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Contents 6

OCTOBER 2014

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

Filling the hunger since 1992

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

1-800-354-8776 • 215-862-9558

www.icondv.com

AT EASE AS A REBEL AMONG REBELS | 22

“When I won the Oscar, I made a point of actively going against that and doing adventure films like 'Con Air' and 'Gone in 60 Seconds,' not what would be expected.” — Nicolas Cage

THE FINE ART OF IRONY | 24

Signe Wilkinson, Editorial Cartoonist, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, and the National Press Foundation’s Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning.

President/Publisher Trina McKenna trina@icondv.com Assistant Raina Filipiak to the Publisher filipiakr@comcast.net

ADVERTISING 800-354-8776

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA | 26

Opera Philadelphia’s 40th anniversary season finds General Director David B. Devan casting globally and competing with the great opera centers of the world for the best artists.

COLUMNS Hung Liu, Midsummer Magnolia.

City Beat | 5 Jim Delpino | 37

A THOUSAND WORDS

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Gone Fishing | 7

ART HUNG LIU| 6 EXHIBITIONS | 8 Delaware Art Museum Treasures: Penn Museum New Hope Arts VASILY KANDINSKY | 10

The Zero Theorem.

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FILM CINEMATTERS | 12 Hector and the Search for Happiness KERESMAN ON FILM | 14 The Zero Theorem BAD MOVIE | 16 Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who is John Galt?

SINGER / SONGWRITER | 34 Jesse Winchester Joe Ely Sutter Zachman Dulcie Taylor & Friends Dale Watson

EDITORIAL

KERESMAN ON DISC | 35 Joel Harrison Moraine Moebius/Story/Leidecker David Rosenboom Morton Feldman Marcin Wasilewski Trio George Cables

City Beat Editor Thom Nickels / thomnickels1@aol.com

JAZZ LIBRARY | 36 Carmen McRae

DINING Caleb’s American Kitchen | 38 Tavern on Camac | 41

ETCETERA L.A. Times Crossword | 42 Agenda | 43

FILM ROUNDUP | 18 Listen Up Philip Last Days in Vietnam Good People The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

Cartoon by Signe Wilkinson.

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REEL NEWS | 20 Venus in Fur Edge of Tomorrow A Coffee in Berlin Mystery Road

THE LIST | 30

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Designer Lauren Fiori Assistant Designer Kaitlyn Reed-Baker

Fine Arts Editors Edward Higgins Burton Wasserman Music Editors Nick Bewsey / nickbewsey@gmail.com Mark Keresman / shemp@hotmail.com Bob Perkins / bjazz5@aol.com Tom Wilk / tomwilk@rocketmail.com Food Editor Robert Gordon / rgordon33@verizon.net

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS A. D. Amorosi / divaland@aol.com Robert Beck / robert@robertbeck.net Jack Byer / jackbyer@verizon.net Peter Croatto / petecroatto@yahoo.com James P. Delpino / JDelpino@aol.com Sally Friedman / pinegander@aol.com Geoff Gehman / geoffgehman@verizon.net George O.Miller / gomiller@travelsdujour.com R. Kurt Osenlund / rkurtosenlund@gmail.com

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).

MUSIC

Opera Philadelphia production of Oscar.

DESIGN

PO Box 120 • New Hope, PA 18938 (800) 354-8776 Fax (215) 862-9845

ENTERTAINMENT

NICK’S PICKS | 32 Hilary Gardner The Fred Hersch Trio Rotem Sivan Jason Moran

Executive Editor Trina McKenna

ON THE COVER: Nicholas Cage. Page 22

Copyright 2014 Prime Time Publishing Co., Inc.

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City Beat

THOM NICKELS

ThomNickels1@aol.com

We were surprised to see that a good many people on Facebook summed up Robin Williams’ death this way: Yes, it was a very tragic thing, but ultimately it was his choice, and we have to respect that. The opinions were stated as if suicide was just another life option—to smoke or not to smoke; to book a flight or rent a car. It’s your choice to jump in front of the El, swallow two bottles of sleeping pills, or dart out into the middle of traffic. As good citizens, we have to respect “choice,” though it would be best not to jump from a tall building and hit a pedestrian on the sidewalk.

As a choice, suicide didn’t hold much water with our 95-year-old great aunt, the last survivor among her circle of friends, and a lady who felt very much alone in her rooms at Roxborough’s Cathedral Village. “Every depression, every misfortune,” she’d often say, “is like going through a tunnel. You come out the other end. You don’t want to end things when you’re still in the middle of it because acting too soon would be the greatest tragedy.” While she would often joke about taking her own life—like jumping into the Wissahickon Creek near the Valley Green Inn—everyone knew that that she was bluffing, the result of a temporary depression that played touch and go with her like an intrusive, annoying fly.

Although the Valley Green Inn was built in 1850, the roots of the Inn can be traced back to Revolutionary War days when it was a hostelry to wayfarers and vagabonds. In 1875, the Inn was known as I.D. Casselberry’s Valley Green Hotel. For more than a hundred years the Inn kept its interior integrity intact, but something happened recently to prick up our ears: a home and garden design team “updated” the look of the dining room, so now the place has the look of a restaurant in Williamsburg or a Disney period room in Orlando. We feel no affection for these “upgrade” design wreck-o-vators.

We visited the new Dilworth Plaza on opening day and noticed armies of vested cheerleaders distributing Plaza-info brochures. The concerted effort to “force” people to like the new design seemed conspiratorial at first. Then there was the earsplitting music which made it difficult to hold a conversation. Yet just as we were about to critique the plaza’s small multiple fountain 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

sprays (arranged like a city garden watering system), we stepped back and noticed something marvelous: how the open space in front of City Hall frames the building in a way we’ve never seen before. It was clear how the old Plaza’s cumbersome maze of steps leading to levels, bi-levels and sunken, rotting urban “gardens,” hid much of the building’s beauty. The new design makes City Hall breathe, even sing. The effect is reminiscent of those great open European spaces in front of palaces and cathedrals, although the groupings of chairs arranged randomly in front of the Plaza café caused us to ask if they’re for café paying customers only. And what about the uncomfortable looking, narrow cement wrap-around bench that had us wondering where (and how) “large” people would sit. While ardent fans of the new look, if we could change one thing it would be to retrieve the Emlen Etting sculpture, Phoenix Rising, created to honor Richardson Dilworth and installed in front of City Hall in 1982 but moved to an under-appreciated spot near Society Hill Towers.

We hear that the Philly Police are riding dirt bikes on the remote, wooded paths throughout Pennypack Park in the Northeast.

What are they looking for? Presumably, they’re on the hunt for suspicious activity, which can mean anything these days—hiking with a pointed walking stick, bird and deer watching, reading Thoreau under a tree, or slipping into a pair of Yoga pants behind a bush. Does being legitimately idle in this society now mean sitting among hundreds of people in a controlled greenhouse environment like Rittenhouse Square? Is it now a possible criminal offense to be seen roaming as a solitary person in wild places off the beaten track?

We heard Thomas Dent Mutter biographer Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz speak at the Mutter Museum, but left the talk and reception knowing only two things about Philly’s most eccentric physician: that he invented anesthesia (ether) and the concept of a recovery room after surgery. What we did learn was a lot of stuff about the author, including how many grants she won, how much the Wall Street Journal loves her book, and how a section of her book was published by The Atlantic. The author’s mother (a nice woman) also wanted us to know that it was her wish that one of those wealthy Long Islanders reading the Journal’s review of Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine might offer to produce Cristin’s screenplay on the topic—“Plus, you know,” Mom

said, “She was on NPR’s Marty Moss-Coane this morning.” The author’s highly unconventional presentation included readings by slam poet friends, and even a slam poet/military paratrooper who really looked more like an accountant. When we introduced ourselves to Cristin afterward, she smiled and said if we wanted to interview her, we should give our card to her marketing person. After we did that, we never heard from anyone in the Aptowicz camp again.

The pompadour mystique has always been high on our list, so like most film buffs we were early fans of Eraserhead, a visually enriching film that tends to stay with you, even as its meaning tends toward the elusive.

David Lynch stumbled into film as a student at PAFA, influenced by the work of David Cronenberg and Dino De Laurentiis. His TV series, Twin Peaks, once hypnotized the nation, but then something happened—he seemed

John Turturro in Eraserhead.

to fall in love with his pompadour, and began to immerse himself in things like Sthapatya Veda architecture (architecture, planning, and building in accord with Natural Law) with its gold Kalash domes. He founded the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, and after becoming an advocate for Transcendental Meditation was once heckled and almost booed off the stage when his cohort and guru, Raja Emanuel, wanted the audience to repeat, “I’m a good German who wants to make Germany invincible. That’s what Adolph Hitler wanted.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the right technique.” Lynch then sprung into damage control and called Raja “a great human being.” About his movie Dune (1984), Gene Siskel (of Siskel and Ebert) once remarked that it’s “a story confusing beyond belief—I hated watching this film. It’s an unintelligible film.” Ebert added that the film’s “amazing sets are totally senseless.” The best thing about Lynch is his unpretentiousness

and his connection to Philly, especially when he was a starving artist and when local art gallery owner, Rodger La Pelle came to his financial—and emotional—rescue.

We went to the Cashman and Associates party celebrating the public relations firm’s new digs at 232 North 2nd Street. A very pregnant Nicole Cashman made random appearances throughout the five-plus hour event. We met photographer Andre Flewellen, The Tribune’s Bobbi Booker, Fox 29’s Good Day co-host Mike Jerrick. We also spotted Sharon Pinkenson before heading downstairs to the Cashman basement, a cozy den and library where we wanted to spend the night.

We offer a final goodnight to truth-teller Tony Auth, whom we had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with months ago at artist Liz Osborn’s house. Although lionized (after death) in The Inquirer, two years ago Auth was forced out of the same newspaper when things there turned sour, confusing and right wing. Auth told us then that an editorial cartoonist of his controversial stature would stand no chance of being employed there today. As for The Inquirer’s stepchild, Philly.com, Auth frowned and said Philly.com was run by well-connected but clueless twentysomethings with zero experience in journalism.

In an interview with a psychologist (youtube.com/watch?v=3NmVoqmfH0M), Joan Rivers confessed that the pain she had struggled with most in life had to do with feelings of personal betrayal. Her husband Edgar’s suicide—secretly planned, and a shock to her—was a betrayal that she still hadn’t gotten over. She was still angry with Edgar for this act of duplicity. She explained how Edgar made goodbye videotapes to family members, and before he went off to kill himself, told his daughter Melissa that he’d see her the following day. “He told my daughter a lie,” she told the psychologist, “and now I’m worried for her. She’ll grow up thinking that every man is a liar. And when Edgar died he left me with a fabulous mansion, but I was alone with no show and no contract, and I was miserable.”

If anybody knows Joan Rivers, it’s Melissa. Melissa became the new Edgar, the caretaker, the tower of strength behind the scenes. And Joan, the talented perfectionist, was undoubtedly impossible to live with.

“Imagine being under her scrutiny all the time,” a friend of ours commented a day after Rivers’ death. “Imagine the pressure and intense stress of that.” ■

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Art

EDWARD HIGGINS

Hung Liu

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THE WORK OF HUNG Liu, a Chinese artist based on the West Coast, is being exhibited for the first time in Philadelphia at LaSalle University, and it is quite an impressive introduction. Hung Liu: Prints and Tapestries runs through December 5.

Liu, a professor of visual arts at Mills College, was born in Changchun, China, in 1948 and was educated (and re-educated) during that country’s Cultural Revolution. Her birth came just as the country was coming under the dominance of Mao and the course of her life was changed dramatically.

After years of study in China she entered the United States in 1984—one of the first to get permission—to take an MFA at the University of California at San Diego.

With the exception of several return visits, Liu has been in this country since. It was, however, one of those visits that sparked the nexus of her current work. She became interested in historical photographs and sought them out. No small task, as during the Cultural Revolution many such photographs were destroyed by families who didn’t want authorities to have any reason to punish them. Liu, herself, had spent four years being re-educated through farm work in camps set up in rural China.

Many of the photographs she found were taken by foreigners of “types” of individuals such as acrobats, war refugees, boatmen, and the like. One series was of prostitutes which were used just to solicit clients. These are the basis of the portraits in the exhibition. They’re larger than life size, done in the manner of realism widely used by Communists for their leaders. The works were then painted over with lines, collages, pictures of birds, butterflies, monkeys, rats, flowers, and stamps. A facsimile of an official-looking identification card is sometimes stuck in the lower left-hand corner. The large-scale faces are straight-forward, serious, and even a bit plaintive.

Liu’s artist statement is the equal of her work: “The result of this overlay is liberation from the rigid methodology of Socialist Realism—the style in which I was trained in China—as an improvisational painting style in which the photo-realism once used in the service of propaganda now dissolves into a fresh kind of history painting. In other words, I make new paintings from old photographs.”

The resulting work, especially those heavily decorated with traditional Chinese motifs, are perhaps more influential to those who know and understand them. It’s not always

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

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Winter Blossom, 2011, Woodcut with Acrylic, 32.25” x 29.75”, Ed. 25, Magnolia Editions.

easy, as the butterfly can mean summer and joy, long life, or a young man in love. There are dozens of species of monkeys and each represents something else.

Nonetheless, the images are powerful, subversive and dramatic. They show skilled painter’s years of training, but also the emotions of a freer brush and a wide color palette. The young women appear as if they are the leaders of the country being celebrated in paint.

Liu attended the Beijing Teacher’s College and then the Central Academy of the Fine Arts in Beijing and also the San Diego campus of the University of California. The tension between the two approaches must have been a very stressful collision of cultures.

Few printmakers give credit to those who assist in making the print—however, Liu is careful and confident to give such credit. She has won two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and has exhibited her work internationally. Her works are in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the Walker Center.

As part of the exhibit, on November 6 at 1:00 p.m., LaSalle professor Dr. Charles Desnopyers will present a lecture on Liu and her history. ■ LaSalle University, 1900 W. Olney Ave., Philadelphia (215) 951-1000 www.lasalle.edu

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A Thousand Words

STORY AND PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK

Gone Fishing

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HE PIZZA SHOP IN Jonesport was already open when I went past at four in the morning, its fluorescent lights probing the night fog along a short section of Main Street.

Pickup trucks clustered in front, lights on, motors running. Inside, the lobstermen were getting their coffee and sandwiches.

I parked in the sandy lot near the bridge, pulled on my boots and walked out onto one of the wharves with my bag of gear. The bare bulb on the bait shack threw shadows along the weathered boards. Near the end of the wharf, a set of narrow stairs covered with green sea-stuff led between the pilings down to a small, wooden raft. I was supposed to get on it and pull myself by a rope over to the floating dock. Looking down into the darkness, I wasn’t so sure.

Dwight, who owns the lobster boat Mum’s Girls, parked his truck at the wharf and nodded to me as he walked past and climbed down the stairs. I watched him ride the raft out to the dock and then I went down, too. The raft rocked in the water, a perilous foot away. Dwight saw my uncertainty and told me to take a big step and grab the railing. It was a hairy moment but I got it settled and he pulled me over.

He got into a dinghy and rowed out to his boat. In a few minutes, Mum’s Girls came to life with a deep rumble. She pulled from her mooring, threaded past the other boats and eased up to the dock. My ride was here. The sternman, Mike, arrived and swung himself over the wide rail in one motion. I tried to do that, too, but flopped into the boat landlubber style. Hi, I’m the painter you agreed to take out today.

Robert Beck maintains a gallery in Lambertville, NJ. His annual exhibition, Open Road, Opens october 25. Robert can be contacted at robert@robertbeck.net.

Dwight released the line and slowly took the boat onto the reach. A few kitchen lights shone from the island as the fog lifted, and we motored under the bridge toward the gold line that was creeping its way onto the horizon. Dwight pushed the throttle, the bow rose, and I leaned forward. Water kicked out to the side and behind. I could see the lights from another boat keeping speed with us against the vague form of Great Wass Island.

Mum’s Girls headed at full speed out into the Atlantic Ocean. The 400-horsepower diesel was so loud you needed to yell to be heard, but there was little conversation. Mike packed small mesh bags with bait. Dwight kept his eye on the plotter and depth finder. Twelve miles off shore it became a beautiful morning. To the west, the top of Cadillac Mountain broke the flat expanse of sea and a whale sounded just off our bow.

