Arts & Events

TUESDAY, MARCH 20 -more-

‘CITY OF WALLS, CITY OF PEOPLE’ -more-

If we think of Picasso and Duchamp as the two opposing poles in 20th century art, the Berkeley campus at present displays significant work by their successors. Fernando Botero’s series of paintings and drawings, documenting the torture at Abu Ghraib, has been perceived as a contemporary Guernica. -more-

Nicola Clayton and her scrub-jays have been at it again. Clayton, as you may recall, is the Cambridge experimental psychologist who keeps making startling claims about the cognitive abilities of the western scrub-jay, a bird she met while at UC Davis. (It’s the most widespread of three closely related species of crestless blue-and-gray jays; the others, the Florida scrub-jay and island scrub-jay, have limited ranges). -more-

TUESDAY, MARCH 20 -more-

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 -more-

MAGICIAN CHIN-CHIN IN EMERYVILLE -more-

Randy Weston—jazz pianist, composer, bandleader—turned 80 last year. Along with a few other generation be-boppers, such as Sonny Rollins, Hank Jones, Jimmy Heath and Benny Golson, he is one of the last survivors from the halcyon days of what was then being called modern jazz. -more-

Mozart purists should not expect Berkeley Opera’s new production, Seraglio, to have much resemblance to the renowned opera The Abduction From The Seraglio. Nothing in this rendition follows the original except the music. -more-

Phillip and Treat are orphans, abandoned by their father when little, bereaved by their mother’s more recent death. But they still constitute a kind of nuclear family, however abbreviated and dysfunctional: Treat’s the breadwinner, a petty criminal who watches out for his little brother by keeping the allergic couchpotato Phillip indoors in their North Philadelphia tenement row house, with windows shut, subsisting mostly on tuna sandwiches (Phillip’s a gourmand of mayonnaise). -more-

Guy Hyde Chick is the kind of name one doesn’t forget easily. In addition to its catchy concatenation of consonants, the name stands for one of Bernard Maybeck’s most famous houses. But what of the man who built the house? This shadowy figure, now all but forgotten, once played a visible role in Berkeley’s public life. -more-

Too Many Valves? -more-

Mr. Cantor, What do you think about lifting the shell of a house and building a new first floor under it? -more-

FRIDAY, MARCH 16 -more-