Ad libs

Sing me a cimbalom

2009-10-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

It wasn't your everyday orchestra moment at the Palo Alto Philharmonic on Saturday: In the middle of a concert, somebody brings out a cimbalom.

But, hey. If you're playing the folk-rich "Hary Janos" by Kodaly, you've got to have a concert hammered dulcimer from Central/Eastern Europe. The cimbalom is a particular star in the "Intermezzo" movement of the opera. "Intermezzo" leaps like a peasant dancing girl (landing, of course, on the first syllable like the Hungarian language does), and the cimbalom adds a rippling depth. At times I could picture a girl's tiny feet tripping across the strings, as though she had jumped up to dance on the instrument itself.

The concert was definitely an international experience, Hungarian-themed with works by Bartok and Dohnanyi, and people chatting in Hungarian. (For an even more international flavor, watch this YouTube video of a Japanese orchestra playing the "Intermezzo.")

Cimbalom player Roman Titcu kindly let us climb up on stage after the concert to look at the gleaming instrument. I'm now in favor of having someone walk in with a cimbalom on many occasions. Long city council meetings, maybe. Or while you're stuck in line at the bank. Imagine.

Pictured: Top: Cimbalom player Roman Titcu with his instrument on stage at the Cubberley Community Center Theatre, last Saturday after performing. Above: A close-up look at the cimbalom. Photos by Rebecca Wallace.

Variety shows

2009-10-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

Kudos to producers at our Media Center, who picked up six Western Access Video Excellence (WAVE) Awards last weekend. A good reminder of the zings of variety you can find on local TV.

Watch the award-winning shows here -- if you're like me, you might end up transfixed by a Mongolian contortionist in a shimmery costume (and apparently no skeleton). Then get pulled into a cool contemporary dance piece called "The Grape Dance" that incorporates a huge green rubber band and was inspired by the struggles of Mexican immigrants helping to build the wine industry.

The contortionist was part of a show called "The Theatre Factory," which brings in local theater groups to perform -- I'd love to see more of that. The WAVE-honored program, produced by Patricia Neme and Patty Page, focused on Velocity Circus, a multimedia/circus entertainment company in San Francisco.

Other winners include The Stephanie Herman Show (she of the Grape Dance), in which the former principal ballerina dances and talks about the creative process behind her works. More dance is to be had in the Studio Sesson on the African-dance troupe Fua Dia Congo, all whirling colors, drums and singing. (Full disclosure: My friend Karen Adams produced this program, with Muisi-Kongo Malonga and Dan Beaulieu.)

Also in the arts, a Jook Joint show (a VJ-style blues program) focusing on Etta James took home an award. It was produced by E.C. Scott and Gregg Mitchell.

Andrea Throndson from Abilities United produced a more serious piece on living with developmental or physical challenges. But the most serious program by far was a poignant PSA by Edoardo De Armas on preventing suicides at the train tracks.

Photo from the Velocity Circus website.

New M-A theater: It sure beats J Building

2009-09-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

Which is worse: sweltering in a stifling theater, or having a key moment in a play ruined because an old air-conditioning system came roaring on at the wrong moment and drowned out the dialogue?

If you build a $32 million theater, one would hope you could avoid both problems. While giving a press tour of Menlo-Atherton High School's glossy new performing-arts center yesterday, principal Matthew Zito was particularly proud of the A/C. He said it's been designed to run no louder than 17 decibels. On behalf of actors everywhere, thank you.

The new theater is quite a sight. While Zito said he thinks it blends well with M-A's low-slung '50s architecture, I am happy to disagree. The new building is swoopy and dramatic and glassy in the front, like a spaceship set down in cornfields. It sure beats the old J Building cafetorium it replaced. I like the way it stands out; you can't miss it, certainly not from Middlefield Road, and it puts M-A on the map in an entirely new way for my, shall we say, vintage-looking alma mater.

The 492-seat house is richly red in theme, with a 40-by-50-foot stage and a fly space that extends up 70 feet into the sky. The control booth is huge, in hopes that it will serve as an educational space for M-A students learning about stagecraft. The green room is actually green.

Out front is a courtyard, where Zito envisions a jazz quartet or Polynesian dancers might perform. Drama students are already using it for rehearsal. Meanwhile, jazz teacher extraordinaire Frank Moura finally has a nice new music room elsewhere in the center, with plenty of input into the acoustics. And I am envious of the big dressing rooms with their flashy lights bordering the mirrors.

The school will use the performance space most of the time, with the city of Menlo Park claiming 55 days of usage a year, mostly in the summer, Zito said. The Music@Menlo-ites are surely eager to use the space; its artistic directors will hold a special concert on Oct. 11 (already sold out) to herald its opening.

