ICON February 2012 by ICON Magazine

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Contents 18

FEBRUARY ~ 2012

FEATURE

FILM Reel News I 16 The Sunset Limited J. Edgar Tower Heist Anonymous

Dueling Steeds I 26 The epic story of War Horse can now be seen on Broadway and at the movies. But which spectacle comes out on top? Cinematters: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close I 18

Thomas Horn.

Jeremy Irvine. Photo: Andrew Cooper

INTERVIEWS

Keresman on Film: Haywire I 20

Rock’s Revolutionary Image Makers I 28 Curator and author Gail Buckland discusses her free-wheeling book and exhibit, “Who Shot Rock and Roll,” about photographers who made popular music a powerful platform for fashion, seduction and liberation.

Bad Movie: Flypaper I 22

Alter Ego I 32 Clybourne Park at the Arden Theatre allows Edward Sobel to show off the fruits of his 10-year relationship with Pulitzer Prize-winner Bruce Norris, which began as dramaturg on Norris’s plays at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago.

DEPARTMENTS POLITICS & OPINION Eugene Robinson I 5 E. J. Dionne Jr. I 5 Lexicrockery I 47

ART

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A Wine and Food Excursion I 34 Il Melograno I 35 Modo Mio I 36

DAVE BARRY Safe on the Slopes I 38

Jimmy Owens Enrico Rava Quintet Jeff Lorber Fusion Amy Cervini Nat Janoff Travels with Manfred Eicher Jazz Library I 52 Lena Horne

DAY/WEEKEND TRIP I 53 ETCETERA Harper’s FINDINGS I 53 L.A. Times Sunday Crossword I 54 Harper’s INDEX I 55

THE LAST WORD I 56 GOING OUT CALENDAR I 59

VICTOR STABIN A Cautionary Tale I 39

ESSAY ABOUT LIFE Making Amends I 43

MUSIC Classical Notebook I 44 Emerson String Quartet Mariss Jansons/Vienna Phil. Nigel Kennedy

Alliteration of the Month I 6 Landscape I 7 Enigma I 8 Henry Ossawa Tanner I 10 Exhibitions I 12

Singer / Songwriter I 46 Charlie Gracie Dion Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band Randy Newman Lisa Mills

STAGE

Keresman on Disc I 48 Lara St. John The Little Willies Spielgusher The Bottle Rockets

The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess I 13 Regional Theater I 14

FOOD & WINE

Goldberg, Avital and Jackson

An Ordinary Marriage I 40

Alfred Wertheimer, Elvis Whispers Softly.

Film Roundup I 24 The Innkeepers Albert Nobbs Perfect Sense The Grey

Nick’s Picks I 50

ON THE COVER: Jerry Schatzberg, American, b. 1927. “Frank Zappa, ‘Himself,’” 1967, printed 2009, chromogenic print 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm). Courtesy of Jerry Schatzberg. Page 28.

opinion Republicans with a one-track mind

Where are the Republican Populists?

EUGENE ROBINSON

E. J. DIONNE JR.

CHYOU KNOW-IT-ALLS WHO think unemployment is the most urgent crisis facing the nation are wrong, I’ve learned from watching a zillion Republican campaign ads on television. All you deficit hawks, rise-of-China worrywarts and alarmed observers of the Iranian nuclear program are wrong, too, and should stop bothering yourselves with trifles. One of Mitt Romney’s spots ends by laying out the nation’s top priority in no uncertain terms. Voters should support Romney, the narrator says, because “beating Obama is the most important issue.” Am I the only one to find that weird? I understand why trying to engineer President Obama’s defeat would be an urgent priority for Romney, who wants to move his family into the White House, but why should it be more important to voters than, say, boosting the economy or reducing the debt? Why shouldn’t the focus be on policies and results? All right, I know how naive this sounds. I’m fully aware of the political calculation: Politics is about winning, and the best way for a Republican to win this year is to make Obama the issue. All the GOP contenders, to varying degrees, have sought to demonize the president. And it’s true that the remaining candidates are spending just as much time and money trying to demonize one another. Romney is portrayed as a mushy, flip-flopping moderate in disguise, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as business-as-usual Washington insiders, Ron Paul as a nutty crackpot. Whoever emerges as the nominee, Republicans have already done a lot of the Obama campaign’s work. I’m also aware that electability has become a major selling point for voters, perhaps even more important than credentials as a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Especially for Romney—whose record as Massachusetts governor is enough to make many Republicans faint dead away—sticking with the “I can beat Obama” line may be the only viable choice. Still, there’s a nasty edge to the discourse here. It’s striking that, in South Carolina where unemployment is at 9.9 percent, the last message Romney decided to send vot-

AIKEN, S.C. January 18 MEMBERS OF THE TEA Party insisted they were turning the GOP into a populist, anti-establishment bastion. Social conservatives have long argued that values and morals matter more than money. Yet in the end, the corporate and economically conservative wing of the Republican Party always seems to win. Thus was Mitt Romney so confident of victory in South Carolina’s primary that he left the state briefly for a fundraiser in New York. And why not? The power of big money has been amplified in this campaign by the super PACs let loose by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and lax regulation. You cannot watch the morning news shows in South Carolina without confronting an intricately confusing blitz of ads, some paid for by candidates, others by the supposedly independent PACs. One kind is indistinguishable from the other. The nature of the ads shows why it would be a major upset were Romney to lose here. Although Romney’s opponents direct some of their fire his way, they are spending a fortune tearing each other apart. Rick Perry’s backers take on both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Ron Paul assails Gingrich and Santorum, too. Romney’s supporters have piled on with ads against Gingrich. Gingrich flicks aside Santorum and Perry with faint praise in his speeches, as he did at an event here, maintaining that “the only effective vote to stop Mitt Romney is Newt Gingrich.” And it does seem, from the polls and the buzz, that Gingrich is the only option whose momentum gives him at least an outside chance of getting by Romney. But Santorum and Perry are not giving way, which is why Romney could afford his side trip to Manhattan. “People have treated Romney coming in first as a foregone conclusion and gone for second,” said Joel Sawyer, who consulted for Jon Huntsman and is now neutral. “I see that as a fundamentally flawed strategy. A very significant number of Republicans are looking for an alternative, but what Romney’s opponents have done is weaken each other.” Bob McAlister, who served as the late Republican governor Carroll Campbell’s chief

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5 / OPINION / REPUBLICANS’ ONE-TRACK MIND

ers before the primary was not “jobs” or “growth”—but rather, “We’ve got to get rid of this guy.” From the sound of it, this whole thing isn’t political. It’s personal. The candidates went back and forth across South Carolina, exhorting voters to “take the country back,” and I wonder: Take it back from whom? Did somebody stage a coup, or maybe a heist? Who’s in possession of this country of yours? And what makes it yours, not theirs?

omney and Gingrich, especially, have taken pains to create the impression that there is something alien and illegitimate about the Obama presidency. They portray Obama not as a political opponent but as a usurper. Gingrich has been shamelessly beating this drum for a long time. Remember his bizarre allegation that “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior” was somehow the key to understanding what Obama was trying to accomplish? That turned out to be just the beginning. At practically every opportunity, he rails about how Obama is a “food stamp president.” At the debate in Myrtle Beach, Gingrich doubled down on his language characterizing poor people as lazy and ignorant, then practically dared anyone to accuse him of race-baiting. He should consider himself accused. Romney’s approach, however, was more subtle. He made the pitch that Obama had to be replaced right now, because if he remains in office for four more years, the country will be transformed into “something we wouldn’t recognize.” Bingo. The Obama administration, to state the obvious, doesn’t look like any of its predecessors. In its diversity, however, it does look a lot like the nation. When I was growing up in South Carolina, the state’s political leadership was all white and all male, and the Confederate flag flew proudly above the statehouse in Columbia. Gov. Nikki Haley (R), who is of Indian descent, gave the annual State of the State address; when she finished, state Rep. Bakari Sellers (D), who is African American, gave the opposition’s response. From the evidence, voters here have more capacity for dealing with change than the Republican candidates seem to think. ■

5 / OPINION / WHERE ARE THE REPUBLICAN POPULISTS?

of staff, said a Romney victory would be the result of the conservative split, “not because Romney is so strong or well-liked by South Carolinians.” The confusion was obvious at the well-attended event here for Gingrich. Interviewed as they stood in line to shake hands with the candidate, voter after voter said they mistrusted Romney—Scott Gilmer, an engineer, saw Romney as “a whole lot like Obama”—but many expressed indecision between Gingrich and Santorum. What’s remarkable is that Romney seems to be closing in on a victory at the very moment when he is painting himself as the anti-populist and a tone-deaf economic elitist. Not only did he suggest that he pays a low 15 percent tax rate (because most of his income derives from investments); he also dismissed the money he made from speaking fees as “not very much.” It turned out that, over the year ending last February, speeches earned him more than $370,000. That’s not chump change for most folks. Think about Romney’s rise in light of the overheated political analysis of 2010 that saw a Republican Party as being transformed by the Tea Party legions who, in alliance with an overlapping group of social and religious conservatives, would take the party away from the establishmentarians. If I had a dollar for every time the new GOP was described in those days as “populist,” I suspect I’d have more than Romney made from his lectures. Certainly some of the movement’s failures can be attributed to a flawed set of competitors and the split on the right, especially Paul’s ability to siphon off a significant share of the Tea Party vote. That has made a consolidation of its forces impossible. (Romney may owe Paul an appointment to the Federal Reserve.) But there is another possibility: that the GOP never was and never can be a populist party, that the term was always being misapplied, and that enough Republicans are quite comfortable with a Harvard-educated private-equity specialist. “Romney is as establishment as they come,” said McAlister. For many conservatives, he added, a fall campaign between Romney and President Obama could thus be a choice between “which of the two establishments do you hate most.” That’s not where the Tea Party’s promoters said we were headed. ■

icon

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

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

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

Trina McKenna trina@icondv.com

ADVERTISING 800-354-8776

Fine Arts Editors Edward Higgins

Burton Wasserman Classica Music Editor Peter H. Gistelinck Music Editors Nick Bewsey

Mark Keresman Bob Perkins Tom Wilk Theater Critic David Schultz Food Editor Robert Gordon Wine Editor Patricia Savoie

Contributing A.D. Amorosi Writers Robert Beck

Jack Byer Ralph Collier Peter Croatto James P. Delpino Sally Friedman Geoff Gehman George Oxford Miller Thom Nickels R. Kurt Osenlund Victor Stabin

PO Box 120 • New Hope, PA 18938 (800) 354-8776 Fax (215) 862-9845 ICON is published twelve times per year. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. ICON welcomes letters to the editor, editorial ideas and submissions, but assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited material. ICON is not responsible for claims made by advertisers. Subscriptions are available for $40 (shipping & handling). Copyright 2012 by Prime Time Publishing Co., Inc.

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a thousand words

STORY AND PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK

Landscape IT IS VERY DIFFICULT for emerging artists to gain a foothold in today’s art market, or just get their work seen by the public. Painters must find wall space and those walls have to be paid for one way or another. It’s understandable and reasonable that the person who owns the walls makes decisions based on commercial realities, but the need for exposure often puts artists in the position of accepting inequitable situations. I’ll give you some examples. Artists are frequently approached to donate work to fundraising auctions, which often gather as many items as possible although the money coming in the door is finite. That means some of the donated work goes cheap or not at all. The organization gets the

money and the purchaser gets the deduction and the artwork at a low price. The artist can only legally claim the cost of materials as a tax donation (not the fair-market value). Benefit art shows are an option, but they are designed to make money for the organizations, not provide opportunities for artists. Take a typical show like the Friends of the Old Well Annual Exhibition. Most of the members of the FOW discuss how much they are willing to donate to the organization while driving to the opening and decide either to get the best piece for their money or as many as they can. A good price point in these events is $300. Many organizations take a 40% commission on sales. The artist has

to pay an entry fee ($25 or more) and frame the artwork. A watercolor requires a mat and glass, and that will cost $100. If the work sells for $300 the artist receives $180, and after expenses makes $55. That’s for creating the work, running around getting it framed, delivering to the show, and doesn’t consider overhead. It’s less than half of what the FOW makes on the sale. If the painting isn’t accepted the artist has spent $125 and has to find another wall. High profile juried shows are one of the best ways to get work seen but some might receive as many as 400 entries and select 100. Even if they don’t sell anything, the show collects $10,000 in entry fees to cover hors d’oeuvres and advertising, with the rest going to the organization. And some reserve the right for their members to purchase work that has been declined, which means the organization receives its fee and somebody gets a good deal on a piece of art, but the artist does not get his work seen by the public even though he has been paid a commission on the sale. Successful galleries show work that appeals to their customers’ taste, and prefer artists who come with a following. But there is a bit of chicken and the egg in that for the artist. You need wall space to get known and you can’t get wall space if you aren’t. Galleries generally take half in commission, although very few take a role in promoting an artist’s career. They have overhead same as any other business, and if they don’t sell the work they don’t make any money. That’s why they have to be selective and lean toward popular images. So it can be tough going for all artists, including those who have reached a level of content, voice and technical ability that would be of interest to the public, and whose work deserves to be seen. Excellence doesn’t equate to commercial success. The art market is not a meritocracy; it’s a market. So an artist who is not painting popular scenes has to rely on venues where his donation is guaranteed an audience or take his financial chances with a juried show. Adding to the difficulties for artists everywhere is how many high-quality venues have closed in recent years because of the wretched economy. Include the loss of the Michener Museum satellite in New Hope, The Museum of Trenton (Ellarslie, which was steadfast in support of living artists), and the Bucks County Playhouse, and it’s clear we are straining the connection to our own art community, which is one of the most talented and creative in the world. It has been said that art is the measure of civilization. The work presented at fundraisers, juried shows, and galleries is a narrow glimpse of what’s being created in the region. There are many thoughtful, challenging, and talented people working in our midst. With fewer places to exhibit both traditional and non-traditional artwork, the opportunities for the public to engage the full depth of that wealth is lost, and that’s bad for everyone, not just the artists. ■ Robert Beck is one of six established painters selected for, Continuum, opening Feb. 25 at New Hope Arts. FEBRUARY 2012

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art

ED HIGGINS

enigma IT APPEARS THAT MOST folks who come in contact with the work of Mavis Smith don’t quite know what to make of it. Smith is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Michener Art Museum, and a colleague of mine suggested flat out that the subjects of her finely crafted egg tempera paintings were, well…”nuts.” Not to put too fine a point on it, he felt they suffered from some mental disease associated with melancholy. Like bipolar disorder. To those who don’t quite know what to make of it, the show’s curator suggests either a deep, intense study of the work—or just diving right in and see what runs up the flagpole. The curator, a distinguished man and artist himself, Brian Peterson, in welcoming notes suggested something akin to espionage calling the work Enigma, and gave himself a code name, Ultra. You don’t see that kind of thing in the art world every day. The artist is Mavis Smith, Trenton native, Bucks County resident, world traveler, book illustrator, mistress of collage, charcoal, and that most demanded of media, egg tempera. According to an interview with ICON contributor Robert Beck published on the website Artsbridge, she is also a wonderful cook. Mavis Smith: Hidden Realities runs at the Michener through May 20. In one of the programs accompanying the show, Smith will give a lecture and demonstration of egg tempera work on May 17. Smith is not much help in explaining the pictures. The Museum provided this quote: “I don’t start out with a firm concept. Your mind is open and you go into a trance and the ideas come in. I start out with a face or a pose that intrigues me; then once I am caught up in the physical execution of the piece, other elements of the composition suggest themselves.” The vast majority of the faces that intrigue Ms. Smith is her own with only slight variations. One sees the work as through a fine mesh fabric. This is not so clearly an artistic device but since Smith shows herself to be an exact and precise craftsperson, it must be done on purpose. In “Night Pole,” that gauze effect is there, but so are the smallest and most intricate details of the blue jeans the subject wears. It’s as if the face is the leitmotif of her work around which revolves such diverse items as shelled peas, kidneyshaped swimming pools, and elegant necklaces. Egg tempera, famously practiced in this region by Andrew Wyeth, is a painstaking process. The artist mixes finely ground pigment with egg yolk, dilutes it with water to a workable stage, dips in the brush and applies a thin, sheer layer of paint. The layers are repeated again and again until the artist is satisfied. Smith has worked in other media, as well. She has written a dozen or so books and illustrated scores of children’s books. She studied at Pratt and the Seattle Academy of Fine Art, lived in Europe—where she exhibited in Holland and Switzerland—and has had shows in Santa Fe, New York and a number of venues in Bucks County. Scattered around the Michener galleries are quotations from Smith and others, including Fellini and Rene Magritte. Even curator Brian “Ultra” Peterson gets into the act. The exhibition also includes a number of charcoal works, some giant-size depictions of what look like Celtic-style defender hedges guarding against invasion. At one point in the show Smith suggests that her work is like channel surfing—a random image pops up, holds our attention despite not knowing what it’s all about, and then we’ll move on. The abiding quality of Mavis Smith’s work is that it is superbly crafted and has an ethereal beauty that gives us pause. Whether it is a mystery or holds magic and meaning, it is indeed up to the beholder. ■ Sanctity.

Edward Higgins is a member of The Association Internationale Des Critiques d’Art. 8

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BURT WASSERMAN

Henry Ossawa Tanner

MODERN SPIRIT

ONCE A STUDENT AT the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Henry Ossawa Tanner is now the subject of a major solo exhibition at his alma mater. Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit is on view in the Fisher Brooks Gallery of the Hamilton Building, across from the landmark red stone Museum structure on Broad St. in center city Philadelphia. Set to run through April 15, 2012, the installation surveys Tanner’s oeuvre from his early days in the Quaker city to his relocation in France where he lived and worked as an artist until his death in 1937. The show is bound to lift the artist’s reputation to new heights of awareness by the public through the appearance of recent scholarship about him in the exhibition catalog and the opportunity to study his creative accomplishments close-up and in retrospect. Another source of information about Tanner is the appearance of the first children’s book about him by authorartist, Faith Ringgold. It is very likely to inspire future generations of admirers to become better informed about him than they were formerly.

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

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This page: The Resurrection of Lazarus, 1896. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. Photo: Hervé Lewandoswki: Photo Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY Opposit page: The Three Marys, 1910. Oil on canvas. Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, TN. Gift of the Art Institute of Chicago

During the years he spent in Europe, Tanner participated regularly in the officially sanctioned Paris Salon. In addition to receiving favorable press notice for his accomplishments, he won many awards and the purchase of his painting, “The Ressurection of Lazarus,” now in the collection of the d’Orsay Museum in the French capital. Light and shade came to be the essential elements of his highly traditional approach to painting. Though he refused to be easily categorized by stylistic fashions or subject matter, he was intrigued by travels to North Africa and the Biblical lands of the Middle East which reinforced his concern for the geography of these settings. He was also partial to spiritual themes that helped shape his life and religious commitments from the time of his childhood to the later years of his maturity. Because of his belief in God and the introduction of faith-based themes in many of his artworks, Tanner has been called a mystic by members of his family and many of the people who admired his pictures. The use of painterly procedures to give voice to his expressive intentions provides considerable basis for this point of view. Due to the depth of feeling he introduced to his creative work, his canvases are not superficially rendered illustrations of sacred tales. Instead, they project a mysterious

quality that allowed him to generate images in a grammar and vocabulary of sensitive visual form. Employing an exceptionally gifted hand, he was able to formulate paintings that transcend the commonplace graphic statements made by hack practitioners who traffic in slick and dreary kitsch. “The Annunciation,” now part of the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a good example of a painting by Tanner, deeply steeped in a religious orientation. In the composition, you see a representation of a young woman being advised by the angel Gabriel that, in due course, she will deliver a holy child who will be the son of God. She is dressed in a style that was customary for an ordinary woman of the time in the Middle East. Unlike older renaissance period examples, the scene is essentially unpretentious. The head of the feminine figure is not surrounded by a halo and Gabriel has no wings attached to a body. Instead, the only supernatural suggestion in the painting is the presence of the angel and his message, rendered as a mystical shaft of golden light. The miracle of awakening alive from the deep sleep of death takes shape in the hushed silence of “The Resurrection of Lazarus.” The power of Jesus to perform a seemingly impossible act is proclaimed in the composition by

subtle strokes of of black, brown and white paint. They leave a spectator in a state of breathless amazement. On taking the picture seriously to heart, words like belief in the divine and devoted piety may become charged with unbounded trust and total dedication. In addition to paintings that focus on examples of the Almighty playing a role in the affairs of humankind, the exhibition also includes a wide variety of subjects taken from everyday life. Considering the range and depth of Tanner’s expressive content, one is not surprised to learn that his career has been a focus of considerable influence on the life and work of such distinguished modern painters as Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff. Both of these men were significant leaders in the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression-era flowering of the arts in New York City during the 20th century. Incidentally, the exhibition also includes a striking portrait of Tanner, painted by Thomas Eakins. It is on loan from the Hyde Collection, a superb small scale art museum in Glens Falls, NY. The overall presentation is decidedly enriched by the addition of this notable example by a distinguished artist paying tribute aesthetically to a colleague and former student he sincerely admired. ■

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exhibitions

Neil Lawner, Under The Big Top Alan Goldstein, Captive (The Last Tree), oil/wax on paper

A Monochrome Winter by Artists of the Soho Photo Gallery Red Filter Gallery 74 Bridge Street ,Lambertville, NJ Thurs-Sun afternoons January 26 - February 26 Opening Reception January 28, 3pm The Soho Photo Gallery was established in 1971 by a group of New York Times photographers striving to break away from the commercial art gallery experience and offer something new. It is now the only non-profit cooperative photography gallery in New York City. The gallery is run entirely by members—over one hundred of them who direct, operate, and financially support the gallery. Seventeen of these fine photographers will be featured in A Monochrome Winter. R. Wayne Parsons, the President of the Soho Photo Gallery says, “We are pleased to have an opportunity to present Black and White works by some of our best photographers. We look forward to a successful group showing.” Well-known photographers have shared in exhibiting at the Soho Photo Gallery as well, including Ansel Adams, Andre Kertesz, Jill Enfield, Jill Freedman, and Joel Sternfeld. Regularly featured in local newspapers, trade and national publications, their website, www.sohophoto.com, offers regular updates with announcements of new exhibits and other exciting gallery events. At the same time as A Monochrome Winter exhibits, the Red Filter Gallery offers an extended viewing of Kisa Kavass’ Moments de Curiosité, and John Andrulis’ Retrospective will also be available to attendees at the gallery.