Dwight slowed us down to a drift as we came up on a field of lobster buoys and I recognized the orange and white stripes that marked his lines. I don’t know how he found them out there. He and Mike began their day of hauling, collecting and sorting the lobsters, restocking, and setting many of the 500 traps they tend, strung in pairs 200 feet below the surface. It required hours of highly choreographed, dangerous work. Mum’s Girls heaved with each swell. The hydraulic winch was fed by hand, and lines slithered along the slippery deck, dragged to the sea bottom by the heavy metal crates. Movements were quick. Everything was wet.

This day was a good one but Dwight and Mike kept an eye on the weather while they worked. The warning signs are subtle: the direction of the wind, the color of the water, the form of the waves. We were a 38-foot vessel alone with the elements and a storm can move in from nowhere, swallowing islands, harbors and boats. They come fast, so you pay attention.

Seals sunbathed on Seaduck Rock as we headed back toward the harbor. Beal Island was up and dressed in summer greens with touches of red roof and white porch. Every now and then a reflection flashed from the windshield of a car traveling the coast road. The cloud of seabirds greeting a returning dragger sparkled against the blue sky.

Eight hours of reacting to the motion of the sea rendered useless most of my long-ignored muscle groups and my exit from the boat was as inelegant as when I boarded. One of the guys working on the dock noticed me staggering around and helped rope the raft and me back to the scary stairs. “Take a big step,” he said. ■ W W W. FA C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V ■ W W W. I C O N D V . C O M ■ O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4 ■ I C O N ■ 7

The Cabinet of Dr. Foto

Nature Morte: Platinum Prints

by Bruce Katsiff

Jay Eisenberg: Past Present Future

Delaware Art Museum 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, DE 302-571-9590 delart.org october 4 – January 25 Opening reception 10/5, 1:30 – 3:30 For more than thirty years, photographer Bruce Katsiff has worked on the series Nature Morte. He collects the remains of birds and mammals—skulls, skeletons, bones, and feathers—which he arranges with other objects in his studio. His orderly compositions, evoking Renaissance cabinets of curiosities, are captured with a large-format view camera and printed in platinum and palladium. Surprisingly beautiful, Katsiff ’s photographs present a haunting meditation on mortality. Former Director and CEO of the James A. Michener Art Museum (1991–2012) and Professor and Chair of the Art and Music Division at Bucks County Community College, Katsiff has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in Pennsylvania and New York. The 29 photographs on view in Nature Morte explore the artist’s meditations on mortality, geometry, and the history and practice of photography.

New Hope Arts 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA 215-862-9606 NewHopeArts.org JayEisenbergArt.com October 5 – 13 Opening Reception 10/4, 6 – 8 pm

TREASURES University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 3260 South Street Philadelphia, PA 215-898-9202 http://wcpennmuseum.com october 31 – November 2 TREASURES Jewelry Sale & Show. The signature fundraiser returns oct. 31 – Nov. 2 with more than twodozen accessory designers and jewelers from across the country and around the world. There will be items for every taste from exhibitors such as Castor Jewelry, Barbara Heinrich Studio, EnA Fine Jewelry, Mark Needham Good Idea and Of Times Gone By. Together, they offer a unique combination of antique and vintage jewelry and accessories—like handbags—as well as contemporary pieces. Exhibitors carry a mix of affordable and higher-end pieces.

TREASURES takes place in the galleries of the Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, in Philadelphia’s University City neighborhood. In addition to garage and metered on-street parking, the Museum is easily accessible via bus and regional rail. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit wcpennmuseum.com or call 215-898-9202.

Winged Equine.

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Early on Eisenberg wanted to work in and master as many different mediums as possible. He thought that’s what artists do. His work as a painter varies; pencil, charcoal, pastel, watercolor, gouache, egg tempera, acrylic and oil paint.

The imagery is grounded in realism. It is, for him, the process of orchestrating abstraction to create a representational illusion of reality. Whether portraiture, landscape or still life, he evokes something with the imagery that may make a statement about art, love, politics or morality. He often creates his own frames encapsulating a picture with materials that relate to the imagery, therefore extending the theme beyond the picture.

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Art

Vasily Kandinsky, Pastorale, February 1911. Oil on canvas, 105.7 x 156.5 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 45.965. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

BURTON WASSERMAN

Vasily Kandinsky

ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL characteristics of what people frequently call “Modern art” was the conception, early in the 20th century, of an entirely new language of non-pictorial expressive visual form. The artist responsible for this remarkable breakthrough was Vasily Kandinsky. He was born in Russia in 1866. After his parents were divorced, he spent his early years in the city of Odessa.

In due course he entered the University of Moscow and focused his academic efforts on the pursuit of studies in law and economics. In time, however, Kandinsky lost interest in these scholarly fields. He then left Russia and moved to Munich. There, he turned his attention to learning about making art.

In 1896 he established relationships with several of the leading vanguard painting groups of the region. They inDr. Wasserman is a professor emeritus of Art at Rowan University, and a serious artist of long standing.

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cluded Phalanx, the New Artists Association of Munich and The Blue Rider. In their own unique way they were each devoted to creating, publicizing and exhibiting work that reflected aesthetic ideas typical of the expressionist schools of thought emerging in Germany at the time. As such, they played a significant role in shaping new outlooks in which the traditions and practices of the past were replaced by new beliefs, ones with artistic characteristics of faith in powerful feelings of internal necessity and a drive to be true to the notion of individual creative freedom.

At this stage of Kandinsky’s career he was also dedicated to voicing the sense of spirit he felt was alive within himself.

As he proceeded, he felt that such a spiritual reality also existed universally within all people. He believed that one ought not expect the overt appearance of such material real-

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Cinematters

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PETE CROATTO

Hector and the Search for Happiness

HERE’S MY REVIEW OF Hector and the Search for Happiness: Get lost.

You want more, huh? OK. Life affirming fare works better if the characters learn after being challenged in some way. Veteran director Peter Chelsom isn’t interested in that idea. Hector and the Search for Happiness, an inspirational comedy based on François Lelord’s novel, gives us the warm and fuzzies, no chaser. The result is the first movie ever based on inspirational posters.

This journey starts with good intentions. Simply put, Hector (Simon Pegg) has lost his smile and it’s tarnishing everything, namely his psychiatry practice. When he verbally lashes an upper class mother for agonizing over reducing her nanny’s hours, Hector realizes he can’t help his patients find vhappiness when he can’t find it himself.

The answer is a getaway, but not the typical Eat, Pray, Love enlightenment package. Hector isn’t soul searching, at least that’s what he tells himself. This is for scientific research. His orderly, precise life of labeled sock drawers and breakfasts delivered with FedEx precision is fine. The practice is what’s suffering. So Hector visits China, Africa, and Los Angeles searching for an answer. He’ll return to England when he has one.

Hector learns plenty on his search, which he records— along with lovely ink drawings—in his little leather notebook.

The whole enterprise feels inauthentic because Hector doesn’t grow. Pegg is a wonderful actor. He can play both cynical and wide-eyed for laughs and not strain going in either direction. The script, written by Chelsom, Maria von Heland, and Tinker Lindsay, does Pegg no favors. One moment we see a bitter, repressed man who runs his life with military precision. The second he hits the airport, he’s dressed like an ex-

plorer in a children’s storybook and lobbing one-liners at the flight attendant. Asked if he would like a drink, Hector quips: “Is the pope circumcised?”

It’s a funny line, and a telling one: Hector has already grown before the in-flight movie. So the trip is a sham, and it grows more and more unbearable as the world reveals to be at Hector’s beck and call. Everywhere he goes Hector meets kind souls who speak perfect English and are Disneyized models of ethnicity. If you’re fat, homely, or don’t sound like a United Nations translator, then scram. It is the world as amusement park, a place where your every need is met and, at times, anticipated. His gorgeous girlfriend, Clara (Rosamund Pike, who, like Pegg, tries her damnedest), caters to his every anal-retentive whim and promises to wait for him; the angry businessman (Stellan Skarsgård) sitting next to Hector ends up taking him for a wild night when their plane lands in China; a super-nice African lady (S’Thandiwe Kgoroge) offers to make Hector sweet potato stew after they land. Wouldn’t you know it? She does. And her whole happy, signing clan adores their new white friend. Even the warlord running the veldt (Jean Reno) tolerates him.

Hector isn’t from our world. When talking to Clara for the first time in days, he announces that he was kidnapped like he’s just read The Catcher in the Rye or saw God in his pancakes. He’s not wide-eyed, but a recipient for watery morals dispensed by ethnic mascots and their crazy cultures featuring corruption and kidnapping. Even when the world is bad, it’s still pretty good, right? More lessons for everyone!

No. I can’t put faith in a movie that spoon-feeds us the homilies found in the small books sold at gift shops—the ones inevitably given to us by relatives who are either bereft

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of ideas or don’t know us very well—as true wisdom.

Especially when Chelsom displays zero respect for us as thinking people. This is the kind of movie where a white woman wearing pearls and a scowl sits in business class as Hector cares for a sick (and wise!) woman of indeterminate ethnicity. This is the kind of movie where Christopher Plummer’s brain researcher is shown to be a cool dude by dressing like Marvin Gaye circa What’s Going On. This is the kind of movie where Chelsom uses brief snippets of Hector as a child—in jumbly home movies, in dream sequences—as emotional depth. This is the kind of movie where Chinese monks brag about having Skype to signify that it really is a small world after all. This is the kind of movie where Hector’s latest nugget of knowledge—“Happiness is answering your calling”—unfurls on the screen in a happy, affirmative font. Even as it’s being recited to us.

Any charm is extinguished with wave after wave of grablife-by-the-collar proselytizing. I would recommend it to kids, only the movie’s spell-it-out approach to life resembles the solemn health class videos about abstaining from sex or turning down drugs that I endured in high school. Hector and the Search for Happiness is empty, condescending, and myopic.

Chelsom not only thinks he has something important to say—he shouts it into our ears with a bullhorn.

My original review stands. [R] An ICON contributor since 2006, Pete Croatto also writes movie reviews for The Weekender. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Broadway.com, Grantland, Philadelphia, Publishers Weekly, and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @PeteCroatto.

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Keresman on Film

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MERICAN-BORN, BRITAIN-BASED director Terry Gilliam has made some wonderful movies—The Fisher King, Brazil, Time Bandits—and The Zero Theorem is his first movie since 2009’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Gilliam’s films are known for their charmingly, sometimes cringe-inducing (and I mean that in a “good” way) twisted sensibility—12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The Zero Theorem, starring Austrian ace Christoph Waltz (Django, Inglorious Basterds), is like Gilliam’s best yet it isn’t, neither fish nor fowl, leaning a bit toward foul, alas.

Waltz is Qohen, a “cruncher of entities”—obviously a play on “numbers cruncher,” letting the viewer know this is going to be a satire on the corporate mindset, as was Brazil.

Qohen is a virtual cipher, a near-idiot-savant that’s a wizard at computer stuff but a virtual basket case away from it. He has phobias of the outdoors, people, being touched, and darn near everything else. He petitions his company’s bosses to “tele-commute,” to work from home (an abandoned church) where he’ll presumably be more “efficient.” We never learn exactly what his company does or produces—I guess that’s supposed to be satirical. Anyway, the “object” of Qohen’s work is to find places for his cyber-world blocks (each containing/embodying a mathematical code) in order for zero to “equal” 100. Existentialism, I guess. Qohen gets distrac-

MARK KERESMAN

The Zero Theorem tions—at first unwelcome, then welcome—in the form of a quirky (what else?) lady, Bainsley (Melanie Thierry), and a precocious teen techno-whiz kid, Bob (Lukas Hedges).

Bainsley is one of those women that exist primarily in the movies—as we all know, hot-looking ladies just go head over heels for guys that are a walking mass of phobias and nervous twitches. Qohen—in the grand existential tradition of anti-heroes—wants to work from home because he expects to get a miraculous phone call that will explain the Meaning of Life…or his life, at any rate. Yeah, that makes virtually no sense, but that’s the character and his M.O. or we would have no movie.

The Zero Theorem is essentially a mash-up of Brazil, Bladerunner, Inception, The Matrix, and Office Space, a heavy-handed satire of humanoid hamsters running on corporate wheels and a garish in-your-face, yet ultimately depersonalized society. Commercials beam noisily from almost every wall surface in the street, and people dress in a manner that’s a mix of a Jetsons/Liquid Sky/Rocky Horror-themed Halloween party. Qohen is essentially unlikeable yet sympathetic at the same time—he seems to have been beaten down by reality so much that he’s only at home as a worker bee in the hive of cyberspace. At the same time he despises the work he does but he has no idea of any alternative—

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until Quirky Girl and Precocious Lad come into his life and show him that, hey, there’s more to life than…uh, whatever.

Zero Theorem is essentially a philosophical version of Inception in that we don’t exactly know what’s real or in virtual. But where Inception came off as a James Bond fan’s wet dream, Zero is…just that, a Philosophy 101 version of Does Life Have Meaning or are we all meat puppets in the hands of a chaos-driven jerk of a puppeteer? Matt Damon has a great brief supporting role as the fearsome Management, an Übermench who dresses like Liberace—one must be careful speaking his name. He, like many of the characters here, talks in philosophical circles. Also, like David Lynch, Gilliam inserts some weirdness-for-the-sake-of-being-weird…maybe because Gilliam, like Lynch, has fallen into the trap of “fanboys/girls are going to like this because it’s So Me.” There is some very good acting going on herein, but The Zero Theorem is the kind of movie that had it came out 20 years ago, it would seem cutting-edge—now it just seems obvious and dated. ■ Mark Keresman also writes for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Pittsburgh City Paper, Paste, Jazz Review, downBeat, and the Manhattan Resident.

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Bad Movie

S

MARK KERESMAN

Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who is John Galt?

OME OF US MOVIE fans want to see our favorite books made into movies…including of course fans of author Ayn Rand, whose Atlas Shrugged was influential for those that believe that unfettered capitalism is THE WAY TO GO, baby! Let the marketplace dictate everything, and as for those that don’t have a, uh, viable “stake” in capitalism, well, to heck with them. It’s an oversimplification but if the shoe fits, kick yourself with it, I say. Rand’s philosophy can be encapsulated thusly: I got mine, screw you and I matter, you don’t.

Selfishness über alles, in other words.

In the world of Atlas Shrugged, the U.S. is being destroyed from within by socialistic policies of the government: Regulations that stifle rather than encourage innovation and growth; and those parasitic bums that insist the government take care of them from cradle to grave, while the poor captains of industry struggle to keep what they’ve worked so hard to build. In Rand’s version of the U.S., the rich industrialists have almost no power and they’re at the mercy of the damn government, which is occupied with the needs of the many. But wait—the Best and the Brightest are disappearing!

(See parts I and II.) Where to? In Part III, we learn: They’ve

run off to a valley where they can flourish, a utopia with (wonder of wonders) virtually no people of color. Their utopia is powered by a “motor” that draws electricity from the air. (Those physics classes? Forget ‘em.) The Best/Brightest left America and their leader, John Galt, is their fearless yet compassionate leader. Compassion, in Rand’s utopia, isn’t forbidden—it simply must be given by someone’s free will, not “forced” by the government. Government largess such as welfare? Unthinkable. Yet Rand received social security when it was her time to collect. (She matters, you do not.)

How’s the movie? A laugh-riot almost beginning to end.

The good guys (the intrepid capitalist rebels) are all physically attractive. The government functionaries are homely/ugly and smoke cigars. A narrator refers to “the Head of State and his cronies” as if they were the Mob headed by Al Capone, albeit without Big Al’s compassion. Unions are viewed as a combination of the Communist Party and the Russian Mob, without any of their decency or fashion sense. Because of government meddling, the country is on the verge of collapse.

The dialogue is so simplistic one wonders if Rand and/or the screenwriters had any familiarity with the capitalist system they love so much. Why did an iconic bridge collapse? Government regulations, of course. I get why some folks distrust

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the government, but if it didn’t have laws and pesky regulations in place, some greedy types would…I dunno, maybe do stuff that would fatten their wallets at the expense of people’s safety and health. Call me a crackpot Marxist.

