners and had not yet entered the realm of celebrity. That’s all changed. There are genius polymath DJs as good as Bach, Beethoven, and the Beatles— or so they say. We met the tall and handsome Mr. Royale who has four years of Philly Sound DJ-ing under his belt, who seemed eager to compete for Best DJ in Master of the Mix’s Season 3, a cable reality show we admit we’ve never watched. We enjoyed the subculture anthropological scratchiness of it all even though the Smirnoff “open bar” was not open at all (wine not included). More women (in heavy perfume) than men moved through the crowd with guest DJs like Elvis Sunrez, Arun and Mr. Sonny James. Mr. Royale, as it turned out, made it past the first and second round. We previewed the 52nd Philadelphia Antiques show, courtesy of Cashman Public Relations, and got a pre-show glimpse of early American pewter objects, furniture, art and decorative pieces from 65 antiques and art galleries. Exhibitors set up booths as buzz saws and forklifts had us thinking we were in a classy Home Depot. We were invited to touch, smell and squeeze every type of antique imaginable, which eventually led us to the booth of Gemini Antiques Ltd. (of New York fame), where one of the Weiss family proprietors pointed out the shops’ specialty: antique toys. The Weiss’ were full of stories, most notably how Jackie Onassis once swooned over a small cup, insisting that she had to have it and that if she were given it “as a gift” she’d tell her friends to shop at Gemini. Weiss, whose shop has a huge celebrity cliental, ended the conversation when he told the former First Lady, “Didn’t you just inherit $100 million from your late husband’s estate?” John F. Kennedy Jr. was also a regular visitor and, according to the Weiss’, the only word they heard him utter when commenting on an item was “Cool” (“Here’s the son of a President, and the only word he knows is cool!”) This wasn’t the end of it. One day when the handsome heir of Camelot wanted to buy something, he had to ask the Weiss’ how one goes about endorsing a check. At the end of the day, we thanked our tour guide, PAS Chair Katharine Eyre for her economical maneuvering around the forklifts and unopened boxes. Zebras stand alone: that’s what we told ourselves when we got into a staring contest with a zebra at the Philadelphia Zoo some time ago. The zebra in question kept us visually engaged for a full five minutes, locking eyes in the steady manner of a shaman, even following us as we made our way to another animal habitat. This unusual eyeball dance remained a mystery for years until The Sofitel’s Patricia McDonald showed us artist Norma Bessières’ Taming of the Stripes, on display in the hotel lobby through June 2013. Bessières’ work illustrates many examples of the zebra eye, what the artist calls a “sensual gaze in the intimacy of a tête-à-tête.” In conjunction with the exhibition, Executive Chef Jim Coleman of Sofitel’s Liberte Lounge and Chez Colette have prepared an African-inspired menu, such as Ugandan Veal with Bananas and Ginger and Nigerian Pancakes with Smoked Shrimp. Now we can all have a farm in Africa. ■ 58

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26 / EXCLUSIVE FEATURE / THE TIMERINOS

and sculptures, is a living, breathing tribute and an up-to-theminute curated collection. The Tiberino’s massive garden acreage—treehouse and all—is a multi-studio grounds where live bands, film screenings, poetry readings, live nude modeling, chess tournaments, avant-garde goddess performances and the Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow’s burlesque dancers, clowns and fire-breathers happen gives “The Ellen” a constant sense of future-forward movement to go with its painted recollections of all Tiberinos past. “Forget about the scores of works that we’ve done,” Joseph Tiberino once told me in connection to the thriving, living memorial in which his family resides. “We’ve been here approximately 46 years and in that time, people other than the family have created various works—some genuine masterpieces, some that no one knows about, some I don’t even recall completely—along with the work we make daily. This space is about constant discovery, for us and our audiences.” Those audiences can only get bigger; not solely because of the very public mural that depicts immigration, North Philly street scenes, corner-bound crooners and the like along the Municipal Services Building outside walls. Mayor Michael Nutter recently visited “the Ellen” as part of a neighborhood arts initiative and acknowledged the Tiberinos’ three-dimensional murals importance to the community in a literal and figurative sense as well as crediting their Museum with being a necessary focal point of Powelton Village. Along with a recently filmed (and currently airing) PBS/WHYY television special on the family and its Museum, Joseph Tiberino has directed fantastic mockumentaries on varying aspect of his, his wife’s and the family’s work with films such as The Mural and The Museum. To go with those films, documentary filmmaker Derrick Woodyard is currently living on the Tiberino family complex and filming them for his own full-length documentary. “The Tiberinos put together a space that’s an adventure to be in—not like an ordinary museum where the art is encased in glass along white walls, but one where the art is literally the entire world and atmosphere around you,” says Radio Eris’ Lora Bloom, the co-creator of Goddess Night. “You are part of the experience; so much emotion, so many stories on those walls.” Few and far between are the public art spaces dedicated to a single artist’s work, let alone a family’s: Warhol’s Factory, the Wyeths’ compound are but two. Combine that rarity with the fact that the Tiberinos exist there as a living, breathing, organic part of the compound and you get the personal side of the Museum. Beyond the singularly personal or even the familially personal, Joseph Tiberino is married to the idea that art should be in Philly’s neighborhoods in smaller home galleries and mini-museums such as theirs. Gary Steuer, Philly’s Chief Cultural Officer in the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, believes so as well. As the man who ran similar art programs in New York City, Steuer wants to see art with social significance scattered throughout town and told Tiberino as much. “He says he wants to help us create a touring exhibition of our work as well as maximize our presence in this city,” says Joseph Tiberino, sitting in the basement of his home Museum’s newest room, a cleared-out junk cellar that now doubles as a studio for visiting sketch artists. He seems content in the knowledge that “the Ellen” is as world-class as it is homespun. “I hope that happens, that we get to bring our work throughout the country. I think people would get it if they were exposed to it.” ■

