THIS WEEK
ENSEMBLE MONTEREY steps out with “Wally the Beard,” Bernard Herrmann’s score for the March 1, 1965, episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Herrmann wrote film scores for Orson Welles before working for Hitchcock, a large corpus of concert works and one extraordinary opera, Wuthering Heights. The SANTA CRUZ CHAMBER PLAYERS go for Baroque in Aptos. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra opens at PACREP’S Circle Theatre. Music returns to the HENRY MILLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY’S “Mothership” in Big Sur. Carey Crockett’s UNICORN THEATRE surfaces after a long nap with Rob Foster’s 26 HIGH STREET-A ‘JACK THE RIPPER’ MYSTERY. The Forest Theater Foundation hosts CARMEL POPS!, this Saturday; it’s a fundraiser that features student musicians, actors and dancers, and benefits their school programs. For details, click HERE For other events and links, click our CALENDAR
CRITICS: THE HIGHER CALLING
LOCAL REVIEWERS OF LIVE PERFORMING ARTS—with a few truly professional exceptions—fall flat on their faces thanks (or no thanks) to a fundamental failure to grasp the essential demands of the job. Strangely, many of them find favor with some Monterey Bay Area publishers, but bring little or no training or discipline to the job.
Two weeks ago on this page, we carried a link to an op-ed in the New York Times by its Chief Music Critic, Anthony Tommasini, in which he underscored exactly what is wrong with today’s reviewers: they write about themselves instead of the subject at hand. Yet instead of using the opportunity to examine his craft, Tommasini—you guessed it—wrote about himself. To read the entire op-ed, click HERE
THE DREADED CONCERT COUGHING FIT
JESSICA DUCHEN gets into a cold sweat just thinking about it. Click HERE
THE ODD ORIGIN OF AMERICAN WOMAN
GUESS WHO’S unexpected hit.
WHY DID HUMANS START MAKING ART?
JONATHAN JONES ponders the possible explanations. Click HERE
WHEN DID HUMANS START SPEAKING WORDS?
AGAINST OTHER THEORIES, Daniel Everett pushes the time frame much further back—to nearly two million years, long before the rise of Homo sapiens. Click HERE
THELONIOUS MONK AT 100
TOM VITALE REFLECTS on the high priest of bebop. Click HERE
ROUND MIDNIGHT, Paris, 1954.
FRESH REVIEWS
MONTEREY SYMPHONY season opened with ‘greatest hits’ by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. ESPRESSIVO plays Elgar, Bartók & JS Bach. Click HERE
COMING UP SOON
UCSC to host Pacific Rim Music Festival. MPC THEATRE will open Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. THE LISTENING PLACE READERS THEATER books Over the River and Through the Woods. PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE coming to Carmel. HIDDEN VALLEY to host Alma Nova and Early Music recitals. Pianist JEROME ROSE to play Santa Cruz.
Scott MacClelland, editor; Rebecca CR Brooks, associate editor