Virtually none of the C-list cast of the previous installments have returned to reprise their roles…and who can blame them? The dialogue is at the level of afternoon soap operas, embarrassingly earnest and heavy-handed. Characters repeat things the narrator already told you. Some aspects of the story make no sense: Everyone in Rand’s secret utopia is dressed in vintage LL Bean and even though the population is the Best and Brightest, who built their town? Just because you are a financial wizard (with the first name of Midas, no less) or an oil magnate does not mean you are a carpenter or architect. Why does the president have John Galt tortured instead of just executing him? Hint: It’s called a Plot Contrivance, which gives industrialist Dagny Taggart a chance to act like a pistol-packin’ partisan. The lovely Dagny goes into the bowels of a subway in an evening gown and has Lifetime Channel-type sex in its control room. Of course.

This writer howled with laughter at all the serious parts… and to put icing on lumpy gravy, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rand Paul have cameo parts as commentators. ■

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Film Roundup

PETE CROATTO

Jessica Chastain, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

Listen Up Philip (Dir: Alex Ross Perry). Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce, Krysten Ritter, Joséphine de La Baume, Jess Weixler, narrated by Eric Bogosian. Thirtysomething NYC novelist Philip Lewis Friedman (Schwartzman) has finished his second novel, which certifies him—in his mind, anyway—as a full-fledged, committed artiste. So, naturally he can adopt a toxic personality that blends braggadocio with impatience and assholery. Bryn Mawr native Perry’s third feature film examines Friedman’s destructive presence on his ever-decreasing circle of friends, including his long-suffering girlfriend (Moss) and literary titan Irv Zimmerman (Pryce), whose initial benevolence quickly fades. The writer-director takes a risk in centering a movie on a totally unlikable person, but it’s a credit to his intimate, laid back approach and brittle humor—never mind Schwartzman’s deft performance—that Philip elicits feelings beyond contempt. He is so committed to being an author that he ceases being a human being. He’s a figment of his own snobby aspirations. It says something that the film’s narrator is third-person omnipotent. Even in his own movie, Philip is above it all. (Note: I’m sure any resemblance to Philip Roth— from the cover art of Zimmerman’s books to Friedman’s woes with women—is purely coincidental.) [NR] ★★★ Last Days in Vietnam (Dir: Rory Kennedy). Veteran documentarian Kennedy (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) focuses on the 1975 fall of Saigon, specifically the efforts of American embassy employees to get the hell out before the North Vietnamese army arrived. Like most of America’s time in Vietnam, nothing went smoothly. The embassy’s proud di-

rector, Graham Martin, refused to evacuate the compound until the bitter end, so scores of workers and their South Vietnamese compatriots were covertly shipped out by Martin’s own employees. With the North Vietnamese army closing in with lethal ease, the only workable evacuation plan involved U.S. helicopters transporting embassy personnel and South Vietnamese citizens to battleships. Thousands scrambled for safety. Not everyone made it. Even if you already know the story, Kennedy’s thoroughly reported, bittersweet film reveals how feelings can rise above or get squashed by protocol. [NR] ★★★ Good People (Dir: Henrik Ruben Genz). Starring: James Franco, Kate Hudson, Tom Wilkinson, Omar Sy, Sam Spruell. American transplants Tom and Anna Wright (Franco and Hudson) moved to London after the 2008 recession. The fresh start is officially moldy. Eviction and financial ruin loom, until the couple’s downstairs roommate dies, leaving behind an unclaimed bag filled with 200,000 pounds. Tom, who’s hiding the full financial reality from Anna, pays off some debts. Then Anna, who wants to get pregnant, spends a bit to advance that desire. Pretty soon they’re attracting attention from a devoted cop (Wilkinson), a suave drug dealer (Sy), and a sadistic, police-protected crime lord (Spruell). Though I hoped the movie would become a Mexican standoff of misguided morality, Genz’s (Terribly Happy) swift, atmospheric take on the getaway tale is still satisfying—even if the ending resembles Straw Dogs as written by Home Depot employees. A slight but entertaining outing that is enhanced by Genz’s

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gritty, jaded eye, less so by Franco and Hudson’s performances. The supporting cast, especially Wilkinson and Spruell, does pick up the slack. Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Snowpiercer) adapted Marcus Sakey’s novel. [R] ★★★ The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (Dir: Ned Benson). Starring: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Viola Davis, Bill Hader, William Hurt, Isabelle Huppert, Ciarán Hinds, Jess Weixler. A combination of Benson’s two previous films, subtitled Him and Her, Them is no barely functioning Frankenstein monster. It presents a crumbling marriage from the perspective of the deliberately named Eleanor (Chastain) and Connor (McAvoy), who unravel after a tragic event. She leaps off the Brooklyn Bridge, survives, and retreats to her parents in Connecticut. Connor, who’s a bit reluctant to grow up, is uncertain how to pursue. Basically, they’re two fractured souls figuring out how to become whole again. By constantly keeping us at arm’s length, Benson, who also wrote the script, keeps us involved. He transitions expertly between the spouses’ strange new worlds, revealing just enough for us to keep wondering why these two rudderless people keep circling each other en route to reclaiming the past, or if it’s worth the effort. The certainty of romance has faded and now nobody knows anything, which is why Them feels so haunting even in its quiet moments. McAvoy and Chastain are terrific. And the rest of the seasoned cast is pretty damn good.

[R] ★★★1/2 ■

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Reel News

GEORGE OXFORD MILLER / REVIEWS OF RECENTLY RELEASED DVDS

Venus in Fur.

Venus in Fur (2014) ★★★★ Cast: Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric.

Genre: Drama Bases on Broadway play and 1870 novel By Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch.

Directed by Roman Polanski.

Unrated, contains sex, nudity, profanity Running time 96 minutes.

In French with English subtitles.

It opens onto an empty theater. A director (Amalric) has given up auditioning women for the leading role as a dominatrix. Then Vanda von Dunayev (Seigner) shows up late. Who is this harried, tattooed bimbo? Is she the floozy she looks like or the sophisticated dominatrix character she portrays? Or is she someone totally different intent on dominating, subjecting, manipulating the condescending director? With abrasive finesse, she peels back layer after layer to expose the director’s misogynistic views of women, sex, status, and power. This two-actor psychological drama tags all the emotional and intellectual bases as they battle for dominance, and the last word.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) ★★★★ Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton.

Genre: Sci-fi thriller Based on the novel All You Need is Kill Rated PG-13 for violence, profanity Running time: 113 minutes.

A Coffee in Berlin (2014) ★★★ Cast: Tom Schilling, Marc Hosemann.

Genre: Drama Unrated, contains strong language Running time 88 minutes.

In German with subtitles.

Like déjà vu, every summer gets a mindless sci-fi blockbuster and the fall DVD release. This year, Tom Cruise joins the fantasy movie mix as a decidedly anti-superhero stuck in a time loop reminiscent of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. But instead of just getting the girl, Rita (Blunt) the warrior queen, wimpy William Cage (Cruise) must save the world from an unstoppable alien attack. Cage starts out as a hapless military PR spin man (shades of Clark Kent, reporter?), and ends up in full-body armor (without the cape) on the front lines of Normandy Beach, site of the futuristic last-stand battle. Zap! He’s killed, then wakes to start over again, and again. Though not a parody, the cowardly Cage bumbles his way in classic savethe-world fashion with apt one-liners, thriller battle sequences, hyper CGI, and splattered aliens along the way. Cruise may have at last found his niche here.

When law-student dropout Niko (Schilling) breaks up with his girlfriend, he spends the day wandering the streets of Berlin with no higher ambition than a cup of coffee. The day-in-the-life storyline follows the slacker as he sinks even lower. Once full of hope and potential, Niko now is surfing the wipe-out slope of a wave toward a dubious future where random events instead of willful decisions determine his fate. But along the way he encounters a succession of wacky characters full of unintended insight.

He meets an old schoolmate artist, homeless man, actor in a Nazi movie, and a drunk still haunted by memories of Kristallnacht.

They all have stories that show the promises and tragedies, and unlearned lessons, that life brings everyone. Shot in black-and-white with a jazzy sound track, the movie looks at “what it all means” through the eyes of a searching, youth on a fool’s journey.

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Mystery Road (2013) ★★★ Cast: Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving Genre: Contemporary Western (Australian) Unrated Running time 116 min Like the classic western, this modern Australian crime thriller uses the beauty and vastness of the Outback to create a sense of place that is as much a star of the feature as the actors. When Jay Swan (Pedersen), an Aboriginal cop, returns to his home town, the white police force is more hostile than the unforgiving landscape. So are his ex-wife and rebellious daughter. He doesn’t make any points when he insists on investigating a case dismissed by the white police sergeant—the murder of an indigenous girl. His inquiries lead to the underbelly of crime and corruption in the town. As Sway exposes a culture of drugs, prostitution, and racism, he comes face to face with dirty cops, ruthless criminals, and systemic corruption. But he never backs down, even at the Gunfight-at-OKCorral finish. ■

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Exclusive Interview

A. D. AMOROSI

At Ease as a Rebel Among Rebels

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“When I won the Oscar, I made a point of actively going against that and doing adventure films like 'Con Air' and 'Gone in 60 Seconds,' not what would be expected.” — Nicolas Cage

ICOLAS CAGE COMES WITH a ton of personal baggage every time he hits the screen: the depth and length of his stretch into method acting; his impulsiveness with women; his passion for comic book mythology; his love of castles, especially all things Transylvanian; his tax woes. You can hardly read a story about him or a review of one of his movies —and there are many, if you consider his filmography and pay attention to Andy Samberg’s impersonations of Cage—without feeling the wrath of cinema writers looking to take him to task for collecting Superman comics or eating cockroaches.

“Now even the art of film criticism... incorporated how many homes I bought or sold into the review,” Cage said not long after making and releasing Bad Lieutenant. “It should always be about the work itself. What difference does it make if Bill Clinton had an affair—how does that affect his performance as President?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to see this movie and not get a little verklempt,” he says with a laugh. “It’s a really emotional moment.”

All that should stop now. Not just because, he’s right and much that is in real life shouldn’t matter, but rather because his acting has settled into a simmering mix of sharp, grand incisiveness and earnest, wide-eyed wonder.

He’s a finely tuned instrument made richer when the composition is at its peak. Even films that don’t deserve him or his dedication (there are several, but not as many as critics would have you believe) are made bolder and more audacious with his devoted participation.

“I am in the process of reinventing myself,” he said in 2012. “I am returning to my roots, which is independently spirited, dramatic characters. I had taken a year off to reevaluate everything I had done, different kinds of performances I had done, the more operatic and more baroque stuff like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011), Drive Angry (2011) or Season of the Witch (2011). I wanted to find something where I could use my life experience, my memories and my emotions.”

That’s where Left Behind comes in. Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have crafted 16 top-selling novels (along with a children’s series of books) based on the Christian faith’s dispensationalist End Times—better If A.D. Amorosi can’t be found writing features for ICON, the Philadelphia Inquirer or doing Icepacks, Icecubes and other stories for Philadelphia’s City Paper, he’s probably hitting restaurants like Stephen Starr’s or running his greyhound.

known as the Rapture, currently a ripe field for mediamakers what with HBO’s diabolical The Leftovers now going into its second season. Though Left Behind has been made into a small series of films and a computer video game earlier in the 2000s, it is the series’ authors who believe that Left Behind never had the benefit of a big name and credible actor (Cage) and a top notch filmmaker (Vic Armstrong, a second unit director on The Amazing Spider-Man, Thor and 2011’s Season of the Witch where he first worked with Cage). “With Vic I could go within,” says Cage. “Exhale. Live in the moment of the scene. He gave me room to breathe, find the truth.”

LaHaye has been quoted as saying that Cage and Armstong’s take on Left Behind makes it "the best movie I have ever seen on the Rapture,” with Jenkins quoted as saying “I believe it does justice to the novel and will renew interest in the entire series.” Each of the novel’s authors participated in the new film’s script.

Currently filming Pay the Ghost, Cage said, “I was very taken by the family dynamic that was played out in this script. That’s what drew me to the project, that and the opportunity to work with Armstrong again.” Because Cage had a good rapport with the director on Left Behind, he felt as if he could get to where he wanted to go as an actor quicker, get to its depth and feel more directly. “This is a person put in an extraordinary situation,” says Cage of his character Rayford Steele, a pilot who becomes part of a small group of survivors left behind when millions suddenly vanish and earth gets plunged into fiery destruction. “This is a man who realizes what his values are. He reaches a catharsis through the experience of this extraordinary flight that he is on. It makes him get back to the heart of his relationship with his family.” If anything in this film comes across for Cage (or rather through Cage) it is that people make mistakes and that love is all at the end. “How do you make such an extraordinary set of circumstances authentic? How do you make it real? That became our challenge.”

Cage mentions, at first, that part of the actor’s responsibility was to “play it,” the bizarre explosive circumstances unfolding within Left Behind as cinema verite, to make it real. That’s just the sort of film that drives him in the first place. “I’ve never been afraid to venture into the unknown—take City of Angels for instance,” Cage said, reminding us of his 1998 Americanized version of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire where the actor plays a seraphim. “I like doing films that face impossibilities, the challenges of making them real. If I could do something honestly and authentically with all this chaos around me—how do I make that organic. That’s the goal.”

Speaking to the culture of End Times that finds The Leftovers a big hit, I asked Cage about his connection to the aesthetics of the Rapture. He finds that there is a zeitgeist at work where art and artists are driven to such a message. “Collectively, there is something. I didn’t know

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about The Leftovers until someone brought it up to me. I wasn’t aware of it. But it’s like when one man invented the steam train in one part of the world, with another doing likewise on the other side of the globe, and they never spoke. We’re all just tapping into something subconsciously. I always try to come at a movie with a set of truths, a place of truth, even if it’s truth in my imagination. I don’t want to act. That implies lying. Acting is about trying to get to a truth within my past, my memory, my experience and to make it real, now, in the moment. Bring it to the situation my characters are in. This time out, it was about recalling emotions, say what I might want to say for real, within such extraordinary circumstances.”

When I asked about how his role in Left Behind connects to his other gigs, Cage talks about his character, Ray, the captain of a jumbo jet who flirts with his flight attendant, as a man who has lost his way, forgot the true path his life should have been on. “He’s not a bad guy. He’s just making the same mistake that lots of people in powerful positions do.” Cage talks about the seduction of the flesh taking away from the importance of family. “It’s the call of the wild. Many guys do it, but Ray luckily makes it back to his wife and kids. That’s his true goal throughout—even through tragedy—just to get on the phone with his daughter to say he’s sorry.” As a father himself, Cage found that aspect of his role gut wrenching. “I don’t think it’s possible to see this movie and not get a little verklempt,” he says with a laugh. “It’s a really emotional moment.”

Talking about these blunders, talking about seeing the light of the Rapture’s rays, talking about drawing hope from family, Cage states that he wants Left Behind to affect people of all faiths…and no faith. “When you have those bad moments, it’s like the old saying, ‘there are no atheists in foxholes.’ Whether you’re in crisis or not, you should know that everyone is invited to the table.” This sounds a bit different from what the actor has mentioned previously. Cage has said in the past that he did not have a religion in his life. “I wasn’t raised that way,” he said back in 1996.

“My father always believed that if I was going to have a religion I should discover it on my own and not have it crammed down my throat at a young age. I kind of wish I had some religion.” Now, during this conversation on Left Behind, Cage mentions being familiar with the Rapture and all of its implications, even though he’s not schooled in Bible verse. “My brother Mark, though, is a Christian pastor and he was very excited about this. He told me how much I really had to do the movie. I was already invested in it and loved the script, but seeing his passion really inspired me.” He’s not necessarily turned on, as an actor, by roles meant to change or uplift lives. Cage is, however, interested in spiritual themes. “Look at my filmography. It’s all right there. Without going into my own spiritually— which is private, not for public consumption and very sacred to me—I like to make films that explore these outer worlds. I like to let my work do that talking.” ■

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Exclusive Interview

The fine art of irony

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Signe Wilkinson, Editorial Cartoonist, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, and the National Press Foundation’s Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning.