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Continuum… the emerging image New Hope Arts 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA 18938 215-862-9606 www.newhopearts.org Friday-Sunday 12-5 February 25th – March 18th Opening Reception 2/25, 6-8 This featured event is an invitational show of nationally recognized artists who have chosen regional emerging artists to present along with them. While painting is the medium of choice for this exhibition, the pivotal concepts of evolution, style and point of view illuminate twelve artists’ visions ranging from the abstract to the figurative. More than sixty works will be on view. Painters with long-standing recognition in the regional arts community and beyond, are veteran exhibitors Robert Beck, Sandra Flood, Alan Goldstein, Glenn Harrington, Pat Martin and Paul Matthews. New Hope Arts has challenged those “Master” artists to individually choose an artist whose work reiterates the meaning, interest and intention of his or her own work. The artists showing with New Hope Arts for the first time include Alex Cohen, Linda Conklin, Evan Harrington, Nancy Shill, Judy Tobie and Elizabeth Weiler. The show marks an opportunity for recognition of a number of returning artists as well as new exhibitors. It also marks the opportunity to acquire significant new works for the collector and enthusiast. Most works are for sale during the exhibition.

Frock & Roll: Fashion that Rocks The Baum School of Art David E. Rodale and Rodale Family Galleries 510 West Linden Street, Allentown, PA(610) 433-0032 baumschool.org February 9, 2012 – March 2, 2012 Opening Reception February 13, 2012

The Baum School of Art is pleased to present a fashion exhibit entitled Frock & Roll: Fashion That Rocks, from February 9 through March 2, 2012. Consisting of high end designer fashions and accessories, the show explores fashion that exists outside the traditional boundaries of daily attire. As proud partners in the Rock through the Valley initiative among arts organizations throughout the Lehigh Valley, The Baum School presents a unique take on the connection between Rock and Fashion. The show combines recent works by emerging designers, several of whom starred on various seasons of television’s celebrated fashion series Project Runway, as well as iconic designers works from the 1980s to the present, which are on loan from a private collection. On Saturday, February 25, some of the featured designers from New York and Philadelphia will gather at The Baum School of Art for a cocktail party and evening of socializing with the press and the public. Attendees will view a runway show by Baum School and LCCC fashion students and performances by the Community Music School Top 40 Ensemble and Repertory Dance Theatre.

footlights

DAVID SCHULTZ

The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF controversy surrounded this production last August. In that sultry month a new version of Porgy and Bess premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Directed by Diane Paulus (Hair), with an assist by playwright Susan-Lori Parks and composer Diedre L. Murray, this was a heavily trimmed adaptation, reorchestrated, with a happier, more hopeful ending. Some theatergoers were surprised, opera lovers were aghast, and even composer Stephen Sondheim got involved in the ruckus. Mr. Sondheim wrote a harsh letter to The New York Times in protest, and it was keenly shared among passionate theater folk online. Theatergoers wondered what exactly this new version would be when it entered Manhattan that winter. The overwhelming negative publicity must have had an impact on the production team as they tried to make the work more accessible to a mainstream audience. The final version, now officially renamed The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, that has just opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in Manhattan has kept its original heart intact, and the finale has been returned to where it’s always been. Thank God. For those who know this work well, much of the visceral impact is missing—for the average theatergoer who has just a passing knowledge of the work, well, they won’t know what they’re missing. Yet, this 1935 masterpiece by George Gershwin still packs a wallop, thanks in no small part to its leading lady, Audra McDonald. Ms. McDonald brings an achingly precise portrayal of Bess in this production. When she first arrives onstage, weathered, with a facial scar, she reminded me of a heroine in Kurt Weill’s opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The current version has a much-downsized collection of Catfish Row townsfolk. The streamlined cast still manages to charm, though the soaring choral work does suffer in comparison with its operatic staging. One shouldn’t confuse overwhelming orchestral sonics with a large or-

chestra and numerous singers with a much smaller Broadway venue and fewer actors: Louder (Broadway) does not always equal better. There is no one right or perfect version of this classic. What has been lost in this trimmed revision has also been its gain. Without doubt this Porgy is well acted with perfectly delineated performances. The relationships are given even more emotional depth (if that’s possible) in this rendition. Norm Lewis gives subtle shadings to his reading of Porgy. Gone is his cart to get his around. Mr. Lewis walks in this version, he twists his legs in agonizing contortions and his handicap seems shockingly genuine. Mr. Lewis holds his own with his memorable duets with Ms. McDonald, though invariably her voice overwhelms his. When Ms. McDonald is onstage, everyone and everything fades into the background. Her physical presence and voice shimmers. David Allen Grier brings a dark humor to his role as Sporting Life. He surprises with his vocal dexterity. His snakelike slither and sly repose works well in his reading of this often comically portrayed role. Towering in height and menacing in a feral way, Phillip Boykin creates real sparks as the villain Crown. The

scenes with Ms. McDonald and Mr. Boykin achieve a truly intense sense of what this piece is capable of doing when running full steam. The scene where Bess misses the boat back to Kittawah Island after the picnic, and discovers Crown hiding from the authorities after killing a man is electric. It’s a drop-dead moment to savor. The rather mundane and unattractive set (Riccardo Hernandez) looks like the musical is taking place inside the middle of a steel drum. There is very little to visually propel the action. We know what is happening at any given time, but the background is unusually drab and could have been given more specificity. The costumes (ESosa) are spot-on. Choreographed in tight spaces, Ronald K. Brown gives the performers great dances and movement—but they do seem to be hemmed in by the claustrophobic set design. Despite my many reservations about this production, I am still in thrall. To see and hear this Gershwin masterpiece is to be swept away in a sea of emotional highs. ■

David Schultz is a member of the Outer Critics Circle.

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regional theater Clybourne Park Thru 3/18

EDITED BY DAVID SCHULTZ

an extraordinary treatise about passion, parenthood and the moments of beauty that can transform a life. Civic Theatre of Allentown, 514/527 N. 19th Street, Allentown PA. (610) 432-8943. $20-$26.

Clybourne Park tells the story of a house, a neighborhood and the people who have come and gone over five decades. This daring comedy, leasing characters and property from the 1959 classic A Raisin in the Sun unearths that gentrification is not just black and white. This 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning play was penned by Bruce Norris. Directed by Edward Sobel [see interview with A.D. Amorosi in this issue]. Arden Theatre Company, 40 N. 2nd Street, Philadelphia PA. (215) 922-1122. $20-$45.

microCRISIS Thru 2/12 Fast on the heels of the current recession, microCRISIS is a scathing satire that follows a smart, slick, big-vision banker as he draws a gaggle of innocent do-gooders into an outrageous global lending scheme, bouncing seamlessly between the U.S., Ghana and Monaco. Never stopping to consider the destruction in their wake, the banker and

Abduction From The Seraglio 2/17, 19, 22, 24 & 26. Mozart’s musical genius returns in a fresh, highly theatrical coproduction between the Opera Company of Philadelphia and Teatro Comunale of Treviso. The humorous tale of a Turkish ruler’s comically passionate pursuit of his beautiful young prisoner is now set in the 1920s. This new production posits a resourceful heroine Konstanze as a spy, and Belmonte, her would-be rescuer, as a handsome pilot, brilliantly playing on the timeless human foibles that still make Mozart’s work ring true. Starring as Konstanze is soprano Elizabeth Zharoff, and tenor Antonio Lozano gives heft to the role of Belmonte. Sung in German with English translations. Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Streets. (215) 732-8400. (Estimated Running Time: 3 hours, 10 min.) A View from the Bridge 2/22-3/4 A fiercely compelling drama about love, belonging, and betrayal. Eddie Carbone, an Italian American longshoreman, becomes obsessed with his 17 year-old niece Catherine. When she falls in love with another man, Eddie’s jealousy erupts in a rage that consumes him, his family, and his world. A View from the Bridge is a lesser-known Arthur Miller play. Directed by Anne Lewis. Act 1, DeSales University Theatre, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, DeSales University, Center Valley PA (610) 282-3192. $18-$24. A Raw Space Thru 2/19 The lives of two high-powered couples tangle during a private interior design competition. The competition quickly grows more private than they bargain for and is not necessarily limited to design. The shocking end results in an elegant interplay between architectural design and marriage. Written by Jon Marans. Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe Street, Bristol PA. (215) 785-0100. 33 Variations 2/24-3/10 A mother coming to terms with her daughter...A composer coming to terms with his genius...And, even though they’re separated by 200 years, these two people share an obsession that might, even just for a moment, make time stand still. Inspired by Beethoven’s final work (Opus 120 or the Diabelli Variations), 33 Variations is a new American play by Moises Kaufman, author of The Laramie Project. This stirring work is 14

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Frank X and Hannah Gold

his unwitting accomplices try desperately to stay one step ahead of the game. Featuring Frank X, Kevin Bergen, Bi Jean Ngo, Hannah Gold, Dave Johnson and Maia Desanti. Written by Mike Lew and directed by Seth Rozin. InterAct Theatre Company, @ The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia PA. (215) 568-8079. www.interacttheatre.org Stop Kiss 2/22-2/26 When Callie, a twenty-something New Yorker, promises to cat-sit for Sara, a friend of a friend who’s new in town, Callie doesn’t expect them to hit it off. In fact, she makes sure she has a date on the night they’re scheduled to meet, so she can avoid an awkward conversation. They do hit it off, though, and through the weeks that follow— to their great surprise—the two women find themselves falling in love. Just moments after they share a giddy first kiss, however, a brutal act of violence rips their world apart. Stop Kiss offers a heartbreaking, tenderly comic, sometimes vicious reflection on the pain that can come from trying to be who we really are. Written by Diana Son. Muhlenberg College Dept. of Theatre & Dance, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance, Muhlenberg College, Allentown PA. (484) 664-3333. $8-$15. For mature audiences. ■

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reel news The Sunset Limited (2011) ★★★ Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson. Based on a play by Cormac McCarthy Directed by Tommy Lee Jones Unrated Running time 91 minutes. Two actors, one called Black (Jackson), the other White (Jones) locked in a low-rent apartment, and a question we spend our lives trying of answer. That’s all Cormac Mc-

REVIEWS OF RECENTLY RELEASED DVDS BY GEORGE OXFORD MILLER Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

Tower Heist (2011) ★★★ Cast: Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, Alan Alda Genre: Action comedy Rated PG-13 Running time 104 minutes. Eddie Murphy is back in full, foul-mouth, ever-jivin’ form. In this Occupy Wall Street-gone-rogue plot, hilarity is cool, corruption sucks, and revenge rules. Josh Kovacs (Stiller), manages a high-rise tower for the most elite Wall Street sharks, and the biggest fish of all, hedge fund manager Arthur Shaw (Alda) lives in the penthouse. When the FBI busts Shaw’s Ponzi bubble, Josh realizes that the pension fund for his entire staff just flushed downstream. But Shaw reportedly has $20 million secreted away in his fish bowl in the sky. What to do? Call in the professionals, in this case excon Slide (Murphy), and plan a high-stakes payback caper. With director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour trilogy), screenwriters Ted Griffin (Ocean’s Eleven) and Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me if You Can), plus a cast of all-star comedians, this movie actually lives up to its slap-happy potential. Anonymous (2011) ★★★ Cast: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Rafe Spall Genre: Drama Rated PG-13 for some violence and sexual content. Running time 130 minutes.

Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones.

Humanity long ago abandoned the notion that the Earth is flat or that Santa Clause lives at the North Pole. Likewise, the literary world scoffs at the notion that Shakespeare didn’t pen his plays. Nevertheless, the concept intrigues imaginative director Roland Emmerich, who brought aliens to the screen in Independence Day and iced

Carthy (No Country for Old Men) needed to set up a stage play and this HBO movie. Well, not exactly, he needed two of the best actors in the business. When a white college professor tries to throw himself in front of the Sunset Limited subway, a religious ex-con saves his life, then tries to convince him that life is worth living. Mired in a nihilistic world view, the professor decides that oblivion is preferable to a meaningless life in a cruel, meaningless world. The ex-con believes that life has intrinsic value and celebrating its beauty endows every life with meaning. The ebb and flow of the tête-àtête never losses momentum as the two actors pull off a philosophical tour de force. J. Edgar (2011) ★★★★ Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench Genre: Drama Directed by Clint Eastwood Rated R for brief strong language. Running time 136 minutes. Awards: Golden Globes nominated Best Actor Too bad young J. Edgar didn’t see Throw Mama from the Train. The FBI today might resemble the Mayberry Police Department instead of Big Brother. This introspective biopic explores how Hoover (DiCaprio) made the transition from a brow-beaten mother’s boy to a man with unbridled power. He spent his young adult life trying to meet the expectations of his overbearing mother (Dench). Since that didn’t work out, he spent the rest of his life projecting high expectations onto the FBI and its agents. During his 47 years as director, he outmaneuvered his critics, expanded his authority, used treats and intimidation when necessary, and never lost his focus to create the most powerful law enforcement agency in the free world. DeCaprio’s nuanced performance radiates Hoover’s egocentric, all-consuming, maybe even mothering, goal to protect the nation from criminals, anarchists, and communists.

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Joely Richardson and Jamie Campbell Bower. Photo: Reiner Bajo

over the world in The Day After Tomorrow. So don’t expect an Oliver Stone exposé. Do expect a rollicking, royal court drama as loose with historical facts as a campaigning politician. Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford (Ifans), the darling of the young Queen Elizabeth, dares not dabble in something as common as fiction writing. So he employs dithering Bill Shakespeare (Spall) to pose as the author. Naturally, things quickly get out of hand. The storyline may depart from the realm of possibility (Oxford died before many of Shakespeare’s plays were written), but the acting, costumes, and setting exquisitely recreates the fiery English era. ■ George Miller is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers and believes that travel is a product of the heart, not the itinerary. See his webmagazine at www.travelsdujour.com.

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Thomas Horn.

cinematters

YOU KNOW WHAT EXTREMELY Loud & Incredibly Close needs? Wes Anderson. In his best work, The Royal Tenenbaums’ director creates his own little retro world, giving us enough clues to assure us not to take everything so seriously, and filling it with characters whose flaws we embrace. Stephen Daldry cannot do that. His Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is intellectually precious and dripping with stylistic hiccups. It needs a director who detests the ordinary, who embraces the grand. Daldry directs as if quirk, like tension or romance, is part of every film lover’s language. It is not. For a movie rushed to theaters so it could be eligible for Oscar nominations, Daldry’s approach is expected. (Note: I’m writing this two days before nominations are

A senior critic at Filmcritic.com from 2002 to 2007, Pete Croatto also reviews movies for The Weekender. His essays, reviews, and feature writing have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly, TCNJ Magazine, Deadspin, and The Star-Ledger. You can read more on his blog, whatpeteswatching.blogspot.com.

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PETE CROATTO

announced. If Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close gets any, we should all start preparing for that Mayan apocalypse.) Everything that distinguishes Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, however, is flagrantly, almost aggressively, negative: its lack of ambition, its condescending attitude, and its unpleasantness. The last trait is astounding since the movie includes Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, two actors who have built their legends by being more benign than anybody else. The superstars, whose screen time is limited, are not the irritants. The actor who gets the limelight is 14-year-old newcomer and former Jeopardy! champ, Thomas Horn. He plays Oskar Schell, an 11-year-old who enjoys a special relationship with his father, Thomas (Hanks). The old man creates elaborate hunts—or “reconnaissance expeditions”—for his shy, awkward son, many of which involve talking to strangers. As

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keresman on film

MARK KERESMAN

Haywire HAYWIRE, DIRECTED BY STEVEN Soderbergh, is, to quote fellow director Jerry Lewis, an odd duck. Soderbergh is known for a diverse and generally entertaining batch of movies: Sex Lies and Videotape; Traffic; The Limey; Out of Sight; Erin Brockovich; Solaris; Ocean’s Eleven (not the version with Sinatra), and the fine but little-seen Kafka. Haywire is maybe a change-of-pace movie for him—it’s an all-out action movie with spy/covert operation/paranoia overtones. Compared to his other films, many viewers might come away with a “Is this the best Soderbergh can do?” feeling. Yet, if Haywire was directed by Michael Bay, it might be seen as a triumph of restraint and good taste (especially as “taste” and “restraint” are evidently not words many discerning moviegoers would associate with “blow-it-up-good Bay”).

Anyway, to the movie: Mixed marital, err, I mean, martial arts fighter Gina Carano stars—her debut as a leading actor—as Mallory, a mercenary/commando-for-hire. Her work frequently takes her into covert-operations-land, where “contractors” and “consultants”—freelancers, those employed by companies—do deeds that need to get done yet go beyond messy “jurisdictions.” She and a few lads are hired to rescue a kidnapped journalist in Spain, a relatively simple assignment that (of course) blooms into a bouquet of intrigue and betrayal. As with the littleseen/underrated thriller Spartan (2004, starring Val Kilmer, written and directed by David Mamet), we are dropped directly into the action as it’s happening, invited to pick up on what’s going on via context and flashbacks. The “why” and “what” are as vague to the audience as

they are to Mallory—we are unsure as to what’s going on as she is unsure of whom to trust. All she knows is: At least some of the people that hired her and/or with whom she worked want to see her dead. Almost no one can be trusted. This new-quantity-to-the-world-of–film has a mostly excellent supporting cast: Michael Angarano (24, Will & Grace, Red State), Ewan McGregor, actor du jour Michael Fassbender (nearly every movie over the past year), mannequin du jour Channing Tatum, an almost unrecognizable Antonio Banderas, and as, the touch of aging class, Michael Douglas as an American covert type that acts as a “liaison” of sorts between official American intelligence/spy channels and the freelance types. It’s the kind of movie that if this writer breaks down what happens, it’ll spoil all the “fun.” It is, after all, a plot-driven movie with a plot that’s clear as a bucket of warm mud. While Ms. Carano has a ways to go yet to be taken seriously as a full-fledged actor/actress (pick whichever you prefer), she shows herself nicely as a budding action star. What’s somewhat refreshing here is—while Carano is a very attractive lady—she never trades on her sexuality to get her character’s “jobs” done. Her sole concession to “feminine wiles” is to (grudgingly) wear a dress and heels to a somewhat fancy party. She isn’t a wise-cracking James Bond/Derek Flynt wannabe—Mallory/Carano is a professional and that’s how she comes across. Another nifty aspect is nearly all of her fight scenes are just that—no CGI, no nausea-inducing rapid cuts where you can’t tell who is doing what to whom. Some of the fight scenes even have a bit of awkwardness to them, just as “real” knock-down, drag-outs do. There’s plenty of violence, yet there is no tidal wave of blood, gore, and corpses, and no pyrotechnical explosions. In some ways, Haywire evokes the days of good old drive-in movie violence (circa 1970s, early ‘80s), before every movie had to show Keanu and Bruce “outrunning” a fireball the size of Cleveland. If you want to see a nice-looking young (29) lady kickin’ hiney hither and yon, this is the ticket—there’s a new action gal in town! Soderbergh fans may want to keep repeating to themselves, “It’s only an action movie” or “Say,that Bay guy is getting good since he got rid of Megan Fox.” In conclusion: If Hollywood ever gets its doodoo together to actually film the long-rumored/delayed Wonder Woman movie, Gina Carano is a serious contender for Diana Prince/Princess of the Amazons. ■ In addition to ICON, Mark Keresman is a contributing writer for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Pittsburgh City Paper, Paste, Jazz Review, downBeat, and the Manhattan Resident.