agenda CALL TO ARTISTS ARTISTS CALL: Artist of the Month Series Tredyffrin Township Building in Chesterbrook, 1100 DuPortail Road, Berwyn, PA. Monday-Friday 8 AM-4:30PM. Closed Weekends. To be considered, contact Monique Kendikian-Sarkessian at monique.kendikian. sarkessianfineart@hotmail.com. Must be a member of Delaware Valley Art League. DVAL, founded in 1947, is a non-profit association of professional artists that exists to promote interest in the fine arts within the community & to advance the skill and creativity of its membership. Check for more exhibits, workshops and information about membership: delawarevalleyartleague.com facebook.com/delawarevalleyartleague ART EXHIBITS THRU 5/4 Spring Juried Show. Delaware Valley Art League, Penn Medicine at Radnor, 250 King of Prussia Rd., Radnor, PA.] THRU 5/5 Patterns of Life: new work by Pat Lange and Carol Sansalone. The Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge St., Lambertville, NJ. Reception 4/6, 47. Fri-Sun 11-6. 609-397-4588. lambertvillearts.com THRU 5/18 New Hope Arts Sculpture Exhibition 2013. The 13th Annual exhibition showcases more than 40 regional & national artists. New Hope Arts, 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA 215-8629606. newhopearts.org THRU 5/26 Look for our Sunroom Gallery at the Bucks County Designer House. Visit BucksCountyDesignerHouse.org. Patricia Hutton Galleries, 47 West State St., Doylestown, PA. 215-3481728.PatriciaHuttonGalleries.com THRU 5/31 New Work, Schmidtberger Fine Art, 10 Bridge St., Suite 7, Frenchtown, NJ. 908-268-1700, sfagallery.com THRU 6/2 John Petach, “Rivertown.” Quiet Life Gallery, 17 South Main St., Lambertville, NJ. Open Wed.-Sun. 609-397-0880, quietlifegallery.com THRU 6/15 Martha Jackson Jarvis: Ancestor’s Bones. Drawings, paintings, digital imagery, and sculpture. Williams Center Gallery, Lafayette College, Easton, PA. M-W & F 11-5; Th. 11-8; Sat. & Sun.12-5. 610-330-5361. http://galleries.lafayette.edu THRU 6/28 La Tauromaquia: Carnicero, Goya and Picasso. Arthur Ross Gallery, inside the Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania, 220 So. 34th St., Philadelphia, PA upenn.edu/ARG 5/1 New Hope Arts, reception for the outdoor sculpture program 6:30-8:00pm. New Hope Arts, 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA newhopearts.org, 215-862-9606 5/2-7/7 “Retrospective,” featuring multiple artists; Wendy Paton & Stephen Perloff: “Two for the