SIGNE WILKINSON MADE IT very clear before we met that she did not want her photograph used as part of this interview. I wondered at the time if she was concerned with home-grown crazies like “Jihad Jane” [the online alias of a woman living near Philly] who had just been sentenced to ten years in prison for her part in a plot to murder a Swedish cartoonist whose images of the Prophet Mohammad offended Muslims. I remembered that after the Danish cartoons first set off a world-wide violent protests, Wilkinson had been the only honoree on a Women Who Dare 2007 Calendar who used a cartoon of herself in lieu of a photo to accompany her entry. Political cartooning, which Wilkinson has been doing for the Philadelphia Daily News for thirty years, is not for the faint-hearted—especially at a

“At a local university for which I was penning a cartoon advocating increased minority access to higher education, my drawing was flagged by their officially sensitive black person because he astutely noted [that] my black character looked kind of gay. No comment from their officially sensitive gay person.” time when political correctness runs amok, political rhetoric is crazed, and litigiousness is turbocharged.

These cartoons may amuse those who agree, but they outrage those who don’t. So the job requires a lot of chutzpah. As one newspaper editor puts it, “The job requires strength, egoism, stubbornness, and willingness—even eagerness to risk getting your behind kicked on a daily basis.” Signe Wilkinson and I spoke of these issues when we met.

The Danish cartoons of Mohammad are perhaps the best example of the free speech issue. You are among the most fervent of your brethren in defending the Danish cartoonists.

While Jack Byer brings to interviews and reviews an extensive background in the Arts, he also brings the soul of a romantic who loves to dance and is seldom seen without his signature Basque beret.

The groups who demand respect for their views are often groups that do not respect the rights of women. Russians shot the daring journalist Anna Politkovskaya in the face for her stories. The Taliban tries to keep women ignorant and shot Malala Yousafzai in the face for her young activism. A religious group that stones women to death for adultery does not get to hide behind its “religion” for such acts. Of course women aren’t the only ones who suffer but men don’t get picked on just because they’re men. If religious worthies don’t want cartoonists making fun of their prophets, they should stop doing hideous things in the name of those prophets. It’s quite clear that in a theocracy led by any one of the more fanatic religious ‘leaders’ of our time, women cartoonists would be the first to have their pens confiscated. I love our First Amendment!

Victor Nevasky, the highy respected publisher, and Ed Sorel, the great editorial cartoonist, are both fiercely independent-minded and fiercely protective of First Amendment rights, yet they would not have reprinted the cartoons. Cartoonist Molly Norris disavowed her “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” campaign after the FBI advised her to go undercover because of threats to her life. Their rationale was that the threat of firebombing stores and physical harm to people was too real. They believe reprinting the cartoons would be petulant, gratuitously offensive, reinforce misunderstanding, and put people in danger. So you disagree with their rationale.

I totally do. I heard Nevasky speak about a year ago at our cartoonists’ convention in Salt Lake city and I stood up—no one else on the panel was speaking up for free speech, so I stuck up for it. I don’t get the argument. What does that say about us. If someone threatens us, we’ll kowtow and cave in to their demands.

But aren’t there circumstances where unbridled freedom can be injurious to the innocent? Don’t cartoonists have responsibilities too?

There are no limitations for cartoonists; there are limitations on what various publications are willing to print. I have an ongoing relationship with my readers, which means I don’t insult their intelligence by avoiding certain topics. My standard is this: if any group of

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people, whether political, ethnic, or religious, wants the government to do something that will affect my life (laws, taxes, editorial freedom, whatever) that group has wandered into the political sphere and should be treated as any other political operative.

You do six cartoons for the Daily News each week.

Three of them also appear three times a week in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Do the pressures of your job push you to have stronger opinions than you actually have, or to have contrived opinions about subjects you may not care deeply about, or to run roughshod over nuance to reach an unambiguous conclusion?

That’s an excellent question. If I had only national topics I think I’d be in more trouble on that score because there are a lot of national issues that I don’t have huge opinions about or I just don’t know enough about them. Some of my readers would say that’s all topics. But in addition to the national ones, I have the State and local. So if I am uninspired by what is going on in Washington, I am almost always rewarded here at home. We have a wonderful State legislature that is a fountain of inspiration and our own city council is always working on my behalf.

Some great pols have passed in front of your eyes during all your years in Philly. Who was the greatest fodder for your work?

When I first got started at The Daily News, Frank Rizzo decided to run for mayor again. I did a cartoon showing all these other people putting their big toes in the water, testing whether they would run. Then off the diving board came the enormous Frank Rizzo, calling “Cannon Ball!” He asked for a copy of the cartoon.

He lived not far from us at the time, so my husband and I strolled my daughter over to the house unannounced and knocked on the back door. Rizzo shouted from inside, “Who is it?” I said who I was and he said, “Come on in,” sat us down, and then showed me the house, including this long wall of rifles he had. At the end of the 40 minutes or so we were over there, he was offering my husband jobs. And I thought, wait, wait, we gotta get out of here and we upped. The rea-

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JACK BYER

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Exclusive Interview

A Night at the Opera IF OPERA PHILADELPHIA’S 39TH season was filled with strangely magnetic, angularly dissonant programming—Salome, Nabucco, A Coffin in Egypt—then its 40th anniversary proves to be a nice round number, a little softer on the sonic palette, star-shinier for the fan, and equally as challenging as last year.

You can blame the schedule for the 40th season, to a large extent, on Opera Philadelphia General Director David B. Devan, as this is the year that his imprint and taste shows through on the company’s scheduling after being here for three years. Along with Music Director Corrado Rovaris, Devan has chosen classics, scheduled premieres and worked diligently on nailing down some of opera’s finest performers: For Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Jonathan Beyer, Jennifer Holloway and Taylor Stayton; for Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, Lawrence Brownlee and Angela Brown; the east coast premiere of Oscar

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The intricate puzzle of Opera Philadelphia’s 40th anniversary season, from bigger shows at the Academy of Music to smaller events at the Kimmel’s Perelman Theater, finds Devan casting globally and competing with the great opera centers of the world for the best artists. will feature countertenor David Daniels—making his Opera Philadelphia debut as Oscar Wilde—along with Heidi Stober and William Burden; Philly-born bass baritone Eric Owens in his role debut as King Philip in Verdi’s Don Carlo, with Dimitri Pittas, Leah Crocetto and Michelle DeYoung; and a co-presentation with the Kimmel Center and the Curtis Opera Theatre on Ariadne auf Naxos. And this is all before March 2015. Add the fact that Devan brought married opera sensations Stephen Costello and Ailyn Pérez, “The Jay-Z and Beyonce of opera” who met as students at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, to sing at the 40th Anniversary Gala before season’s start and you’ve got quite a provocative roster for which Devan is responsible.

Though he can’t divulge much of season 41 at present, Devan does let me know that Pulitzer-winning composer Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain (a co-production between the Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia with respective premieres in 2015 and 2016) is already booked and scheduled.

“Since becoming general director about three years ago, this is the first season that I have my fingerprints all over the schedule,” says Devan. “Opera companies are like ships. Once you steer a course, it takes a moment to change direction.”

Opera Philadelphia’s General Director David B. Devan.

Since Opera Philadelphia has long been consistent in offering what Devan sees as a “a broad range of artistic expression,” the general director knew that he wanted first and foremost for this season a “substantial verity” as well as finding pieces that showed off the stalwarts within the company, Opera Philadelphia’s orchestra and its chorus. From there, Devan’s goal was to find the biggest and the best names in the field of opera and work out productions suited to them, and roles they hungered for.

“We go to star singers and find out what they want to do coming up, what their desires are,” says Devan.

Take bass-baritone Eric Owens, a man at the top of his game presently. “He mentions that he’s always wanted to do King Phillip in Don Carlos, so for us to get him, we consider doing Don Carlos, then, hell, now we have to cast the rest of the singers at about the same level.

And then we have to find a great production or build

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one worthy of those artists and directors. Finally, you’re thinking about how that one show fits and balances against the other shows that you’re considering for that very same season.”

The intricate puzzle of Opera Philadelphia’s 40th anniversary season, from bigger shows at the Academy of Music to smaller events at the Kimmel’s Perelman Theater, finds Devan casting globally and competing with the great opera centers of the world for the best artists.

“I think Opera Philadelphia has a great tradition of identifying artists as they develop, so we always have new and exciting voices within our productions. Several years ago, though, we were less successful at getting artists at top of their career, so this season righted those wrongs and allowed us the perfect blend of vets and great up-and-comers.” The idea behind that mix of stars and newbies, says Devan, comes from a finely curated set of transcendent moments on stage. Take having Jonathan Beyer in the Barber of Seville in the role of Figaro, for instance: “That’s a big job, but we watched his development, and followed his training at Curtis and heard him sing around the country. He came in and nailed the audition.” When Devan and I spoke, he was getting ready to watch the first costumed run-through of Barber, using an old management trick—“I go when no one is expecting me.” He calls what he witnessed a “massive energy surge” surrounding the production.

“We did a lot of great, dynamic and dramatic shows last season. Nabucco? You wouldn’t call that fun. The Barber of Seville? Now, that’s fun.”

As for Yardbird, Devan says that Opera Philadelphia is getting “crazy press from all over the world” for their story of saxophone bop giant Charlie Parker. “I wonder if we’ll have enough seats—remember it’s part of our chamber series with only five performances. But that’s all that Larry Brownlee’s schedule will allow,” says Devan of the most in-demand tenor in the world. “For Larry to take on such an iconic role, and do it here first is amazing.” Devan says much the same thing of countertenor David Daniels making his Opera Philadelphia debut as Oscar Wilde in Oscar with a theatrical piece written specifically for him. “It’s tailor made—remember Wilde had a high speaking voice,” notes Devan.

So what does Devan want Opera Philadelphia’s 40th season to be for novices and veteran listeners alike?

He’d like a “WOW” moment. “I’d like people to say that that was the start of Opera Philadelphia 2.0. That this was the season that connected opera to the community in the biggest and best way possible.” ■ Information for all events and programs can be found at www.operaphila.org

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A. D. AMOROSI

Lawrence Brownlee stars as Charlie Parker in Opera Philadelphia’s production of Yardbird.

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24 / THE FINE ART OF IRONY sons they’re politicians is that they’re charming people—one on one. They remember your name, they know everybody in town, they know how to connect with people. That’s why people vote for them. They feel they’re being connected. But I don’t want to get to know any of them too well, personally. Maybe after they’re out of power.

phia to see young blacks killing blacks. [“If you want to get great views of young black men killing each other.” (Nov 2005)] Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson denounced it at a press conference, saying, “The Daily News has an obligation to be responsible.

To compare the KKK with the young black men being killed in the city of Philadelphia is irresponsible.”

You’ve gotten lot of mileage off the State legislature for nominating you to be the State vegetable.

Well, who wouldn’t be milking it for all it’s worth. State Rep. Joe Pitts, whose hometown of Kennett Square is proclaimed “mushroom capital of the world” by the American Mushroom Institute, introduced a bill to make the mushroom the official State vegetable. Controversy then ensued over whether the mushroom, a fungus, could be considered a vegetable.

I remember it garnered the newspaper weeks of letters and cancelled subscriptions. Yet you had done dozens of cartoons decrying violence, guns, dufus do-nothing legislators and the rap culture.

I needed traction and got it. The initial outrage warped into black readers and talk show hosts defending me and saying that, yes, indeed, this was black on black crime that couldn’t all be pinned on the system. Too many young black men had become the killers. They had turned the hatred inward, and were hunting and killing their own.

I see a cartoon coming on.

Yup. I did a cartoon that had the whole State legislature as the state frog, the State amphibian, the State mammal, the State insect, the State rock. There was a frog at one desk, a mammal at the next, and so on. And then the guy who was the Speaker of the House nominated me as the State Vegetable as a joke on me.

Jules Pfeiffer said there’s nothing more important to a cartoonist than ill will. You, and practically every cartoonist has said the same thing in some form. How did you answer your daughter when, as I understand it, she first asked “Mommy, how does it feel making money poking fun at people all day?”

Embarrassing. Totally mortifying. My immortal soul will probably not do too well as a consequence. I see it as sort of okay if somebody is doing something really bad. What gets under their skin more, a sober-sided letter pointing out their wrongdoing or a satirical cartoon?

Nothing in a newspaper draws as much litigation as a cartoon on a touchy topic. Cartoonists have received in the mail tin boxes of dog excrement, messages like “You commie bastard, I can’t wait to read your obituary.” What is the most upsetting or vulgar message you’ve received?

There are several. I used to keep this one drawing that someone sent [of me] that is totally pornographic. It’s also racist and sexist. A masterpiece in its own right. But If I took personally the vicious letters attacking me, I could never get up in the morning. I have to say, well, I had my shot, now this person had his. You put your ideas out there and you want to see how people feel about it.

You can’t always be so philosophical?

It’s not philosophical. I just don’t take it personally. I didn’t do a cartoon about the writers—they’re reacting to the cartoon. If they horribly disagree, they’re going to be as vitriolic as they can. And good for them. They should be. We’re always cleaning things up.

Everybody speaks nicely; nobody says the wrong thing. You can’t make people think what you want them to think. It’s better always to have it out in the open.

Does that include State Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffrey and his wife Lise Rappaport, who are suing you for a cartoon you did about them?

Needless to say, I cannot speak about it.

Your husband is an attorney. Does he give you counsel about these things?

My biggest defender is the First Amendment. I’m shocked that a judge would think that someone exercising the First Amendment ought to be sued. But my second biggest defender is my husband. I don’t think I would have lasted without his support. And not legal, just moral. And I love that.

What cartoon of yours raised the most questions about your patriotism and fitness to do your job?

My drawing of a KKK travel agent encouraging trips to Philadel-

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Hard to guess the misinterpretations people will have to your work. It’s often willful misinterpretation. What is your experience with professional offense-takers.

Things do get problematic when some groups hire image enforcers, the “Professionals.” You have professional lesbians—paid to harangue anyone who utters a negative word about dykes—professional Jews, professional Arabs. At a local university for which I was penning a cartoon advocating increased minority access to higher education, my drawing was flagged by their officially sensitive black person because he astutely noted [that] my black character looked kind of gay. No comment from their officially sensitive gay person.

Other whiners are cartoonists, some of whom get very pouty when readers have the nerve to voice opinions, and spineless editors who are too chicken to deal with any controversy.

What about stereotyping? It’s one of the things cartoonists have to deal with.

Except for complaints from schoolteachers—“we don’t all wear buns and carry rulers”—Armenians—“we’re not all terrorists”—the Irish—“paddy wagons is a hurtful term”—opera singers—“we’re not all fat”—Catholics—“you wouldn’t understand so don’t try”—Italians—“we’re not all gangsters” and a few other groups whose members are all perfect, beautiful and above caricature, I haven’t been affected by political correctness.

You seem to be a free speech absolutist.

One of the things that has protected cartoonists in the U.S. is the Supreme Court decision in the Falwell vs Flynt case. Rev. Jerry Falwell filed suit against Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, for a cartoon he ran in which Falwell’s mother is in an outhouse performing an unchristian act with a man. It was a cartoon I would never run in a million years. Yet that cartoon was protected by the Rehnquist court in a unanimous decision that said cartoons are just cartoons.

Get over it. Thank goodness for that decision. If the Court had decided otherwise, you would have humorless people at all levels telling everybody what they could draw. It would be intolerable.

You’re the past president of the AAEC [Association of American Editorial Cartoonists], which has been compared to running a grade school. How is it alike?

First of all, they’re all boys, with a couple of us fems. A lot of them see themselves as class clowns. So the comparison is to the anarchistic rock throwing behavior of small children. They’re very opinionated people, but we hardly ever talk about political points of view when we’re together. We don’t say the AAEC is going to endorse this or that political position. So from an outsider’s point of view, it might look pretty chaotic like a grade school.

Editorial cartooning is still a boy’s sport. I’ve read that males have nine out of ten cartoonists’ jobs. Why?

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Singer / Songwriter Jesse Winchester ★★★★ A Reasonable Amount of Trouble Appleseed Recordings Jesse Winchester lost his battle with cancer in April, a few weeks short of his 70th birthday. A Reasonable Amount of Trouble, a title taken from a line spoken by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, serves as Winchester’s graceful farewell. There’s a philosophical approach in the songs that bookend the album. “The sun is going down now/there

are shadows all around,” Winchester sings on “All That We Have is Now,” a reminder to enjoy the moment as it will not pass this way again. “Just So Much,” takes on the feel of a prayer as Winchester considers the role of God in dealing with life’s trials. Winchester lightens the mood on “Never Forget to Boogie,” a dance song that echoes the spirit of his freewheeling “Rhumba Man” from 1977. On “A Little Louisiana,” Winchester mixes Cajun and Zydeco for a tasty musical gumbo.

