Category: Arts & Humanities

Dear Editor: In the old Biochemistry Building is a group of famous murals by the American artist John Steuart Curry, painted from 1941-43….The University Planning Office and the state architects are planning renovation of the historic structure, not demolition, so the murals don’t have to be moved.

….I have proposed integrating students into the conservation of the murals. I let my students help in making murals, why not today in their preservation? Sounds like a good idea, except the state wants to give the contract to an out-of-state firm.

Maurice Ravel is easily the most imaginative and idiosyncratic of the French Impressionists, at least when it comes to opera. Those who doubt that may want to attend University Opera’s production of “L’enfant et les sortileges,” which opened Friday before about 250 people in Mills Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus.

Did you hear the one about the law professor who wrote a book about lawyer jokes that wasn’t so funny?

Sorry. There is no punch line. It’s a true story. Marc Galanter, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, has given us “Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes & Legal Culture,” a book that uses a vast and impressive collection of past and present lawyer jokes to help identify and explain both the causes and results of our national love-hate (these days mostly “hate”) relationship with the legal profession.

This will be a busy week for classical music, and a good week for reminding the listening public just how much of the classical music scene in Madison, when it comes to presenters, performers and even composers, is owed directly or indirectly to the University of Wisconsin School of Music.

Swirls of color, writhing bodies and confetti cannons welcome us to Carnivale at the beginning of “The Rover,” the latest offering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s University Theatre.

In some ways it’s a long 150-minute ride, but also one full of energy, humor and enough technical eye candy to keep us entertained throughout the trip.

Karlos Moser — the acclaimed former director of the University Opera for nearly 40 years — returns to campus and Music Hall with a premiere concert of song cycles Sunday.

An online auction that begins Nov. 11 will likely raise less money, with bidding on the 39 cows starting at $1,000 apiece.

Sixty percent of the proceeds will go toward construction of the $78 million UW Children’s Hospital. The remaining 40 percent will go to a charity designated by each cow’s sponsor.

Here is a schedule of events for “Paris in Performance,” an interdisciplinary exploration of music, dance, poetry, lectures, film and art re-creating French political and artistic visions from 1870 to 1920.

All events except the UW opera performance are free and do not require tickets. Visit the UW School of Music Web site� for details.

University of Wisconsin pianist Catherine Kautsky has visited Paris many times since she first went there at 13. But there is one time she remembers most fondly and vividly.

She had a sabbatical in 1994-95, and she and her philosophy professor husband, and their two children, had decided to go to Paris because they thought that’s where they would live the good life.

….Now, with the support of the UW Arts Institute, she has a new project to bring the wonders of French music and culture, especially art about childhood and absurdist art, to a broad Madison public.

The reviewer, Rob Nixon, is the Rachel Carson professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

This Saturday, which happens to be UW Arts Night Out, a campus-wide celebration of the visual and performing arts, features one of the concerts on my “must hear” list for this season.

Saturday night at 8 in Mills Hall, the UW’s Pro Arte String Quartet will perform a surefire program of great masterworks, all meant to celebrate anniversaries.

When director Norma Saldivar first gathered the children’s cast of the play “Esperanza Rising,” she brought family pictures. There were pictures of her parents, who emigrated from Mexico to Chicago Heights in the 1950s, where her dad worked in the steel mills.

She’s now an associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Drama and heads the graduate directing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

By Jacob Stockinger

There’s a lot more classical music being performed this week, including an all-Mozart program and two free guest artist concerts at the University of Wisconsin School of Music…

The Madison World Music Festival is expanding in a volatile world.

Performers who are also global travelers seem to sense the danger in international politics, and that cultural unrest is affecting Madison’s free festival, which runs Thursday through Sunday at the Wisconsin Memorial Union, for better and worse.

Some international musicians want to perform in America because of its controversial role in international affairs. Others choose not to, for similar reasons.

It takes a village to put on a global performance gala, which is why 11 people make up the committee that planned the Madison World Music Festival.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, thousands of music lovers will flood the Memorial Union Terrace for free performances thanks to their hard work. Dancing along with the crowd will be Esty Dinur, one of the founding organizers of the third-annual festival at UW.

Madison movie, kind of:

We can claim some ownership of “The Last Kiss,” since the new Zach Braff comedy-drama was shot partially in Madison. (If you don’t blink, you can see a shot of the Capitol in the trailer.) But aside from looking for your house in the background, the movie looks like it’s worth seeing for a smart and insightful look at relationships, and is getting some strong early reviews.

(Lakeshore Entertainment’s Tom Rosenberg and Andre Lamal, both UW-Madison alumni, filmed scenes for their movie on campus as well as downtown in June 2005.)

This weekend marks the centennial of the birth of pianist Gunnar Johansen, who served from 1939 to 1976 as the first artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin School of Music, where he gave private lessons, taught group classes and performed solo, chamber and orchestral music.

Events will take place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and all events will be free and open to the public.