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bad movie

THIS WRITER IS, ALAS, old enough to recall when Ashley Judd was a contender for the title of Great/Serious Young Actress in the early/mid-’90s—very pretty but with an earthy quality (i.e., not your typical Hollywood “hot” gal), dignified, expressive, versatile. In recent years however, Judd has gone from co-starring in films with Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Morgan Freeman to co-starring with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and starring in the barely released Crash rip-off Crossing Over. Maybe there aren’t that many mainstream film roles open to actresses over the age range of 35-40, or maybe Judd appeared in too many similar movies (i.e., woman-in-peril with an older gent as mentor/ally) over the years and got typecast while younger actresses now get the type of roles she used to get. She may be the female counterpart to De Niro—a quality performer who’s succumbed to doing paycheck roles in (undistinguished/mediocre) movies undeserving of her talent. Case (you knew it was coming) in point… In the heist (or caper) genre, it’s mainly the “how” followed by the “whom”—a clever crew/cadre of perpetrators that the viewer can (to varying degrees) “root for.” (In some heist films, the perps are sympathetic and their “mark”—the target of the theft—is seen as “deserving”—and sometimes not.) Flypaper—produced by one of its stars, no less—applies a twist to bank robbery/heist movies. The viewer usually gets to see one particular plan in motion, but here, two gangs decide to rob the same bank at the same time. Both gangs take bank employees as hostages. The characters are thinly drawn and stereotypical—the “professional” gang, a polyglot lot, includes a bloodthirsty/loose-cannon British guy (why always a British villain?), a determined, no-nonsense black guy that’s the nominal leader, and a very intelligent dweeb-y Jewish guy (played by an Italian-American, according to Hollywood tradition of casting Jews to play Italian-Americans and Italian-Americans to play American Jews). The rank amateurs are two Southern white trash guys from central casting—LOTS of tattoos, Southern 22

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MARK KERESMAN

drawls so thick and over-the-top you could walk on them, education levels that ceased after the fourth grade. Ashley Judd is the Girl Next Store bank teller; there’s a Rubenesque, sassy black woman teller; the security consultant is a textbook technodweeb/nerd; the bank guard is tubby and sleazy; Jeffrey Tambor plays the bank boss/uptight corporate type (surprise), etc. Other players include Tim Blake Nelson, Mekhi Phifer, Matt Ryan, John Ventimiglia, and Curtis Armstrong. Patrick Dempsey (who produced) plays an obsessive-compulsive customer that Judd’s character thinks is sort of cute, then can’t stand him, then she seems to like him, then SHE CAN’T STAND him (golly, never saw this in a movie before), then she likes him again. The dialogue is predictable and the jokes are painfully obvious: Southern thug: “It’s like extra sad when a hot chick dies. When an ugly chick dies, it’s like, their life probably sucked anyway, so it’s no big deal.” Where Flypaper diverges from the pack is when it evolves into an Agatha Christielike whodunit. Murphy’s Law tends to govern heists (as with nearly everything else), but in this case the perps start to die off. Dempsey’s character supposes, “What if this whole thing is a set-up, and who exactly is being set up and why?” While the plot is novel (and absurdly complex), the acting is one-dimensional, except for Dempsey, whose obsessive/compulsive-Columbo-on-speed jags are mildly entertaining. The concept of “realism” is bludgeoned over the head and stuffed in a sewer, even for a movie. Though much of the action in the bank occurs after closing time, there are big explosions and much gunfire—yet no one outside hears anything. On the plus side, Flypaper is nicely paced and doesn’t drag…but I can understand why this movie didn’t get a wide release. (According to imdb.com, it was released on all of two screens in the USA.) If you like Judd and/or Dempsey, OK—but I doubt either will rave about this in their memoirs. ■

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film roundup

PETE CROATTO Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

The Innkeepers (Dir: Ti West). Starring: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis. It’s the last weekend for the Yankee Pedlar Inn, a creaky New England hotel that has fallen into disrepair and irrelevancy. The owner is long gone, leaving staff members Claire (Paxton) and Luke (Healy) to close up shop and pursue other interests, namely observ-

ing the building’s celebrated paranormal activity. What starts as a nighttime lark soon turns into something far more dangerous as Claire uncovers sights far more dangerous than things that go bump in the night. West’s script establishes a sarcastic rapport between Claire and Luke, two young adults now starting to realize how much potential they’ve wasted. Aside from that refreshing maneuver, The Innkeepers is a straightforward, contemporary haunted house (or rather hotel) tale that offers some scares amidst the indie-flavored substance. West, who also edited and produced the film, is a Wilmington, DE native. And yes, that’s ‘80s leading lady McGillis of Witness and Top Gun fame as a hotel guest with hidden motives. [R] ★★ Albert Nobbs (Dir: Rodrigo Garcia). Starring: Glenn Close, Janet McTeer, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Johnson, Brendan Gleeson, Brenda Fricker, Pauline Collins. Close, in the title role, portrays a woman who disguises herself as a man in 1890s Ireland. Nobbs’s life as a hotel waiter is all stoic professionalism until she meets a fellow gender disguiser (McTeer), who proves that the good life (i.e., house, wife, business) is attainable. Inspired and flush with cash, Nobbs sets her socially awkward sites on a beautiful, uninterested coworker (Wasikowska), a pursuit that guarantees heartbreak. Terrific cast and a promising concept can’t overcome the fact that Nobbs is—forgive the lack of poetry here—boring. She’s mopey and meek, and her humanity remains disguised during the entire film. That’s your central protagonist, folks. And she’s featured in a plot with zero drama, thanks to a script crammed with clichéd supporting characters (daft elderly waiters, gossipy kitchen help, hard-drinking doctors), each one painted in the same shade of bland. All take away from Nobbs’ internal struggle, which is never clearly defined. Close also served as a producer and writer. [R] ★★ Perfect Sense (Dir: David Mackenzie). Starring: Ewan McGregor, Eva Green, Connie Nielsen, Ewen Bremner, Stephen Dillane. A bike-riding, womanizing chef (McGregor) and a self-centered, intense epidemiologist (Green, Casino Royale) take a fancy to each other in modern-day Belfast. Their burgeoning relationship occurs amidst a worldwide catastrophe: people are mysteriously losing their senses, leading to a scary, uncertain future. The movie’s best assets are McGregor and Green, who make us care 24

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about two narcissistic souls learning to love in a time of catastrophe. The actors also elevate the film above apocalyptic gimmickry. In these times of social, environmental, and geo-political uncertainty, directors and writers have repeatedly gone the world-iscoming-undone route. Sometimes it works. Here, Mackenzie (Mister Foe) nearly breaks his arms in his forceful embrace of that perspective. He has Green deliver a somber, pretentious narration and eagerly presents people freaking out a la The Happening, leading to scenes that are more amusing than arresting. Perfect Sense proves that some stories are best served straight up. Also available On Demand. [NR] ★★ The Grey (Dir: Joe Carnahan). Starring: Liam Neeson, James Badge Dale, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Nonso Anozie, Joe Anderson. A plane carrying a ragtag group of oil drillers crashes into the snowy Alaskan unknown, leaving seven survivors with limited provisions and no chance of being found. If that doesn’t qualify as bad luck, there’s this: The men’s unscheduled destination is home to a pack of vicious wolves that doesn’t appreciate outsiders. Ottway (Neeson), the stoic sniper who picks off these predators on the drilling sites, becomes the leader of these ornery men. His plan is to have them reach the forest— and possible safety—before the wolves get them. Carnahan’s jumpy, gritty approach fits well with the hunter vs. hunted storyline, and he slows the movie down so we see the humanity behind this scruffy pack of misfits. The Grey is the latest installment in Neeson’s quest to become the symbol of senior, selftortured virility. The plan is working. Neeson brings the macho in this entertaining outing that lets your mind drift while keeping your eyes open. [R] ★★★ n

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feature

R. KURT OSENLUND

Dueling Steeds: War Horse on Stage and Screen The epic story, originated in a 30-year-old novel, can now be seen on Broadway and at the movies. But which spectacle comes out on top?

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THE LIGHTS COME UP. The audience claps. Couples take turns brain- and nit-picking before returning home to relieve the babysitter. In the end, the experiences of film and theater aren’t all that different, and crowd-pleasers have a way of stirring up cheers no matter the medium. But how often is it that such a work is available in two arenas at once? War Horse, which began as a novel in 1982 before being adapted for the London stage in 2007, can be seen, right now, both on Broadway and in movie theaters, as the stateside theatrical production continues alongside the release of Steven Spielberg’s big-screen translation. The recipient of five 2011 Tony Awards, including Best Play, Broadway’s War Horse sets the bar high, boasting strong prestige and near-unanimous viewer approval. Spielberg’s take, an old-school, broad-canvas picture that deliberately nods to the days of John Ford and Technicolor, pulls out all the stops and formal guns so as to match the play’s majesty. But does it succeed? Which incarnation of Michael Morpurgo’s book is more deserving of your claps and car-ride conversations? Really, it comes down to what moves you, and what sort of implementation of craft leaves your mouth agape in wonder. Directed, in its current version, by Tony winners Marianne Elliot and Tom Morris, with scenic, lighting, and sound design by Tony winners Rae Smith, Paule Constable, and Christopher Shutt, respectively, the play most certainly has innovation on its side, parlaying a classic yet dusty story into a stunning showcase of remarkable stage techniques. As many already know, the horses in the production, like Joey, the central stallion who gallops his way through World War I after being taken by the military from best pal Albert, are man-operated puppets, contraptions of wood and leather conceived by Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones’s Handspring Puppet Company. Though the puppets have a very homespun, nuts-and-bolts look, and clearly take at least some inspiration from the anthropomorphic costumes in Julie Taymor’s The Lion King, they appear utterly inventive on stage, wielded by patient perfectionists who expertly instill soul with tail flicks, ear flutters, and subtle, believable equine sounds. They are part of an overall design that’s extraordinary for its blend of traditionalistic elements and chic, modern minimalism. Without ever appearing on-the-nose or literal as something ripped from the pages of history, the stage’s backdrop is a giant strip of torn paper, a rough-edged projection screen that intermittently bears charcoal-etched landscapes, the date and setting, and iconic animations (Eadweard Muybridge’s Horse in Motion is shrewdly evoked). The stage itself is often dressed with the scarcest of props and other mechanical animals, like a wheel-mounted duck that makes for an excellent running gag. The biggest wow factor lies in the expert depiction of battle and spectacle, a streamlined, brilliant barrage of hand-tooled action that elicits childlike amazement. To simulate a horse-mounted soldier getting

Jeremy Irvine in Steven Spielberg’s screen adaptation of War Horse.

shot, stage hands rush in through the crowd with an oversized, screw-like bullet on a stick, which strikes the actor before he’s carried off in simulated slow motion. At a moment as arresting as anything you’re likely to see on stage, a tank emerges from behind the curtain line, its menacing arts-and-crafts look suggesting the world’s most formidable papier-mâché project. The most memorable and striking thing about the War Horse play is that it has the ardent audacity to get in a viewer’s space, its deftly calibrated elements surging out to the edge of its circular stage, and beyond. Figures rush through at scene breaks and criss-cross the floor with barbed wire. Actors line the aisles with pennant strings. This is a show whose viewer involvement hardly stops at the emotional. And then there is the cinematic interpretation, which is currently lighting up screens across the globe and trotting along the Oscar campaign trail. Spielberg lovers will delight in what the maestro has to offer here, reveling in all the aesthetic trademarks that have come to define His Blockbusterness. Duly accounted for is the heavenly backlighting, as well as that unmistakable Spielberg gaze―a character’s face in glorious close-up as he marvels at something breathtaking (in this case, naturally, it’s a certain astonishing steed). Such an expression, as always, is what Spielberg hopes will be a reflection of his viewers, an in-text duplicate of magnificent awe. There are times when the War Horse film absolutely warrants this, as its epic action set pieces are easily last year’s finest. Janusz Kamiński, the cinematographer who’s shot every Spielberg film since Schindler’s List, offers up one magical vista after another, most notably the angelic emergence of soldiers from a wheat field (soldiers who, ironically, are about to unleash hell), and Joey’s climactic dash across ravaged battlefields, a sight that ranks among the more rousing to emerge from recent popular films.

Spielberg opens up the story to a whole new world of wide-angle grandeur, and his technical muscle-flexing provides a certain sweep the stage show inherently can’t. But whereas the play partners novelty with convention, the film is wholeheartedly old-fashioned, often cripplingly so. You’d be hard-pressed to find a current film more worthy of theatrical presentation, but you’d be harder-pressed to find one more doggedly unoriginal, trumping youthful wonderment with a regressive disregard of roughly 60 years of film narrative. The heightened awareness of horse slaughter in archaic warfare remains intact, but Spielberg otherwise pilots a redundant story to a saccharine finale, which he paints in all the fiery, preposterous hues of Scarlett O’Hara’s daydreams. There’s no question that it was the director’s intent to concoct a throwback effort, a family film untarnished by contemporary grit and cynicism. But that can’t help his movie’s lack of satisfaction, nor can the masterful handiwork of collaborators like Kamiński (also on board and on point are editor Michael Kahn and composer John Williams, both Spielberg regulars). The overwhelming adherence to picturesque tradition starts to suffocate the heart of the tale, and Spielberg’s devotion to faces in particular hampers the poignancy of the boy-and-his-pet bond (newcomer Jeremy Irvine is far more handsome than he is diligent or affecting). All the gleaming, formal sap in the world can’t outshine latter-day realness. There is something to be said for Spielberg’s commitment to his visions, and no one can call his War Horse a poorly-made film. But at the end of the day, when the applause has settled and the chatter has stopped and the babysitter has gone home, one simple surprise remains: a puppet, transparently and primitively manipulated by actors, has the power to draw out more gasps, cheers and genuine sobs than an actual, wondrous animal, photographed in flesh and blood. ■

R. Kurt Osenlund is the managing editor of The House Next Door, the official blog of Slant Magazine. He is also the film critic for South Philly Review, and a contributing writer for ICON, Slant, Cineaste, Fandor and The Film Experience. He compiles his work and posts other goodies at his blog, www.yourmoviebuddy.blogspot.com. Email at rkurtosenlund@gmail.com.

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feature

Rock’s Revolutionary Image Makers

AIL BUCKLAND PLOTTED HER escape from stifling suburbia while staring at the front cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the 1963 album with “Blowin’ in the Wind” and other musical milestones. Then a teen in Eastchester, N.Y., she found freedom in the photograph of Dylan walking with girlfriend Suze Rotolo on a snowy street near their apartment in Greenwich Village, happily huddled to warm a bitterly cold day, seemingly ready to hop in the VW bus behind them and head for hippie heaven. Clutching the cover, she would gaze at the giddy couple and think: I want to go wherever they’re going. Buckland grew up to become a well-traveled, well-respected photo historian, an authority on everything from early documentary pictures to true-crime shots. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan cover inspired her while she prepared a free-wheeling book and exhibit about photographers who made popular music a powerful platform for fashion, seduction and liberation. Premiered in 2009 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and opening February 11 at the Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley, Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present is based on Buckland’s interviews and archival adventures with scores of photographers, including Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan portraitist Don Hunstein, who happens to be her Manhattan neighbor. It’s full of scenes sexy (Elvis Presley courts a female stranger with a whisper), revisionary (Jimi Hendrix looks uncommonly elegant in a tux) and incendiary (Hendrix burns his guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival). There are sections on famous acts before they became famous (the Rolling Stones struggle to seem nasty), striking album covers (the Mamas and the Papas crammed into a bathtub) and the key collaboration of audiences (Ramones fans are close enough to play their heroes’ guitars). Among the many unpublished prints—the photographic equivalent of B sides— is an out-take from the Freewheelin’ session, which took place 49 years ago this month. Who Shot Rock & Roll is the first major museum show to tell the story of rock photos from the other side of the camera. It connects Buckland to not only her teen years as a dreamy rebel, but her early 20s as a protest photographer who idolized Dorothea Lange, chronicler of injustice and justice. “Rock and roll is a bipartite revolution of sound and image,” says Buckland. “All revolutions need to be documented to be believed. And these photographers were on the front line of documenting this explosion in music, culture and attitude.” Geoff Gehman: A panoramic exhibit of rock photographs from the photographers’ archives and perspectives seems perfectly natural and downright logical. So why did it Alfred Wertheimer, American, b. Germany 1929. “Elvis Whispers Softly,” 1956, gelatin silver print 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm). Photograph © Alfred Werthheimer, The Wertheimer Collection. Geoff Gehman covered photography and rock music as an arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. He is the author of The Kingdom of the Kid, a memoir of growing up in the middleclass, long-lost Hamptons. He can be reached at geoffgehman@verizon.net.

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GEOFF GEHMAN

take so long for someone to share your vision? Gail Buckland: Actually, I have several answers, and they’re all related to the slow acceptance of photography as a respected art form. For a long while, for example, jazz photography was considered more seriously than rock photography, perhaps because jazz was considered more seriously than rock. I’ve been around long enough to remember when fashion photography was never exhibited in museums. And then there was a [Richard] Avedon show and an [Irving] Penn show and all of sudden fashion is embraced as a higher aspect of photography. In many museum circles music is still basically ignored as an important subject. There was this massive show of photographs at the Tate [Modern] in London, yet there was not one photo that even implied the impact of music in Britain. I think the Brooklyn Museum would not have invited me to do this show if I did not have a track record as a curator or an author. These sorts of shows are often done by experts in rock and roll whose heart and soul is in the music. My heart and soul is in the photography. Yes, I listen to rock. But the passion I had as a teenager and in my 20s for photography, holding my camera, taking pictures—that is how I connect to the passion of a young musician. GG: One of my favorite revisionary pictures in the show is of Jimi Hendrix in a tux, looking wickedly cool as a Wilson Pickett sideman in 1966, a year before he torched his guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival. Do you have a favorite shot that radically changed your mind about a musician, a photographer, a groove?