The CD also features versions of songs from the ‘50 and early ‘60s that influenced Winchester. “Devil or Angel,” is a pleasing mix of country and rhythm and blues. “Rhythm of the Rain,” the signature song of the Cascades, offers a soothing tale for the brokenhearted. “Whispering Bells,” recorded by the Del-Vikings, finds Winchester savoring the pleasures of doo wop and harmony singing. 12 songs 42 minutes Joe Ely ★★★1/2 B4 84 Rack ‘em Records Joe Ely has been a musical explorer, combining elements of rock, country, blues and folk in his recordings and live performances. The Texas native also has embraced changes in technology as heard on B4 84, a collection of previously unheard recordings from the early 1980s featuring an Apple computer and Roland drum machine.

Ely demonstrates that a roots-rock sensibility and electronic music are not incongruous. The sonic enhancements complement rather than overwhelm such tracks as the Buddy Holly-inspired “You Got the Broken Heart” and the edgy “What’s Shakin’ Tonight? The electronics add a sense of urgency to “Imagine Houston” and the frenetic “My Baby Thinks She’s French,” which shows off Ely’s gift for wordplay. “Dame Tu Mano” employs a catchy Tex-Mex rhythms

tomwilk@rocketmail.com

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

that incorporates a bit of “Twist and Shout.”

Today, computers are an accepted component of making music. Ely’s B4 84 shows he was ahead of his time and many of his contemporaries. 10 songs 35 minutes.

Sutter Zachman ★★★ Repeat Offender Modern Roots Music Sutter Zachman sums up his approach to songwriting in one sentence. “I like songs that have some surprises, but that are simple enough that you can sing them around a campfire,” he says. The Los Angeles-based artist lives up to that philosophy on Repeat Offender, a four-song EP. “Back to Sleep” is a dreamy, mid-tempo number that combines a soothing melody with Zachman’s warm vocals.

ter she gave up for adoption as a baby.

Taylor, who plays guitar, dulcimer and harmonica, writes songs that fit in the country/folk mold. “Can’t Even Pray” finds the song’s protagonist at a crossroads, uncertain of where to turn. “Look up to heaven/With nothing to say/You know you’re in trouble/When you can’t even pray.” He serves up a change of pace with the musically feisty “Dig a

Hole,” which recalls Mary Chapin Carpenter’s up-tempo hits of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Among the songs by Taylor’s band, “Anna Marie” is the highlight, a wistful, Cajun-flavored waltz about a sailor being separated from his true love. 11 songs 42 minutes

“Why Do You Need Money?” is delivered over silky, soulful groove that recalls the sound of 1970s Philadelphia International music. Amanda Russell’s violin helps to lift the song melodically. “America” has lyrical overtones found in the work of Jackson Browne and Paul Simon. “Once Was a Girl” is a slice of romantic pop that captures the end of a relationship.

“Once there was girl; now there’s nothing,” Zachman sings.

With Repeat Offender, Zachman shows there’s something to look forward to—his next release. 4 songs 12 minutes.

Dulcie Taylor and Friends ★★★ Only Worn One Time Mesa/Bluemoon Recordings Beginnings and endings are the underlying themes of Only Worn One Time, the new studio album from Dulcie Taylor. The CD also features four songs written and sung by members of her supporting band. Taylor has a sharp eye for details that helps to elevate her songs above the norm. The title track deals with the rush of emotions a man feels when he discovers the wedding dress of his ex-wife as he is trying to make a new start. “Like My Momma Loved Me” finds a woman trying to start a relationship with a grown-up daugh-

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Dale Watson ★★★ The Truckin’ Sessions 3 Red River Entertainment From “Six Days on the Road” to “Lookin’ at the World through a Windshield,” trucking songs have been a vibrant part of American music. Dale Watson keeps the tradition with The Truckin’ Sessions 3, a collection of original songs.

With a voice that recalls Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, Watson has a good ear and feel for the genre. “It’s Been a Long Truckin’ Day” captures the working-class blues of a frustrated trucker when “every foot feels like a mile.”

On “Freewheelin’,” Watson describes the ups and downs of a life on the road using lines supplied by truckers themselves. “I’m a Truckin’” is a celebration of a trucker’s lifestyle that recalls Harlan Howard’s “Busted” in form and structure.

“Suicide Sam” and “Lugnut Larry” portray the lighter side of trucking, while the Western swing of “Texas Armadillo” details an encounter with roadkill. “I Live on Truckin’ Time” is a pensive ballad about a trucker’s connection to the road.

“We’re Truckin’ Along” is a spirited duet with Amber Digby about a husband-and-wife trucking team. The album ends fittingly with “10-100,” trucker slang for a bathroom break.

It’s a pedal-to-the-metal instrumental that showcases Watson’s Lone Star Band. 14 songs 37 minutes. ■

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Nick’’s Picks

NICK BEWSEY

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

Hilary Gardner ★★★★ The Great City Anzic Records

gai Cohen Milo (dig his walking line on “Pass It On”) and a master on brushes and rhythmic textures, drummer Mark McLean. Both provide lush support throughout, but on two covers in particular—Jobim’s “Useless Landscape” and a rarely heard “A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes (from Cinderella)—Sivan’s lines and affecting style transport us into a realm of musical bliss. Without a doubt, For Emotional Use Only is one of the great guitar albums in recent memory. (10 tracks; 45 minutes)

Vocalist Hilary Gardner is a terrific singer in the tradition of Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, with a storytelling style that’s equal parts wise, sensual and sophisticated. Gardner’s star is as bright as can be on The Great City, a sizzling debut with chill musical accompaniment (virtuosic pianist Ehud Asherie’s solos recall Hank Jones’ urbane swing) that gives an aura of wonderment to her poetic collection of songs about New York. She effortlessly charms and swings on tunes like “Chelsea Morning,” but her magnetism is obvious

Jason Moran ★★★★1/2 All Rise: A Joyful Elegy For Fats Waller Blue Note Fred Hersch Trio. Photo: Matthew Rodgers

its its own world” and cuts like the title track, which deftly pulls and stretches one musical motif in purposeful directions, or the Louisiana Bayou-flavored “Home Fries,” dedicated to Hébert, usher you into a zone that is sonically satisfying, yet also ripe with emotional pleasures. Now 59, Hersch’s recordings seem to get better and better, a remarkable achievement for a master pianist and leader whose rhapsodic style and rhythmic language imbues Floating with a quality that whispers “classic.” (10 tracks; 59 minutes) Rotem Sivan ★★★★ For Emotional Use Only Fresh Sound New Talent

Hilary Gardner.

Sometimes jazz has to open doors to invite new fans and listeners in, an idea that visionary pianist Jason Moran approaches squarely and adroitly on All Rise. It’s an album unlike anything else he has produced. Earthy backbeats, breathless vocals by bassist and co-producer Meshell Ndegeocello and Lisa E. Harris, along with Moran’s own gutsy use of electric keyboards help fuel the hyper-modern reimagining of the music of Fats Waller. Originally conceived and produced as a Harlem stage project called the Fats Waller Dance Party, this studio recording evolves out of the historical perspective that jazz once was and can still be “dance music.” Calling Waller “a special kind of provoca-

Speaking of melodic intelligence, an emerging artist like guitarist Rotem Sivan is one reason why listening to jazz is so rewarding. Affable in the extreme, this Israeli-born, New York-based musician evokes the better balladry of Pat Methe-

on “Manhattan Avenue”—it’s a little black dress of a tune that fits Gardner in all the best ways. (11 tracks; 38 minutes) The Fred Hersch Trio ★★★★ Floating Palmetto Floating marks a triumphant return to the studio for pianist Fred Hersch and his trio, and the album’s title is a perfect expression for the record’s feeling and his interaction with bassist John Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson. The format is a good one: Hersch programs the date to mirror his typical set list in a club setting, and it’s one that grabs you at the outset with a bewitching “You And The Night and The Music,” an arrangement that skips along to a percussive beat, and closes with a Monk tune (“Let’s Cool One”), both tracks a primer for appreciating what Hersch refers to as “intelligent melody.” But in between it’s the original tunes that make this album click at an elite level. Hersch says “a good tune inhab-

Nick Bewsey has been writing about jazz for ICON since 2004 and is a member of The Jazz Journalists Assoc. He also paticipates in DownBeat’s Annual International Critics Poll.

Jason Moran.

Rotem Sivan.

ny and relaxed swing of Kenny Burrell, two obvious inspirations, yet his confident playing style and refreshing compositions marry that astute sense of swing with unabashed romanticism. Sivan sees his songs as musical photographs and—like a series of happy memories—the tunes unfold like turning pages in an album, radiating with color and interest.

New to me as well are his marvelous trio mates, bassist Hag-

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teur” who sang and MC’d as well as played piano, and who also maintained a running commentary on what was going on around him, Moran and company (including his Bandwagon trio, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits) transform a well known Waller repertoire into groove-based gems that still give the leader space to expand the music creatively (he kisses his solo stride piano with a synthesized rush on “Handful Of Keys,” for instance).

The most arresting tracks give Moran and Ndegeocello a shining platform—the irresistible pop and snap on “The Joint Is Jumpin’,” the chilled out vocals behind “Honeysuckle Rose” and the righteous bass and beats with a gospel spin on “Jitterbug Waltz.” Much like Terri Lynn Carrington’s career-defining Money Jungle: Provocative In Blue, All Rise proves you can be boldly crowd-pleasing while slyly giving us a valuable music history lesson we can also dance to. (12 tracks; 42 minutes) ■

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Keresman on Disc Joel Harrison ★★★★★ Mother Stump Cuneiform Jazz composer/guitarist Joel Harrison is one of the more inclusive musicians in the American scene now. While based in jazz, Harrison’s influences and approach encom-

Michael Bates, Joel Harrison, Jeremy Clemons Photo: Lesley McBurney

passes traditional Indian music, contemporary classical, rock, gospel, and country music—he even did a tribute to George Harrison, Harrison Plays Harrison. Mother Stump shines the stagelight on Harrison the guitarist—about half this set is original material, the rest are tunes by Luther Vandross, George Russell, Leonard Cohen, and Paul Motian, among others. While JH has the technique of a jazz player (think Kenny Burrell and pre-Mahavishnu John McLaughlin), it’s how he uses it that’s refreshing—he plays with the slow-burning, searing, burnished tone and haunting sustain of a seasoned blues player—think the House of King: B.B., Freddie, and Albert, and Texan aces T-Bone Walker and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Further, Harrison is unaffraid to utilize the range of effects rockers usually have at their disposal. Note the old-school Mississippi bottleneck/slide style on Motian’s “Folk Song for Rosie.” Unlike some gut-wailers, JH knows when enough is enough. Glenn Patascha lays down thick cushions of Hammond organ and his bass/drums team is tight throughout. While this platter’ll be filed under “jazz,” fans of stringbenders Hendrix, Clapton (in his prime), Roy Buchanan, and the like will be on cloud nine with this. (11 tracks, 60 min.) cuneiformrecords.com Moraine ★★★1/2 Groundswell Moonjune To paraphrase Frank Zappa: Progressive

rock isn’t dead, it just smells funny. In the 1970s, the much-maligned beast that was progressive rock—prog, in current hepcat parlance—was a commercial force. Bands like Jethro Tull and Yes got played on the radio.

Now it’s become virtually an underground/alternative thing—which is fine, because many bands can thrive therein. Take Seattle’s Moraine: all-instrumental and has an unusually rich palette with guitar, bass, drums, baritone sax/flute, and violin. Moraine combine the classical music-tinged arrangements of Van Der Graaf Generator and (dare I say) Zappa, the low-end swagger of Morphine, the tightly focused bombast-with-flair of King Crimson, and the jazz-inspired textures of Soft Machine. Unlike some of their forwardlooking brethren, Moraine includes some smoldering blues influences, mostly from Dennis Rea’s slow-burning guitar. Also unlike some of their brethren, Moraine knows when to rein it in, to be concise, and end a song when it ought to be done. Plenty of sharp, clever, frequently passionate playing (but never for its own sake), punchy dynamics, and a soupçon of subtlety—what more does one need from a prog platter? (10 tracks, 52 min.) moonjune.com Moebius/Story/Leidecker ★★★★ Snowghost Pieces Bureau B Three masters of contemporary electronic music join forces for a platter that’s slightly confounding as it is subtly compelling. Dieter Mobius was a charter member of the legendary German electronic combo Cluster (the roots of Kraftwerk and so many others), Tim Story is, well, Tim Story, and Jon Leidecker is also known as Wobbly and as a member of sonic provocateurs/pranksters Negativland [sic]. While some purveyors of electronic sound are confrontational (read: unlistenable for most people) or they spin out soothing sounds by the bushel, this triumvirate goes for a middle ground. While some of Snowghost has its relaxing chill-out aspects it also has lots of rhythm, deep dark, often creepy rhythms anchoring and providing impetus for the individual pieces (no pun intended). Balancing/alternating calming textures with the jaggedly dissonant, acoustic and electronically generated tones, the (seemingly) calculated and spontaneous, the science fiction film eerie and the beautiful, the repetitive and the unexpected, Snowghost Pieces is one of the most distinctive, fascinating, and absorbing releases of creative electronic music you may hear this year. (11 tracks, 58 min.) bureau-b.com

shemp@hotmail.com

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

David Rosenboom ★★★★1/2 Zones of Influence Pogus Morton Feldman ★★★1/2 String Quartet No. 1 and Early Quartets Mode Iowan David Rosenboom is a pioneer in the use of neurofeedback compositional algorhythms—he was also one of the the first composers to use a digital synthesizer. So he’s a wiz-kid, what of it? Mr. Rosenboom— note the absence of an “L”—composed Zones of Influence for percussion, played by ace bang-maker William Winant (active in classical and jazz circles) and interactive electronic systems. It’s both heady and brisk, cerebral yet entrancing, the percussive sounds dancing through the speakers/your ears, breezes from the South Pacific islands, parts of Africa,

Marcin Wasilewski Trio ★★★★ Spark of Life ECM George Cables ★★★★1/2 Icons and Influences HighNote Here are two jazz piano trio platters, both very different, both with salient aspects in common. Poland’s Marcin Wasilewski Trio is perhaps best known this side of the pond

Marcin Wasilewski Trio

David Rosenboom

and the rainforests of South America. It’ll help your appreciation if you’re a fan of delicate and/or exotic percussion and even more if you’re fascinated by the intersection of humanity and technology…either way, much of this is beautiful. If Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa (the latter in “classical” mode) collaborated for a soundtrack to The Outer Limits: The Movie, the result might’ve sounded like this. (8 tracks, 95 min.) pogus.com While he looks like his nickname could be Snooky the Bookie, Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was one of America’s most distinctive composers. His compositions are marked by an unusual sense of detail and a sense of quietude—imagine hearing a snowflake’s creation, as the crystalline geometry is formed. For the uninitiated, imagine a cross between Franz Schubert (sublime) and John Cage (Zen-like). String Quartet #1 (1979) features subdued, softly repeated patterns and occasional moments of wiry fierceness. Also presented are quartets from 1951 and ’56, but are closer to the academic classism of their time—interesting, a bit dry, but the expansive, occasionally breathtaking first quartet is the reason to hear this. (3 tracks, 90 min.) moderecords.com

as trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s outfit, but they got The Right Stuff on their own. While the MW3 has a very “European” sound, don’t stereotype them—the opener, “Austin,” is rich with crystalline Bill Evans-like grace but has some gently sly blues and gospel overtones à la Gene Harris and Horace Silver.