And I'm looking forward to seeing a full event schedule. Theater manager Cara Arcuni said a new website with calendar will launch soon.

Pictured: Top: Glossy windows at the front of the new performing-arts center. Above: A view from a catwalk looking down on the stage. Photos by Rebecca Wallace.

Back to my city by the beigli

2009-09-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

Ah, it's the best when the arts and food harmonize. Palo Alto Philharmonic cellist Ann Jona found out I had lived in Budapest, her hometown, and invited me to a Hungarian picnic this past weekend.

It was a terrific spread at Flood Park, put on by a Hungarian church in Redwood City. I was extremely happy to plunk down my donation and get a huge plate of stuffed cabbage, potatoes and cucumber salad, along with dios beigli. (We were too full for the langos.)

I could translate dios beigli for you as "walnut roll," but that wouldn't do it justice. This is a firm, robust pastry that isn't too sweet, isn't too dry, and just plain knows its own business. Above is the makos, or poppyseed, variety as well. I made a makos beigli for my family last Thanksgiving (very traditional) and it looked just like that, only with cracks and a crooked shape.

Koszonom szepen to Ann, and overall I must say that the Palo Alto Philharmonic has excellent taste. It's planning to kick off the 2009-2010 season with a Hungarian-themed program on Oct. 24. Fellow Magyar-philes should be pleased to see a program replete with Bartok, Kodaly and Dohnanyi. Hungarian cello soloist Csaba Onczay is even flying in to perform.

Pictured: Dios and makos beigli in a photo by Hu Totya, from Wikipedia

Instead of art openings, galleries closing

2009-08-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

The red pen is getting a workout, and not in a good way. While gathering info for the fall arts preview issue, super-intern Lauren Jow and I crossed five art galleries off the list from last year.

That's five galleries that have closed here or are about to: four in downtown Palo Alto (Aicon, Hot Mango Pickle, Kathleen Avery Fine Art and Tercera) and one in Los Altos (ZYT Gallery). Tercera shuts its doors Aug. 31 after a closing sale. Five galleries gone feels like a big number here. And even if you couldn't afford fine art anyway, we all may feel a little bereft.

In my visits to Aicon, for instance, I learned so much about Indian and Pakistani art. The miniatures tradition of Pakistan was fascinating to me, like doors opening in an array of media: human hair, tiny boxes and pins, paint applied with a traditional squirrel-hair brush. Now Aicon is just another in the line of empty storefronts on the increasingly gloomy Bryant Street.

As for Kathleen Avery, I was just thinking the other morning as I walked by that I'd never heard of public exhibitions there, and yet the lines of the figurative sculpture in the window still added something lovely to my day. That afternoon, the blinds were closed and a For Lease sign was up.

In most cases, the economy seems to be to blame, unsurprisingly. No one's alone in this. The New York Times reported in June: "Some two dozen galleries here have folded. ... The most notable among them ... are midsize galleries, where the reputations of up-and-coming artists first gain traction." Are up-and-coming artists here losing a place for their voices, too? Or do you have to be pretty settled to score good real estate in downtown P.A.? Fledgling artists can mingle with the experienced on the walls of the Pacific Art League, but the league also focuses on art classes and other community events rather than being a glossy gallery.

If you're a gallery owner, perhaps creative -- and dramatic -- marketing and moves can help you survive. In yesterday's Chicago Tribune, the happiest-sounding gallerista was David Leonardis. He shuttered one gallery location but kept the other, where to keep the cash flowing he held a buy-one-get-one-free art sale, and then started selling pieces from his private collection for 70 percent off.

Coming soon, a leaf from the federal government's book: The Tribune reports that Leonardis is "now planning a 'cash for clunkers' art sale/exchange."

Pictured: "Ghost Chair #1," a 2006 wood-panel, chair and paint piece by Garry Knox Bennett, one of Tercera Gallery's artists.

Au revoir, Arthur

2009-07-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

So saddened to hear about the passing of Arthur Krakower, the 88-year-old wunderkind Peninsula artist. A call or email from Arthur was like a small gem, bright in the palm. He had a way of combining childlike enthusiasm with timeless gentility and kindliness. Manners were never out of style when he was around. And yet he was completely in the modern world. He was even on Facebook.

Arthur's paintings, drawings and prints have wonderful titles. "The Geraniums Were There When We Fell In Love" and "What A Great Day," to name two. No irony there: just the pleasure of finding a third career after two successful ones, of going back to art and immersing himself in it. Retired from retail and real estate, Arthur went back to school and earned a master's in painting and drawing at age 80. What more can one say about dedication?