William "PoPsie" Randolph, American (1920–1978). “Jimi Hendrix and Wilson Pickett, Prelude Club, Atlantic Records release party, Harlem, New York,” May 5, 1966, chromogenic print 20 x 20 in. (50.8 x 50.8 cm). Courtesy of Michael Randolph, Executor to the Estate of: William "PoPsie" Randolph. FEBRUARY 2012

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GEOFF GEHMAN

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interview

A.D. AMOROSI

ALTERego

WHEN THE ARDEN THEATRE Company unleashes playwright Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park this month, it’s not just sending the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama into the world. The sharply comic tale samples characters, and story lines from Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 A Raisin in the Sun, and teases misgivings behind gentrification and territorialism. Clybourne Park offers the opportunity to see Edward Sobel, the Arden’s Associate Artistic Director, at his finest—including his famed take on Tracy Letts’s Superior Donuts at the Arden in 2011. Not only because the one-time Steppenwolf Theater Company director gets to look back to Chicago where Clybourne Park is set. Not only because Sobel directs some of Philly’s finest actors in multiple roles. Clybourne allows him to show off the fruits of his ten-year relationship with Norris, which began when Sobel served as dramaturg on Norris’s Purple Heart, then worked on productions of The Pain and the Itch and The Unmentionables, all at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. A.D. Amorosi: How would you say Philadelphia and Chicago compare as serious theater towns? Edward Sobel: There are a lot of similarities. In both cities the predominant ethos is to do good work for the sake of doing good work, not to do good work so you can get your next job or become famous. The top actors in Philadelphia are as good as the top actors anywhere, including New York City. A.D.A.: What made you take the gig at the Arden? ES: As I was making the transition to Philadelphia I tried to familiarize myself with the companies in town. Terry [Terrence J. Nolen, the Arden’s Producing Artistic Director] was kind enough to meet with me. And then, by good fortune, a few months later there was an opening on the Arden staff and Terry called me. In the meantime I’d seen some of the work of the company, including Bruce Graham’s play Something Intangible, and thought that this company was the right place for me. Fortunately, Terry agreed. A.D.A.: Having nothing to do with Norris, what is the most perfect piece of theater you’ve ever read? ES: I think King Lear is about as close to a perfect play as I’ve read. And Beckett’s Endgame is a close second. But I don’t think there’s such a thing as the perfect play. If you are going to write a great play, you’ve got to leave room for the hypothetical collaborators who will help turn it into theater, which means you can’t hermetically seal it into perfection. I also think the best plays happen when a writer, and later directors and actors, is searchingly investigating something he passionately wants to understand. If you are trying to do that, you’re lucky if it’s not just a 32

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complete mess of a Petrie dish, never mind perfection. A.D.A.: How did you meet Bruce Norris before becoming his dramaturg on Purple Heart? ES: I didn’t even know Bruce prior to working on Purple Heart so I was just kind of foisted on him for that play. He seemed willing to tolerate me, so we just kept at it. A.D.A.: What was your first impression of his writing? ES: Well, I’d seen The Infidel, and thought this Norris guy was pretty courageous. That’s a play, similar in some ways to the second act of Clybourne, in which no one moves on stage, literally, for a really long time. So you are

Edward Sobel.

entirely reliant upon the language and ideas to be compelling. And I thought, “Wow, he’s actually doing it.” Plus he prints his drafts of scripts in a really great, unique font. [chuckles] A.D.A.: What have you done with or applied to The Unmentionables and The Pain & The Itch that you may not have done with other playwrights’ work? ES: Bruce is one of the smartest, quickest people I know. His plays often operate with a very careful, skillful manipulation of the revelation of information. So sometimes I’ve helped remind him that not everyone is as smart and quick as he is and that information needs to be a little clearer here and there. Now, with Clybourne Park, knowing Bruce as I do, I have some idea of what the music of the play is—he writes with a very particular cadence that is sometimes initially counter-intuitive for actors. It is very challenging to get it right. If you fail, its really grating—like a bunch of instrumentalists playing out of tune. But when done well, it’s quite exhilarating. A.D.A.: Since you and he have collaborated often, does he get your opinion of each upcoming project? ES: No. In fact, I had very little to do with Clybourne Park prior to directing it, despite working with Bruce on

his four preceding plays. I think I sent him an email the day he won the Pulitzer for Clybourne that said “See, you should have stopped working with me a long time ago.” I’m certainly thrilled to read anything Bruce wants me to read at any point, but he pretty much keeps his own counsel in the writing process. A.D.A.: What was your initial take on Clybourne Park and its skewering of Lorraine Hansberry’s Younger family? ES: I thought it might be a really interesting failure. I wasn’t sure audiences would accept the conventions or be willing to examine the issues in the way Bruce provokes them to. Instead its been a huge hit everywhere its been done—London, New York, Washington. Shows what I know. A.D.A.: What do you think of that type of “sampling”—taking characters from other theater pieces and applying them in new ways? ES: Well, in the case of Clybourne Park, I think it’s deeply appropriate. The play is partly about claiming property and territory, so when Bruce cannibalizes from Lorraine Hansberry, he’s almost daring her to leap from the grave and say “You can’t have Karl Lindner. He’s my character.” A.D.A.: What was the greatest challenge in casting for this work? What were you looking for? ES: Bruce warned me early on the best approach was to cast for Act II. That is, that the actors had to be really deft comedians. I tried to heed that advice. The play deals with some very thorny issues, particularly with respect to race. Also, the characters in the play are not necessarily nice people. Nice people rarely make for good comedy. So finding good actors who were both reasonably enlightened and comfortable about troubling ideas and able to play not-nice-people, while still being people with whom I wouldn’t mind spending 40 hours a week in the rehearsal room—that’s a lot to ask. A.D.A.: What do you want audiences to feel when they leave Clybourne Park? ES: Indicted. Look, it’s a funny play. And, you know, it won the Pulitzer Prize, so at least some people thought it was an important play. I hope people come see it. n Clybourne Park runs through Sunday, March 18 at the Arden Theatre, 40 N. 2nd Street. www.ardentheatre.org

If A.D. Amorosi isn’t found writing features for ICON, the Philadelphia Inquirer, acting as a columnist for Philadelphia City Paper (amongst other writings appearing on NBC-TV’s The 10! Show, and editing at Blurt magazine), he’s probably running his greyhound or trying on snug fitting suits.

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first sip

PATRICIA SAVOIE

A Wine and Food Excursion

HOTEL Modern Cuisine h Classic Comfort

food & wine

Corner of Swan & Main Lambertville, NJ 609-397-3552

ABOUT AN HOUR FROM New Hope, or two from Philadelphia, in central New Jersey, is an historic estate that has been transformed into a culinary and wine destination. Natirar was once a grand estate in the hills of Somerset County, NJ. In the early 1900s, Walter and Katherine Ladd acquired several parcels of land around Peapack, eventually amassing 1,000 acres. They named the estate “Natirar” (Raritan spelled backward since the river ran through it) and built a grand mansion in which they lived for many years at the top of a hill with a sweeping view. After their deaths, the mansion was converted to a convalescent facility. Eventually, in the early 1980s, the then 500-acre estate was sold to the King of Morocco, and on his demise, inherited by his son. A local visionary by the name of Bob Wojtowicz saw the potential of the property and, working with Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, arranged for it to be purchased by Somerset County for use as a park. But they also secured a 99-year lease on 90 acres of the land. Those acres have been converted into the Ninety Acres Culinary Center, which is actually located in the renovated carriage house and garage. Opened in late 2009, it has a restaurant, a cooking school in partnership with Viking Range Corp., a wine school and a farm. The restaurant at Natirar is not simply a farm-totable place; in fact, they call it “table at the farm.” The 19-acre farm is home to vegetable and herb gardens, cows, sheep, Duroc Berkshisre pigs and a mix of heritage-breed and new-breed free-range chickens. Vegetables are grown all winter using a “tunnel” approach— the beds are covered with canvas that can be raised on sunny days to catch the direct rays. There are several options for dining here. The warm, inviting main dining room with the open kitchen at one end offers an a la carte menu. Or, you might choose the room with a communal dining table that does not require reservations. Or, there is the “Bring Me Food” option, for which you are seated near the open kitchen and served Chef David Felton’s choice of dishes. London-born Felton, who was previously at the Pluckemin Inn in Bedminster, calls it “breaking down the wall between diner and chef.” Here he is in his element, with a farm in his back yard to fuel the high-tech kitchen.

On one visit, the Barnegat Lighthouse scallops with beets were sweet and moist, and the Griggstown chicken with chanterelles and bacon in a red wine sauce had an enticing hint of smoke from the bacon. A potato leek soup had char fish roe suspended in it, so that each pearl of roe gave a pop of salinity. But the menu changes with the seasons, so your scallops or chicken may have a completely differeent treatment. Brooke Sabel was working as lead sommelier at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City when she got a call from Natirar one day asking her to interview for the Wine Director position. She got it-- not a surprise considering her multiple wine credentials -- and has put together an exciting list that is a match for the food. She and Chef Felton work together to develop pairings for his dishes and her wine discoveries. Sabel also teaches wine classes in the wine school. She has collected 11,000 bottles in the cellar, including many wines that are sustainably, organically or biodynamically produced and are labeled as such on the list. There is an excellent half-bottle list. And there are wines from Greece, Uruguay, Corsica, Slovenia, several regions of Spain, and most major Italian wine regions. There are several “deep dives” into wines from single wineries, with many different vintages offered for each wine. For example: Lopez Heredia from Spain, Giacomo Borgogno from Piedmont, Jean-Maurice Raffault from Chinon in France, and the Corison winery in Napa Valley. For stronger stuff, there is a wonderfully retro cocktail menu: a pear Sidecar, Sazerac, Manhattan, Whiskey Sour, and Gin and Tonic. The Culinary Center offers an abundance of cooking and wine classes. In February there are pizza making, Family Night Steak and Bake, French Bistro, Southern Italian, Thai and the ever-popular Girls Night Out classes, among others. [See the website for calendars and lists of special events. Classes fill up quickly.] So, what of the lavish Mansion? While it is used for private events, like weddings, work has just begun on a major expansion that in a year or two will create a hotel with 75 guest rooms with dramatic views. A spa is also being developed. ■ Ninety Acres at Natirar, 2 Main Street, Peapack-Gladstone, NJ. www.natirar.com (908) 901-9500

Patricia Savoie is a wine and culinary travel writer. She can be reached at WordsOnWine@gmail.com

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IL MELOGRANO

IL MELOGRANO IS NOW well into its second decade. Competing from afar with Doylestown proper’s bustling restaurant district might kill a lesser enterprise. Il Melograno doesn’t benefit from the walk-by, tourist, shopper, and courtroom-spill-out that spills into the center-borough eateries. Il Melograno, which is situated in a strip mall to the north of the borough, would seem to be relegated to trading solely as a destination restaurant. But it does not. It is a favorite with the locals. In their estimation, only in a geographic sense is Il Melograno on the outside looking in. Besides being a favorite of the residents, it’s a preferred table for legions of Doylestown employees and suits who commute in and out of the Borough daily. Il Melograno is on the radar screen of diners seeking good Italian fare as remote as the Big Apple. Appearances are deceiving. The shopping center that Il Melograno calls home is undistinguished. It belies the warm ambiance within. The restaurant has an air of Old World détente amplified by white-linen tablecloths, upscale, tasty Italian cuisine, and a fine selection of wines. The fare is exclusively Italian. Most of the menu lists standards rendered in traditional form with little tinkering. The menu is divided into Antipasti ($10-$11), Soups ($7, $8), Salads ($6, $10), Pasta ($16-$20), and Entrées ($20-$23, $29, $34). Prices are reasonable. Portions are generous. One of my favorite dishes for years is Carpaccio di Manzo. Appealingly presented, the raw beef soaks under a citrusy drizzle of lemon spritzed with truffle oil. A mound of spring mix salad loaded with onions, capers and shaved Parmesan sits atop. Salmone Affumicato brings rustically smoked salmon with fresh spring mix. De rigeur for an Italian ristorante, there’s impeccably presented Mozzarella alla Caprese. Fresh tomatoes alternate with sliced Mozzarella and roasted peppers. Drizzled with first-press olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and topped with fresh basil, the preparation and presentation is classic. A menu miss is Calamari Fritti. On one recent visit, the squid was chewy. The taste and the presentation were bland—not up to par with the rest of the menu. Soups are prepared with Italian soul. Soup du Jour is always a good bet. Lobster Bisque is hefty, hearty fare with an undercurrent of subtle, pleasing sweetness. Pastas are all priced at $20 or below. Spaghetti del Pescatore interlaces scallops, shrimp, and squid—all sautéed in garlic and olive oil. Several other pastas on the menu are prepared with fruits de mer. Ravioli al Granchio corrals copious clumps of crabmeat with vodka sauce and sun-dried tomatoes. Ravioli al Pomodoro is spinach and cheese ravioli with fresh tomato in a basil sauce. For meat-lovers, Fettuccine Boscalola is loaded with peas, mushrooms and chicken in a light brown sauce. Gnocchi a Pomodoro is a good choice at a good price: potato gnocchi is paired with freshly diced tomatoes spiced profusely with fresh basil for only $16. Il Melograno has traditionally offered a strong list of entrées, handled with consistency by veteran chef-owner Angelo Patruno. Pollo alla Cacciatore, an Italian standby, is a feast of peppers, mushrooms, onions, and chopped tomatoes in a white wine-based brown hunter’s sauce—savory and right-priced at $20. Veal Saltimbocca scores on aged prosciutto with veal spruced up with fresh sage and sautéed in a white wine sauce. Costolette D’Agnelo alla Pugliese infuses lamb with a garlicky essence redolent of rosemary. House-made desserts are tasty. I recommend saving a few calories for the cannoli—two huge pastry tubes dusted with sugar and streaked with chocolate sauce. Dabs of creamy ricotta-rife cream fill the tubes to bursting, with extra dabbed on a plate loaded with berries and streaked with chocolate sauce. Chef-owner Angelo Patruno learned his Italian chops in the old country. He and his wife left Italy in 1988 for Bermuda. There he worked at the Harbourfront Restau-

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rant in Hamilton. The Chef and family moved to Philly a few years later and partnered with his brother at the iconic Monte Carlo Living Room on South Street. Angelo also logged time at the Primavera in Ardmore. After putting a few years in at Café La Fontana, he opened Ristorante Il Melograno in Doylestown. His wife Maria works the front of the house. The couple is well established at their current location. They won’t be leaving anytime soon. That’s good news for the loyal locals who realize that not all of Doylestown’s gems are stored in the same center-borough vault. ■ IL MELOGRANO, 73 Old Dublin Pike, Doylestown, PA 18901 215-348-7707 Website: http://ilmelogranodoylestown.com/

food & wine

dining

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ROBERT GORDON

Modo Mio

food & wine

THE PLEASANT, CONFIDENT CROWD that patiently waits for a table to free up at Modo Mio isn’t huddling by the door because its curbside bling seduced them. This modest looking BYOB trattoria in Northern Liberties’ thrives despite not having the benefit of a pulsing crowd of passersby. Strollers are few along this stretch. Inside, however, it’s a different story. Chef-Owner Peter McAndrews, recreates the essence of the Italian trattoria. And he does so in both ambiance and food. Those two elements are the siren call that keeps the sizzle in this homey room. Recreating bona fide Italian is no mean feat for McAndrews to pull off. McAndrews spent a good portion of his life living in Italy, studying its cuisine and soaking up its culture. His gastronomic philosophy is sown in the terra firma of Old World Italian cuisine, as contrasted, he underscores, with New World Italian cooking. The former is based on fresh farm-to-table ingredients, homemade sauces, and bright spicing. The latter takes too many profit-driven detours that corrupt or compromise bedrock Italian culinary principles. McAndrews, who earned hometown cred years ago at Fairmount’s Rembrandt’s, transports the menu of a typical Italian trattoria to Northern Liberties with rocking success. Dolce Vita pervades the spirited—and at times boisterous—air at Modo Mio. McAndrews and his personable cadre of waiters stroll the room, interacting, exchanging pleasantries, soliciting feedback, talking food, making dining here an experience that’s at once personal and gregarious. The fare is something to come back for again and again: Modo Mio boasts an envious contingent of loyal regulars. House-made bread arrives quickly, lightly toasted, served with white bean purée, diced fennel with spicy peppery topping, orange marmalade and grana padano cheese. The bread presages Modo Mio’s greatest asset: eschewing the ordinary. Few details here are dismissed or considered small. And no price is big. All Antipasti are priced at $8—quite a bargain considering the depth of most dishes. Modo Mio’s bruschetta ia a mini-feast that stars a diverse cast of chicken liver paté, fresh figs, and capers. Scallops pair with a hardy chickpea pancake stoked with green-apple mustard. Eggplant is more accurately a snail dish—a dozen snails are served in puréed eggplant boosted by sublime hazelnut pesto and aged provolone. I should point out that every choice on the menu is expressed in a single word (save one dish: Mozzarella en Corozza). For food-

ies who scour every inch of the menu, that’s not a game changer. But as a caution to the hasty menu skimmer, be sure to read the entire menu description. A lover of snails runs the risk of missing out on a truly outstanding rendition of snails because the dish is titled simply Melanzane or eggplant on the menu. Among the Pastas, which are all priced at $11, Lasagna is prepared Bolognese-style topped with an egg cooked over-easy. Agnolotti is pinched ravioli, a popular pasta in Italy’s Piedmont region. Minced rabbit and a mélange of greens are stuffed inside the pasta. The sage butter that moistens the dish is rich and husky. Strozzapreti, which means, intriguingly enough, “priest chokers,” are delicate pillows of potato gnocchi, enhanced with plum tomatoes and green olives moderated with Mozzarella cheese. Among the Secondi (entrée) choices, Trota is trout lightly clad in cornmeal. A harmonious set of ingredients spike the flavor: raisins counterbalance the bite of radicchio, small chunks of apple add crispiness and pine nut brown butter at the base. Gatto is a winning choice for the swelling ranks of vegetarians—a savory butternut squash tort. Bitter broccoli plays off the spunky sweetness of red peppers garnished with rosemary breadcrumbs. Anatra is crispy boneless duck leg, sided with braised cabbage. The sweet meat meshes delectably with gremolata—a condiment coupled frequently with ossa buca alla Milanese. The gremolata recipe is fortified with walnuts and complements the dish nicely. Modo Mio makes all their own desserts, which include a tender, divine, chocolaty torte, along with a tempting slate of in-season fruit tortes. Consistent with the trattoria theme, frothy, hearty cappuccino is brewed with Old World reverence. Modo Mio is BYOB and cash only. No credit cards are accepted, which doesn’t stop the crowd from rolling in. In mid-week, Modo Mio regulars are still getting seated after 9:30, despite a posted closing hour of 10 PM. But how do you turn away the Geator with the Heater? Yes, Jerry Blavat, a guy who has bled Philly red sauce for six decades—and still going strong—is a Modo Mio regular. So is an army of other inveterate Philadelphia crawlers who have made Modo Mio a regular stop, or perhaps a good staging site for their next trip to Italy. ■ MODO MIO, 161 West Girard Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19123 (215) 203-8707

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dave barry

Safe on the Slopes HERE’S A FUN WINTER vacation idea: Why not go skiing? If you answered, “Because I don’t want to spend the next two years in a full-body cast,” then I have good news: Thanks to modern, high-tech ski equipment originally developed for use by U.S. astronauts, 72 percent of all skiers are able to walk with assistance in less than ten months!

Yes, things have really changed since the early days of skiing, a sport that traces its origins back to 16th Century Switzerland, where, according to legend, a man named Hans lived with his family on top of a mountain. One day, Hans’s daughter became very ill, and his wife, Bernice, told him to go down to the village immediately and fetch the doctor. Hans, knowing that it would take hours to walk down the mountain, noticed two loose barrel staves that happened to be lying around, and suddenly an idea struck him. Using some leather thongs that also happened to be lying around, he attached the staves to his feet, grabbed two poles that also happened to be lying around, aimed the staves down the mountain and gave a shove. Within a matter of seconds, nothing had happened. “Hans, you moron,” explained Bernice. “It’s July. There’s no snow.” And so Hans had to walk manually down the mountain to get the doctor, who cured the little girl in five minutes by threatening her with leeches. But this incident 38

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got Hans to thinking, and the next day he started tinkering with some chairs and huge steel towers and powerful motors and several thousand feet of cable that happened to be lying around. By dusk, he was finished. “Look, Bernice!” he said. “A person can ride all the way up the mountain on chairs dangling precariously from this cable!” “If you think I’m getting on that,” said Bernice, “you’re crazy.” “I’m not talking about us,” said Hans. “We’ll stay safely on the ground and collect large sums of money.” And thus the modern ski industry was born. Today there are thousands of ski areas and, as of 8 o’clock this morning, every single one of them had excellent skiing conditions, as measured by the Official Ski Area Rating System, in which each area objectively rates its own conditions on a standardized scale that ranges from the highest possible ranking, Extremely Superb (defined as “snow or at least cold mud clearly visible in places”) all the way down to the lowest ranking, Very Good (defined as “This ski resort is located in Puerto Rico”). Because different skiers have different abilities, ski resorts offer a variety of slopes, which are color-coded according to degree of difficulty, as follows: GREEN: Steep BLUE: Steep BLACK: Steep If you’re a beginner, you want to avoid the steeper slopes. I would rule out Colorado altogether. One time I went skiing at the swank Colorado resort of Aspen, and the ski slope there turned out to be basically a cliff. Not coincidentally, Aspen is the home of a world-class knee-injury clinic. It’s located right at the base of the mountain; the surgeons just stand around the operating room, scalpels in hand, chatting about golf, and every few minutes there’s a scream, and a new patient comes crashing through the roof. Of course, to reach that level of expertise, you’ll need to take lessons. Most ski areas have ski schools, where an instructor will assign you to a class of students who are of approximately the same age, skill level and athletic ability as you, except that they are all secretly members of the Olympic slalom team. You’ll see what I mean: The instructor will get you all up on top of the mountain, then say, “Follow me!” and start skiing sedately down, making graceful turns, totally under control. Your classmates, after exchanging the secret Olympic wink, will follow the instructor, making it appear as though they have never done anything like this before. Some will even fall down, but they’ll get right up again as though it’s no big deal. You’ll think, “How hard can this be?” So you’ll push off and within seconds you’ll be going so fast that your ski outfit will burst into flames from friction with the atmosphere. You’ll hurtle straight down the hill, a human comet, penetrating the ski lodge directly through the wall, rocketing past the wise veterans who have elected to spend their ski vacations indoors, and coming to a violent halt in the cafeteria when you slam into the salad bar with such force that surgeons will later find individual chickpeas embedded two inches into your forehead. As you’re lying there, face-down in the vinaigrette, you’ll hear, from way up on the mountain, hearty Olympic laughter, plus your instructor’s voice advising you: “NEXT TIME, KEEP YOUR KNEES BENT!” They encourage this because it makes you go faster. The important thing is not to be discouraged. Remember: Everybody falls at first. The real winners pick themselves up, dust themselves off and signal for the cocktail waitperson. Remember to keep your elbow bent. ■ (c) 2007 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

This is what happens when hybrid creatures living in surreal environments go through their daily routines with the radio on. IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL sunny day. Birds were singing and there was not a cloud in the sky. As far as the eye could see, the lake front property is spotted with wellplaced, perfectly manicured homes. The water is perfectly still, except for the gentle ripples coming off a small shiny aluminum rowboat gently bobbing way out in the distant middle of the lake. According to local fish, it was nice below the water as well. Plus, today the radio is on. Sitting on the floor of the tiny, shiny boat is a small, but loud radio. The fishing radio listener is tuned to MPR, Minnesota Public Radio, to hear the top-ofthe-hour NPR news feed. The radio, sitting on the bottom of the shiny, tiny sheet metal boat, has transformed it into a giant underwater speaker. The boat also has another surprise bonus feature—it has the same reflective properties of a fun house mirror. The lucky fisher-person had unknowingly created a device to attract fish on multiple platforms: audio, visual and bait. Annish Kapora’s Chicago Bean got nothing on this baby. The siren’s distant, even sound acoustically blankets the lake as NPR’s Quodlibetical Quahog introduces the 12 o’clock national news. As clear as a bell, the authoritative voice vibrates the bottom of the sheet metal boat and enters the water. Coincidently, the news just happens to be about water, or rather what’s in the water. “Studies are showing that traces of pharmaceutical drugs are ubiquitous in the nation’s water tables. It seems water treatment plants were never designed to extract most complex chemical compounds from waste water. Not only that, until recently there hadn’t been instrumentation to test for these compounds. As a result, this issue could have origins dating back who knows how many decades. To date, testing is inconclusive. So far the top known detected drugs are Prozac, Viagra, Ambien and Lipitor. Furthermore, there are reports of multiple species of fish turning up with dual reproductive organs, making it possible for said fish to lead asexual or very sexual lives, depending on how one looks at it.