Joakim Milder plays beautifully wintry tenor sax on a few tunes, chilly and sunny as the northern lights of Sweden and Alaska. Spark of Life has got a nigh-on perfect latenight/very-early-AM contemplative vibe without ever being overly cerebral or arid…simply exquisite. (11 tracks, 73 min.) ecmrecords.com Like the late Cedar Walton, George Cables has made a career out of being one of the best accompanists/band members in post bop jazz history, especially with the late Art Pepper. Icons is Cables front and center, paying tribute to jazz icons (pianists and not) that’ve inspired him. Like Wasilewski, Cables is exceedingly lyrical but is more old-school in his approach—three of the figures to whom he plays homage are Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, and Benny Golson, and that’s a good way to summarize this set: Evans’ elan, Brubeck’s classy gregariousness, and Golson’s earthy, earnest, blue-edged swing. At times Icons and Influences, breezy without being lightweight, reverent without being stuffy, sounds like the summation of nearly every great piano trio there ever was, and the best part is Cables makes it sound (deceptively) easy. This is boss, hepcats. (12 tracks, 73 minutes) jazzdepot.com ■

The List : OCTOBER OCT. 1 – WCL 10 The public/private merging of the minds that is World Café Live/ WXPN celebrate ten years under one roof with sensuous, textural folkie Valerie June & venue favorite Sean Hayes.

World Café Live, 3025 Walnut Street, 8 p.m., $10, 215-2221400, www.worldcafelive.com OCT. 1 – LYKKE LI The saddest Swedish woman since Garbo might just be a little happier now that she’s singing on the new U2 album. Or maybe not.

Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St, Philadelphia, PA 19123 (215) 232-2100 www.utphilly.com OCT. 2 – STEVE NIEVE Not that Nieve doesn’t have solo albums to his name but any opportunity to see and hear Elvis Costello’s longtime keyboardist going it alone is a worthwhile venture – especially considering how Costello’s own shows as of late have been pretty dull affairs.

World Café Live, 3025 Walnut Street, 8:30 p.m., $20, 215-2221400, www.worldcafelive.com OCT. 2 – ESPERANZA SPALDING Post-Bop jazz bassist and elastic vocalist Spalding goes further into eclectic pop the longer she travels through her career.

That she navigates those sonic waters like a modern day Stevie Wonder makes her an increasingly fascinating presence.

Keswick Theater, 291 N Keswick Ave, Glenside, PA (215) 572-7650 www.keswicktheatre.com OCT. 3 – A FISTFUL OF SUGAR If you don’t love the idea of a Philly band mix-and-mingling the disparate tones of hip hop and bluegrass, stay home.

World Café Live, 3025 Walnut Street, 8:30 p.m., $10-$12, 215222-1400, www.worldcafelive.com OCT. 3 – CHARLI XCX WITH ELLIPHANT XCX, a heroine of all electronica snarky, AutoTuned and upbeat, readies her increasingly larger crowds for her sophomore album.

Theater of the Living Arts, 334 South St., 9 p.m. $18-$20, 800745-3000. www.ticketmaster.com OCT. 4 – BRYAN FERRY For my money, this is the show of the month: an intimate opportunity with art pop’s original, tuxedoed lounge lizard.

From Roxy Music to slithering solo albums such as Bete Noire, to some truly bracing versions of Dylan’s back catalog, Ferry is always capable of delicious decadence and eerie soulfulness.

The Tower, 69th & Ludlow, Upper Darby, PA. 8 p.m. $85-$45, 800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com OCT. 5 AND 6 - NAS The toast of literate rap, a poet of the pavement and the penthouse, Nas may not always make perfect albums, but this time out, he’s showing off his first and finest work, Illmatic.

Keswick Theater, 291 N Keswick Ave, Glenside, PA (215) 572-7650 www.keswicktheatre.com

A. D. AMOROSI

A curated look at the month’s arts, entertainment, food and pop cultural events

OCT. 5 – INSANE CLOWN POSSE Everyone should, during the course of one’s lifetime, see the heroes of Juggalos everywhere – like a jail sentence.

Electric Factory, 421 N 7th St, Philadelphia, PA 19123 (215) 627-1332 www.electricfactory.info

OCT. 19 – TWIN PEAKS Didn’t David Lynch leave town? Wait. This is just some indiepop band borrowing his abstract Northwestern sensibilities.

The Barbary, 951 Frankford Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19125 (215) 634-7400 www.thebarbary.org

OCT. 8 AND 9 – NEIL YOUNG Did he divorce his wife of 36 years to hang with Daryl Hannah? Is he doing this gig with just an acoustic guitar, or, as he did at the Tower, a pump organ and an electric guitar? Is he making an orchestral album or another lo-fi phone booth recorded record next? You probably won’t get a chance to know unless you already bought tickets to this very sold out show.

Academy of Music, 240 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19102 (215) 893-1999 www.academyofmusic.org

OCT. 15 AND OCT 29 – FLEETWOOD MAc This could be one heroic gathering now that long gone keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie has returned to Stevie Nicks/Lindsay Buckingham’s Fleetwood fold.

Wells Fargo Center, Broad and Patterson 8 p.m., $179.50, 129.50, 79.50, 49.50. 800-298-4200. www.comcastTIX.com

OCT. 11 - KEVIN JAMES The King of Queens takes a break from bad movies to make good stand-up comedy about weight loss, family values and odd jobs.

Academy of Music, 240 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19102 (215) 893-1999 www.academyofmusic.org OCT. 12 – PUSS N’ BOOTS Norah Jones pretends she’s David Bowie and creates a Tin Machine-like band of gal pals to bash guitars and crash cymbals on the alterna-country tip.

ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA, 7:30 p.m, $25. 610-332-1300, www.artsquest.org OCT. 14 - FLYING LOTUS WITH THUNDERCAT Anybody keeping track of where electronic music is headed for the future has followed the career of producer/label owner Flying Lotus and his bassist Thundercat.

The Tower, 69th & Ludlow, Upper Darby, PA. 8 p.m. $30, www.ticketmaster.com OCT. 15 – HERE COME THE MUMMIES These guys dress as mummies and perform horror-core R&B to celebrate their gauzy dressing. OK. ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA, 8 p.m, $20-$30, 610-332-1300, www.artsquest.org OCT. 16 – JACKSON BROWNE Hang on. Didn’t he use to date Daryl Hannah too. And he’s playing the Academy of Music just like her new paramour?

This is getting weird.

Academy of Music, 240 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19102 (215) 893-1999 www.academyofmusic.org OCT. 16 – JULIAN CASABLANCAS If you like The Strokes, Casablancas’ Velvet Underground-like ensemble, I’m not certain how you’ll feel about his creaky, wonky solo act, The Voidz. It is nice autumnal Halloween music, however.

Electric Factory, 421 N 7th St, Philadelphia, PA 19123 (215) 627-1332 www.electricfactory.info

OCT. 24 - ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO Fans of King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, take note: the best friend of chicken-choking guitar sounds and nervous vocals returns with a hard driving threesome.

World Café Live, 3025 Walnut Street, 8 p.m., $25-$28, 215-2221400, www.worldcafelive.com OCT. 24 & 25 – KENNY WERNER TRIO W/ARI HOENIG Moody improvisational jazz has no better friends than pianistcomposer Werner, drummer Hoenig and bassist Johannes Weidenmueller.

Chris’ Jazz Cafe, 1421 Sansom St, Philadelphia, PA 19110 (215) 568-3131 www.chrisjazzcafe.com OCT. 27 – HARRY SHEARER’S NIXON Anyone familiar with dry-witted comedian Shearer’s radio program Le Show knows how deeply moved and wildly enthusiastic he is about America’s most crooked President.

World Café Live, 3025 Walnut Street, 8 p.m., $18-$20, 215-2221400, www.worldcafelive.com OCT. 27 – BARRYMORE AWARDS Philadelphia theater’s love letter to itself where practitioners wear tuxedos and gowns in order to find themselves celebrated for a year’s accomplishments. I love this party.

Kimmel, 300 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA (215) 670-2300 www.kimmelcenter.org OCT. 29 – GARCES FOUNDATION GALA Restaurateur/Iron Chef Jose Garces and his dentist wife Beatriz throw one of this city’s most worthy gatherings.

Kimmel, 300 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA (215) 670-2300 www.kimmelcenter.org OCT. 29 – PHIL NICOLO The Philadelphia producer promises a night of remixing rock classics from Led Zeppelin, The Police and beyond in a manner befitting his studio-centric ears.

World Café Live, 3025 Walnut Street, 8 p.m., $TBD, 215-2221400, www.worldcafelive.com OCT. 31 – HENRI DAVID’S HALLOWEEN The Philadelphia jeweler and party thrower hasn’t given a clue as to where his favorite holiday bash is or what his costumes (always at least a dozen changes throughout the night) will be. And he doesn’t have a web site or a Facebook for it.

Just keep your ears pricked. ■

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Jazz Library

BOB PERKINS

Carmen McRae

I BELIEVE I MAY have mentioned in a previous article the fact that very often with famous entertainers, only the first name is sufficient for identification. This happens particularly in the genres of jazz and standard/popular music. When a hip person wants to say something about a well-known artist, they may refer to that artist as Sarah, Billie, Ella, or Carmen.

The latter of course is a reference to Carmen McRae, dubbed by jazz critics, writers and fans, “The Singer’s Singer.”

Carmen did not garner the wide acclaim attained by the other singers mentioned, but to a following of die-hard fans, she was the equal of any jazz and standard pop singer, past or present. More than one jazz critic has offered that when Carmen was at her best, which was more often than not, there was no one better. Lyricists must have loved her because she knew how to complement their work by squeezing the full meaning out of the 36 ■ I C O N ■ O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4 ■ W W W . I C O N D V . C O M ■ W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V

words they’d written, and complementing their lines with her own unique interpretations. To stretch a point, she probably performed some songs even better than they had been written.

Carmen was born and raised in Harlem; her parents were Jamaican immigrants, who knowingly or otherwise, helped their daughter become an entertainer by providing her with piano lessons at an early age, and bringing Ellington and Armstrong records into the house. As a teenager eager to become an entertainer, Carmen formed strong and lasting relationships with Billie Holiday and composer Irene Kitchings; the latter, the wife of pianist Teddy Wilson. These two inspired and encouraged her.

Prior to entering her 20s, Carmen toughed it out by playing intermission piano in New York’s Minton’s Playhouse, where jazz legend has it, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and her husband-to-be, drummer Kenny Clarke and a few others, framed the new music called bebop. She supplemented her meager club earning by working as a secretary by day. She was further groomed by stints with the bands of Count Basie, Benny Carter and, and Mercer Ellington.

Nineteen-forty-eight, proved to be a pretty good year for Carmen, as she came to the attention of Decca Record mogul Milt Gabler, who signed her to a five-year contract. A dozen recordings followed, but nothing big happened career-wise. She moved to Chicago and played piano in clubs for several years before returning to New York, but credited the time spent in the Windy City with giving her, as she put it “the most prominent schooling I ever had.”

Nineteen-fifty-four was a better year for Carmen, as she was voted best female vocalist

by Down Beat magazine. This was about the year I saw her at the old Blue Note Jazz Club in Philly. She accompanied herself on piano during the engagement. About a decade later, a friend of mine who was a bartender at the internationally known Pep’s Jazz Club in Philly, said he had the pleasure of providing Carmen with her favorite beverages before and after her shows. He recalled her as being friendly and a very generous tipper. In those halcyon days of jazz in Philadelphia and other cities, artists were booked for weeks at a time—and at the top clubs in Philly, there were also Saturday and Monday matinees.

A bittersweet recollection I have of Carmen occurred when she appeared at a club in

Philadelphia in the mid-1980s, a time when she was on her last legs, and sang while seated. It was painful to see this regal chanteuse, with the once finely-chiseled features, obviously in poor health. But, nonetheless, it was Carmen…perhaps not at her best, but still the legendary Carmen.

Though her name may not have been quite as well known as the several storied ladies of jazz and standard-pop, Carmen held a place in the pantheon of great jazz singers, and boasted a career that spanned a half-century. She sang in clubs and concert venues around the globe—and wherever she went, her hosts and fans were delighted she came, and anxiously awaited her return.

Carmen often revealed a salty exterior: she didn’t care much for interviews, and wouldn’t suffer foolishness from anyone, on or off stage.

I interviewed her once, and came away unscathed. I found her delightful. One interviewer who evidently did not, described her as being like a 45 rpm record, in that one side was always a hit, but the flip side you wouldn’t want to audition. Perhaps the late acceptance of her talents, coupled with two bad marriages, had something to do with her sometimes mercurial manner. But much like her primary influence, Billie Holiday, Carmen included in her songs some of the troubles and frustrations she’d not only seen, but had been a part of. For instance, her ability to render a ballad contained all the ingredients of a love song—the good times of a romance were clearly palpable and the bad times might be fitted with sarcasm, and a “love stinks” kind of cynicism—that somehow connected with audiences, and did not mar the performance of the material. In fact, her fans expected, and welcomed the contrast, because this was Carmen!

She recorded for many labels and compiled over 60 albums during her career. One of her many bests is Carmen Sings the Great American Songbook on the Atlantic label. Another is Carmen McRae: The Diva Series, on Verve. Carmen Mercedes McRae—“The Singer’s Singer”—was born April 8, 1920, and passed away at her home in Beverly Hills on November 10, 1994 following a long battle with emphysema. ■

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

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About Life

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

BONDING, SEPARATION, LOSS ANYONE WHO IS READING this is alive because someone (or more than one person) has bonded to them. Without any bonding early in life, babies fail to thrive. They die or suffer such major damage to the psyche that they become emotionally dead. The depth, quality and duration of those early bonds determine much of what each person becomes over the course of life. In all the years of the “nature vs nurture” debate, experts from all walks of life believe the effect of nature

and nurture is about 50/50. Changing genetics seems within our grasp in the next 50 years. Changing the very nature of the psyche is, to some extent, within the grasp of most already.

Just as the brain can rewire itself after a head injury, the heart is open to fundamental change given the right inputs.

The conditions for human change and growth are present in everyone. There are times in the course of our lifecycle when people are more open to bonding deeply. Those times are: from birth through early childhood; early adolescence; when one becomes a parent and certain other times such as the loss of a parent, child or spouse; and during certain phases of separation. These are times of great learning, absorption of information, formation of the self, reformation of aspects of the self. These conditions are sometimes driven by great occurrences, sometimes driven by crises and sometimes driven by the nature of the lifecycle as it unfurls the self in response to certain milestones and achievements.

Often, in the course of bonding and separating from parents, lovers, family, friends and spouses, the opportunities for deep and reparative bonding arise. Getting closer to another person presents the chance to fix and/or repair damaged and fragmented bonds that were injured. In unhealthy and dysfunctional bonds there’s residue from such damage, and that manifests as defensiveness, resistance to closeness and putting up walls. Walls are present to protect us from being hurt or damaged again. Because no life is perfect, everyone has walls or barriers of some sort.

Pouring love into someone with wounds can result in a fright so deep that they may run away. Some people reject love because they feel undeserving. Some people run away from love because they fear they will lose themselves in the process of getting closer. Some people run from love because they’re sure they’ll hurt the other person. Some people run from love because their only experience of love has been marked with pain. Knowing that these walls or defenses will surface is a basic key to understanding how best to bond deeply with others. Fearful people do and say many things to throw others off from really knowing them deeply.

In reality, most people hope to meet someone who will see through those walls, to know that the fortress is constructed of bricks and stone fashioned from fear, hurt, loss and other kinds of damage. Behind the walls and drawbridge lies a scared child who rejects others. These rejections are but attempts to throw others off the hunt for the true self. The true self is at an even deeper level—it is filled with the kind of magic that makes so many things possible in life. The true self lies within the frightened and wounded child.

As with all bonds, the structure and demands of life cause bonded people to separate in order to do individual things like work, hobbies, education, other friendships as well as family and community obligations. Separation, whether it’s the first time a baby is left with babysitters, the first day of kindergarten, becoming more independent, moving away, etc, test the bond. What is required to have an adequate separation in many of these events is the ability to internalize or hold onto the person deeply in one’s heart. Insecurities and jealousies often stem from insufficient internalization. People sometimes become bonded to someone who is not trustworthy or able to hold onto the internalized other. When this happens, bonds are damaged and the person can become injured again. As difficult as it may be for some to bond and become close, it’s even more difficult to maintain a bond and stay close. This may explain in part why the divorce rate in the U.S. is 50 percent and why the average marriage lasts only 6.5 years. The best medicine for separation anxiety, as it is with most fears, is reassurance followed by the experience of someone being there consistently over time. In bonding, this state is known as constantcy.