Last night, Arthur came to my mind at a Music@Menlo concert in Palo Alto. Violinist Joseph Swensen played the elegiac opening of the third movement of Schumann's Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor with such plaintive beauty. I thought of Arthur and of a dear friend who left us two years ago. There was no heaviness about the feeling of loss, though. Rather, I felt the particular warmth that sadness in music can bring, the sense that everyone who is listening to or playing the music, or who wrote it, has moved through the same emotion. Sometimes in a concert there's a feeling of shared understanding in the air. It's comforting.

Then Wu Han took the stage with fellow pianist Jeffrey Kahane to play Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," arranged for four hands at the piano. She is an absolute delight to watch. From back in the audience, I thought I could see her smiling as she found the mischief in the music, and I wouldn't have been surprised to hear laughter from the stage, even in a respectful concert setting.

It wasn't intended that way, but the evening felt like a perfect tribute to Arthur's spirit.

Pictured: Arthur's Facebook profile photo.

'Art without inhibitions'

2009-07-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

To find the new home of Art For Well Beings, you have to wander a bit. The little art center is, as director Judy Gittelsohn says, "tucked in behind" a cluster of buildings off Palo Alto's Park Boulevard. You cross a small courtyard green with shrubbery, then see the spiky, cheerful cacti lining the classroom windowsill.

I liked this place right away. The room feels peaceful and hidden; I'd never seen the room or the courtyard even though I've walked California Avenue a million times. Judy says that's the whole idea: a space where everyone feels comfortable making art. You don't feel like someone's watching over your shoulder.

Judy, herself a talented painter, is known for her art classes for people with special needs; students may be developmentally disabled, or recovering from an injury. But she teaches everyone, and likes to mix different populations in a class. She had a classroom in a school before (and also teaches at the art center and the art league), but moved onto Park Boulevard earlier this year, enjoying having her own space.

"The special-needs population can teach us how to make art without inhibitions," she told me when I dropped by a few weeks ago. "We can learn freedom. My job is to create a safe place where they can create."

There wasn't a lot of art on the bright white walls (Judy says that makes the room feel more "serene"), but creations by kids and adults, both mainstream and those with special needs, filled the corners. Cut-out fish by 9-year-old Colin Huang were bright with personality; Judy says Colin plans to make a book of Palo Alto birds. Judy also held up a "paint by puzzle" work, in which each student paints a different section. She's planning various one-day exhibits, including Superman-themed paintings by Palo Alto artist Nick Golick.

Other projects in the works include "A Meal To Remember," a fund-raising dinner at East Palo Alto's Four Seasons Hotel, in which 20 girls will create paintings to illustrate a menu at the hotel. The painters will be from Girls to Wom en, an East Palo Alto youth organization.

Meanwhile, Judy and other teachers offer a range of classes at Art For Well Beings, including parent-and-child classes and sessions with collage and charcoal drawing. Some, like "Art in French," haven't taken off yet, but she's optimistic. "It's not as full as I would like," she said of the roster of students, "but I'm getting an inquiry every other day."

Pictured: Top: Fish by Colin Huang. Above: Judy Gittelsohn with a "paint by puzzle" work. Photos by Rebecca Wallace.

Puah on ice?

2009-07-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

Our show is back from Louisville, but it's not curtain down yet on "Puah's Midwife Crisis." Director/writer Cheryl Goodman-Morris has been getting queries about producing the musical in other locations, including Michigan. From Portola Valley to the South to the Midwest?

Meanwhile, back in California, several "Puah" cast members are reporting theater anxiety dreams. We didn't have time to worry before; our schedule in Louisville was what Cheryl called "exquisitely challenging." Now we can take a breath, miss each other already, and have the occasional actor's nightmare.

The Pharoah's daughter dreamed she had to make an entrance on a skateboard. Another actor imagined that the Actors Theatre people interrupted one of our performances to set up an ice-skating rink on stage. Still another dreamed about doing the entire show without remembering a single one of his lines.

Hey, if we wait until winter, I bet an ice rink will play really well in Sturgis.

Pictured: Don Gustafson, left, as Pharaoh with Susan Squires Cox and Betsy Burdick as his evil advisors. Photo from www.puahthemusical.org.

The quotable Louisville

2009-07-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

You can forget that not everywhere is California. The other day in a restaurant near the Ohio River, one of my fellow Bay Area actors asked, "Is the fish fresh?" The waitress retorted, "Louisville is a UPS hub."

Best quotes from our time in Louisville, though, are theater-related. There's a wall backstage at the Victor Jory Theatre at Actors Theatre that's covered with graffiti. As you climb the stairs next to it, you find more and more to read (if you can handle getting close to the blazing July-afternoon roof).

I jotted down a few bon mots. Judging by the last one, crew folks were probably responsible:

"I love this business! It's the only truly accepted medium to convey our spirits to this tight-ass planet. Lose theatre, we'll lose our spirits."

"Good, but it's not 'Three Sisters.'"

"When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."