….there are Godard fans like University of Wisconsin Cinematheque programmer Tom Yoshikami, who was inspired not only to study film by Godard, but to learn French so he didn’t have to rely on the English subtitles. That makes him the perfect person to program an extensive retrospective of Godard’s work for the Cinematheque fall film series.

The real center of Ghost Hunters is not, as its subtitle suggests, William James, the American pioneer in psychology and researcher in the paranormal, but Leonora Piper, a Boston housewife and mother and paranormal phenomenon.

This week, the summer classical music season winds down and the fall classical season begins.

The former will take place at the 17th annual Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, and the latter will be at the University of Wisconsin School of Music’s Mills Hall on Monday at 7:30 p.m., when the Faculty Concert Series kicks off with the always popular annual Karp Family Labor Day Concert.

One of Madison’s longtime residents is also one of its least-well-known artists.

But that may be about to change with a show called “Wild Edges,” which opens Saturday and runs through Nov. 5 at the University of Wisconsin Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave.

In case you had forgotten, last week’s torrential rains were a reminder that, being in the Upper Midwest, we do not have an endless summer here in Madison. Things get gray, things get cold, and people head indoors.

Let’s all get an early jump on Thanksgiving, then, and be thankful that fall’s also the time when the concert scene revs up again to greet us. This one looks especially promising….

Sept. 19, Tool, Kohl Center: Expect a feast for the eyes as well as the ears as the innovative and unsettling art-metal band plays what may be the hardest show the Kohl Center has ever hosted (aside from KISS, perhaps).

Cubism has always had a bit of an identity problem. As art, it was never quite what or who you thought it was. The fractured human and natural forms had a cockeyed elusiveness, like a guy turning the other cheek, giving you the cold shoulder and the evil eye all at once.

You’d hardly think a Russian — a guy from a social system symbolized by a quasi-cubist hammer and sickle clanking along for the “communist” good — could make this all better for the masses, cultured or otherwise.

That’s why it’s something of a revelation to encounter a persuasive aesthetic answer to several vexing isms, artistic and political, in “Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity,” opening Saturday at the Chazen Museum of Art and running through Nov. 26.

IT HAD already won a prestigious Peabody Award, and last weekend “Two Days in October,” the documentary film based on Madison author David Maraniss’ acclaimed 2003 book, “They Marched Into Sunlight,” captured a Creative Arts Emmy Award.

….The documentary, like the book, focuses on two days in October 1967 in two distinctly different settings – a fierce battle in Vietnam, and the UW-Madison campus, where the anti-war movement was peaking.

It is called “provenance,” which isÃ? the historical record and ownership credentials of works of art and antiquity.

And provenance, the artistic equivalent of pedigree, has become perhaps the hottest, most controversial issue in the art world.

It may be a question of Greek or Roman antiquities that were illegally excavated, sold and exported abroad.

(Chazen Museum of Art director Russell Panczenko is quoted)

For the first time in three years, ticket prices for the University of Wisconsin School of Music Faculty Concert Series,� which will for the second year again be focused on Thursday and Saturday evenings so faculty members can perform with other groups, will increase.

Individual tickets will rise just over 22 percent, from $9 to $11 for general admission, with admission for seniors and non-UW-Madison students going from $7 to $8, for an increase of just over 14 percent. (Inflation for the past three years has averaged about 3 percent a year.)

….”Everything is going up, including printing programs and having the Memorial Union handle computerized ticket sales,” said concert manager Rick Mumford.

On the rump of one of the 101 fiberglass cows dotting the area as public art this summer, some loser has deemed it hilarious to spray paint a vulgarity involving the word bull.
Emily Gritt shakes her head.

“It’s sad, very sad, but sort of funny how stupid they are,” she says.

She gets out a sponge and some paint thinner. The graffiti vanishes with a few rubs.

“I love it when it comes off so easy,” she says.

Gritt, 21, a UW-Madison senior and art education major, has one of the more unusual summer jobs.

If you’re looking for a fun and educational field trip to amuse the children, and maybe yourself, on a sunny late summer day, here’s an idea that also involves some sleuthing and discovery.

Michael Goldberg, the acting director of the Overture Center of the Arts, is one of three finalists who will be interviewed by resident arts groups and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz for the high-profile job of the center’s new director.

….Goldberg is a long-time veteran of the Madison arts scene. He was an assistant director and director of the Wisconsin Union Theater for 25 years before retiring, and then becoming a vice-president for programming and development at the $210-million Overture Center, which is the state’s largest performing arts presenter.

The real center of “Ghost Hunters” is not, as its subtitle suggests, William James, the American pioneer in psychology and researcher in the paranormal, but Leonora Piper, a Boston housewife, mother and paranormal phenomenon. Her astounding capacities as a medium captured the attention, and often the approbation, of not only James but a crowd of 19th-century scientists.

Many art show openings and receptions take place at the beginning of the month, as you can see from the accompanying gallery listings. But this is an especially big weekend over at the Memorial Union on the University of Wisconsin campus.

