...is like one of the best things there is, am I right? So even though this has nothing whatsoever to do with Boston, you'll want to click here to read the open letter from the Steely Dan guys - Don and Walt, as they call themselves - to actor Luke Wilson, encouraging him to lean on his brother Owen to make things right over Owen's new movie. The movie's called "You, Me and Dupree" and it's just a little too much like their song "Cousin Dupree" for Don and Walt's taste. They don't actually threaten to rip off Owen's head and piss down his neck, but ... close. It's hilarious. (Via Salon's Audiofile.) And come to think of it, Don (aka Donald Fagen) actually did go to Berklee, so this is HubArts adjacent.
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« June 2006 | Main | August 2006 »
July 24, 2006
July 23, 2006
July 22, 2006
Williamstown interlude
In town on other business today, I spent an hour in the Williams College Museum of Art, and it alone was worth the trip. MassMoCA and the Clark Art Institute get all the attention, but my stroll around the smaller WCMA ran the gamut of glories, from 19th- and 20th-century favorites to the discovery of an artist entirely new to me and a hypermodern installation from China.
Start with the last one. I made the stop because of Cate McQuaid's Globe article about Zhan Wang's "Urban Landscape Beijing," a vast model of the great city compiled in stainless steel cooking implements - steamer trays and tea urns, cookpots and silverware. Big and conceptual and its own punchline, it's the sort of piece that usually finds a home at MassMoCA. But I'm not sure it really makes the artist's point about overwhelming modernization and "westernization"; Americans, anyway, like shiny and sleek, and it has a kind of retro sci fi cool under the spotlights. It's hard to feel outrage about something that looks like a family reunion for the robot from "The Day the Earth Stood Still." It might also fit better, literally, in the vastness of MassMoCA - it's a little scrunched inside its gallery in WCMA's historic building.
From there I wandered into the museum's more or less permanent "American Dreams" exhibit, featuring a rotating selection from the permanent collection. There aren't many rooms this small where you'll find an Eakins and a Copley and an especially nice Cassatt together; I was drawn by Ben Shahn's "Portrait of Walker Evans" and the impressionist beauty of Robert Lee McCameron's "Group at the Theater." I was disappointed to find that Hopper's great "Morning in a City" had been rotated out. But one of my all-time favorites, Grant Wood's "Death on the Ridge Road," was in the house, with its looming car crash horror, Steinbeckian midwest landscape and Thomas the Tank Engine vehicles. (Memo to museum staff - can't you find a slightly less reflective piece of glass for the frame??)
I spent a little time with an exhibit of three Jackson Pollocks, one just restored by WCMA staff.
Then, in another small room, I was introduced to the works of Rhoda Holmes Nicholls, who for some reason has never been seriously studied until now, and hasn't even been exhibited since 1924. This self-portrait is only a taste of what she has to offer, most of it running to landscapes from around the world - and the North Shore of Massachusetts. How it is that none of her sand dunes and rocky shores found their way into the Peabody Essex Museum's "Painting Summer in New England" I'll never understand. The 1881 watercolor "Moonlight on African Farm" is a spooky stunner. And a small, seemingly Japanese-inspired oil from the same year called "Apple Blossoms" makes you thankful for the richness of its blue and gold background and the bright purity of its white flowers.
It was a hell of an hour. And admission is free. I actually stuffed a fiver in the jar by the door on my way out. Get thee to the Berkshires before the summer is out.
July 21, 2006
Right place, right band
Like the Elvis Costello/Allen Toussaint team or the Neville Brother of your choice, Dr. John has been turning up on festival and benefit stages all over America since Hurricane Katrina, a sort of musical conscience reminding us of the glory and suffering of New Orleans. But when he pulls into the Tanglewood Jazz Festival on Sept. 2, it's going to be extra cool. He's got a new album of Johnny Mercer songs coming out, "Mercernary," and the show will be all about that, with guest vocalists Irma Thomas, Ann Hampton Callaway and John Pizzarelli, plus a horn section including the great Howard Johnson.
NSMT laughs at fate
If I ran the North Shore Music Theatre, I might have been a little reluctant to book Rogers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" this year. Last year after opening night of the production on July 14, a fire blazed through the facility, requiring a months-long shutdown and fundraising for millions in repairs and rebuilding. And now they're taking the show to the stage again, beginning Aug. 22, with Deborah Lew in the title role and Lisa McMillan (left) once again essaying the part of the Wicked Stepmother. And I thought theater people were superstitious. The show runs through Sept. 10. Tix, $35-$70, at the web site, the box office in Beverly, or 978-232-7200.
July 19, 2006
July 18, 2006
July 17, 2006
Take me out to the narrated symphonic performance
NPR "Only a Game" host Bill Littlefield (left) will narrate the World Premiere performance of "Lifting the Curse: A Story of the Red Sox" by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Charles Ansbacher conducting, on July 24 at the Boston Common's Parkman Bandstand. Littlefield wrote the words for the work by composer Julian Wachner. Alas, also on hand will be Wally the Green Monster, who has every bit as much to do with baseball as beach balls and old Neil Diamond tunes, but I digress. Several subsequent performances will be narrated by Boston's own Dick Flavin.
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