"All the world's a stage, but I wouldn't want to mop it."

Pictured: Lunchtime in downtown Louisville after a summer thunderstorm. Photo by Rebecca Wallace.

Putting it together

2009-07-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

"It's gonna go places," a woman just said in an affectionate Southern drawl to one of my fellow "Puah" actors. Hey, our show is already going places. From Actors Theatre over to the huge church convention, then back to Actors Theatre, then back to the convention, then back to Actors Theatre ... aw, grits; you get the idea. Yesterday we did a full tech rehearsal at the convention, then a matinee at the theater, then an evening show at the convention. Or was that the day before? We've been rehearsing and teching and making last-minute changes for days, and this show-on-the-road-thing can make your head spin.

But audiences are loving "Puah's Midwife Crisis." People are telling us we're going places. People are laughing and crying (The Actors Theatre space is small. I saw them.). From my point of view, it's a thrill to see how much the musical has grown and improved since we performed it back in Portola Valley in March. Its creators have been refining it: adding songs, changing staging, etc., while we actors are finding new bits, new motivation, new meaning in our words.

Puah originally started the show with a long monologue about the Biblical saga that led our story to this point. It was informative and she sold the heck out of it, but it was exposition-heavy. So the creators, Cheryl and Karen, replaced it with a new song for Puah that they penned in their spare time. Tells the story in a cheerful way, works in an "oy vey" every now and then, and gives actress Emily Greco yet another opportunity to hold the room.

My favorite change has been the end of Act I. Originally the act ended just after Puah and her fellow midwife, Shiphrah, sang a ballad called "Your God is My God, Too." Powerful, regardless of your religious preference, but some people thought the end of Act I also needed more of a suspenseful kick, to make the audience come back from intermission wondering what would happen next. After all, Pharaoah has handed down an untenable edict: P&S have been ordered to drown all the Hebrew boy babies as soon as they're born. P&S have disobeyed him, but they've been caught. We needed the feeling that this is a turning point not only for S, who discovers God, but the whole world of Jewish slaves struggling to survive.

Now we all come out on stage at the end of Act I, dressed as slaves, fearful and trying to keep our faith with our eyes turned toward the future as we sing: "Are we chosen? If we're chosen, what will be our cue? Can God lead us out of slavery? Hard to see the view..." The staging is stark and our movements slow and simple.

This afternoon is our last matinee at Actors Theatre. While performing in front of 3,000 people at the convention was a hoot (especially having our faces blown up on Jumbotron-sized screens), I'm going to miss the theater the most. There's a proper theater smell of paint and sawdust. The tech folks here are welcoming; the lighting is bold; and the angles are wonderful. The audience seats slant up toward the ceiling. Everywhere we turn on stage, there's a face following what we do, learning and feeling and living the story we're telling.

Pictured: Director Cheryl Goodman-Morris, right, working with actress Ginger Holt in the Actors Theatre. Photo by Rebecca Wallace.

Earthquakes in Kentucky?

2009-07-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

We're well into tech rehearsals at the Actors Theatre now -- it's great to be in the new space with lights and sound and the musicians who just flew in. Amazing how a drum kicks up every song and the energy of every drooping actor.

One big change is that we've moved from a proscenium stage to a three-quarter thrust. So now we have the audience on three sides. Intimate and elemental; we'll be able to better feel the energy of the crowd, breathe it in. Plus since my character is a flirty, rather clumsy chick who's not too bright, I just may have to stumble dangerously near an audience lap during the pregnant aerobics scene.

(Happy to have a director who lets us break the fourth wall in this show...)

Yesterday the theater's operations manager gave us a safety lecture, which, interestingly, included an earthquake warning. The other big announcement is that we are nearly sold out.

Apparently when one is telling an obscure story about acts of civil disobedience in the Bible, it pays to have a huge church convention nearby.

Pictured: Rehearsal in the Actors Theatre. Photo by Rebecca Wallace.

Off to the Actors Theatre

2009-07-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Most days I write about other people having arts adventures. Now my show is going on the road. Hey, I hear Kentucky is the new Broadway.

I've been performing in a new Portola Valley musical, "Puah's Midwife Crisis," and next week we'll have the great privilege of doing the show at Actors Theatre of Louisville, a hot spot for new works. We'll also be taking the stage at a huge church gathering, which is fitting because the musical is based on an Old Testament story.

Our sets, costumes and props have already taken a road trip to Louisville, with the actors following by plane. Friday and Saturday should be a flurry of dress and tech rehearsals as we get used to our new spaces. And the heat. Later in the week, it'll be thunderstorms.

Puah (played by the magnificent Emily Greco, above) is a novice midwife trying to make her way in an Egypt ruled by a Pharaoh with untenable edicts. Her story is uplifting and dramatic, with book and music by Cheryl Goodman-Morris and Karen C. Russell. I can't imagine there are too many midwife musicals out there, so maybe we'll find an extra niche market.