That’s because the Memorial Union will open a show of historic photos to accompany the 75th anniversary of the Wisconsin Hoofers, which bills itself as the largest inland sailing club in the world. There will be other activities including a reunion, demonstrations and a film.

Poetry performances and Latin music are planned to celebrate the creation of a new diversity office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The “multicultural extravaganza,” called Rhythm and Poetry Sin Fronteras, will be Friday at 7 p.m. at the Majestic Theatre, 115 King St. It will highlight the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative (OMAI).

Veteran satirist Harry Shearer — best known as the voice of Mr. Burns and other characters on “The Simpsons” — told a national audience on Sunday that Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) canceled his show because the statewide network’s officials “were displeased with the political content” of his liberal-leaning national public radio series.

The open road beckons. The feel of the asphalt under the tires, the hum of the engine, the promise of some new adventure around the next bend.

But with gas prices topping $3 a gallon, who can afford a road trip this summer?

Luckily, the UW-Cinematheque is stepping in with its latest summer film series, a salute to the American road movie. And you won’t have to pay for gas, or a motel room for the night, or even those high-carb cheese puffs you like to munch on while you’re driving.

Most summer theater tends to be light, airy and little more than superfluous entertainment. The University Theatre’s production of Terrence McNally’s “Master Class,” thankfully, turns that equation on its head.

Telly Leung, who recently completed a year-long run as Boq in the sit-down production of Wicked in Chicago, will co-star in the Four Seasons Theatre’s upcoming presentation of Sweeney Todd at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

Tuesday would have been an excellent night for the Wisconsin Union Theater to send out its seats for a cleaning. Because while hundreds paid for their seats, few actually used them.

Instead, the audience spent the night on its feet to see Brazilian superstar Seu Jorge and his powerhouse band unleash an electrifying and highly danceable show.

Today’s “What They’re Listening To” surveys recordings of 16th and 17th century music in late- and post-Renaissance Spain.

It is the third of three installments of CD recommendations on early Spanish music by John W. Barker, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of medieval history. Barker is also a nationally recognized record and music critic who sits on the Madison Early Music Festival advisory board.

“Early Music From the Iberian Peninsula: Spain and the Age of Discovery” is the theme of this year’s festival, to run July 8-15.

If you happened to be on the Memorial Union Terrace this past Tuesday night, you got your appetite whetted for Seu Jorge’s upcoming show next Tuesday indoors at the Union Theater.

It’s like slapping a “natural” label on a box of sugar-coated cereal, says Joshua Greene, of the way the word “spiritual” has been maligned.

The 1971 UW alum, who has turned his life into a study of religion and human nature, laments the “bastardizing of spiritual principles” by “another brand of commercial selfishness” — the gurus, books and events that fuel the self-help industry. It is a field full of self-absorption, one where few people truly put their beliefs ahead of self-interest.

Who is an exception? Greene’s latest work is “Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison” (John Wiley & Sons, $25.95), a project that frames the youngest Beatle as a sincere and devout guy who was way ahead of his time.

You might think of John Wilde’s art as a mix of the subconscious and the superconscious.

Of course you can draw your own conclusions at “Things of Nature and the Nature of Things,”Ã? a retrospective of the longtime UW professor and area artist who died March 9 at 86. The exhibit opens Saturday in the Mayer Gallery of the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art and runs through Aug. 20.

For those who consider cow-tipping a sport, what happened at the Kohl Center early Thursday was not very sportsmanlike.

Three whimsically decorated artificial cows, part of the Milk Marketing Board’s CowParade Wisconsin, were found lying on their sides Thursday on the concrete sidewalk in front of the arena.

Dozens of flashy fiberglass cows will descend on Downtown Madison Saturday morning, covered in everything from the American flag to Georgia O’Keeffe paintings to picturesque vistas of the Wisconsin countryside.
It’s the beginning of CowParade Wisconsin, an international event that mixes community, charity, artistic creation and, of course, colorful cows.

The artsy herd coming to the Madison area consists of about 100 life-size cow sculptures, which state artists have designed and painted in recent months to represent facets of life in Wisconsin.

One of the cows, designed by UW-Madison senior Emily Gritt, wears a UW Marching Band uniform. Calling her design “Moo Rah Rah Wisconsin,” Gritt says her cow will be visible in front of the Kohl Center on Saturday.

The Isthmus Jazz Festival has shed its indoor confines to embrace the natural risks that befit an art form based on improvisation. Somehow this feels right, especially in a city that defines its urbane lifestyle and politics through its environmental realities.

After losing its access and time slot in the Overture Center, the city’s fortress of cultural control, Madison’s largest annual jazz gathering will now make music amid nature’s vagaries on the shore of Lake Mendota, with all its potential for pollution and storms or blissful, sparkling harmony. This weekend’s fest digs are the Memorial Union Terrace, 800 Langdon St.

Perhaps the rough textures and shimmering prisms of surface reflections will surprise you.

Perhaps the less-than-mammoth scale will draw you in and surprise you with intimacy, even delicacy.