Discoveries: Arts and Culture

In her American Conservatory Theater debut, artistic director Pam MacKinnon continues her career-long exploration of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee ( Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ). In this wildly imaginative and satirical comedy, a newly retired couple picnic and squabble on a beach about their life together, when they are interrupted by two human-sized, English-speaking lizards. Are these creatures an evolutionary miracle or a threat? And which couple is the greater risk to the other? As the two pairs begin to communicate, they come uneasily together, discovering how transitions in life can spark terror and restlessness in any creature of habit. -- one review.  Edward Albee’s “Seascape” has been around since 1975 and won the playwright his second Pulitzer Prize for drama. Even so, one might expect a play about human-sized lizards comparing notes with an older human couple to be a disorienting experience. But for Pam MacKinnon, American Conservator...

Went to reading in European Studies department, Moses Hall, UC Berkeley  of Swedish poet Bruno K. Oijer, the title of the presentation, the title of one of his poems: “Even if Everything Ends”  He  did spend some time in Berkeley in the 70’s, likes beat poetry and rock and punk music…Victoria Haggblom has translated three volumes of poetry…she got her degree BA at Columbia University. She has lived for some time now in the US, currently in Berkeley. She studied with Rilke? Lesser who has transl Transomer.  She won Scandinavian Foundation Prize.   A friend gave her his poem, and she translated it so other friends could enjoy the work… // I liked the poems.//  Oijer has been one of the most popular and influential Swedish poets for decades, and is as well known in Scandinavia as Tomass Transtromer. He is in his late 60s?    He is also a musician, plays in rock and punk bands.  The Three Volumes are  after his first published book, ...

This Four Legends from the Kelevala   is one of the most beautiful of Sibelius' compositions I have ever heard, and the audience concurred that with a Finnish conductor, we have been the recipients of new insights and nuances in the music .   The program:  Lemminkainen and the Maidens of the Island; Lemminkainen in Tuonele; The Swan of Tuonela; and Lemminkainen's Return . This 45 minute  long piece concluded the program.  In the first portion Salonen opened with the Icelandic composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Metacosmos (2017) in its West Coast Premiere. The European premiere takes place in Berlin later this month.  Salonen  comments on the independence of Icelandic artists which is envied by everyone.  This 15 minute piece was followed by R. Strauss, " Also Sprach Zarathustra ", Opus 30 (1896)(34 minutes)  which was a variant in terms of what Salonen did in evoking its meanings and tonality in his conducting...The title of a loose "inte...

England, 1959. Free-spirited widow Florence Green (Emily Mortimer, Mary Poppins Returns) follows her lifelong dream by opening a bookshop in a conservative coastal town. While bringing about a cultural awakening through works by Ray Bradbury and Vladimir Nabokov, she earns the polite but ruthless opposition of a local grand dame (Patricia Clarkson, Sharp Objects) and the support of a reclusive, book-loving widower (Bill Nighy, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel). As Florence’s obstacles amass, she reminds herself that a town without a bookshop is no town at all. Based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s acclaimed novel, The Bookshop is an elegant rendering of personal resolve and the battle for the soul of a community. What a lovely film!   I totally agree; one is never alone in a bookshop, or in a library, or with a book in hand.  A book can be an excellent friend and companion.  Without books, life would not be worth living.  Life not recorded in a book has not b...