My character, Neferdotti (yep, she's dotty), is part of the comic relief. Whenever the plot gets really heavy, we, the Egyptian ladies-in-waiting, come in and sing. There's a girl-group tune, a blues song, an aerobics number. We wear giant pregnant bellies, and I sing while being pushed around on a rolling chaise longue. Sometimes we fall down.

More later from the road...

Pictured: Top: Emily Greco as Puah. Above: The ladies in waiting (I'm in the center) do a girl-group number. Photos from www.puahthemusical.org.

Doctor Noize Beats Truman

2009-06-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've finally forgiven Doctor Noize, that big meanie, for making me believe a fake press release. News does break on April 1st, y'know. Anyone could have fallen for it.

Fortunately, we stopped the presses before reporting that kids' musician Doctor Noize (a.k.a. Cory Cullinan, who lives in Colorado but hails from Los Altos) was going to have one of his songs in "High School Musical 4." Man. I could've written a heck of a headline.

Cory swears his latest Noizeletter is true. Lots of good news. I've always found it interesting that he's a classically trained Stanford musician who has woven his expertise into groovy shows and CDs for kids. This fall he's heading back to the concert hall to solo with the North State Symphony at youth performances in Chico and Redding. Nice.

"Herr Maestro and I promise these events will be very solemn and absolutely no fun at all, especially the rockin' tuba solo," Cory says in the Noizeletter.

Another big announcement is that Doctor Noize will be guest-hosting this summer on XM Kids Radio. I am addicted to the ahmaaazing Seth Rudetsky, but perhaps I can be persuaded to change the station every now and then. Hey, how about doing a duet with Seth? Don't all you big important DJs know each other?

Satellite radio isn't exactly raking in the forints lately, but maybe Doctor Noize can help. Or not. As Cory writes in the Noizeletter: "I once wrote a song for the long-running network soap 'Another World,' which had been on air for 35 years. My song was played on the show, and just months later...the show was cancelled. That's power, baby."

Pictured: Doctor Noize and friend; photo from www.doctornoize.com.

Where's our downtown theater festival?

2009-06-11T15:45:00.000-07:00

You can't complain about an evening of Balkan-Yiddish-gospel-postmodern music, really. World Music Day sounds pretty cool (except that you can't call it WMD without thinking of our last president).

But where's the free outdoor theater festival in Palo Alto? The one-acts on the corner? Pinter in the park? That would be my little dream. Music gets center stage in the summer, due to some long-held tradition involving amps over asphalt. But there are days when you want art that's more narrative, telling stories by sunset, highlighting the up-close emotion between two people, talking out that which cannot be sung.

If I ran the circus, there'd be more following in the alfresco footsteps of PACT's Hot Dog Suppertime Shows, or PYT's Theater in the Park, but for big kids. Yes, the Shakespeare is lovely, too. More of that, please. Can we have this also, in an inflatable auditorium, or is that pushing it?

Theater on the corners and in the plazas of downtown Palo Alto would be vibrant, surprising and immediate. As tantalizing as overhearing a conversation in a crowd. You don't need much room to tell a story, just a compelling narrative and people who know they're inside it. Maybe a few set pieces and props, or just a pair of actors, or a whole set constructed in a piazza. Whatever way you make it, I'd go.

Some of the stages in my theater vision:

King Plaza in front of Palo Alto City Hall. A political setting for pieces that tackle thorny issues and times, or scripts sassy with satire. Kushner. "Tomfoolery."
The circle lawn at Gamble Garden, intimate and rustic. I can imagine a collection of one-acts with two or three actors each, the audience sitting all around.
Heritage Park on Homer Avenue. Big enough for some splashy musical theater. Despite the judicious tree-planting that has occurred, the big grassy expanse could still easily accommodate even the gym scene in "West Side Story," assuming you don't mind dancing on the lawn.
Lytton Plaza on University Ave. A busy spot, good for anything fast-paced and urban. The college kids might like that sprightly talker Mamet.

I still haven't figured out a good place for the inflatable auditorium.

Pictured: The circular lawn at Gamble Garden. Photo by Rebecca Wallace.

Being outside inside at CSMA

2009-06-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a.m.: a morning for growing ant strength and carrying my desk into an open field. In June it can be physically painful to be stuck inside.

Since desk wouldn't balance on head, I went to an art gallery. You can pretend to be outside in drawings by Robert C. Schick, but you're an arts editor doing work. Schick is a Midpeninsula lifer with pen-and-ink visions of both landscapes that remain and those that have been plowed under.

Farms and orchards recall life before strip malls, while houses with luxurious porches hark back to times with a lot less street traffic, when people actually talked to their neighbors just outside the front door.

