Arts & Events

On Sunday, May 1, I attended the Opera Parallèle production of The Lighthouse, a 1979 opera by Peter Maxwell Davies. Based on a true story about lighthouse keepers who mysteriously disappeared in 1900, leaving no trace, from a lighthouse on Flannan Island in the Outer Hebrides, The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies is heavy on atmosphere but somewhat spare and chilling in musical terms. The orchestra offers an unusual mix of jangly out of tune piano, guitar, banjo, flexatone keyboard, blaring brass, strings, and exotic percussion. The music is jagged, often piercing, and the singing is largely declamatory. Three singers play the three lighthouse keepers. They seem to switch back and forth between the keepers who mysteriously disappeared, on one hand, and those who discovered that the original keepers had disappeared into thin air, or, possibly, into the sea. -more-

It's rare to have professional Noh actors here from Japan to perform their intensive style, which is physically based in a spare, rigorous form of stage movement and dance that resembles a martial art, the longest-lived continually performed style of theater onstage today, with its origins in the 14th century.

"Nothing is new. Constantly!"

Hank (Ben Ortega) is having a talk with his daughter Marlene (Anna Smith) through the front door. Or trying to; the locks have been changed by his estranged wife. His daughter, wearing a pained expression, stands inside. Her absent mother doesn't want her to open the door or talk to him. The conversation runs through a tense recitation of banalities, punctuated by little explosions of that tension. Everything's inconclusive, with the sense of something mechanical winding down ...

Portuguese Fado singer Ana Moura returned to the Bay Area for a concert Friday, April 22, at San Francisco’s Nourse Auditorium sponsored by California Institute of Integral Studies. To my taste, this concert was a disappointment. I have heard Ana Moura twice before, and both previous times I was enthralled by her dark, dusky voice and impeccable phrasing in the musical genre of Fado, which explores the Portuguese sentiment of saudade, a potent mix of yearning tinged with sorrow. Lately, however, perhaps beginning with her 2012 CD Desfado, Ana Moura has begun ‘de-constructing’ traditional Fado and mixing it with other musical currents. Where Fado is concerned, I am a purist. I was first introduced to Fado at a club in Lorenco Marques (now Maputo) in Mocambique way back in 1963. Here was a middle-aged woman in a black dress with a black lace shawl, accompanied only by a Portuguese guitar, singing her heart out in songs of deep, almost bitter longing. Soon I bought up all the Amalia Rodriguez recordings I could find, reveling in the intense expressivity of this the greatest Fado singer in recent history. -more-

Opens at the Landmark Albany Two on April 29

The appearance of Dough marks another great leap for humankind. Not since Cheech and Chong have marijuana buds had such a co-starring role in a major pop film.

(Related question: How did the East Bay Express NOT review this film? After all, the EBX's current issue devotes the equivalent of three full pages to nothing but pot ads.)

Start with your basic ingredients: Elderly Jewish grandfather (the priceless Jonathan Pryce as grey-bearded Nat Dayan) runs a Kosher bakery in London's East End; the business is called Dayan and Son, but the baker's son is a successful lawyer, estranged from the baking tradition and from his father; the building is owned by a widow who has eyes for Nat but wants to sell the building; out of desperation, Nat hires a teenage refugee from Darfur (compelling newcomer Jerome Holder as Ayyash) as an apprentice in his shop; but, unknown to his mom, Ayyash already has a part-time gig—selling weed in London's shadow economy.

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On Sunday, April 24, California Bach Society gave the last of three concerts dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chorales. Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was the venue for this concert, while the earlier ones were in San Francisco and Palo Alto. Conducted by Artistic Director Paul Flight, California Bach Society is a 30-voice chamber chorus specializing in Renaissance and Baroque choral music. Borrowing a title from one of Bach’s Motets which was heard on this program, Paul Flight labeled this concert Singet dem Herrn (Sing unto the Lord). Bach, as we know, composed many chorales, some of which became integral parts of his cantatas. In the chorales chosen for this program, the hymn melody is sung by the sopranos while the lower three vocal lines provide rhythmic and harmonic support. -more-

Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble.
Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826)

In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
has died of old age.
—Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

A Celebration of Haiku & Its Relationship to The Beats & Zen Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1950’s and A Book Release Party for “Haiku Revisited Volume 2 - A Creative Textbook” by Louis Cuneo (Mother’s Hen Publications)

Friday, April 29
7- 9 pm

The Beat Museum
540 Broadway & Columbus
North Beach, San Francisco
415.399.9626

The Beat Museum of San Francisco is pleased to invite the public to a special free event celebrating Haiku in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1950s until now. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and others, through their avid interest in Zen Buddhism, adapted this unique Japanese form to the new free-verse of the American poetic voice. Jack Kerouac would call them “Western Haiku” in his “Scattered Poems” published by City Lights Publications. -more-