Loss is inevitable in the course of living life. Losses from death, illness (mental and physical), physical separation and emotional separation are commonplace and expected. Some people do very poorly with loss and never recover. People who manage to move on despite loss have deeply internalized the bond that existed with another person. They understand that distance, disagreements, and even death, do not bring about total loss. The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel believed that if we hold someone deep in our hearts, they will exist for us forever even if we never see them again or if they have already passed away. ■

Jim Delpino is a psychotherapist in private practice for over 33 years. Email: jdelpino@aol.com Phone: (215) 364-0139.

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Dining

ROBERT GORDON

CALEB’S AMERICAN KITCHEN A FEW TRIPS TO Caleb’s American Kitchen in Lahaska is convincing. Caleb Lentchner, the eponymous Chef-owner, has given this part of Bucks County dining a welcome, in the words of Chuck Berry, “shot of rhythm and blues.”

Caleb’s American Kitchen has moved into the location along busy Rt. 202 that was long occupied by Wildflowers, an eatery that, frankly, grew stale in its waning years. Caleb’s endows both the Wildflowers space and the region itself with new life. It’s open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That stoked schedule can spell burnout and slippage in quality. But it hasn’t. I’ve visited Caleb’s now in all the seasons to test its seasonally changing menu. The fare has remained good and reliable no matter the season.

I particularly like the dishes that tap Caleb’s creativity—dishes like Vegetarian Corned Beef & Quinoa. He mimics corned beef with seitan. For the pure gastronomic alchemy of impersonating meat’s taste and texture, Caleb’s is one of the best I’ve tasted. His process of pickling the seitan with caraway distinguishes the dish. The seitan-corned-beef possesses a delectable smoky undercurrent. Paired with nutty quinoa and spinach, it’s one of the finest vegetarian dishes I’ve ever had. Anywhere.

Rolling through the seasons: On the summer menu, mango, pepper, diced red tomatoes, and yellow cherry tomato enlivens barramundi, with sautéed spinach counterbalancing the fruity swirls.

Also on the summer menu is Lump Maryland Crab Mini Tacos: three delicate taco shells crammed with crab salad colorfully capped with avocado purée. On the winter menu, I enjoyed the South Beach Ceviche Mini Tacos: three taco shells clutch a savory cargo of ceviche, garbanzo beans, and cucumber slices.

Three nuclear-hot chile slices border each of these items.

Braised Short Ribs Grilled Cheese is a simple but cogent pairing. Short ribs and aged cheddar are grilled together on crusty bread spread with pickled red onions. Opposite the quartered sandwich mounded at one corner of a large plate is a grove of pickled red onions that weave colorfully between long helix-shaped ribbons of cucumber. The pickling is more than garnish. Its sweet-sour pucker complements the sandwich nicely, and endows the familiar with a splash of excitement.

Maui Ahi Tuna Poke is a popular dish for all seasons. It’s served in a large martini glass filled with Hawaiian tuna, which has been marinated, minced and mixed with macadamia nuts. Ginger adds some zing. New England Lobster Rolls are three crispy brioche squares wrapped around columns of rich Maine lobster salad. The three brioche squares tower upward from deep green pesto in a beautiful, appetizing dish.

The sauce in Braised Texas Antelope Ragu and pappardelle was so soulfully delicious, it eased some of last winter’s pain.

Ditto for last winter’s Sustainable Native Atlantic Salmon. The grilled salmon glinted atop a bed of spinach and quinoa pilaf spiked with basil. A slice of fresh grapefruit playing counterpoint to the sweet tastes of the other ingredients topped the salmon.

Over the years, I got to know Caleb at Marsha Brown’s in New Hope, where he, in large part, migrated from the kitchen to the front of the house. In our conversations (and his creations), I was impressed by his ideas and culinary ambition. He was imaginative and progressive. I also sensed he didn’t have full freedom to pursue and bring his own ideas to fruition. Now he does, and the results are what I anticipated. Caleb is committed to farm-to-table cooking. He is showing a yen for invention— and for inventing more vegetarian/ vegan choices. His son’s gluten allergy has spurred him into educating himself about glutenfree cooking and to venture into that frontier.

Caleb and his wife Carol have laid out a lovely, airy interior with plenty of table room and plenty of room between tables.

And they’ve given some welcome diversity to a scene suffering from a long bout with the boogie-woogie flu. ■ Caleb’s American Kitchen, 5738 Route 202 (junction of 202 and 263), Lahaska, PA (215) 794-8588. www.calebsamericankitchen.com Email comments and suggestions to r.gordon33@verizon.net

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HOTEL Modern Cuisine h Classic Comfort Corner of Swan & Main Lambertville, NJ 609-397-3552 W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V ■ W W W . I C O N D V . C O M ■ O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4 ■ I C O N ■ 39

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10 / KANDINSKY

ities as people, places and things to successfully convey the essence of non-material truths.

Consequently, by exaggerating and distorting the representation of his subject matter, he felt his art heightened and dramatized the expressive spiritual content he sought to share through his art with a potential audience.

Currently, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue in New York City is offering visitors a wonderful exhibition made up of examples of Kandinsky’s work from this period of his creative life, which unfolded just prior to his invention of pure abstraction. (He called that next phase of his artistic development “non-objective art” because it was not based on the outward appearance of ordinary, everyday objects.)

This present exhibition, titled Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901 to 1911, is scheduled to remain on public view until spring of 2015. Typically, image content seen in the examples

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28 / THE FINE ART OF IRONY

Women spend a good portion on their child-rearing careers breaking up fights. Cartoonists spend their entire careers starting them. When they aren’t separating small combatants, women are saying, “Be nice.” Women struggle to be nice in a mean world, and cartoonists struggle to be meaner in a mean world. Cartoonists are never nice.

You once described your profession as “a vain, transitory profession that pokes fun at people.”

The transitory is pretty easy to talk about. Cartoons are made for the moment. You can’t do an editorial cartoon about something nobody knows about. There’s no joke. If you look at old political cartoons, it’s really difficult to know what they’re about—especially if they were drawn about something that happened before you were born. It’s gone, lost in history. The vain part is in thinking that they have any effect whatsoever. My friend Bob Mankoff [cartoon editor of The New Yorker] said it well, “Some people say cartoons speak truth to power. Well, if that’s true, they’re not speaking very clearly.” Here we are all these years later still drawing about war, corruption, environmental degradation, you name it.

Vasily Kandinsky, Landscape near Murnau with Locomotive (Landschaft bei Murnau mit Lokomotive), 1909. Oil on board, 50.5 x 65.1 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 50.1295. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

installed include memories of visits to Russia, assorted pastoral views, seasonal sights, urban parks and expressionist treatments of human figures.

It’s an extraordinary installation of paintings and graphic works in which the roots of Kandinsky’s later accomplishments are presented with the keen scholarly insight and the exercise of superb taste by the Guggenheim’s Senior Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Tracey Bashkoff and Associate Curator of Exhibitions and Provenance Megan Fontanella. Imbued with considerable compositional richness, they are poetically meaningful points of connection between intuitively felt living experiences and the timelessly infinite cosmos.

In retrospect, Kandinsky stands out vividly as one of the foremost intellectuals in the vast reaches of modern art. He was a restless and exceptionally innovative visionary with a bottomless curiosity about virtually everything related to expressive aesthetic form in painting and other studio disciplines as well.

Typically, over the span of his creative life, he was a superb craftsman, designer and illustrator as well as a gifted printmaker in the areas of etching, lithography and woodcut. In fact, there was hardly anything connected with the grammar of design that he didn’t approach imaginatively and with an emotionally driven measure of passion. Little wonder that Walter Gropius eventually sought him out to be a master on the teaching faculty of the Bauhaus, a school of art and architecture at Dessau in Germany.

In addition, beyond exercising a rare capacity for critical thought and writing, Kandinsky also benefitted enormously from undertaking journeys to such far-flung places as Venice, Russia, Paris, North Africa and Amsterdam. Besides helping to broaden and deepen his outlook on life, these travels also provided him with offbeat sources of subject matter for his highly varied artworks.

In the end, perhaps the most significant feature of Kandinsky’s contribution to the world of art is the sheer vitality of his gift for making form come alive with an energized sense of color, rhythm and pattern.

One can’t help but feel a pitch of animated excitement as a consequence of making close contact with Kandinsky’s assorted accomplishments—a prophet who was not denied entry into the Promised Land, he was able to structure works that proved to be both seminal and sublime.

Truly, Kandinsky was graced with the privilege of leaving a heroically scaled legacy of vision for those who would potentially be deeply touched by all that he brought into being. ■ 40 ■ I C O N ■ O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4 ■ W W W . I C O N D V . C O M ■ W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V

Signe Wilkinson takes along a sketchbook whenever she travels.

So what then is the value of editorial cartooning? Does this work make a difference or is it merely an entertainment?

Compared to politicians, political cartoons are powerless little things. They can’t give friends tax breaks, vote themselves raises, send kids off to war, or protect our private lives from government intrusion. Somehow, though, on their way from newsstand to birdcage liner, cartoons seem to incite brief incendiary outbursts, propelling readers to call me for apologies…or ask for reprint rights.

A request for reprint rights once saved your job.

That’s right. I started out at the San Jose Mercury. The Mercury got less than it bargained for. I was probably not ready for prime time. Apparently, a few people didn’t like my work, so it was questionable how long I’d last at there. One day the publisher came into my office, and I thought he was coming in to give me the axe. But he asked if he could have a copy of such and such a cartoon. It seems that a neighbor by his summer home in Hawaii saw my cartoon reprinted in The Washington Post and asked him for the original. I asked him who his neighbor was. It was Clare Booth Luce! And so this little liberal’s job was saved by a conservative Republican, but at least she was a woman.

Before we part, I’m curious about why you’ve been adamant that you don’t want your photograph accompanying this interview. Yet you’ve generously offered ICON the privilege of reprinting your cartoons. You were the only woman in the Library of Congress’ “Women Who Dare” calendar without a photograph to accompany your bio. You used a cartoon of yourself in place of a photo. Why the sensitivity?

I guess I’m just a Native American at heart and believe photographs steal your soul. One of the great things about cartooning is that it’s anonymous. It’s not about me; it’s about the image. People can get mad at the image, but they’re not associating it with me. After all these years I get mail that starts with “Dear Mr. Wilkinson.” And I’m happy about that. I’m just happy that it’s about the cartoon and not about me. ■

E

Dining

ROBERT GORDON

Tavern on camac THE TAVERN’S MENU CATEGORIES read like this: Snack, Graze, Eat, and Embellish. The nomenclature suits Chef Mackenzie Hilton’s fare. Her style can be described as either simplistic complexity or complex simplicity. At Tavern on Camac, she has cobbled a menu that’s delightful for grazers.

A few years ago, Mackenzie was packing them in a few blocks away from T.O.C. at Mercato [see the March, 2011 edition of ICON].

Her distinct, stylish cooking gained her a lot of fans. I loved the “Cured Meats, Artisan Cheeses, Olive Oils & Flavored Olive Oils,” part of her menu, which commanded one entire page. In addition to offering various tastings of cheeses and charcuterie, she came up with winsome adventures like a $6 “Flight of Olive Oils.” I can still recall the unctuous sweetness of such specialties as Vincotto Fig vinegar, an import from Lecce Italy infused with fig and aged for three years.

The Tavern on Camac is an attractive edifice tucked into Washington West’s cobblestoned So. Camac Street, a picturesque pedestrian path in the Gayborhood. The nearby historic marker for the Philadelphia Sketch Club suggests the area has long attracted the artsy. The marker proclaims it to be the nation’s oldest artist club that boasts alumni like Eakins and Wyeth. In any event, the location feels miles removed from the traffic and craziness of nearby Locust and Spruce.

Inside and outside, the Tavern is handsome, historic, and scrupulously tended. In the downstairs restaurant, rich, dark woods, somber wood paneling, hewn overhead joists, and industrial-age bricks fuse into a tidy urban minimalist look. In one corner, a doorsized grill bars passage through a corridor that vanishes into the dark. “The passage winds along under the street. At one time, it was used for the Underground Railroad. Now we use the space for storage,” our server tells us.

The atmosphere suits the fare. Perhaps the signature lick in Mackenzie’s arsenal is her knack for making the commonplace

seem upscale—a bit of legerdemain she accomplishes with substance, not pretentious packaging. She unlocks nuances and subtleties, offering items like the Lancaster Farm Pickle Plate that invite the diner to explore. A huge plate dimpled into nine separate pockets features pickled onions, pickled cauliflowers, pickled watermelon rinds, spicy sesame Asian cucumbers, kimchi, pickled cabbage, carrots and parsnips, and dill. The crunch-fest is a gleeful audit of an array of the perky, puckery, and peppery products of pickling.

Pork Belly Sliders are addictive. The flavor of Kimchi and cilantro are dialed up to a just-right level to give the rich meat that’s slathered with scallion aïoli an exotic Asian twist.

On the list of “Snacks,” deviled Sauder Farm eggs enjoy the heat of sriracha. Tender, crunchy Grilled Asparagus stalks are flaked with Pecorino Romano shavings and a poached egg enhances both the taste and the visual appeal.

In the “Graze” section of the menu, there’s a delicious dish that garnishes a verdant package of buttered favas, fresh rocket, and shallot with shavings of Pecorino Romano, a sprinkle of pine nuts, lemon zest, and a sneaky tingle of mint.

The Fried monkfish Po’ Boy sandwich is the best Po’ Boy I’ve had since slurping down Oyster Po’ Boys at Parasol’s in the Big Easy. A potent, spicy pickle remoulade and slaw brighten the monkfish, which is mounded so high inside the brioche that the mouth almost needs an extra joint to chomp into it. A mega-heap of French fries makes an ideal side.

Other choice entrées include Steak frites: Meyer hangar steak with garlic fries—a tasty homage to French bistro—and Hudson Valley Duck Confit dressed in red-wine vinegar and olive oil, crowned with poached egg, and served with frisée and crispy potatoes.

Desserts, like caramel corn and house-made chocolate chip cookies, are campy, cheeky, and tasty. In other words, just plain good-tasting fun, which is something the Tavern on Camac offers whether you decide to snack, graze, eat or embellish. ■

Email comments and suggestions to r.gordon33@verizon.net

Tavern on Camac, 243 South Camac Street, Philadelphia (215) 545-0900. www.tavernoncamac.com W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / I C O N D V ■ W W W . I C O N D V . C O M ■ O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4 ■ I C O N ■ 41

The Los Angeles Times SUNDAY CROSSWORD PUZZLE

TWELVE-STEP PUZZLE

By Matt Skoczen and Patti Varol Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

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ACROSS Takes great pleasure (in) It may be fit for a queen Loathe Sushi bar tuna Three-time Wimbledon champ Rigel’s constellation Alla __: music notation Big __ Door holder’s quaint invitation “Hurry!”

Nebraska settlers “G’day” sayers Network with regular pledge drives Fifth Avenue retailer Unprovoked John of Scotland Part of i.e.

Bolt, back in the day Native American ritual Comic collected in “Cows of Our Planet” Zesty start in London?

TV production company cofounder, familiarly Like gossip Where stars come out Quarterback Marino Immortal Russian ballerina Galina Hard work Car and Driver check Alain, par exemple When two hands meet?

Minute Work __ Secure door feature Where many tweens may be seen Capital mentioned in “M*A*S*H” __ colada Rubeola spot GPS option “Gimme a break!”

“Are you __ not?”

Likely will Dog park sound “No, No, Nanette” number Like helium It may be flat Mal de __ Birds Eye rival 1974 #1 hit for Helen Reddy Foto Hut owner on “That ’70s Show” Fresno-to-Bakersfield dir.

Three times, in Rx’s Doesn’t agree to

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Complex course __ cat Conceal Short side?

Prepare for the ring Like some test questions Household cleaner Polynesian tongue Chalet beverage Garbo of “Grand Hotel” Network with regular pledge drives 133 Flagrant, as injustice 134 Somewhat far 135 Mythical reveler

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DOWN Word after see or go Gamer’s game face Arizona cultural resort Olympic skater Yamaguchi Sault __ Marie Veggie burger ingredient Expanding-circle film effect Respiratory cavity Prepared for use, as a violin bow Get in the game Easy as __ Heathcliff’s creator Natural rope fiber Thorough repair Like core courses: Abbr.