Road” continues in Gallery ll. Red Filter Gallery, 74 Bridge Street, Lambertville, NJ. Thur.-Sun.12-5. 347-244-9758. redfiltergallery.com 5/3-28 Two Girls and Their Art. Work by Stacie Speer Scott and Annelies van Dommelen. “The A Space,” New Hope Arts, Bridge St, New Hope. Open Fri, Sat, Sun. Reception 5/11, 6-9. 5/4-9/7 Spring Juried Show. Penn Medicine at Radnor, 250 King of Prussia Rd., Radnor, PA. Delaware Valley Art League. delawarevalleyartleague.com 5/5-6/16 21st Invitational Exhibition of Fine Art Miniatures from Around the World. Opening recep. 5/4, 1-5. Live music/hors d’oeuvres. The Snow Goose Gallery, 470 Main St., Bethlehem, PA. 610-974-9099. thesnowgoosegallery.com 5/10-12 Pennsylvania Guild Fine Craft Fair. Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Friday & Saturday: 11-7; Sunday: 11-5. pacrafts.org 5/10-6/2 EAT. Work by Rich Harrington and John Treichler. Reception 5/11, 4-7pm. Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge St., Lambertville, NJ. Fri-Sun 11-6. lambertvillearts.com 5/11 & 12 Patricia Hutton Galleries participating in the Bucks Fever Gallery & Studio Tour! 11-4 pm. Painting demonstrations, talks by artists Frank Arcuri, Dot Bunn, and Janine Dunn Wade. Refreshments. Patricia Hutton Galleries, 47 West State St., Doylestown, PA. 215-348-1728. PatriciaHuttonGalleries.com 5/18-6/9 An Artist’s World. Reception 5/18, 4-8pm. The Studio & Gallery of Materese Roche, 5113 Anderson Rd., Buckingham, PA. matereseroche.com 5/25 Atelier Dualis welcomes Omar Rodriguez who will be presenting a demonstration in graphite during Downtown Bethlehem’s first Artwalk of the season! 4-8pm, 91 West Broad St., Bethlehem, PA. 419-304-9000. atelierdualis.com. 6/2-9/1 “Toulouse Lautrec & His World:” The art and life of one of the most fascinating artists and personalities of the Belle Époque in France. Preview Party, 6/1, 6-8pm. Allentown Art Museum, 31 North Fifth St., Allentown, PA. 610-432-4333. allentownartmuseum.org 6/2-6/15 “Opposites Attract”: artwork by Charles McVicker and Lucy Graves McVicker. Sawmill Gallery, Prallsville Mill, Rt. 29, Stockton, NJ. Tues-Sun. 1-6 pm. Talk and tour by Charles on June 5, 2 pm. Closing party 6/15, 3-5. Benefit for the Delaware River Mill Society. lucygravesmcvicker.com / charlesmcvicker.com

Historic Main St., Bethlehem, PA. Sat. 10-5, Sun. 11-5. bfac-lv.org 5/18 28th Annual Baum School Art Auction. Silent auction begins 6pm; live auction begins 8pm. Preview night, 5/16, 6-8pm. The Baum School of Art, 510 W. Linden St., Allentown, PA. 610433-0032. baumschool.org 5/18 The 13th Annual Arts Alive! Juried Arts & Craft event. Downtown Quakertown, PA, 104. Great shopping, live music, food, free admission and parking, kids’ activities. New this year: Wine tasting on East Broad St. Rain date, 5/19. 215-536-227 quakertownalive.com 5/18 8th Annual Young Playwrights’ Festival, 7pm. Plays written by area students, with direction and performances by the Touchstone Ensemble & community guest artists. Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center, Bethlehem, PA. Gala dessert reception and live/silent auction in the Lehigh University Art Galleries to follow. 610-867-1689. touchstone.org. 6/1-6/2 Peddler’s Village Fine Art & Contemporary Craft Show. Routes 202 & 263, Lahaska, PA. 215-794-4000. Peddlersvillage.com 6/15 Stahl’s Pottery Preservation Society presents its 26th Annual Summer Pottery Festival, 9:004:00. Sales by 30 contemporary potters, tour pottery site, demonstrations, refreshments & baked goods. Admission $3/adult; under 18 free. Free parking-held rain or shine. 6826 Corning Rd., Zionsville, PA. For directions and information, stahlspottery.org. 610-965-5019.

THEATER 5/3-6/2 Into the Woods. Book by James Lapine; music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, NJ. mccarter.org. 5/4 Héctor Del Curto, Tango Quintet, 9PM. Dinner & Show 6PM. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. 610-758-2787. zoellnerartscenter.org 5/19 An Evening with Garrison Keillor, 7:30pm. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. 610-758-2787. zoellnerartscenter.org 5/23 2013 Freddy Awards, The State Theatre Center for the Arts. 7pm. Stream live at WFMZ.com. 453 Northampton St., Easton, PA. 610-2523132. statetheatre.org 6/10 & 6/11 Addams Family, 7pm. State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton, PA. $60/$55. 610252-3132. statetheatre.org

FESTIVALS & AUCTIONS 5/11 & 12 48th Annual Fine Art & Craft Show. Over eighty regional, national & local artists, arts profects for children, fun for the entire family.