Some watercolor, too, which has a wispy nostalgia but lacks the precision of the drawings. The black-and-white gives the ink landscapes a confidence -- and patience -- that you need if you're going to fight in City Hall. (Schick is a veteran of anti-development wars.)

Eventually I had to go back to the office, but for a while it was good to feel like a kid with the entire day and yard ahead of me, when a hillock of soft grass under a spreading oak was the whole world.

BTW, Schick will be at an opening reception at the gallery, Mohr Gallery at CSMA, this Friday evening from 6 to 8.

BBTW, after I wrote this I found a terrific Judith H. Dobrzynski post on ArtsJournal about cell phones in art galleries. Yep, a Fall Out Boy ringtone would've dropped a giant ant on my dreamy gallery mood. Tell me again why cell-phone dampeners are illegal here?

Pictured: "Proposed Mountain View Heritage Park for the Cuesta Annex," a 2006 watercolor by Robert Schick.

Fridays at the Cantor: 'Metaphysics'

2009-05-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

Every Friday, a different musician climbs the stairs to the Cantor Center balcony to play Mark Applebaum's experimental work "The Metaphysics of Notation." I had previously written about flutist Jane Rigler playing a rippling, percussive version of the piece; last Friday I went to see Sam Adams on electronic keyboard and laptop. (Scroll down for my video.)

How do you play a musical score that replaces standard notes with flowers, wavy lines, human figures and rising lines of dots? Any way your muse takes you. If you're lucky, the composer will come by.

Applebaum was there last Friday, watching while Adams focused on one piece of the score, creating music that used silence and long moments of thought, then intensified. Adams wove in recorded words: "make real sense," "notation," "symbolic structures." A drone created urgency and interest. By the end, the music echoed through the balcony like a plane taking off in a storm. I felt in the center.

Adams' father, the composer John Adams, also dropped by. In my photo above, he's listening so hard to his son playing (at left) that he's barely moving. Applebaum is standing in the pale-green T-shirt. After the performance, he praised Sam Adams for his "studied, ascetic approach" to the music that also allowed in such warmth.

Applebaum's score is on display in panels hung around the balcony; you can view it all week, but it's only on Fridays at noon that it takes on audible life. (My video shows glimpses of a few different panels, not just the one Adams played from.) The free weekly concerts are set to continue through February 2010.

'What would Matt do?'

2009-05-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

A new San Francisco exhibit calls him "Artist and Educator," but Matt Kahn is just as often thought of as "Mentor." You can't read about him without seeing that word.

It's perhaps the best legacy one could have after teaching at Stanford for 55-plus years. Over and over, people say that Matt Kahn taught them how to appreciate the role of design throughout the world. A few years ago, IDEO design firm founder David Kelley told the Weekly that every day when he works on projects he thinks: "What would Matt do?"

Textile artist Jean Ray Laury also called her former teacher "encouraging, demanding, insightful and fun." She added, "I learned more about quilting from him than I ever learned from anyone else, though I'm sure he never held a needle in his life."

As for me, I never studied design. When I interviewed Kahn for another story, I just liked his crinkly-eyed smile.

The current show, held at the San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design, also showcases the ways in which Matt Kahn helped shape the Bay Area's art and design in the 1950s and '60s. Besides teaching at Stanford, he also worked for Eichler Homes, the developer whose houses are ubiquitous in Palo Alto.

The exhibit includes his designs for Eichler homes as well as works in furniture, textiles and metal, with weavings by his wife, Lyda Kahn. Fittingly, special events include "Matt Kahn: Teacher and Friend," in which designers talk about how the professor influenced and inspired them.

Pictured: Two works by Matt Kahn from the exhibit. Top: "Pair of Tripod Chairs," ca. 1965, oak. Above: "Lidded Box," ca. 1965, wood with enamel on copper lid.

Photographer wins global honor

2009-05-08T10:23:00.001-07:00

Another well-deserved honor for Menlo Park photographer Mark Tuschman, whose sensitive and beautifully lit photos let us peer into worlds we otherwise might never see. He won this year's photography contest held by the Global Health Council, an alliance of health-care groups and other professionals. There were 550 entries from various lands.

A set of three photos drew the honors. Above is an image from Bangladesh, where Mark saw many young mothers who seemed totally detached from their newborns. Here, a nurse cares for a baby while the mother sits in the back alone.

Mark, whom I interviewed last year, is a quiet, thoughtful sort with a tremendous social conscience. He's found a way to balance his day job as a commercial photographer with his own creative projects: He travels a few times a year for nonprofits that help the poor, recording the effects of the programs. He took this photo for EngenderHealth, a reproductive-health organization. Check out his blog for some thoughts on microfinance in the developing world.