China setting Pap’s son, in Twain stories Bugs Prepared for painting, perhaps Tries to charm with, as a pickup line Goes after Quatre et sept Glow “Joy of Cooking” writer Rombauer Fuss Tutti-__ ice cream Waffle maker “Whip It” band Red-wrapped import Swirl Dutch burg Cinematic pet Aborigine of Japan Lava lamp lumps Camden Yards athlete Campus mil. group “Don’t __” “I come to fetch you to the __house”: Decius Brutus Grand __ Opry Opposite of paleo-

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Same: Pref.

Yeats’ land: Abbr.

Support for a hora honoree “The Black Cat” (1934) co-star Skippy rival Yard, e.g.

“Money __ everything” Pre-sunrise effect Sandwich choice Sputtering sound 1997 Emmy winner for TV’s “Rebecca” Peter or Paul Soften Mountain lakes Declaims Showed signs of age, as paint Signal to start talking Beach party challenge Cannes chum It’s for the birds “Awake, arise __ forever fallen!”: Milton Admit an embarrassing mistake Furrier family Poet depicted in “Il Postino” Hardly generous Cochise player of ’50s TV Soldier’s lodging in a private home Beer critic’s adjective Cross one’s heart

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Fictional skipper Veers suddenly Peek or bug ending Rider on Butch’s handlebars Messes (with)

124 Texter’s “Holy cow!”

125 Followers of nus 127 NFL overtime margins of victory, often

Answer to September’s puzzle, I OWE YOU ONE

Agenda CALL TO ARTISTS Philadelphia Sketch Club America’s oldest club for artists

7th Annual Philustration Exhibition. 10/31-11/15. Juried online exhibition open to all participants. Prospectus: www.sketchclub.org. Deadline for entries 10/11.

Philadelphia Sketch Club, 235 South Camac St., Phila.

215.545.9298.

ART EXHIBITS THRU 10/12 Shared Vision: The Myron & Anne Jaffe Portenar Collection. Arthur Ross Gallery, Fisher Fine Arts Library bldg, 220 S. 34th St, Philadelphia. arthurrossgallery.com THRU 10/17 114th Anniversary International Exhibition of Works on Paper. Philadelphia Watercolor Society, Community Art Center, 414 Plush Mill Rd, Wallingford. pwcs.org.

THRU 10/18 Works by Janet Cooke in Stewart Gallery. Reception 10/12, 2-4. Also in Stewart Gallery, Gala live auction preview & historic works.

Main Gallery: 2014 Large Format Art Show. Philadelphia Sketch Club, 235 S. Camac St., Philadelphia.

215-545-9298. sketchclub.org.

10/25-11/23 Robert Beck, Open Road.

Receptions: 10/25, 5-8; 10/26, 1-5. 204 N. Union St., Lambertville, NJ. 215-9820074. robertbeck.net THRU 10/25 Atushiko Musashi. Grossman Gallery, Williams Visual Arts Building, Lafayette College, 243 N. 3rd St., Easton, PA. 610-330-5361. http://galleries.lafayette.edu THRU 10/26 Out of This World: Work by Steve Tobin. Michener Art Museum, 138 So. Pine St., Doylestown.

MichenerArtMuseum.org THRU 11/2 Marion Di Quinzio. The Quiet Life Gallery, 17 So. Main St., Lambertville, NJ. 609-397-0880.

Quietlifegallery.com

THRU 11/2 Kelli Abdoney & Sandy Alpert, And here we are...

Red Filter Gallery, 74 Bridge St., Lambertville. Tues-Sun, 12-5. 347-244-9758. redfiltergallery.com THRU 12/13 Michael Pestel: Requiem, Ectopistes Migratorius.

Williams Center Gallery, Main Campus of Lafayette College, 317 Hamilton St., Easton. 610-330-5361. galleries.lafayette.edu 9/4-10/5 Flight/Patterns. Work by Jennifer Cadoff and Beatrice Bork. Reception 9/6, 5-8.

Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge St., Lambertville. lambertvillearts.com 9/9-11/2 Then & Now: Patricia Lange & Doug Sardo. Reception 10/11, 4-7. Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge St., Lambertville, NJ. lambertvillearts.com 10/1-11/2 Nick D’Angelo: Paintings Achromic VII: “Goodbye for Now.” Rodger Lapelle, 122 N. 3rd St., Philadelphia. WSun 12-6. 215-592-0232. rodgerlapellegalleries.com 10/5-10/13 Jay Eisenberg: Past, Present. Future. Reception 10/4, 6-8. New Hope ARTS, 2 Stockton Ave, New Hope.

215.862.9606 NewHopeArts.org 10/10-10/12 Art For Conservation. Artists of the Gallows Run benefit to conserve land. Opening reception, Friday, 10/10, 58pm: bid, buy, drink, dance, eat, mingle. Sat., Sunday, 25pm. Rising Sun Farm, 207 Church Hill Rd, Kintnersville, PA grwa.wildapricot.org 10/12-1/25 Robert Indiana, A-Z. Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley, 31 North Fifth St., Allentown, PA. AllentownArtMuseum.org 10/18-1/11 From Houdini to Hugo: The Art of Brian Selznick.

Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pkway, Wilmington, DE. 302-571-9590. delart.org

10/18-11/16 Painting People. Patricia Hutton Galleries, 47 W. State St., Doylestown. 215348-1728. PatriciaHuttonGalleries.com

dozen designers and dealers. Penn Museum, Philadelphia. pennmuseum.org

10/30-1/18 HENRIQUE OLIVEIRA: Adenocalcinoma Poliresidual.

Opening 10/30, 5-7:30. Artist talk 4:00. Arthur Ross Gallery, 220 S. 34th St., Philadelphia. ArthurRossGallery.com. 215-898-2083.

GALAS/FESTS/AUCTIONS 10/5 ART AUCTION. Karl Stirner, Stephen Antonakos, David Anderson, Brandon Ballengée, Berrisford Boothe, Nancy Cohen, Willie Cole, Vicki DaSilva, Melville Edwards, Curlee Holton, Will Lamson, Emil Lukas, Loren Madsen, Paul Matthews, Steve Tobin, Jim Toia. Lafayette College, Wilson Room, Pfenning Hall, 352 Hamilton St., Easton, PA. Tickets: chad@taggartassociates.com or call 610-417-9947. sites.lafayette.edu/KSAT-auction.

10/10 Not-Just-ART AUCTION, 7pm preview & reception.

Pasta & hors d’oeuvres.

8pm, live & silent auctions.

Brookside Country Club, Macungie. Online preview: biddingforgood.com. 610-4347811. LVArtsBoxOffice.org 10/12 Art for the Market, 4th Annual Juried Show and Live Auction. 1pm at Grand Eastonian Suites Hotel, Easton.

EastonFarmersMarket.com 10/18 Philadelphia Sketch Club’s 150th Anniversary Gala honoring Elizabeth Osbourne, Robert Beck and Moe Booker. Medal presentation, live art auction, silent auction, cocktails, buffet, music.

7:00-midnight. 215-5459298. sketchclub.org 10/18 Autumn Alive. Crafters. cupcake contest, food, beer, entertainment, and Pet Parade.

10 a.m.-4 p.m., rain date 10/25. 215-536-2273.QuakertownAlive.com 10/30-11/2 TREASURES: Jewelry Sale & Show. More than two

11/1 & 11/2 29th Annual Holiday Marketplace. 11/1, 10am- 5pm, 11/2, 11am-4pm. Lehigh Valley Chapter PA Guild of Craftsmen. The Swain School, 1100 South 24th St., Allentown, PA. Lvholidaymarketplace.com THEATER / DANCE 10/1-10/12 Harvey, by Mary Chase. Act 1 Performing Arts, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts. DeSales Univ., 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-282-3192. Desales.edu/act1 10/14-11/2 The Understudy. McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ. 609258-2787. mccarter.org.

10/16-10/26 The Miser, by Moliere. Act 1 Performing Arts, Schubert Theatre, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, DeSales U., 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-2823192. Desales.edu/act1 10/24-11/2 Anyone Can Whistle by Stephen Sondheim. Muhlenberg College, Theatre & Dance, 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA. 484-664-3333.

Muhlenberg.edu/Theatre 11/5 & 11/6 Mamma Mia! State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton, PA. 610-252-3132.

Statetheatre.org 11/6-11/8 Moving Stories, inspired by emerging choreographers.

Muhlenberg College, Theatre & Dance, 2400 Chew St., Allentown.484-664-3333.

Muhlenberg.edu/dance

Thurs.-Sat., Dinner and a Show at SteelStacks, Bethlehem. 5-10. Table service, valet parking. artsquest.org

Thursday & Friday nights: DeAnna’s Restaurant, 54 N. Franklin St., Lambertville, NJ. LIVE JAZZ. 609-397-8957. deannasrestaurant.com.

10/24 ANTHONY JESELNIK

CONCERTS 10/11 Jo Dee Messina. State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton.610-252-3132.

Statetheatre.org 10/17 Red Baraat, 8pm. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. Free parking. 610-758-2787.

Zoellnerartscenter.org 10/18 Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, Emerging Genius.

Cello soloist Deborah Davis.

Christ Lutheran Church, 1245 Hamilton St., Allentown. 610-434-7811. pasinfonia.org. lvartsBoxOffice.org 11/1 Arturo Sandoval, 8pm. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. Free parking. 610-758-2787.

Zoellnerartscenter.org 11/1 The American Boychoir in a Gala concert, 8pm.The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Central Moravian Church, Bethlehem, PA. 610.855.4382, ext 10. BACH.org 11/7 Christine Clewell, organist.

Arts at St. John’s, St. John’s Lutheran Church, 37 S. 5th St., Allentown. 610-4351641. Stjohnsallentown.org KESWICK THEATRE Keswick Theatre 291 Keswick Ave., Glenside keswicktheatre.com 10/4 FLYING COLORS Neal Morse, Mike Portnoy, Dave LaRue, Casey McPherson, Steve Morse.

DINNER & MUSIC Every Monday, Live guitar with Barry Peterson, 7-10. Karla’s, 5 W. Mechanic St., New Hope. 215-862-2612. karlasnewhope.com

10/23 CHARLIE DANIELS BAND

10/6 NAS - 2 shows 10/10 Tim & Eric & Dr. Steve Brule 10/11 KATHLEEN MADIGAN 10/16 WMGK’S ROCK FINALS

10/25 RENAISSANCE w/Al Stewart 10/29 TODD RUNDGREN 11/1 & 11/2 THE CAPITOL STEPS MUSIKFEST CAFÉ 101 Founders Way Bethlehem, PA 610-332-1300. artsquest.org 10/12 PUSS N BOOTS: Norah Jones, Sasha, Cath. Popper 10/15 HERE COME THE MUMMIES 10/22 DRIVE BY TRUCKERS 10/25 CRAIG THATCHER BAND 10/28 MIKE SUPER, magic 10/31 HALL & OATES TRIBUTE EVENTS & FESTIVALS THRU 10/31 Every Sat. & Sun. Over 50 shops & eateries, free parking, sales and Fall menus, live music, Alchemy student art show, scarecrows, 5k trick or trot, pumpkin carving, zombie crawl, WDVR live broadcast. Frenchtown, NJ. Frenchtownnj.org 10/15 Tinicum Art and Science High School. Maasai Traditional Tribal Dance and Cultural Presentation, 2-4.

Handmade Kenyan jewelry for sale. Tinicumartandscience.org. 85 Sherman Road Ottsville, PA. 610-8476980. Donations accepted.

BOOK/POETRY READINGS Esoteric Reading & Music Night, 5pm. Jordan Krall w/ Human Adult Band, Leza Cantoral, Doug Gelsleichter, Christopher Paul, Nick Cato and Philip Lopresti. Panoply Books, 48 N. Union St, Lambertville, NJ. 609-397-1145.

Panoplybooks.com

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Carol C. Dorey Real Estate, Inc. Specialists in High-Value Property www.doreyrealestate.com (610) 346-8800

WILDBERRY

SAUCON VALLEY PRIVACY

FAIRWAY VIEWS

It is a rare pleasure to encounter such a Saucon Valley property, the very essence of elegance in a premiere estate property. Prominently positioned on 5 acres, enveloped by mature trees, manicured lawns & perennial gardens, there are lovely outdoor living spaces of covered & screened porches, stone patios & private vistas all overlooking a pool, pond, spa, hot tub, and tennis court… in a bucolic setting of natural beauty. The timeless design features a wealth of custom details in 8,716 square feet, with 6 BRs, au pair suite, & spaces of grand proportions that invite one to entertain. $2,650,000

This 2004 custom-built home is centered in the midst of towering trees and cleared woodlands on five quiet acres. Striking amenities and pretty views are found in more than 4,200 square feet of living space. Cherry floors, high ceilings accented by crown moldings and cherry cabinetry provide warm nuances. There are four spacious bedrooms, including a first floor master suite with two walk-in closets, double vanities and a jetted tub. Outdoors, songbirds, butterflies and colorful plantings provide the perfect backdrop for the heated swimming pool. $699,000

Steps from the prestigious Saucon Valley Country Club, this lovely home is set on two flat acres with vistas of surrounding hills and the manicured grounds of an award-winning golf course. Generously-sized rooms are geared for sophisticated entertaining with a well-equipped kitchen with adjacent breakfast room and butler’s pantry. Glimpses of the sparkling pool and flagstone terrace accentuate the formal dining room and grand family room. Side porches offer sweeping views and a place to relax. Close proximity to the Promenade Shops and I-78 are an added bonus. $1,275,000

BETHLEHEM MASTERPIECE

CLASSIC BRICK COLONIAL

PARKLAND SCHOOLS

In 1936, a time when quality was the rule and not the exception, noted Lehigh Valley architect, Charles Lovelace, designed this exceptional estate. Recent renovations and expansion have enhanced the original grace and grandeur, bringing this home up to today’s standards, but still retaining the stature and ambience of its history. Always a home to prominent executives, both the interior and exterior are particularly well suited to entertaining. The gardens and patio areas are an extended venue for large gatherings. At once classic and elegant, while warm and comfortable, it is indeed, the perfect family home. $975,000

This Weyhill Woods beauty channels the charm and classic lines of a historic home yet offers luxurious amenities discriminating buyers demand. The foursquare construction boasts a functional and beautiful floor plan featuring a gourmet kitchen, brick walled sunroom, main level office with access to a covered porch, and a luxurious master bedroom suite with tray and gambrel ceilings, jetted tub and gas fireplace. Biking and walking trails, and Saucon Valley Country Club border this desirable neighborhood with Southern Lehigh public schools. $1,095,000

Great proximity to I-78, the PA Turnpike, and Lehigh Valley Hospital add to the appeal of this Colonial Williamsburg style home in Winchester Heights. Detailed moldings, three fireplaces, and period colors enhance the lovely rooms. The floor plan flows beautifully on three levels with five bedrooms, three and one half baths, kitchen with center prep island, and oversized three car garage. A private yard and mature landscaping frame this special residence. $585,000

HISTORIC BETHLEHEM TREASURE

TIMBER CROSSING

LONG VIEW MANOR

Much care has been taken with the restoration of this beautiful residence. Walls were removed to open up both the kitchen and the spacious master suite. The new blends seamlessly with period details, with a Moravian tile floor in the study and handmade tiles around the fireplace. By the kitchen is a wood oven imported from Tuscany. Outside a lovely garden and patio has a water feature originally built in the 1930s as a child's swimming pool. This home is in the National Register of Historic Places and has been featured on many historic tours and venues. $799,900

The Promenade Shops, prestigious Saucon Valley Country Club and I-78 are less than five minutes from this exquisitely renovated carriage house. Wide plank floors, hand hewn beamed ceilings and textured plaster walls accent the open floor plan. The gourmet kitchen features distressed cabinetry and a granite center island, and the stunning living room has a wall of windows, vaulted ceiling and floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace. A spa-quality bathroom and access to a delightful private porch is found in the first floor master bedroom suite. Meticulous landscaping provides picturesque privacy to this uniquely beautiful home. $695,000

Strategically sited on a lofty three acres in The Manor, this estate home offers highend amenities, impressive architectural details and an invitation to enjoy a remarkable lifestyle in one of the Valley’s leading neighborhoods. This impressive estate home delivers commanding views, wonderful outdoor amenities and comfortable living. The home boasts 4 bedrooms, including a 1st floor master, 3 full baths, 2 half baths, theatre room featuring a fireplace and built-in TV and 5,100+ square feet of living space. $995,000

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