There’s rumor the President will be selecting a Blue Ribbon Committee to appoint scientists to further study this information’s validity,” the clam announced. On a personal note, not one the clam could easily express on the air, there was relief that the administration cared and was not willing to just let fish go fuck themselves. For BiBo, the Bifoliated Bonito, each day seems better than the last. It just is. Being a fish, you’re not really required to ask that many detailed questions as to why. That said, there is the one common question that all fish ask, or at least think: “What kind of fish am I, anyway?” Not having mirrors and not having a bendable neck makes it hard to impossible to see anything other than one’s tail. Fish initially look at other fish tails to get an understanding of what the rest of their own bodies might look like, hence getting the whole picture as to who and what they are. Bibo, on the other fin, never actually saw his tail because his leaflets and acorn nuts block the view. Bibo spent most of his day just happy to be floating, not being burdened by any apperception was a good thing. Who knows, maybe it was something in the water. The Quodlibetical Quahog’s voice drew him to the shinny little bait dangling boat. The news initially sounded important, but it was immediately replaced by the fascination of seeing his reflection, the first sight of a fish with his exact foliage attached to a tail. Wow! Food! The Bonito is finito. n

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victor stabin

*Quodlibetical (adj. Not confined to a particular subject; discussed at pleasure for curiosity or entertainment) Quahog (n. A large clam) - aka chatty clam

Victor Stabin is an artist and author of Daedle Doodle, his version of an ABC book, populated by characters with $5 alliterative names. victorstabin.com FEBRUARY 2012

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essay

SALLY FRIEDMAN

An Ordinary Marriage M y husband and I are standing at the kitchen sink while he scrapes the dishes, and I rinse them in warm sudsy water. The division of labor is etched in stone—immutable—because over the years of a very long marriage, we both know that he scrapes better than I do. If it’s a weekday night, Jeopardy is playing on the kitchen TV and my husband, a master player, gets four right in a row. We “high-five” each other, and celebrate with chocolate popsicles. Low-fat, alas. It’s been a long journey from giddy young bride and groom setting off for a Bermuda honeymoon, to the kitchen sink in our empty-nester digs. But there we stand, celebrating nothing more than a dinner of meatloaf and baked potatoes, and a night in the den with yesterday’s unfinished newspapers. For us, it’s the everyday ordinary/extraordinary sweetness of routine—of kitchen table dinners, walks on the beach when nobody’s feet hurt, of children and grandchildren streaking through our lives, of remembered songs and jokes and of long, perfectly comfortable silences—that matter. I know that there are Valentines out there who will dress up tonight and go out for elaborate veal dishes and fine wines. There may Vic and Sally Friedman. even be expensive gifts thrown in. Not at our house. What this 51-year union has taught me is that marriage is harder—and much richer—than I’d ever expected it to be. That it’s the accumulation of everyday moments that make me profoundly grateful. Dare I say, with Cupid’s arrow unfurling on this day, that love comes with baggage? I love this man more than I can explain, I do not cherish his clever ability to win arguments because he is trained in the law, and I am a totally emotional/non-linear thinker. He still cracks his knuckles in a way that makes me cringe. And we each can be stubborn, petty, petulant and mean-spirited because we are flawed. We have had to put up with the side dishes of marriage—the sentences that begin with “Oh, for crying out loud!” and the chill in the air when we can’t even agree about what movie to see, let alone our differences over some core values.

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But the entrée of love is that it transcends all of the tedium and moodiness and lingering debate over whose fault it is that we bought the wrong sofa and what constitutes a civilized temperature indoors in winter. Our joint venture flourishes because we’ve maneuvered the mine fields of a long marriage, creating a life, a home and a family, including three complicated daughters who left us for their own lives just as we were beginning to thoroughly enjoy them. After years of concentrating on them, not us, we got back to that first stage of marriage: just you and me, kid. It’s sometimes lonely. But more often it’s not. And this new era comes complete with seven grandchildren who remind us that the blood lives on. My first mate and I have lived through our share of rough sailing, because that’s what life dishes out. We’ve had those scary waits for medical bulletins, those challenges from work that brought our lives meaning—and occasional chaos. But we’ve also stood in the silent dark together, and watched a child of our child sleeping with a slight smile stretched across her rosebud lips. We’ve buried our parents together, and wondered how we would go on without them. But we have. And we’re on the front lines now. Last scene from an ordinary marriage: My husband has fallen asleep with his glasses on and the newspaper sections scattered on our comforter. I tiptoe over to his side of the bed to turn out the light. For just a moment, I study his face, now as familiar as my own, in the semi-darkness. And I feel a marrow-deep rush of tenderness and contentment because that face is there. ■

Sally Friedman has been “living out loud” for over three decades. In addition to ICON, she contributes to the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, AARP Magazine and other national and regional publications. She is the mother of three fierce daughters, grandmother of seven exceptional grandchildren and the wife of retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Victor Friedman. Email: PINEGANDER@aol.com.

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29 / FEATURE / ROCK’S PHOTOGRAPHERS

GB: Well, we have a very, very specific idea of how Jimi looked from 1967 on. But the truth is, looks back then changed so quickly. When I was going through the EMI archives, I would see the warning: “Do not use this photo.” Even though it had been taken only four months before, it was already out of fashion because there were new hairstyles, new styles. Philip Townsend photographed the Rolling Stones [in 1963], before they even had a record contract, six months

relationship with the musicians built on respect and trust. It makes me think of something Eve Arnold, who recently passed away, said: “You know, they’re not looking at the camera; they’re looking at me. And I have to convey to them that I really care about them, about getting something real.” These photographers need to connect just like a young guitarist needs to connect. So many of these photographers see themselves as part of the noble tradition of photography. They have CartierBresson books on their tables, Walker Evans reproductions on their walls. But they’re treated as hacks. This is the opportunity to give them their day in the sun. Because they were instrumental in probably the biggest cultural revolution the world has ever known.

Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955-Present, by Gail Buckland is published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and available from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and bookstores.

before they made history. Their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, told Townsend to make them look mean and angry. So Townsend took them around the East End of London and made them sit in the gutters. And one of them would smile and Townsend would say: “No—don’t smile. You’re supposed to look mean.” They had not learned to pose yet. Author/Curator Gail Buckland. Photo: Joyce Ravid. GG: Was there a photographer who kept surprising you while you were archiving and interviewing, who led you down rabbit hole after rabbit hole? GB: I enjoyed visiting Jerry Schatzberg, whose studio in GG: The section on fans and fanatics is fun and fascinatthe ‘60s was so hip, it inspired parts of Tom Wolfe’s book ing, whether they’re going crazy for the Ramones or Mor[The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby]. I rissey. But why did you pick that picture of girls clamoring saw all these photos of the Stones putting on bras and for New Kids on the Block? To me, they were about as rock stockings to dress up in World War II military drag. And and roll as Barry Manilow. here was this great portrait of Frank Zappa, just propped GB: It really has nothing to do with New Kids. It has up in a corner. It was so funny and so orange, I just something to do with [photographer] Lynn Goldsmith recthought it had to be in the show. ognizing in the faces of those girls the way that she went I really enjoyed learning about people I hardly knew crazy for the Stones. You know, David Gahr, before he died, about, like Hannes Schmid, the original photographer for told me that his shot of Bruce Springsteen surrounded by the Marlboro Man [cigarette ads]. The reason rock bands teenage girls really epitomizes rock and roll. Bruce isn’t on liked him was totally bizarre. He had been out in New stage, he doesn’t have an instrument. And yet there’s this Guinea, living on his own with cannibals. He was at a dinfeeling that these girls are ready to burst out of their skin. ner party with musicians who found him so fascinating, GG: Can you remember any truly memorable reactions they essentially said jump on the bus and follow us. Right to the show, comments that make you want to curate other away, he was seen as part of the tribe. Not a groupie, but a rock-photo shows? friend. GB: I’m very happy that the show has helped many of Almost all of the photographers represented here had a the photographers who had never been exhibited in an art 42

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museum. [R.E.M. portraitist] Laura Levine was picked up by the Museum of Modern Art. Other photographers were picked up by the Morrison Hotel Gallery [in Manhattan]. A collector wants to start collecting. It’s gratifying to know they have more of a following. I love it that the show is so inter-generational, that so many children see it with their grandparents, that guards tell me that they’ve never seen so many people spend so much time looking at and talking about images. The experience has made me really respect the next generation for respecting our music. My son at college sent me an email saying: “Mom, you have to listen to more Led Zeppelin.” And I turned around and said: “Hey, that’s my music.” GG: I’ve read that writing and curating Who Shot Rock & Roll reminded you “who I am.” So what did you learn about who you are? GB: What I learned is that the kind of passionate, rebellious person I was at 18, 19, 20 still lives inside of me—the kind of person who got arrested one summer in D.C. for protesting the “dirty” [oil] pipeline from Canada. And I was reminded yet again that rock and roll really connects people. Last June I curated a special show featuring women rock photographers in Croatia. I reviewed the portfolios of Croats, Bosnians and Serbs. They were so excited because rock and roll means so much to them. Before the Bosnian war so many of them played in the same bands. War breaks out, and their bands break up. Peace returns, and they’re back in the same bands, back to being friends instead of enemies. I think rock and roll is dangerous. But I like dangerous. The world needs all those things that put fire in your belly to be unaccepting of the status quo, to want a better world. You know, a lot of the New York punks were Jewish and their parents were Holocaust survivors and they put swastikas on themselves. I think that’s a wonderful, wonderful story. I don’t think it necessarily comes down to your instrument as much as this incredible need to be somebody. This incredible desire to do something creative. To connect with like-minded people. To break out. To reinvent yourself. To not be your parents. ■ Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present, Feb. 11-May 13, Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley, 31 N. 5th St. (between Linden and Hamilton streets), Allentown, 610-432-4333, www.allentownartmuseum.org. Curator and author Gail Buckland will sign book on Feb. 11. Lecture and book signing on Feb. 12. Other rock-related events, including fashion shows and concerts, scheduled in the Lehigh Valley through May can be found at www.rockthroughthevalley.com. Geoff Gehman covered photography and rock music as an arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. He is the author of The Kingdom of the Kid, a memoir of growing up in the middle-class, long-lost Hamptons. He can be reached at geoffgehman@verizon.net.

about life

JAMES P. DELPINO

Making Amends EARLIER THIS WEEK A good friend asked me to write about making amends. After thirty-two years in full time private practice I have seen people injure and hurt each other in many ways and at the deepest levels. I have learned from people the best ways to make amends and get it right in relationships with friends, family, significant others, spouses and co-workers. What I propose is a very high standard. Most folks may not be capable or willing to make amends at this level, however because

Step 2: Express sincere sorrow or remorse. In short, apologize. Being apologetic means surrendering your own pride for the sake of the other. Insincere apologies often make things worse. Sometimes apologies are face to face, sometimes on the phone or in writing. You must choose the format that works best for the people involved. Part of the process of making amends is the growth involved for each person in this kind of dilemma. It’s better to learn to humble yourself than let an emo-

each relationship is precious it is worthwhile to shoot for the best. Here are the five steps I propose for making amends:

tional injury fester in someone else. Humbling yourself, besides being good for the spirit, helps to keep false pride in check.

Step 1: Own it! If you have hurt or wronged someone—own it. Even if the hurt was a result of a misunderstanding or slip of the tongue or otherwise unintentional hurt. By owning it, you acknowledge you had a role in causing hurt to someone else. Even if the hurt is minor or a perceived hurt, it is important, when you value another person, to let her know you accept responsibility for injuring someone else’s feelings. This is also a way of validating the feelings and reality of another person. You will often receive more respect in the eyes of the injured person as you begin to heal their wound. Remember that while words can hurt, they can also heal and uplift.

Step 3: Make a sincere promise that you will not repeat the actions, inactions or words that led to injuring another’s feelings. Promising not to do it again also holds you to a high bar. Everyone likes to be reassured they will not be hurt again in the same way in the future. This helps to reinstate trust in a relationship. Making a false or insincere promise will teach the other person not to trust your words. When your words and actions are in alignment, the other person will be able to observe your integrity. If you’re unable to make this kind of sincere promise, then you may not be ready to fully make amends.

Those three steps are verbal. They are intended to communicate several messages and set the stage for the last two steps, which are action-oriented. Step 4: Do the work it takes to improve that aspect of you. It is often said that “talk is cheap.” Words lay a good foundation for making amends, but are not sufficient to achieve the best results. The most common error in making amends is to say the words and then become lazy or uncommitted in following up with the kinds of work or actions required to help you not repeat the same hurt. Making a sincere promise not to repeat inactions or words that caused the injury often suggests you must somehow improve or better yourself as a person. Be willing to do what it takes. If you have, for example, hurt someone by being a poor communicator you might consider reading a book on the subject, watch some educational videos about communication on the Internet, take a course, go to group therapy or psychotherapy. These choices depend on how much you need to grow or improve yourself. If you have struggled with drugs or alcohol and this struggle has hurt others, you can consider going to AA, NA or any number of twelve-step programs. If you need to learn how to be better in relationships, you can always search for a mentor to teach and guide you. If you have injured others through your angry outbursts you could engage in some sort of anger management process. In this day and age there are countless ways to get access to information and help. Doing these kinds of things demonstrates your sincerity and integrity and goes a long way in the eyes of someone who has been hurt. Step 5: Make it up to the other person. This step has two goals: gathering information and following through. The simple question, “How can I make this up to you?” often suffices to achieve goal number one. People often know what will help them trust and forgive you for your shortcomings. It might be as simple as “bring me flowers” or as complex, difficult or expensive as “I’ll clean your house every week for a year” or “I’ll take you to Paris.” Depending on the injury and the people involved, making it up to another person is unique to the relationship. The idea is to replace or dilute the negative feelings associated with being hurt with positive experiences. While Step 4 focuses on improving yourself, Step 5 focuses on putting the feelings of the other first. It is a way or righting the wrong and re-balancing the scales. Making amends is more than just words—it requires actions. ■ Jim Delpino is a psychotherapist in private practice for over 30 years. Email jdelpino@aol.com (215) 364-0139. FEBRUARY 2012

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classical notebook The Prussian Quartets ★★★★ Emerson String Quartet Released on Sony Classical www.sonymasterworks.com The Emerson String Quartet stands alone in the history of string quartets as musicians of unrivaled eminence with an incomparable list of great recordings over more than three decades; this latest recording is their first recording of Mozart quartets in 20 years. For their debut album on Sony Classical, the Emerson String Quartet has chosen Mozart’s last three string quartets, also known as The Prussian Quartets, K.575, K589

and K.590. These were Mozart’s last three string quartets written in 1789 and 1790 after his visit to the Royal Court in Berlin, they were commissioned by the King of Prussia. The King himself played the cello and, accordingly, Mozart set out to provide the cello with an especially prominent part. These last quartets represent Mozart’s distillation of a lifetime of writing for string instruments in various combination and genres. The Emerson Quartet said, “In playing Mozart, we always strive for elegance, beauty and style. In the purely melodic passages, we try to emulate the human voice, ranging from the most intimate pianissimo to a full sonority when appropriate. In general, Mozart has played an important role in our concert repertoire, and we learned these three quartets fairly early in our career. But it had been twenty years since we recorded any of these quartets, so we felt that it was time to add more of this wonderful and challenging music to our discography.” And yes, this recording clearly shows indeed a great interpretation of Mozart’s music. The fact that the Emerson Quartet has been performing this repertoire for years before recording it clearly results in an extreme mature interpretation now captured in perpetuity on this CD. It is not a secret that a string quartet is a form of playing that grows over the years and requires a huge commitment and time from four individuals. It is not because four great string players get together there is a great string quartet born and, therefore, this recording of a long-time quartet is even more special. The Emerson String Quartet, now in its 35th year, is currently on tour with Mozart’s Prussian Quartets and is to perform in Hamilton (MT), Stony Brook (NY), New York (NY), San Diego (CA), Seattle (WA), Los Angeles (CA), Houston (TX), Washington (DC) and at Tanglewood in Lenox (MA) over the upcoming months. More information can be found on their website www.emersonquartet.com. Don’t miss this CD and try not to miss a performance in one the above mentioned cities.

New Year’s Concert 2012 ★★★1/2 Vienna Philharmonic Mariss Jansons Released on Sony Classical www.sonymasterworks.com

The Emerson String Quartet. Photo: Andrew Eccles/DG.

Peter H. Gistelinck is the Executive Director of The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Prior to joining the Orchestra, he was the Director of Sales and Marketing and Co-Artistic Director for the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra and Flemish Radio Choir in Belgium. Mr. Gistelinck is a member of the Kimmel Center Resident Advisory Committee, The Recording Academy, American Film Institute, Musical Fund Society, Philadelphia Arts and Business Council, International Academy of Jazz and International Society for the Performing Arts.

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The annual New Year’s Day Concert in Vienna has been an exalted tradition for more than seven decades, and the resulting performances and recordings with works from the Strauss dynasty and their contemporaries are among the classical market’s most in demand repertoire. The program traditionally revolves around waltzes and polkas by the Strauss family (Johann father and son as well as Josef and Eduard Strauss), and also includes works by other composers of that era. It was broadcast live on television for the very first time in 1959 and has been broadcasted ever since. And the list of conductors who have led the Vienna Philharmonic at the New Year’s Concert reads like the who’s who of maestros. Boskovsky, concertmaster of the Orchestra from 1936 to 1979, conducted the Vienna New Year's concerts from 1955 to 1979. In 1980, Lorin Maazel became the first non-Austrian conductor of the concert and the practice of choosing a different star conductor every year—and occasional star soloists—began in 1987 after seven appearances in a row by Maazel. Members of the Orchestra voted to rotate conductors and this may have occurred with the telecasts going worldwide, perhaps to make the audio and video recordings more marketable. The first of these rotating stars was Herbert von Karajan, an Austrian, then 78 and in frail health. During the 2012 New Year’s Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic, Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons returned to conduct the annual celebrations after his acclaimed debut in 2006. The newly released New Year’s Concert 2012 recording is once again a blend of well-known classics and several premieres, works that have never been recorded or are rarely heard. As always, the concert is bound to end with two traditional encores: the famous waltz The Blue Danube and the Radetzky March. Ever since their first recording together in April 1992, Mariss Jansons has belonged

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PETER H. GISTELINCK Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

to the circle of conductors with whom the Vienna Philharmonic feels a special bond. The invitation to conduct the 2012 New Year’s Concert marks the approaching 20th anniversary of this collaboration, which since its onset has been characterized by mutual artistic and personal understanding as well as great respect. The conductor himself declared his passion for the music of the Strauss family and the event itself. “It is something quite special,” he said, “a wonderful opportunity to listen to this music and get to know it. This atmosphere, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Golden Hall of the Musikverein—all that adds up to a long and wonderful tradition reMariss Jansons. sulting in fantastic, very specific music.” This recording is available exclusively at amazon.com and through ArkivMusic. Digital download and CD available now and a DVD and Blu-Ray are to be released later this month. A great collectors’ item that stands well within all of the other Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert recordings. The Four Elements ★★★ Nigel Kennedy Released on Sony Classical www.sonymasterworks.com

Nigel Kennedy.

