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Thursday, December 4, 2008
THE ARTS
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Scott Woltz hasn’t given it much thought until now. Until someone poses the question. And it was only fate that someone would. Judas? At Christmas? “Gosh,” he said. “You know, it really didn’t occur to me.”
Three years, three husbands. And here’s the amazing part – all three have the name Bob Cratchit. No. It isn’t one of those role reversal situations where the husband takes the wife’s name. Let’s just say when it comes to names, Mrs. Cratchit is very picky about her choice of husbands. Claire Jones, official harpist to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, will perform in a holiday harp concert with Baton Rouge harpist Melissa Stockstill at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, in the sanctuary of Bethany World Prayer Center South, Fieldstone Drive off Industriplex Boulevard. Nov. 30-Dec. 6, 2008 The exhibit Deck the Walls, featuring works from four Louisiana photographers, will open Friday, Dec. 5, in the Community Gallery at the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, 427 Laurel St. The Louisiana Sinfonietta, under the direction of Dinos Constantinides, will perform its third concert of the 2008-2009 season at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, in the LSU School of Music Recital Hall. A man stood in the audience the night before. No one caught his name, and Rod Parker could only guess that he wasn’t a student. But none of that mattered, because the moment was stilled by what he had to say. Choral Christmas, featuring the Baton Rouge Symphony Chorus, will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, at First Baptist Church, 529 Convention St. This is an important Louisiana story. Important to the state’s history, its culture, its art community. Especially its art community. For Xavier Gonzalez once was an art instructor at Newcomb College on the Tulane University campus in New Orleans. Rosemary Goodell, Ross Jahnke and Marcus McAllister will be the featured artists beginning Sunday, Nov. 30, at Baton Rouge Gallery, 1442 City Park Ave. The show will run through Dec. 30, and a First Wednesday opening reception will be 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 3. The exhibit Prey by artist George Marks will open with a 6-9 p.m. reception Friday, Nov. 21, at Ann Connelly Fine Art’s Goodwood Village location, 711 Jefferson Highway. This exhibit is showing in conjunction with Mid City Merchants’ White Light Night. Playing the bad guy isn’t so bad, that is, if you can label Lady Augusta Bracknell a bad guy. And you really can’t, because there aren’t any bad guys or good guys in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest. There’s just, well, the nice and the snobby. Consider it the calm before the storm, that last weekend before Thanksgiving arrives and the Christmas rush is officially on. Elizabethan Gallery owner Liz Walker thinks the best way to spend that Friday night, Nov. 21, is at the Mid City Merchants Association’s annual fall art hop, White Light Night. So, Will was trying to decide whether to write or not write when Gustav came along and made a mess of everything. Now, that probably made Anne happy, because Will was forced to remain in Stratford a few weeks longer than planned. Several musical performances are scheduled this week at LSU: Hamiruge: The LSU Percussion Ensemble will perform a concert at 4 p.m. today, Nov. 16, in the LSU School of Music Recital Hall. Think of the kid whose eyes can’t help but be attracted to the shine and sparkle on his first visit to Tiger Stadium. That sparkle, it’s contagious, isn’t it? It has a way of floating around the stadium and into the kid’s eyes, especially with those first four notes. Emotions are running high this month. Elections, football, Thanksgiving — it could all play out with a soundtrack of Russian music. That’s right, Russian. Throughout the month of November, LSU Museum of Art, in conjunction with the College of Art and Design, will be presenting 20 original panels by acclaimed French graphic novelist, Pierre-François Beauchard, best known by his penname, David B. The Louisiana Sinfonietta played mostly Mozart Sunday afternoon at First Baptist Church. Mozart, that master of classical form and melody, was represented by his sacred choral-orchestral piece, “Litaniae Lauretanae” (“The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary”) and the Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra. No one is comparing Robert Grayson to Emperor Joseph II. Remember the emperor? He’s the one who said, “Too many notes, my dear Mozart.” The scene was depicted in the 1984 film Amadeus. But it wasn’t fiction. It’s the emperor’s actual commentary on Mozart’s first Viennese opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail. One sentence has a way of telling a picture’s story. The fog, the water, the sky. Morris Taft Thomas could see it all, not in the actual sentence but the images it conjured. For he, too, spent time on False River in childhood. That’s not saying he grew up poor on a plantation; he didn’t. He was a student at Southern Laboratory School; his dad worked for Exxon. Tickets are on sale for the Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre’s production of The Nutcracker, A Tale from the Bayou, which returns to the Baton Rouge River Center Theatre Dec. 20 and 21. There will be 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. performances on both days. This production features world-class guest stars, award-winning local dancers and a unique southern Louisiana take on the holiday. Experience always pays off, even when it comes in the form of a singing waiter. Richard Hobson probably never thought much about it when he took the job in college. Pssst. Hey you. Yeah, you. Come over here. I have something to tell you. A secret. Don’t look at me; just listen. What I look like, who I am, you don’t need to know that. All you need to know is what I’m about to say. Think of it as confession minus the priest and the Hail Marys. Think of it as a way of sharing a piece of me without actually having to share myself. The exhibit Add, Subtract and Multiply: Paintings by Liz Noble will open Monday, Nov. 10, at Foster Hall Gallery on the LSU campus. The show will run through Friday, Nov. 21, closing with a 6-8 p.m. reception on that day. It seems a natural: “Dracula” opening its three-weekend run at Baton Rouge Little Theater on Halloween night. The expectation is for the audience to gasp and shudder. But laugh? Sorry, Count Dracula. In more ways than one, modern society has driven a stake through your heart. BRLT’s production, directed by Keith Dixon, is visually lush and true to the Bram Stoker story set in late-Victorian London. |
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