6/12-6/30 Crazy for You, The New Gershwin Musical! Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre, Allentown, PA. 484-664-3333. muhlenberg.edu/smt

6/12-6/30 Rodgers & Hammerstein’s, Oklahoma! Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, DeSales University, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. Tickets: 610-282-9455. PaShakespeare.org

MAUCH CHUNK OPERA HOUSE One of America’s oldest vaudeville theaters, built in 1881. 14 West Broadway, Jim Thorpe, PA. 570-325-0249. mauchchunkoperahouse.com 5/3, 4 5/9 5/10 5/11 5/17 5/18

DINNER & MUSIC Saturday nights: Sette Luna Restaurant, 219 Ferry St., Easton, PA. 610-253-8888. setteluna.com Thursday nights: DeAnna’s Restaurant & Bar, 54 N. Franklin St., Lambertville, NJ. Live music and raw bar. 609-397-8957. deannasrestaurant.com.

5/19 5/24 5/25 6/2 6/14

Every Thurs.-Sat., Dinner and a Show at SteelStacks, Bethlehem, PA. 5-10:00pm. Table service and valet parking. Information, menus and upcoming events visit artsquest.org

6/15

CONCERTS

6/22

Some organizations perform in various locations. If no address is listed, check the website for location of performance.

EVENTS Thru 5/31 (Every Saturday) Mixology Weekends, 1-5. Sample 3-4 mixed drinks. Free recipes. Tasting fee $8. Chaddsford Winery, Peddler’s Village, Shop #20, Lahaska, PA. 215-794-9655. chaddsford.com

5/5 St. John’s Chancel Choir and Friends. Copland’s Psalm Motets and Favorite Anthems. Arts at St. John’s, St. John’s Lutheran Church, 37 So. Fifth St., Allentown, PA. 610-435-1641. stjohnsallentown.org

5/17 Tinicum Art and Science 8th Annual Coffee House Fundraiser, 5pm to 8pm. Student performances, artwork, fabulous vegetarian food and silent auction. Tickets $25 in advance. 610-847-6980. tinicumartandscience.org

5/5-7 ALL MOZART. Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K.546; Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K.364; Symphony No. 29 in A major, K.201. The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. 215-545-1739. chamberorchestra.org.

5/27 Rice’s Market is open for Memorial Day. Come to Rice’s for great prices! Open year round. Tues. & Sat. Rices.com

5/4 and 5/11 106th Bethlehem Bach Festival: Rioult Modern Dance Company in an all-Bach program with Bach Festival Orchestra. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University. 610-866-4382, ext. 10 or 15. bach.org.

6/1 The Peddler’s Village Friends & Family Rube Goldberg Challenge. In dedication to the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Reuben Lucius Goldberg who created whimsical drawings depicting machines taking simple, everyday tasks and making them as incredibly complicated as imaginable. Routes 202 & 263, Lahaska, Bucks County, PA. For more information: 215-794-4000, Peddlersvillage.com

6/2 An Afternoon of Jazz and Classical Music: A Benefit for Musicopia. 3PM. Presented by ICON, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, WRTI.FM, Jacobs Music and Drum Workshop. Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Tickets: icondv.com or 215-730-1789.

READINGS 5/11 at 6:00PM Panoply Books Reading Series 2013: Gary J. Whitehead. FREE. Poet, painter and cruciverbalist Gary J. Whitehead will read from his just-released collection of poems, “A Glossary of Chickens,” selected by Paul Muldoon for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. His poems have appeared widely, most notably in “The New Yorker.” Panoply Books, 46 N. Union St., Lambertville, NJ 609-397-1145

6/9 Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra. Valley Vivaldi chamber music concert by principal instrumentalists. Music of Vivaldi, Bach, Pergolesi, Handel, Telemann, Boccherini, Quantz, and Tartini. 7:30, Christ Lutheran Church, 1245 W. Hamilton St., Allentown, PA. Tickets: 610-434-7811, PASinfonia.org ARTSQUEST CENTER AT STEELSTACKS (Musikfest Café) 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA 610-332-1300. artsquest.org 5/9 5/11 5/17 5/22 5/23 5/24 6/1

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CLASSES Summer Arts Programs at DeSales University. Summer Video Institute: desales.edu/svi, ext. 1732; Summer Theatre Institute:desales.edu/sti, ext. 1320; and Summer Dance Intensive: desales.edu/sdi, ext. 1663. DeSales University, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. For more information, 610-282-1100 or desales.edu/svi

Preservation Hall Jazz Band The Red Elvises The Fabulous Thunderbirds Chick Corea: Solo Piano Concert Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Music of Grover Washington, Jr: Jason Miles, Musical Director Dave Davies of the Kinks ■ W W W. I C O N D V .C O M

Cast of Beatlemania Trampled Under Foot Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys Start Making Sense The Peek-A-Boo Revue Commander Cody with Professor Louie and the Crowmatix CD Release Celebration with Craig Thatcher and Nyke Van Wyk The Jon Herington Band Childhood’s End: Pink Floyd Tribute Tea Leaf Green Dave Matthews Tribute by Billy Bauer Band Craig Thatcher’s Salute to the Fillmore, Volume III The Felice Brothers

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