World-famous British violinist Nigel Kennedy made his label debut for Sony Classical last October with his new work, The Four Elements, written for violin, orchestra, band and voices. Kennedy’s highly descriptive composition, inspired by the elements air, earth, fire and water, takes the listener on a multi-genre musical journey of exhilaration, contemplation and celebration. Kennedy became know as a musical phenomenon in 1989 with his recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons which sold (probably unsurprisingly) about two million copies worldwide and made him an instant international celebrity, not only because of his musical style, but definitely also because of his looks and way of presenting the piece. Let’s not forget that Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is the most successful classical piece ever, with or without Nigel Kennedy. Kennedy’s latest recording, The Four Elements, is a suite of pieces which he originally conceived as his own 21st century response to Vivaldi’s baroque masterpiece in the sense of creating programmatic, pictorial music based on an underlying theme. In this piece, Nigel Kennedy brings together some of the contrasting themes of his musical life. At the start of “Air” he plays a haunting violin passage reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, but as the piece develops it moves through blues, cool

dance grooves and hints of Oriental melodies. In “Fire,” powerful funk riffs contrast with a broody motif played by piano and acoustic violins, before evolving through speedy unison passages, reflective vocal interludes and pastoral violin themes, then climaxes in a frantic electric hoedown. A notable new ingredient in the mix is the electronic drum programming by Damon Reece, who has worked with Massive Attack and Goldfrapp. Singers featured on the album include Zee Gachette and Xantoné Blaq, a former member of Amy Winehouse’s band. Hailed at the start of his career as a brilliant young prodigy of the classical violin, Nigel Kennedy has been on a mission ever since to prove that no category is big enough to contain him and music in general. He has made landmark recordings of concertos by Elgar, Brahms and Beethoven, while branching out into explorations of Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, while performing klezmer music and standards from the jazz repertoire. Today he has his own jazz group, the Nigel Kennedy Quintet, as well as being the founder and musical director of the Orchestra of Life, with whom he recorded Four Elements. This CD is an interesting recording of definitely a talented musician for whom musical boundaries have never existed. Give it a try! ■ FEBRUARY 2012

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singer /songwriter Charlie Gracie ★★★ For The Love of Charlie ABKCO

Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

The band is a musical democracy with four of the members contributing songs. “Dilemma,” penned by guitarist/vocalist Junior Mack, is a slice of jazz/rock that would sound at home on the Allman Brothers’s earliest studio albums. “Points of Friendship,”

At 75, Charlie Gracie could be considered an elder craftsman of rock ‘n’ roll. Fifty-five years after topping the Billboard singles charts with “Butterfly,” the South Philadelphia native continues to record and perform around the world. With help from Al Kooper and Graham Nash, For The Love of Charlie shows Gracie’s talent remains undiminished. Recalling the vinyl albums of the 1960s, the CD’s dozen songs clock in at just over 36 minutes and show his versatility as a singer. “All I Wanna Do is Love You” is a straightforward affirmation of his rock ‘n’ roll roots. “My Hummingbird” is an Elvis-styled pop song with backing vocals that call to mind the Jordanaires. “And Now I Win” is a heartfelt slice of gospel. Gracie pays tribute to his local roots with “Back to Philadelphia,” a celebration of his hometown with references to South Street and the Mummers Parade. “On the Way to Cape May” features Gracie on banjo in a tribute to the Jersey Shore. Dion ★★★1/2 Tank Full of Blues Blue Horizon Tank Full of Blues completes a musical trilogy for Dion that began with Bronx in Blue in 2006 and Son of Skip James in 2007. The common thread is the blues, one of Dion’s earliest musical influences before he hit it big with the Belmonts and as a solo artist with “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue.” The new CD differs from the predecessors in that Dion wrote or co-wrote nine of the album’s 11 songs. The title track is a primer on the blues that sounds like a lost classic of the genre. “I’ve got a woman who wants me/I’ve got another woman who wants me gone,” Dion sings in a voice that retains its power at age 72. “I Read It (in the Rolling Stone)” is his salute to the longtime music magazine delivered with a swampy blues feel. “My Michelle” is a rock ‘n’ roll love song updated for the 21st century with its references to a cellphone and iPhone. “Bronx Poem” wraps up the album on an unexpected note as Dion offers a moving recitation on his life and philosophy over the course of six minutes. With Tank Full of Blues, Dion shows he’s far from running on empty. Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band ★★★1/2 Renaissance Man lilJohnieboy Records A charter member of the Allman Brothers Band, Jaimoe has gone back to his his jazz roots with Renaissance Man, the debut studio album by Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band. The seven-piece outfit, which features a three-piece horn section, serves up a pleasing blend of jazz, blues and rock. tomwilk@rocketmail.com 46

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written by trumpeter Reggie Pittman, has echoes of Weather Report featuring Paul Lieberman on flute and Pittman on flugelhorn. “Simple Song,” written by David Stoltz is an effective change of pace featuring Stoltz on acoustic guitar and Mack on steel Dobro, engaging in a musical dialog. The band goes back to the early 1970s for a pair of covers. “Melissa,” a highlight of the Allman Brothers Band Eat a Peach album, is reworked as a bossa nova number. Mack brings out the heartbreak on his soulful version of “Rainy Night in Georgia,” a hit single for Brook Benton. Randy Newman ★★★ Live in London Nonesuch Randy Newman’s work on movie soundtracks over the last two decades, most notably his Toy Story trilogy, has tended to overshadow his output as a singer/songwriter. Since 1996, he’s only released two albums of new material. Live in London, a combination CD/DVD is welcome reminder of his talents as a concert performer. Newman performs eight of the 22 songs solo at the piano. On the remaining 14, he is accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra, which adds color and shading to such songs as “The Great Nations of Europe” and “Marie.” Newman’s repertoire spans his entire career from “Love Story” off his 1968 debut album to “Laugh and Be Happy” from Harps and Angels in 2008. “It’s Money That I Love” shows his debt to Fats Domino’s piano style while “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” offers his unique perspective on the Almighty’s view of his creation.

LEXICROCKERY by Robert Gordon TOM WILK

His best songs retain a timelessness. “Louisiana 1927” written about the great flood of the 1920s gained a new relevance after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” remains a heartbreaking song of loneliness. The DVD contains the same program as the CD and adds an interview Newman did with the BBC. Lisa Mills ★★★1/2 Tempered in Fire Burnside Distribution As a singer, Lisa Mills combines a grit and power that has drawn comparisons to Janis Joplin. Mills even served as lead vocalist for Big Brother and the the Holding Company, the same band that Joplin fronted in the late 1960s.

Gullibull’s Travels:Lilliputians posing as Giants travel from primary to primary selling the gullible a bunch of bull. Concubind: the bind Romney’s grandfather, Miles Park Romney, found himself in when polygamy was declared illegal in the US prompting Mormon Miles to flee to Mexico with his three concubines. Concubind: the bind Newt Gindrich finds himself in trying to explain away his “open marriage” offer to his second wife to accept his concubine. Patheticillogical liar: A pathological liar who advances illogical lies, such as “my burning patriotism caused my infidelity,” to a pathetic constituency that accepts them. Pere Mittance: in the elitist milieu of Mitt Romney, $375,000 is a mere pittance. A Pere Mittance is its real-world opposite. A Pere Mittance describes a monumental sum of money that ludicrously exceeds the yearly earnings of 99% of the citizenry. Mittority: the vastly more elite, richer, .1% of the 1% minority that holds 42% of the nation’s wealth. Grimitts: the nonstop, annoying, condescending grin/grimace/smirk Mitt Romney stiffly directs, with body halfturned, toward each speaker during a debate Alsorandom: the kingdom where the group of ex-Republican royalty who failed to attain also-ran status in the Presidential election await their proper destiny: a Fox News or reality show gig.

A native of Mississippi, Mills brings a command of soul and blues to the ten songs of Tempered in Fire. The title track is a memorable ballad on the trials of romance. “My Happy Song,” which Mills co-wrote, is ironically named as she details a love gone wrong with Matt Winch contributing a mournful flugelhorn solo to the bluesy track. Mills sounds energized and frisky on the uptempo “Why Do I Still Love You” as Andy Fairweather Low’s guitar work pushes her to new heights. The six-minute “Blue Guitars of Texas” shows her ability to build the song’s dramatic tension to a cathartic release. She acknowledges her southern roots with a horn-fueled version of Wet Willie’s “Keep on Smilin” and a tender reading of Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine” which gains a new dimension being sung by a woman. ■

Justmeantal: a judgmental statement delivered in coded racial innuendo, which, when challenged as racist, is facilely dismissed as fact-based judgment; e.g. when calling President Obama the “greatest food-stamp president ever,” Newt Gingrich “just meant” that more people are on food stamps than ever. Fact. That’s all. Nothing else. Somprayero: a Mexican prayer hat.

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keresman on disc J.S. Bach/Lara St. John/Marie-Pierre Langlamet ★★★★1/2 Sonatas Ancalagon

The Little Willies ★★★1/2 For the Good Times Milking Bull/EMI

What Chuck Berry is to rock & roll, J.S. Bach is to classical music—simple enough. They have much in common—catchy and logical melodies; animated and propulsive rhythms, and streamlined construction. Sonatas are, in modern parlance, instrumental mini-suites of three or four short movements written for one or two (occasionally three) instruments. In the case of Sonatas, Bach wrote for combinations of violin or flute and harpsichord (that keyboard Lurch played on The Addams Family), and here are arranged for the duo of Canadian-born violin ace Lara St. John and Marie-Pierre

Country music in general has taken lots of hits over the decades, some of them deserved—corny, conservative, redneck-y, cartoonish, etc. In trying to shake the old stereotypes, mainstream country has come up with new ones—as with slick, assembly-

Lara St. John.

Langlamet, harpist for the Berlin Philharmonic (a German combo of some renown). The presence of harp instead of harpsichord (or piano) imparts a somewhat folk-like inflection and buoyancy, giving JSB’s tunes a nice, palpable contrast with St. John’s soulful, plaintive yet commanding violin. As with Berry and other poets of song, Bach’s sonatas have an emotional straightforwardness that’s potent and beguiling—they are alternately reflective, full of get-up-and-go, fleeting but sweet contentment, and blue melancholy. Sonatas is a platter to get blissfully lost within, whether a fan of or novice to ol’ JSB. larastjohn.com/ancalagon [Lara St. John and Marie-Pierre Langlamet will be playing a chamber concert with some selections from this CD on February 26 in Lambertville, presented by the Riverside Symphonia. riversidesymphonia.org/tickets_basically_bach] line pop, there’re lots of pretty, pretty girls and hat-boys light on grit and soul but, by golly, are photogenic. Fortunately, there are performers that value the past but aren’t

shemp@hotmail.com

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MARK KERESMAN Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

stuck in it—Elizabeth Cook, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and these Little Willies from NYC. The Little Willies consist of chanteuse Norah Jones, guitarist/singer Richard Julian, ace six-string bender Jim Campilongo, and a couple of simpatico pals, and their game is covering classic country songs (mostly) from the 1960s. There’s plenty of lean, no-frills honky tonk snap ‘n’ twang but they put their own spin on some of ‘em—note their languid, sultry, jazz-tinged take on “Lovesick Blues.” Willie Nelson’s “Permanently Lonely” is an echo of pure ache, and Jones brings out the winsome, dignified desperation in Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” It’s a little short, but lovers of REAL country music will find this a portable holiday. Spielgusher ★★★ Spielgusher Clenched Wrench/Org Music Improvisation (jazz-like and not) is not strictly limited to the realms of instrumental discourse—Jack Kerouac proved that. Spielgusher is an endeavor uniting the surreal raps/rants/recitations of gonzo writer Richard Meltzer and improvised musical sketches/miniatures performed by bassist Mike Watt, drummer Yuko Araki, and guitarist Hirotaka “Shimmy” Shimizu. This platter contains 63 slivers of bizarrely fractured, frequently scatological, and mordantly amusing stories and observations suggesting the mind-warp verbal breadcrumb-trails to and from Lenny Bruce, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Allen Ginsberg, and, yes, Kerouac. The music gently shimmers like a mirage, churns like the Doors at their most agitated, and struts like psychedelic funk. Sometimes Meltzer is like that nutty guy at your local tavern, bus kiosk, or coffee shop, brimming over with non sequiturs verging on brilliance (“why can’t the universe meet me even halfway?”), else-times a full-of-himself malcontent. Jim Morrison might so like this album. orgmusic.com / clenchedwrench.com The Bottle Rockets ★★★★ Not So Loud: An Acoustic Evening with… Bloodshot What separates Festus, Missouri’s Bottle Rockets from the roots-rock pack is its unapologetic grounding in the redneck roots of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Williams Jr., and John Anderson. It’s not “like punk never happened,” but the BRs are boisterous when punk was/is surly and impatient. But they sing of life in Midwest America in a manner far more convincing (and less anthemic and corny) that John C. Mellencamp (listen to “$1,000 Car,” herein) and have some of the never-say-die workaday weariness of the Clash and the Pogues. Recorded live in St. Louis ‘07, the Bottle Rockets unplug the heavy artillery for acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin, and stand-up bass (+ drums) and play a cross-section of their career highlights…and these versions have, dare I say, even more heft than their “regular” versions. When Springsteen seems too romanticized, Dylan too mature and/or abstract, and the Clash too British, play the Bottle Rockets— this is a balm not unlike that first cold sip of today’s brew. bloodshotrecords.com ■

The Bottle Rockets.

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nick’s picks Aaron Goldberg, Omer Avital, Ali Jackson ★★★★ Yes! Sunnyside Pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Omer Avital and drummer Ali Jackson prove that there’s nothing wrong with making music that’s winningly soulful and plainly beautiful. They get right to it on this date recorded in December 2009, with Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Maraba Blue,” a loping blues with soul-jazz flavor and a gospel lilt that’s leavened with warm, plump bass notes and Goldberg’s sure touch. The title tune bounces with the sureness of Oscar Peterson in his prime while others like the joyful, loose-limbed “Aziel’s Dance” and a cover of Monk’s “Epistrophy” are enriched by the snap and pop of Jackson’s timekeeping. It don’t mean a thing without two Ellington tunes. The trio maps out Mercer Ellington’s bouncing “Way Way Back” and Duke’s feisty “The Shepherd” with their compelling interplay that Goldberg takes to a higher plane on the latter with his brilliant keyboard runs and sparkling solos. The recording sheds light on Goldberg’s improvisational dexterity and he’s the catalyst for this music sounding so complete and heartfelt. Matched with Avital and Jackson, they collectively make Yes! a perfect date that’s pretty and smart. (9 tracks; 63:37 minutes)

Vita (Cam Jazz) trace this love affair. Tribe groups Rava with a team of younger Italian musicians with a similar interest, notably trombonist Gianluca Patrella, who shares front line duties without reservation and a prescient rhythm section led by pianist Giovanni Guidi. Rava is definitely fired up by this band in spite of a program that drifts between gauzy tone poems and energetic tunes like the sharply rendered “Choctaw” where the quintet snaps into focus and enriches a typically buoyant Rava melody. Tribe also gives the masterful Rava a platform to revisit tunes he’s previously recorded, which goes to show how flexible and interesting his music can be in present day hands. The trumpeter can be somber (“Amnesia”), sentimental (“F. Express”) and a straight-up modernist (the juicy title track), which gives Tribe its overall vibe. (12 tracks; 64:51 minutes) Jeff Lorber Fusion ★★★★ Galaxy Heads Up Back in the late ‘70s, the JL Fusion band struck a chord with listeners who dug the band’s sonic pyrotechnics and a fiery young saxophonist named Kenny Gorelick who morphed into Kenny G. That aside, Lorber’s signature sound hasn’t changed much over the years, a percussive electro-keyboard sound rooted in deep bass and punchy grooves, and it’s that familiarity that continues to make him so listenable and keeps him in current demand as a producer and player. Sharply co-produced by Lorber and Yellowjacket’s bassist Jimmy Haslip, Galaxy rekindles the group’s original fire with a terrific new band (and tunes to match) that

Jimmy Owens ★★★★ The Monk Project IPO Recordings For a jazz musician to put together a tribute to pianist and composer Thelonious Monk as his debut might give one pause—I mean, haven’t we heard this all before? But in the hands of trumpeter Jimmy Owens, the music is wrapped tight in the blues and whether it bustles (“Bright Mississippi”) swings (“Let’s Cool One”) or revels in quirkiness (“Brilliant Corners”) it turns out that there’s still plenty of elasticity and an element of surprise in Monk’s classic tunes. An NEA Jazz Master and educator, Owens recruits an all-star band comprised of trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, tenor saxophonist Marcus Strickland and baritone sax player Howard Johnson with an equally unflappable rhythm section of pianist Kenny Barron (himself the leader of the Monk tribute band back in the day called Sphere), bassist Kenny Davis and drummer Winard Harper. The band shines as a whole but saxophonist Marcus Strickland gets extra credit for his salient phrasing and bursts of improvisational goodness. The music may be familiar on The Monk Project but Owens makes it sound remarkably attractive all over again. (10 tracks; 75:01 minutes) Enrico Rava Quintet ★★★1/2 Tribe ECM Enrico Rava is an evocative trumpeter and composer with a deeply felt affinity for film music, particularly from his native Italy. His albums, and there are many good ones, have a cinematic quality and indeed, the albums titled Tati (ECM) and La Dolce

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

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Jeff Lorber Fusion.

includes saxophonist Eric Marienthal, percussionist Lenny Castro, trumpeter Randy Brecker and spot-on input by Vinnie Colaiuta and Dave Weckl who alternate on drums. The up-to-date sound is impressively gut rumbling but when you have speedball tracks like “Live Wire” and “Big Brother” paired with high-quality remakes of “City” and Wizard Island” the result is a mix that’s infectious, and Galaxy deservedly keeps Lorber in the bullseye of the contemporary jazz scene. (11 tracks; 55:36 minutes)

NICK BEWSEY Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

Amy Cervini ★★★★ Digging Me Digging You Anzic Records

Sounds And Silence: Travels With Manfred Eicher ★★★★ Blu-ray Directed by Peter Guyer and Norbert Wiedmer

For lovers of great jazz vocalists, a voice as original as the late Blossom Dearie’s remains distinctive to this day and just as delightful. Her relaxed style and clever delivery is echoed by singer Amy Cervini on Digging Me Digging You, a tribute recording where she culls her favorite Dearie tunes and gives them a twist with beefed up contributions from some of New York’s best jazz musicians. The ensemble is anchored by pianist Bruce Barth and includes bassist Matt Aranoff, drummer Matt Wilson, clarinetist Anat Cohen and her brother, trumpeter Avishai Cohen, a cello section, with vibes and percussionist James Shipp—all of it recorded in spectacular fashion by James Farber. Cervini has a charming left-of-center voice that never mimics Dearie but respectfully honors her, from the perky, Broadway flavored “Everything I’ve Got” and bossa nova swoon of “I’m Shadowing You” to the wistful, cabaret confessional “I Like You, You’re Nice.” Cervini infuses Dearie’s best tunes (“Rhode Island,” “My Attorney Bernie,” “Down With Love”) with a joyful effervescence that’s emotionally honest and affirming, even as she tackles a croaker like “Doodlin’ Song.” But Cervini plays it straight, without irony or a wink, and makes it work. The album also succeeds from Cervini’s partnership with pianist Barth, especially when they reframe Dearie’s signature tune, “Tea For Two,” making it a whole lot bigger and nearly twice as nice. (13 tracks; 47:18 minutes)

The esteemed ECM label, headquartered in Munich, is sustained not by its roster of renowned musicians (Keith Jarrett, Charles Lloyd) and a catalog of more than 1,000 jazz and classical recordings, but by the preternatural vision of one man, Manfred Eicher, whose life embodies a relentless quest for perfection. He’s the focus of an engrossing documentary, Sounds And Silence: Travels With Manfred Eicher, that gives us a refracted tour of the producer’s schedule and begins with Eicher in a room alone, deep in contemplation over a solo piano recording, after which he remarks, “for me the luminosity of the sound is always what I’m looking for.” The co-directors, Peter Guyer and Norbert Wiedmar, zero in on themes of creation, process and completion. And then there are the musicians in Eicher’s orbit, characters we meet along the way—pianist Eleni Karaindrou who happily surrenders control to

Nat Janoff ★★★★ Come Together Move Apart Self-release When Nat Janoff solos on his guitar his eyes close and he gets a beatific smile on his face as his playing expands in pleasing directions, his mind and fingers creating compelling moments that clarify his gleaming originals. The music on CTMA is revelatory for the quality of Janoff ’s group sound and it’s worth repeat visits. Grab it for Janoff ’s cleanly composed tunes built upon solid melodies and rhythmic structures (“Mood”) and for his trio, where bassist Francois Moutin rocks his upright bass and coaxes fleet solos with amazing dexterity (“Sunday Morning”) and drummer Chris Carroll who reigns supreme with serrated time signatures and smooth propulsion (“Shorter Times”). Nat Janoff. Get it to hear pianist John Escreet juice Janoff ’s date with stellar comping and kinetic solos that flatter the guitarist’s tracks with choice phrasing. Escreet plays off Janoff ’s riffs, blending traditional runs with his own edgy improvisation (“Mood”) or cementing a groove (“Partly Cloudy”), something that’s especially affecting when the band blends both on the FX-dusted cool of “Transit.” It’s baffling that it wasn’t picked up by one of the many boutique jazz labels for proper distribution but Come Together Move Apart is easily accessible through Janoff ’s website and internet outlets. www.natjanoff.com (9 tracks; 54:36 minutes)