To life and to live theater

2009-04-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

I got a cute email yesterday from Bridget Summers, who is doing PR for Paly's "Fiddler on the Roof" and had a story to tell from Friday's performance. Apparently the power went out right before Tzeitel's wedding. Pause. Then, in the dark, the cast started dancing and singing again. (Mics, shmics.) The audience cheered, the show went on, and the lights came back up in time for the Bottle Dance.

Why would a publicist want to tell a reporter about something that went wrong? Clearly, my friend, you haven't spent much time in the audience. Messes, near-misses and glitches that get overcome create some of the best moments in live theater.

If you're an actor, nothing gets the adrenaline jiggling like realizing your castmate has missed his entrance -- and you have to stand there ad-libbing and holding a duck. If the audience laughs at one of the lines you made up, you're golden.

If you're in the audience, how great is it when something breaks and you see the cast keep going? Auntie Mame drops her cocktail and the glass shatters. She immediately puts her hand out to Ito and demands, "Another." Sitting in the audience, you're thrilled for her. It's like watching a car crash that didn't happen.

I do community theater. The kind where you go on stage with your tutu held together with gaff tape. So I've seen lots of power outages, mics go out and set doors stick, and even tiny kid actors just keep belting out their songs. You kind of want to hug all those Paly students.

The best part about seeing a near-miss is that it is a near-miss. It's something that no one expected to happen, and so it's perfectly human. It's an unrehearsed exchange, the man behind the curtain, a test of the stage manager's mettle. It can't be Photoshopped away or edited out. And in that moment, you see what that scrappy little theater company's really made of.

When I was in a Sunnyvale production of "Fiddler" a few years ago, one of my favorite times was during that notorious Bottle Dance, when four men cavort with wine bottles balanced on their heads. Everything looked great, and then suddenly two of the guys dropped their bottles. It could have ruined the dance, but instead the guys looked at each other, grinned through their beards, shrugged, and kept going. The rest of us rooted for them like the close community of villagers we were supposed to be.

Later, another actor told me that an audience member had been doubtful about the dance up until that point. The bottles just looked too perfect, like they were glued on. Then the whole scene became real. The dancers, the shtetl. You could even go out on a limb and say the bottles were a metaphor for the precarious position of the Jews in Anatevka. All because a couple of guys slipped. And that's live theater.

Pictured: Alex Nee and Ryan McLeod in the foreground, with Alex Browne, Marc LeClerc and Jovan Bennett in the background, in Paly's "Fiddler" production. Photo by Carla Befera.

A billion potential readers can't be wrong

2009-04-18T10:17:00.001-07:00

Seen at Stanford the other week... A new strategy for the Times?

Photo by Rebecca Wallace

On the beach

2009-04-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't expect to feel serene in an exhibit about beach trash. But when you've picked up nearly two tons of discarded plastic at your favorite oceanside spot over the last decade, you might as well do something pleasant with it.

Artists Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, who spend a lot of time at Kehoe Beach, have brought the fruits of their labor to Stanford in a pocket-sized exhibition called "Disposable Truths." Small plastic objects are the focus. They're glued on a chair, table and lamp like rainbow chicken pox. On the floor, white pieces of plastic trash -- forks, caps, general detritus -- make a clumpy shag carpet.

On the walls are photos of tidy groupings of plastic. One photo is all of toy soldiers; another is of lemon-juice containers. There are also combs, lighters, whistle mouthpieces. You'd never imagine that girls' barrettes came in so many shapes: bows, dragonflies, school buses; even a pig with the word "MONDAY." Red spreaders for snack cheese are bleached by the sun, or have coral patterns on them, or look completely unchanged by their time in the ocean floating who-knows-where.

"We have been sold the myth of disposable plastic," the authors write. "We throw it away but it stays with us for centuries and may ultimately irreparably alter the planet."

Gloomy sentiments, and certainly true, but I enjoyed the beauty and symmetry that the artists created in their patterns of objects. They took trash and created order. It reminded me of being a child and happily sorting buttons from my mother's button jar: by color, size, number of holes, levels of shininess...

Photos by Rebecca Wallace. In my top photo, you can see the neatly lined-up cheese spreaders.

An evening with Adams

2009-04-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

It was a true pleasure to hear the composer John Adams speak last night at the Cantor Arts Center. Kronos Quartet violinist David Harrington conducted a free-flowing interview with his fellow musician and friend -- the two have known each other for 30 years. It was like eavesdropping at a particularly entertaining dinner party. You never knew what turn the conversation would take next.

Harrington confessed to being a novice interviewer, which made my ears perk up. As someone who throws out queries for a living, I was curious to hear what was on his index cards. I may have to steal his most creative question: "What's your favorite note?"

