Discoveries: Arts and Culture

This was brilliant and so relevant.  I cannot say more.  I was moved to tears.  The couple tried to hard, and the protagonist tried to achieve the Amercan dream, and went back to his "bones" when forced to...a lesson for all of us. Well enacted, tasteful and topical. Amir Kapoor is living the American Dream—an upper East Side apartment, Italian suits, and the promise of becoming partner at the law firm. But when he and his wife Emily, an artist influenced by Islamic imagery, host a dinner party for their friends and colleagues, lies and deception threaten to shatter Amir’s carefully constructed life of cultural assimilation.  Playwright Ayad Akhtar won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for this engrossing and combustible drama that probes the complexity of identity, the place of faith in today’s world, and the hidden prejudices still alive in liberal society  Director Kimberly Senior comes to Berkeley Rep to stage the provocative play that she shepherded from Chica...

Experienced pure joy this evening at the Philharmonia Baroque holiday concert at the Congregational Church in Berkeley, which was looking festive. Here are some excerpts from the " Ode for St Cecilia's Day , text by John Dryden"A Song for St. Cecelia's Day".  Dryden's text is an amalgamation of Newtownian physics, Biblical apocalypse, and a yougn person's guide to the baroque orchestra...beginning with the "jarring atomes " of creation and condluing with the trumpet of Last Judgement. Like "the Messiah", Cecelia was composed in ten days ! . First presented at Covent Garden 1736, Music by the incomparable Handel(for the Holiday season)    Cecilia is, as you know the patron saint of Music (18th century) . Pope Piux  IX invoked her name in the resotration of Gregorian chant and a cappella choral...counterpoint to the excesses of symphonic and operatic church music. November 22 is her "feast day". The signed and dated manusc...