Manfred Eicher.

her producer, the austere saxophonist Jan Gabarek who absorbs suggestions and breathes them out on his horn, the vain but gifted bandoneon player, Dino Saluzzi; and the colorful alto player Gianluigi Trovesi, full of stories and a jovial demeanor that Fellini would have loved. Part travelogue (we see plenty of planes, trains and automobiles) and part backstage musical, the two best moments are purely visual: the cross cutting between young composer Nik Bartsch’s piano tuner performing his own amazing feat of restoration and repair on the felts and hammers with the recording of the pianist’s own unique blending of keyboard and percussion. The other follows anxious composer Arvo Part as he frets over the production of his choral work. When a passage works he dances with Eicher, and when he doubts he remains hopeful that all the parts—music, voice and recorded sound—will “become one organism.” The film concludes with a swell of wide-eyed optimism from composer Part, who hears his work performed as he envisioned, and his elation exemplifies the master producer’s quest for perfection, which in Sounds And Silence suggests the triumvirate of art, commerce and sonic purity. (87 minutes, full 1080i HD, 16:9 OAR) ■ FEBRUARY 2012

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jazz library

Lena Horne

BOB PERKINS

LENA HORNE WAS ONE of the most storied entertainers of the last century. But in addition, she was something of a renaissance lady, in that she covered lots of other ground in her many years on the planet: She survived a shaky childhood, and in the early part of her career, despite her great looks and multiple talents, she encountered racial prejudice while performing in nightclubs, concert halls and films. But she persevered, and became a fixture on radio and television, as well as becoming an activist during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. The Lena Horne Story began in Brooklyn, New York, June 30, 1917, when she was born to Edwin and Edna Horne. Edwin deserted the family when Lena was three, and she spent many of her formative years either with her father’s parents, or on the road with her mother, who had joined a theatrical group that toured the South. Lena received a sketchy education, because of all the moving, and due to the racial segregation that existed in southern schools. Traveling with her mother whetted Lena’s appetite for show business, and at age sixteen—despite objections from family members—accepted an invitation to dance in the chorus line of Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. While dancing, she also took voice lessons and won a job with an all-black Broadway show. Later, she was recommended to bandleader Noble Sissle, and became the band’s featured vocalist. A year later, in 1936, and while still in her late teens, she went out on her own, married politician Louis Jones, had a daughter, Gail, a son, Edwin, and then separated from her husband of three years. The year 1940 saw Horne join the Charlie Barnet Orchestra—one of the first black singers to join an all white band. She stayed a year, prior to meeting the influential entertainment manager John Hammond, who got her a long-term engagement at the famed Café Society Downtown. While at the Café, she renewed her acquaintance with Paul Robeson, whom she had first met as a child. Robeson a renaissance man and longtime activist for human and civil rights, inspired Horne to become more active in the struggle for equal rights for African-Americans. She understood, having recently been passed over by Hollywood for a major role which called for a woman of her hue, but went to the also beautiful Hedy Lamar, on whom a tanning lotion was used. Despite the harsh limitations imposed by Hollywood and the general racial tone of the times, Horne still managed to begin carving out a significant position in motion pictures, signing a seven-year contract with MGM in 1943, and going on the star in Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. At the time, she was touted as being the highest paid African American in films. She may have missed a few other major film productions because she would not accept any roles demeaning to her as a woman of color. In 1947, Horne married white orchestra leader Lennie Hayton. The marriage was kept secret for several years due to racial pressure. Hayton became her pianist, arranger, conductor and manager until his death in 1971. (They separated years before his death, but never divorced) On the heels of Hayton’s death, came the deaths of Horne’s father and son, causing her severe emotional trauma. But she overcame her grief and continued personal appearances, touring the U.S. and England with Tony Bennett. Her greatest triumph came in 1981 with the Broadway show, Lena: The Lady and Her Music. She was awarded a Tony for it and the soundtrack won two Grammies. Over the years, much has been said about her facial beauty, but those in the know also were in awe of her singing voice. She ranked with the best. Horne continued to perform well into her 70s, finally yielding to age and failing health. The awards and tributes amassed over her more than 70 years as an entertainer are large in number. Her beauty, courage, artistry and legacy are legend. Lena Mary Calhoun Horne passed away, May 6, 2010, at age 92. ■

Lena Horne wears a beaded gown as she rehearses on stage at Cafe Moulin Rouge in Paris, 1954. Bob Perkins is a writer and host of an all-jazz radio program that airs on WRTI-FM 90.1 Monday through Thursday night from 6:00 to 9:00pm and Sunday, 11:00am to 3pm. 52

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HARPER’S M

FINDINGS By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

A compendium of research facts POWER WITHOUT STATUS IS the most corrupting. Those who feel powerless attempt to gain prestige by eating larger portions. Lonely consumers prefer unpopular products. Agreeable people have lower credit scores. Undeserved self-praise may induce depression. People who wear less clothing are seen as less competent and moral but more sensitive. Philadelphian teenagers who want to lose weight also tend to drink too much soda, whereas Bostonian teenagers who drink too much soda are likelier to carry guns. Autistic children tend to have broader philtra, myopic children spend less time outside, and children with blocked tear ducts are more likely to suffer from lazy eye. Babies understand the thought processes of others around ten months and begin to behave fairly around fifteen months. Finnish and Swedish researchers captured the glazed stare unique to the hypnotized. Ghost authors were detected in one tenth of articles in six major medical journals. Readers tend to attribute to female rather than male writers the authorship of unfunny New Yorker cartoon captions. Psychologists found that high blood pressure reduces the ability to perceive anger, fearfulness, happiness, and sadness in facial expressions. “It’s like living in a world of email,” explained the lead researcher, “without smiley faces.”

day/weekend trip

DAN HUGOS

Jim Thorpe Celebrates 2012 WinterFest on President’s Day Weekend THE JIM THORPE CHAMBER of Commerce hosts its 18th annual WinterFest Weekend February 18 and 19 on President’s Day Weekend. A mix of family-activities, special shopping and dining promotions and Opera House performances mark a weekend of winter fun in Jim Thorpe. Ice and wood carvers ply their trades in the downtown Josiah White Park next to the Jersey Central train station and also give demonstrations two blocks up the street at the Mauch Chunk Opera House Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Highly entertaining for everyone! Visit IceWork.net and Chainsaw.net for more information. The weekend will also feature a chamber of commerce fundraiser, Mug Walk, during which, for the price of a $10 Jim Thorpe mug, visitors can look for signs which indicate participating shops and stores that will fill those mugs with something free, including cookies, soup, coffee and other surprises. Also, for the kids under 12 there will be a pinata-busting at the downtown train station at noon on both Saturday and Sunday.

KING PENGUINS ON SOUTH Georgia Island were observed mud-bathing amid the “rotted remains of dead penguins and tonnes of penguin poo” to keep cool in summer. Hummingbirds stay aloft in the rain by shaking their heads 180º in a tenth of a second. In New Zealand, where the world’s only known white kiwi survived surgery to break apart rocks it had eaten, 800 endangered nocturnal carnivorous giant land snails were accidentally frozen in a lab. Scientists concluded that bubble-rafting sea snails, which travel beneath the water’s surface on floats made of mucus, evolved from bottom-dwelling wentletraps. Entomologists discovered that three species of Scambus parasitoid wasp are in fact a single species as it appears in spring (large, robust head), early summer (darker body and broader abdomen), and midsummer (small, weak head). Astronomers concluded that blue stragglers look younger than they are as a result of feeding off giant neighbor stars until only a white dwarf remains. The Northern Lights were seen in the Deep South. CHINESE AND BRITISH PSYCHOLOGISTS announced the creation of a Physical Appearance Perfectionism Scale; Michigan researchers determined that the weaker legs of female Olympic sprinters allow them to make false starts undetectable by starting-block sensors; and doctors found that nipple-sparing mastectomies do not present a risk from cancer hiding under the nipple. Countries with high rates of birth-control pill use exhibit higher rates of death from prostate cancer. The Welsh would die less often if they ate only as badly as the English. Climate change had halved the life expectancy of the British mayfly. Male golden orb spiders, to avoid being eaten, placate their female partners with intercoital backrubs; scientists who deadened the female spiders’ sense of touch with superglue observed more males getting eaten. Surgeonfish were found to be calmed by fin massage. “We know that fish experience pain,” explained the ichthyologist who led the study. “Maybe fish have pleasure, too.” Sex with animals doubles a man’s risk of penile cancer. ■

Saturday afternoon from 12:30 to 3:30 you’ll hear the Faculty Brass, a Lehightonbased quartet playing tunes of all genres from marches and polkas to recent pop tunes as they stroll up and down Broadway. That evening at 8:00 PM, the Mauch Chunk Opera House features the British blues band Savoy Brown, as it celebrates the release of their new CD, Voodoo Moon. Tickets can be reserved by calling the box office at 570-325-0249, SoundCheck Records at 570325-4009, or visiting www.MauchChunkOperaHouse.com. On both Saturday and Sunday the Chamber presents free kids’ shows, courtesy of Al Grout, a sensational entertainer who has been performing since 1977, and does over 200 shows a year. Audiences from small children to senior citizens will enjoy some of the most difficult and entertaining juggling being done today. A special 5 PM Opera House performance on Sunday, February 19 features The Allentown Band, performing in a venue much as their closely-linked predecessor did, John Philip Sousa. Founded in 1828, the Allentown Band is recognized worldwide, having twice appeared on national TV—Charles Kuralt’s Good Morning America, and the PBS series The American Experience, and heard regularly on Philadelphia’s station, WRTI. In addition, they have been featured in four European concert tours. For more information call 570-325-5810 or visit the official Jim Thorpe website, www.JimThorpe.org for further details. ■ FEBRUARY 2012

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The Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle UNDERCOVER CORPSE By Mark Bickham Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 7 15 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 30 31 32 38 40 42 43 45 48 49 51 52 54 55 59 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 71 72 73 75 76 77 78 79 82 83 85 86 87 90 95 96 98 54

Voice of Mr. Magoo Eponymous German aeronaut “Baloney!” Immediately __ Fagan, Billie Holiday’s birth name Left on board San __: holiday VIP, in Italy Pudding starches Stuns at the altar *Supercorporation’s revenues Ladd and Freed Shot Hi-__ monitor *Lithium or sodium, e.g. Singer Minogue Clever comeback Villain’s demise, usually Water filter brand *House arrestee’s device Pupil’s place Final words 1997 U.S. Open champ Latin clarifier Music symbols *One blowing off steam Half of a rhyming incantation Stadium souvenirs Taipan’s frypan “Star Wars’’ royalty “The Story of Civilization” co-author Ariel or Will Verdi’s “__ tu” Boomer’s kid, probably Different ones are hidden in 12 starred answers Cacophony Prefix with perfect Military school freshmen Hammer end Chicken __ Near-eternity Chicken supplier to much of the fast-food industry *Having one Corkonian parent, maybe Record holder? Eddie of men’s clothing Battleship letters Butterflies Ruiner of a perfect report card *Liable to spontaneously combust Springfield’s Flanders Draft again Some navels ■

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99 Narrow groove 101 *“Gypsy” star 103 NBA position 104 “South Park” rating 107 Every seven days 108 *Freud essay based on a mythical monster 112 Frenzy 114 Alcohol, vis-à-vis driving ability 118 Unpolished 119 Clubs for pros 120 Little biters 121 Protect in glass, say 122 Hogwash 123 It may be regular 124 Vegas job

DOWN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 27 29 33 34 35 36 37 39 40 41 43 44 46 47 50 53 55 56 57 58

Beatles hair style Not straight up *Cereal pitched by a trio Like some knees Bruins’ sch. Signet-bearing jewelry Zorba’s snore? Skyward, in Hebrew Toon Le Pew Buddy Ambient music pioneer Opp. of express “Deathtrap” dramatist Levin Twangy __ bottoms *Popular music magazine VIP Piece keeper “All __ is but imitation of nature”: Seneca Mg. and kg. Go after Free, in France K-O connection Japanese carp Fifth-century scourge Songwriter DiFranco Mormons, initially Landlocked Asian country Composer Bartók Siberian city Mental impression Catching the worm? Onion relative Lyrical tribute Sgt.’s superiors Duck Craggy crest 1985 Kate Nelligan title role Athletic supporter? It’s in an old way

60 *Place to go to launch in Florida 61 Set free 62 In awe 64 Guitar great Montgomery 66 Twice cinq 68 TV princess 69 Business card no. 70 Foul caller 71 “Stupid me!” 74 *“Dallas” character who died in Pam’s season-long dream 75 Bingo setting 76 Soft attention-getter 77 Can 79 Bit of a giggle 80 Mysterious character 81 Fertility goddess 82 M.I.T. grad, often 84 “I’m here to help” 86 Like calls whose source isn’t determined 87 Rush find 88 Pay in your pocket 89 Still product 91 Giant sound 92 Call-day link 93 Cheap saloon 94 Adherents’ suffix 97 “The magic word” 100 Cornell University city 102 Squeezing (out)

103 Hex 105 Tricky billiards shot 106 Run like __ 109 “... kissed thee __ killed thee”: Othello 110 “Jurassic Park” co-star 111 Acoustical unit

112 Marble not used as a shooter 113 Jackie’s “O” 115 “Mamma __!” 116 “Nova” network 117 Blood system Answer in next month’s issue.

Answer to January’s puzzle, SECRET RETREAT

HARPER’S M

INDEX

Facts compiled by the editors of Harper’s Magazine

Number of letters from Americans President Barack Obama reads each evening: 10 Number of staffers in the Correspondence Office responsible for selecting those letters from the 11,000 received each day: 7 Number of states that have delayed filling judicial vacancies for budgetary reasons: 34 Amount employees of private-equity firm Bain Capital have donated to the campaign of its co-founder Mitt Romney: $69,500 To the Obama campaign: $119,900 Date on which Obama said that donations from lobbyists “don’t contribute to the public interest”: 8/4/2007 Minimum amount Obama’s 2012 campaign has so far accepted from bundlers connected to lobbyists: $2,800,000 Amount former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf paid a lobbying firm for access to top U.S. lawmakers: $175,000 Number of U.S. senators he met on a single day within a month of signing the contract: 6 Percentage of Republicans who say the current economic order “favors a very small portion of the rich”: 62 Percentage increase in total congressional net worth since 2008: 24 Chance that a member of a U.S. corporation’s compensation committee is someone the CEO considers a “friend”: 1 in 3 Portion of New Yorkers making more than $100,000 a year who support Occupy Wall Street: 3/5 Percentage of all Americans who consider themselves part of the top 1 percent of U.S. earners: 13 Percentage of Hispanic Americans who do: 28 Chance an American thinks it is at least “partly true” that secret government airplanes release chemicals into the air: 1 in 7 Number of tickets Virgin Galactic has sold for spaceflights it hopes to begin launching by the end of the year: 460 Amount the Defense Department has requested for new Gray Eagle and Reaper drones and parts in 2012: $1,908,600,000 Minimum number of U.S. colleges that offer courses in unmanned-drone operation: 5 Portion of the Veterans Health Administration’s budget devoted to veterans with mental-health or addiction problems: 1/3 Factor by which a person experiencing long-term unemployment is more likely to report a first instance of mental illness: 3 Percentage of workers with only a high school diploma who received employer-based health insurance in 1979: 70 Percentage of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher who receive it today: 66 Chance that a U.S. worker is of normal weight and without a chronic health problem: 1 in 7 Number of working-age people for every person over sixty-five worldwide in 1950: 11.7 Number today: 8.6 Projected number in 2050: 3.9 Number of people deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the 2011 fiscal year: 396,906 Rank of that number among the highest in the agency’s history: 1 Percentage of Americans who believe it is “extremely important” to halt the flow of illegal immigrants at the border: 53 Who believe that illegal immigrants already in the country should be allowed to stay and become U.S. citizens: 64 Minimum number of weapons confiscated from visitors to the Statue of Liberty last year: 11,448 Estimated tons of debris from the Japanese earthquake headed for the West Coast of the United States: 5,000,000 Date by which the debris is expected to begin reaching shore: 10/1/2013 Percentage of Chinese and Americans, respectively, who struggled to pay for food in 2008: 16, 9 In 2011: 6, 19 Estimated number of stray dogs killed in Ukraine in preparation for the Euro 2012 soccer tournament: 27,000 Sale price for five frozen straws of semen from Gladiator’s Hammer, a breeder deer, at a Texas auction last August: $21,000 Chances that a top brand of imported extra-virgin olive oil is not extra-virgin: 3 in 4 Maximum years in jail a new bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy proposes for the selling of fake Vermont maple syrup: 5

icon 1-800-354-8776

Index Sources 1,2 The White House/Harper’s research; 3 National Center for State Courts (Williamsburg, Va.); 4 ,5 Center for Responsive Politics (Washington); 6 Harper’s research; 7 Center for Responsive Politics (Washington); 8,9 Advantage Associates International (Washington); 10 Hart Research Associates (Washington); 11 Roll Call (Washington); 12 Ross School of Business, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); 13 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute (Hamden, Conn.); 14,15 Poll Position (Atlanta); 16 Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment, and Economy, University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta); 17 Griffin Communications Group (Seabrook, Tex.); 18 U.S. Department of Defense; 19 Harper’s research; 20 RAND Corporation (Santa Monica, Calif.); 21 Washington and Lee University (Lexington, Va.); 22,23 Economic Policy Institute (Washington); 24 Gallup (Washington); 25–27 United Nations (N.Y.C.); 28,29 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; 30,31 Gallup (Washington); 32 U.S. Park Police (N.Y.C.); 33,34 Jan Hafner, University of Hawaii (Honolulu); 35,36 Gallup (Washington); 37 Nature Watch (Cheltenham, England); 38 Texas Deer Association (San Antonio); 39 UC Davis Olive Center (Davis, Calif.); 40 Office of Senator Patrick Leahy (Washington). FEBRUARY 2012

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the last word THE NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR PHILADELPHIA’S 13th and Locust Streets in the late 1960s was a rustic patchwork of small pizza shops, countercultural button and literature shops, a strip joint on the corner of Locust Street, and a host of easy luncheonette eateries like Dewey’s and Robert’s Deli. At the southeast corner of Broad and Locust Street stood the remains of The Hotel Walton (later renamed the John Bartram Hotel), a dark, Draconian looking palace designed by Angus “Anxious” Wade, an artist who later became an architect. Opened in 1896, the ornate interior included Pompeian brick, vaulted ceilings, symmetrical stairs, and Elizabethan strapped pattern ceilings. The hotel was demolished in 1966. The area is also home to Camac Street, or “The Little Street of Clubs,” with its fine array of two-story 19th century structures that house some of the most artistic and Bohemian clubs in the city. Often referred to as Egg Head Row, on this one block radius between Walnut and Locust Street you’ll find the Sketch Club, the nation’s oldest artists’ club; the Plastic Club, the nation’s oldest arts club for women; and the Franklin Inn Club, founded in 1902

A Poor Richard’s Urban Outfitters or a University of the Arts affiliate student dorm (with its antecedent “I burned the pork chops” false fire alarms) would have meant a renovated (destroyed) interior but located on Camac Street since 1907. The Franklin Inn Club was originally founded as a meeting place for literary artists and journalists with the intent to promote the city’s literary scene. In 1966, a prominent new building in the area was the new Library Company of Philadelphia building at 1314 Locust Street. This pleasant looking soft Modernist structure blended well with the streetscape. Facing the Library Company on the other side of the street was the Poor Richard Club and the Club’s adjoining Charles Morris Price School of Journalism and Advertising. The Poor Richard Club was a private club made up of professionals from the field of advertising. Its aim was to encourage (and even enforce) ethical guidelines in advertising, as well as to promote business and social relationships among its members. Say the words ‘Poor Richard,’ and most people think of Ben Franklin. While the Club was named after the imaginary ‘Philomath’ (or scholar) of Franklin’s Almanac, the Club and school were not founded by Franklin. Some confusion still exists around this fact, probably because the name Poor Richard has such rich historical roots that people naturally assume that Franklin had a direct hand in its founding. 56 ■

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The Dr. Joseph Leidy House, Poor Richard Club’s second location at 1319 Locust Street.