"God," Adams responded, grinning. He finally responded in part: "I'm not a linear guy. I like 'em when they're stacked up." (His 2008 "String Quartet," a piece full of deft, hectic energy that will be performed at Stanford this weekend, certainly attests to that.)

Harrington and Adams talked a lot about the need for better arts education in this country, and about the pure joy of experiencing music. More than all the other arts, Adams said, it's about simple emotion. "Music can't convey ideas; it's raw feeling." He added that after 9-11 many people sought comfort in classical music -- not pop -- because of its "depth of feeling."

(Later in the evening, the issue of classical music's depth arose again when a man asked whether our short-attention-span society is killing classical music. Adams was adamant that it's not. "People love to concentrate," he said. Bruckner's complex symphonies, he noted, are more popular than ever, perhaps a welcome exercise for our brains in these poppy times.)

In a pleasantly quirky moment, Harrington asked what Adams thought about Obama giving an iPod to the Queen of England. Adams said: "I thought it was very cool. The iPod is a representation of what's so great about this country." How so? It's beautiful, and it's optimistic, the composer said. "I only regret that Silicon Valley hasn't dedicated itself more to the arts."

The two men laughed about how the iPod was loaded with Rodgers & Hammerstein, with Harrington suggesting "The King and I" as an apropos selection for the Queen.

Adams quipped, "And probably, 'There is Nothing Like A Dame,'" earning delighted groans from the crowd.

When I had interviewed Adams about his "String Quartet," he had been candid about his concerns about the piece, saying that he had shortened the end because it was too long even for him. Last night, he also confessed to being his own worst critic about his compositions, saying, "People try to keep me away from my babies, because I'm like one of those animals who eats them." Another roar of laughter from the audience.

But Adams was anything but critical in talking about his favorite classical works and composers. At one point, he mused aloud, "I'd love to have a selective lobotomy, a regenerative lobotomy, so I could hear Beethoven's Fifth again, just like the first time I heard it."

Photo by Margaretta Mitchell, from John Adams' website at earbox.com.

Lend me a tenor

2009-03-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

There was a great story this week in the Vancouver Sun about hapless singers from a Canadian choir standing out on a freezing bridge in their tuxes, trying to recruit more tenors. Funny, yes, but sadly timeless. Why exactly is it that choral and theater groups have such trouble finding male singers?

Every time I've written about a local choral group, I've asked if auditions are planned. The answer is always the same: "Well, we could use some more men. Especially tenors." It's true in the theater, too. It's enough to make a woman weep. How many times have I battled my way through auditions and call-backs, competing with a slew of other women who look like me and sing like me, and then after the cast list is up the director is still looking for men? How many guys do you know who get to stroll into call-backs on a regular basis without having to audition?

With reality shows still thriving, you'd think that more men would be encouraged to take the stage. After all, if a rock star can be lifted up out of a crowd, doesn't that mean anyone can sing? I wonder what the comparative numbers are of male and female contestants.

What is it about our society that makes people so shy about singing in front of others? It should be as natural as talking. Besides being a welcome creative and emotional outlet, singing is an excellent way to practice the rhythms of a foreign language, or pass on a forgotten piece of culture, such as a folk song from another century. And yet it can feel like crying in public, even when you're trained.

Male tenors, of course, face the added baggage of -- as the Sun article states -- sounding different from the gruff, "manly" sounds they are taught to think of as cool. Not everyone can star in "Jersey Boys."

What are other ways that choruses, theater groups and other organizations can attract male singers? Do you need to start with boys when they're young, doing performances and other educational programs at schools to show them the joy of bursting into song? Do you appeal to men by pointing out how many girls they can meet? Do you point out that Hugh Jackman is a heck of a singer? Even I want to be like him.

Photo by Ward Perrin of the Vancouver Sun, from the Sun's website.

'Drood' is good

2009-03-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

Every theater person has a favorite show that never gets done, that one you jump at the chance to see. Which is why my actor sig oth plans to be at Gunn High School this weekend (while I'm on stage in the hills). Gunn is doing a musical I'll be sad to miss, the terrific "Mystery of Edwin Drood."

Based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens, "Drood" is about choirmaster John swooning over his music student, Rosa Bud, while Miss Bud moons over John's nephew, Edwin Drood. When Drood disappears, who is the murderer?

"The audience members choose who the killer is, which can get interesting at intermission when the characters are all trying to get your vote," says Sig Oth.

It'd be nice if you could choose the endings of other shows, especially ones you hate. I vote to have Eliza Doolittle fall down a mine shaft.

It doesn't know it

2009-03-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

On mornings when I want to write a blog posting, but nothing comes, I can take comfort that at least I'm not an early computer programmed to randomly generate love poetry. Is this the modern equivalent of monkeys at a typewriter? Hilarious.

By the way, what's with the duck? Must be a British thing.