A January 2011 obituary in the Palm Beach Daily News, for instance, noted that the town’s vice mayor, Leon Sol Zimmerman, “graduated from the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising, which was founded by Benjamin Franklin.” Philadelphia’s Poor Richard Club was founded in 1906, one year after the establishment of a Poor Richard Club in New York. From a humble 75 members by 1911, membership climbed to 350. From an original clubhouse in a large Victorian house at 239-241 Camac Street, the Club moved to 1319 Locust Street in 1925. Old Philadelphia buildings generally live many lives. Before the amassed army of ad men in bow ties and spectacles laid claim to the Locust Street address, the Wilson Eyre, Jr. Colonial Revival domestic single-dwelling building with its Armory-strong exterior of brick, sandstone and brownstone, was the home and office of Joseph Leidy, Jr. MD. While no relation to noted paleontologist Joseph Leidy (1823-1891), who headed The Wagner Institute of Science of Philadelphia, and was a Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, Liedy, Jr was a city doc-

tor who probably worked on patients in rooms that later became the classrooms for the Price School. Wilson Eyre, Jr.’s Philadelphia projects include the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the Mask and Wig Clubhouse, and the fountain at Logan Square. Noted for his country houses and Shingle-style residences, Eyre, Jr. although born in Florence, Italy, began his architectural career in Philadelphia. He was president of the Philadelphia chapter of the AIA from 1897 to 1902. The Joseph Leidy, Jr. house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1980, one year after it was sold. The Poor Richard Club folded a few years later, followed by the Price School. Today the building is the headquarters of the National Union of Hospital & Health Care Employees, District 1199C. While this name has a lackluster ring, the structure could have fared a lot worse: a Poor Richard’s Urban Outfitters or a University of the Arts affiliate student dorm (with its antecedent “I burned the pork chops” false fire alarms) would have meant a renovated (destroyed) interior. Historic buildings that are forced to reinvent themselves in order to avoid the wrecking ball inevitably lose much if not all of their original identity. Most people passing what was once the Poor Richard Club today see it as just another old Philadelphia structure, although I have often heard it referred to as an “an old church,” “a small Masonic temple,” or “that Locust Street Armory building.” News pertaining to life cycles of historic buildings cannot match the culture’s major distractions like Justin Bieber, the hog-tied antics of Lady Gaga, or the hellish world of the Kardashians. Scholars and the determined, of course, will always dig for history but most people will not. Still, if there’s such a thing as an ethereal depository of history, this means that the walls of the old Poor Richard Club are rich in archival memory. In 1933, the Club was crucial in the establishment of the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. The Club’s Annual Gold Medal of Achievement was a national news event, beginning with award winners such as Amelia Earhart, Walt Disney (1934), Will Rogers (1935), Henry Ford II (1954), Bob Hope (1945) and Clare Booth Luce (1955). Even President William Taft spoke at the Club’s annual 1914 dinner, held at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. THE CHARLES MORRIS PRICE SCHOOL Price School students did not enter through the Club, but had a separate side door entrance. A narrow staircase of nearly 29 steps led to the foyer-office of the School Registrar. A main classroom, with windows overlooking Locust Street, accommodated about fifty students. With courses like Writing for Magazines, Creative Selling, Public Relations, News Reporting, Marketing, and Public Speaking, students in the late 1960s dressed in jacket and tie or professional business attire. Smoking was permitted in the classrooms—some students even brought their own ashtrays. Lunch time was an hour to explore the restaurants

THOM NICKELS

along the 13th Street corridor or on nearby Broad Street, such as the Havey House, with its signature plank steak, or steak served on a wooden board. A small bar at the corner of 13th and Walnut, Alvin’s Alley, famous for its dark oak interior, conversation, and cheap draft, attracted many male students after class. Alvin’s Alley was known as a reporter’s bar long before the days of Pete Dexter and Dirty Frank’s. Al’s had a Glenn Ford film noir look with a stench of stale beer scripted in the walls. Price students came in two varieties: the advertising and marketing majors who wished to become business professionals and the writers or journalists, who either wanted to become reporters, magazine writers or novelists. The first group outnumbered the second, leaving the second smaller group wondering if they were even in the right school. Because the Price School was a professional “graduate” school, the age range of students ranged from 18 to 50. Famous Price teachers at the time included the bespectacled and very bald Mr. Seltz, who could quote Dale Carnegie while standing on his head; the unflappable, and Irish-reserved and always well-dressed Mrs. Kearney; and Dean Kaplan, as tall as a redwood tree and who with his owl-like tortoise shell glasses looked like something from a New Yorker cartoon. IS THERE A BATHROOM IN THE HOUSE? I doubt whether there’s a man or woman in the City of Philadelphia who hasn’t felt the need to use a public restroom while out on the town. It can happen while shopping, clubbing, or while taking a casual ride on the subway. But finding a spot “to go” is not easy. “Restrooms for Customers Only” signs are popular in city bars and restaurants. Of course, if you are “gifted” at “May I use your restroom” politicking, then you stand a chance, otherwise you are out of luck and may be forced to consider doing the unspeakable: Going behind a dumpster. Feeling the urge and finding a place to go may be easier in the neighborhoods, but if you’re in Center City, you may not have time to get to an appropriate spot. When I was in Paris several years ago (a city that has public restrooms by the way), I was shocked to discover that hundreds of men openly relieve themselves late at night along the Champs Elysees. The French were oblivious to the sight—even police officers looked the other way. In Philadelphia, behavior like this can net you a $100 fine. But honestly, what’s a gentleman or lady to do if there are no public restrooms? “South Street,” Councilman David Cohen told Philadelphia City Council in 2004, “is the city’s second most visited tourist area—yet there are no public facilities available for all these tourists.” The situation remains the same in 2012, although there’s no reason why Philadelphia cannot do what almost

Top: Public Men's Bathrooms in Gent, Belgium, Bottom: Public Toilets in Paris, France. Photos ©untappednewyork.com by Michelle Young.

every European and Canadian city has done: install retractable urinals and toilets that are invisible during the day but quite obvious at night during the peak after bar hours. It makes sense to me: If you don’t want tourists and urbanites to do “the nasty” in public, then provide public restrooms! Last year The Philadelphia Daily News reported on the lack of public restrooms in the Italian Market area. The paper quoted many restaurant owners who said that they would not allow the public to use their “employee only” restrooms. Exceptions to the rule might include extreme hardship cases, like a mother and child in distress, or that one-in-a-million customer with a good “Please let me use the bathroom” line. Ordinarily, though, Italian Market customers are told to go to the public restrooms at the Capitolo Playground at 9th and Federal. Unfortunately, the Capitolo restrooms are usually closed at night and locked up during the day as a protection from vandals. Like the homeless situation that used to exist in Dilworth Plaza, many Philadelphia public restrooms have been closed because of the vagrant problem. It’s not uncommon to hear that once reliable city restrooms in city gas stations or mini-markets have been closed because the

New York City steps up to the plate with bathrooms on the street.

owners were tired of having them vandalized. Rather than constantly fix up the destroyed property, the owners opted to simply close them. As a result, everybody suffers. Finding a public restroom is a little easier in New York City. New York City has 468 subway stations but among those stations one can find at least 78 subway restrooms open to the public. That number may not be much compared to what NYC had in 1940—1,676 public toilets—but it trumps Philadelphia. There are no public restrooms on any of the stops along the Broad Street subway or the Market-Frankford El, minus, of course, the new facilities at the Frankford Transportation Center and the terminal at 69th Street. But at the hundreds of small stops in-between, there’s nothing but a waiting platform and a private restroom for employees only. Philadelphia on New Year’s Day, especially along the Broad Street concourse during the Mummer’s parade, attracts revelers who line up the way they do in Paris. While the police discourage such behavior, the sheer numbers

> FEBRUARY 2012

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57 / THE LAST WORD

of law breakers makes handing out tickets impossible. Under the Rendell administration, the city tried to install self-cleaning public restrooms in the city but the deal fell through when the city and the manufacturer couldn’t agree on how they were to be funded. Can a major tourist attraction like Philadelphia afford to wait any longer? As a City Councilman said in Detroit, “We spend a lot of time and energy promoting our downtown. Then when people get here, there’s no place for them to use the bathroom.” The Chinese may have the answer. The city of Beijing installed 7,700 public toilets on city streets because the government there feels that all travelers should be able to find a toilet within an 8-minute walk in the business area. After decades of inaction, Philadelphia did install a pilot pay toilet near City Hall last year. Complete with a self-cleaning apparatus and piped-in music, the structure proved too good to be true. The pilot program simply vanished. Now it’s back to business as usual, or to the streets of Paris… SELL THE MANSION BUT DON’T GO CRAZY Philadelphia’s Archbishop Chaput did a brave thing when he announced that the Archdiocese would be selling its 13,000 square foot, 3-story stone mansion at 5700 City Avenue. The sixteen-room, six-car garage structure sits on slightly more than eight acres of land and has been described as a “baronial home.” Purchased for $115,000 in 1935 by Cardinal Dennis Dougherty at a time when mansions like this seemed appropriate for ‘Princes of the Church,’ the opulent residence has come to be seen as an embarrassment of riches in the wake of financially-driven closings of Catholic schools and parishes. Yet Archbishop Chaput’s decision to sell the mansion and possibly live in the Cathedral rectory has some observers going off the deep end. “Sell everything,” they proclaim, “Sell the Vatican Museum, sell St. Peter’s, sell tabernacles and centuries old liturgical art.” Such die-hard calls for 1st-century austerity fail to take into account the difference between opulent personal living versus the ancient Jewish belief that nothing was too good when it came to building or decorating “the place where God lives,” or the Temple in Jerusalem. For decades, hard-working Catholics gave willingly to build churches that would stand the test of time. Nothing was too good for a temple, be it marble altar rails, towering frescoes or a gilded high altar. Living a simpler “humbler” life should mean downsizing from a mansion to a house, not turning churches into concrete bunkers.n Journalist Thom Nickels’s books include Philadelphia Architecture, Tropic of Libra, and Out in History. His novel SPORE will be released in early 2010. He is the recipient of the 2005 Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Architecture Journalism Award. thomnickels.blogspot. com

18 / CINEMATTERS / EXTREMELY LOUD

part of their rapport, father and son also commiserate over maps in ice cream parlors and stage oxymoron battles. Mom (Bullock) lurks in the background, showing little concern that her son is talking to New York City derelicts and demonstrating the snobby attitude of a Starbucks barista forever five credits short of their philosophy Ph.D. Life is beautiful until September 11, 2001, when Oskar’s dad dies in the World Trade Center attacks. A year passes. Oskar’s memories start to fade, causing him to venture into Dad’s bedroom closet, where a vase tumbles from a shelf. The clues quickly mount: A small envelope, “Black” neatly printed on it, which contains a key. A newspaper clipping in Thomas’s pocket that has the words “not stop looking” circled. The boy is convinced that his father wants him to find something. Equipped with an organizational scheme inspired by a John Hodgman diagram, Oskar starts visiting every Black listed in the five boroughs’ phone books.

uch an investigation isn’t easy for Oskar, who is scared of everything around him, including bridges and people with bad teeth. The audience is also in for a rough trip. Daldry stages his journey on real-life terms, which makes everything all the more preposterous: Max von Sydow, Oskar’s voluntarily mute companion, displaying “yes” and “no” on the palms of his hands; the stylish photos of ordinary people taken by Oskar that resemble what Diane Arbus would have taken if she favored Kodachrome; Oskar’s book of his journey, which belongs in the window of a Park Slope stationery store. And is anyone else disturbed that a kid is roaming the five boroughs alone, even if mom is too grief-stricken to notice? The world Oskar occupies needs to be bigger, wackier, something so we aren’t constantly confronted with the burden of reality. (One reason why Super 8 and Hugo worked so well is because the films looked like storybooks.) Oskar, an eloquently verbose and tortured soul governed by his own pretzel logic, cannot exist in the real world. Under that enchanting spell of realism, Oskar’s journey becomes dull. Magic can’t bloom here. Neither does character development. Oskar may be clever and plucky, but he’s also an impatient brat who, when not talking like a haughty boy robot, blurts out his fears. Horn delivers a corrosive performance, but I don’t think he has much choice. Oskar is clearly a mess. He’s fatherless, pinches himself to the point of bruising, and treats his elders like peons. He even admits that he was tested for Asperger’s. But couldn’t someone—Daldry, veteran screenwriter Eric Roth (who penned Forrest Gump, for crying out loud)—have found a way to make Oskar tolerable? The only way I would ever get behind Oskar is if I could push him off a cliff. A hero that engenders such spitting hatred has to violate every tenet of screenwriting. Hanks and Bullock come and go, though in the film’s final stretch Bullock’s character proves that she’s a good mother. The takeaway message for parents: indulge your kid’s behavior no matter how dangerous or misguided. After all, kids are people who need to let go of grief in their own way. Really? The value of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, though it’s unintentional, is that it reveals the true threat to this nation. It’s not fear and uncertainty. It is the current generation of coddled, bratty, flash card-trained little monsters who never hear “no” from their parents. [PG-13] n

going out calendar ART EXHIBITS THRU 2/5 Sticks, Hooks, and the Mobius: Knit and Crochet go Cerebral. January hours: 12-5. Lafayette College, Williams Center Gallery, Easton, PA. 610-330-5361. http://galleries.lafayette.edu THRU 2/26 Monochrome Winter. Soho Photo Gallery group show. Kisa Kavass, "Moments de Curiosite" and John Andrulis, "Retrospective" in Upstairs Gallery II. Red Filter Gallery, 74 Bridge St., Lambertville. 347-2449758. http://redfiltergallery.com THRU 2/26 Small Works by Gallery Artists, SFA Gallery, 10 Bridge St., Suite 7, Frenchtown, NJ. 908-268-1700. sfagallery.com THRU 3/11 Silent auction of original oil paintings by Evgeni Gordiets. Designs for Tranquility, 41 Bridge St., Frenchtown, NJ. 908-996-9990. designsfortranquility.com THRU 3/25 In Material: Fiber 2012. Gallery talk with artists 3/3, 10:30am. University of Pennsylvania, Arthur Ross Gallery, 220 So. 34th St, Philadelphia. upenn.edu/ARG THRU 4/15 Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad St., Philadelphia. 215-972-7600. pafa.org/tanner THRU 5/26 Hidden Realities: Mavis Smith. James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 So. Pine St., Doylestown, PA 215-340-9800. michenerartmuseum.org 2/5-3/18 31st Annual Juried Art Exhibition. Coryell Gallery, 8 Coryell St., Lambertville, NJ. 609-397-0804. coryellgallery.com 2/9-3/2 Frock & Roll: Fashion that Rocks. Opening reception, Feb. 13, 6-8 pm. Designer meet & greet, and student fashion show, Feb. 25. The Baum School of Art, 510 Linden St., Allentown, PA. 610-433-0032.

baumschool.org 2/10-3/4 Patrick Neilson: Recent Works. Opening reception 2/10, 6-9. Twenty-Two Gallery, 236 So. 22nd St., Phila. 215-772-1911. twenty-twogallery.com 2/11-5/13 Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present. Allentown Art Museum of Lehigh Valley, 31 N., 5th. St., Allentown, PA. 610-432-4333 allentownartmuseum.org 2/11-3/17 William Pope.L: Reenactor. Premiere of Pope. L’s event film. Lafayette College, Williams Center Gallery, Easton, PA. Mon., Tues., Wed., Fri., 11-5; Thurs. 11-8; Sat. & Sun. 12-5. 610-330-5361. http://galleries.lafayette.edu 2/25- 3/18 Continuum… the emerging image. New Hope Arts, 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA. 215-862-9606. newhopearts.org THEATER 2/9-2/11 Master Choreographers, a showcase for some of the region’s premier choreographers. Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA. 484-664-3333 muhlenberg.edu/dance 2/21-2/23 Shrek The Musical. 7pm. State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton, PA. 610-252-3132. statetheatre.org 2/22-2/26 Stop Kiss by Diana Son. Muhlenberg College, Theatre & Dance, 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA. 484-664-3333. muhlenberg.edu/dance 2/22-3/4 A View from the Bridge, by Arthur Miller, dir. by Anne Lewis. Act 1, DeSales University, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-2823192 or desales.edu/act1 3/10 Celtic Nights, direct from Ireland,

8pm. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. 610-7582787. zoellnerartscenter.org 3/17 Moscow Festival Ballet, Cinderella. 8pm. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. 610-7582787. zoellnerartscenter.org

ley, PA. 610-282-3192. desales.edu/act1

570-325-0249. mauchchunkoperahouse.com

3/16 The Manhattan Piano Trio. 8pm. Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem, Foy Concert Hall, Moravian College, W. Church & Main Sts, Bethlehem. lvartsboxoffice.org. cmsob.org

2/4:

2/11: 2/18: 2/18: 2/19: 2/25: 3/2: 3/10:

DINNER & MUSIC Tuesdays: Music & poetry, dance performances, storytellers & buffet. $30 includes tax and gratuity. Hamilton’s Grill Room, 8 Coryell Street, Lambertville, NJ 609-397-4343. hamiltonsgrillroom.com Saturday nights: Sette Luna Restaurant, 219 Ferry St., Easton, PA. 610-253-8888. setteluna.com CONCERTS Some organizations perform in various locations. If no address is listed, check the website for location of performance. 2/5 The Philadelphia Brass Quintet, Stephen Williams, organ, and Steven Mathieson, timpani, 4pm. Arts at St. John’s, St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 37 So. Fifth St., Allentown, PA. $25, $10. stjohnsallentown.org. 610-435-1641 2/11 The Leipzig String Quartet, 8:00pm. Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem, Foy Concert Hall, Moravian College, W. Church & Main Streets, Bethlehem. Tickets available at the door or lvartsboxoffice.org. cmsob.org 2/12, 2/13 & 2/14 Mozart / Mackey. Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Dirk Brossé, music director. Tickets: 215-5451739 or chamberorchestra.org. 3/4 & 3/5 All Beethoven. Ignat Solzhenitsyn, piano. Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Dirk Brossé, music director. Tickets: 215-545-1739 or chamberorchestra.org. 3/14-3/16 Dance Ensemble Concert, Act 1 Performing Arts, DeSales University. Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, 2755 Station Ave., Center Val-

3/18 Brahms’ Requiem. The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem, PA. 4pm. 888-743-3100, ext. 10 or 15. bach.org.

3/16: 3/23: 3/24:

ARTSQUEST CENTER AT STEELSTACKS (Musicfest Café) 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA 610-332-1300. artsquest.org 2/3: Peter Yarrow Of Peter, Paul and Mary 2/7: David Sanborn Trio 2/9: An Intimate Solo / Acoustic Performance By Citizen Cope 2/10: Josh Thompson 2/12: SteelStacks High School Jazz Band Showcase Preliminary Round 2/14: Valentine’s Day With Bev Conklin 2/16: Brother Joscephus and The Love Revival Revolution Orchestra 2/17: The Aardvarks 2/19: Bettye LaVette 2/21: The Ventures 2/22: Teitur with Marit Larsen 2/23: Leigh Nash Of Sixpence None The Richer 2/24: Trouble City All-Stars and Great White Caps 2/26: SteelStacks High School Jazz Band Showcase Preliminary Round 3/1: Kenny Vance & the Planotones 3/3: Marrakesh Express 3/11: SteelStacks High School Jazz Band Showcase Preliminary Round 3/14: The Irish Comedy Tour 3/16: Salsa Night with Hector Rosado & Su Orchestra 3/17: Runa MAUCH CHUNK OPERA HOUSE One of America’s oldest vaudeville theaters, built in 1881. 14 West Broadway, Jim Thorpe, PA

3/30:

3/31:

Commander Cody Band w/ Professor Louie and the Crowmatix TUSK – The Fleetwood Mac Show Savoy Brown The Allentown Band The Allentown Band Splintered Sunlight The Eilen Jewell Band Noel V. Ginnity and Taylor’s Irish Cabaret Montana Skies Steve Forbert Aztec Two-Step’s 40th Anniversary –“Debut to New” The Denny Siewell Trio (Original Drummer for Paul McCartney & Wings) Willy Porter READINGS

2/11 The Day After I Drowned, by Betty Bonham Lies. (Cherry Grove Collections). Betty Bonham Lies is a poet and distinguished teacher of poetry whose most recent collection is The Day After I Drowned. She is a Dodge Poet for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and was named Distinguished Teaching Artist for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is also a member of Cool Women Poets and the U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative. Her poetry has appeared in Southern Poetry Review, The Green Mountains Review, and Kalliope. 6pm. Panoply Books, 46 North Union Street, Lambertville, NJ 609-397-1145 panoplybooks.com CLASSES Adult Spring Session, 8- or 15week sessions. The Baum School of Art, 510 W. Linden St., Allentown, PA. 610-433-0032. baumschool.org ARTIST SPACE FOR RENT Join a community of working artists. Artist space available at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, the country’s largest, most comprehensive interactive arts center. More info and a studio application available at www.goggleworks.org or call 610374-4600 ext. 136.

FEBRUARY 2012

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