Save on FirstWorks tickets
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Projo Arts Blog |
November 6
Save on tickets to the last two offerings from the FirstWorks festival. Tickets to Cirque Mechanics, which comes to the Providence Performing Arts Center Nov. 14, are half price this Sunday, Nov. 8. Call 421-2787, promotional code "FirstWorks." And bring a friend who has never seen the Providence Singers and save $10 each for the group's Nov. 15 concert for chorus and percussion at Beneficent Congregational Church. The show is at 3 p.m. Email marketing@providencesingers.org. for the discount password.
WHERE THE MONEY WENT: Stories,
Men lead precarious public lives: domination is tacitly expected, but is outwardly shunned. Among tenuous human connections, the ideal man shifts without severing. But how does one tread an invisible line? Canty analyzes domain through several male protagonists, and his concept finds its expression in real estate, a trade that figures heavily in the collection. His symbolic representation of domain is the home -- the place where a man is insulated from a rough and oppressive world, but which keeps him segregated, alone inside himself. Canty's downtrodden heroes face this dilemma above all else.
November 5
Citing an unspecified "personal family matter" Rob Thomas has postponed a scheduled performance at the Mohegan Sun Arena on Saturday until Friday, December 18th. All tickets purchased for the original date will be honored for the later date, according to a Mohegan Sun press release.
"The Price of Malice" (Minotaur, 308 pages, $24.99) by Archer Mayor returns us to Joe Gunther, head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, and his trusty if quirky sidekicks: blunt cop Willy Kunkle; impulsive Samantha Martens, who at the moment is Willy's lover and a good cop; and Lester Spinney, happily married, a father and built like a stork.
November 4
Here's one for the "Better Late Than Never" file. More than a month after Arnie Zimmerman's urban extravaganza "Inner City" opened at the RISD Museum, the museum has finally released its catalog for the exhibit. The 40-page publication features plenty of photographs, along with an essay and interviews by the RISD Museum's contemporary art curator, Judith Tannenbaum.
Though small by traditional standards, the catalog does a good job of documenting the exhibit, which conjures up a miniature rust-belt city, complete with pint-size apartments, office buildings, bridges and a cast of doll-size citizens -- all made of ceramic stoneware. The catalog also includes shots of the first two versions of the show, which made its debut in 2007 at the Lisbon Architectural Triennial. (It was later shown at the national ceramics museum in Leeuwarden, Holland.) The RISD show, which was developed in collaboration with Portuguese architect Tiago Montepegado, runs through Jan. 3. (The catalog, meanwhile, sells for $16.50 at risd/works.) In the meantime, check out this You Tube video, in which Zimmerman talks about his work (including "Inner City). You might also want to read the story I wrote for the Journal's Arts section. [Photo: RISD Museum]
The community singing session known as Unisong will be held Wednesday night at the Rhode Island Philmarmonic Music School, 667 Waterman Ave., East Providence, at 7 p.m. (The site was incorrectly reported in Wednesday's Journal.) Clarice LaVerne Thompson, a music educator, composer and Brown Unversity professor, will lead the warm-up session, and Trinity Rep actress Rachael Warren will lead all comers in song. Admission is $5; for more informatino, go to www.unisong.net.
Bon Jovi may not be hitting Gillette Stadium, in Foxboro, Mass., until July 24, 2010, but tickets are already going on sale - in fact, if you play your cards right you can get them starting Thursday. According to a statement from Gillette Stadium, fans who pre-order Bon Jovi's next record, "The Circle," through Ticketmaster between Thursday at 10 a.m. and Sunday at 10 p.m. can buy a download of the record for $10.84 and up to eight tickets. The disc goes on sale Nov. 10. Tickets go on sale to American Express card holders Monday, Nov. 9, at 10 a.m. They'll be available to everyone else on Mon., Nov. 16, at 10 a.m. Tickets range from $39.50 to $127.50 and will be available at the Gillette Stadium box office, all Ticketmaster locations, by calling (800) 745-3000, the Ticketmaster Express self-service line (866) 448-7849 or at Ticketmaster.com. The Circle Tour will see Bon Jovi perform 130 shows in 35 countries over most of the next two years.
November 3
When Ray LaMontagne does a solo show, one of the side effects of not having a band onstage with him is, "I can't shut up." That's what he said Tuesday night at the Providence Performing Arts Center, and the New Hampshire native sure did talk a lot. After a pretty uncommunicative opening segment, LaMontagne had a Samuel Beckett-like one-sided conversation with an offstage guitar tech, told us about troubles with women ("They said if you look like a pit bull and sing like a bird, women will sleep with you. That's [expletive]"), his experiences as a carpenter ("I mainly just carried stuff") and an unsuccessful stint as an apple picker. And those were just the bits I can repeat. In between all that, though, he played some of the most beautiful and yet no-nonsense songs of the modern singer-songwriter era, full of American-roots influences and sharply observed lyrical details. Like Jackson Browne before him, LaMontagne's songs are more about the emotional spaces that come in between the major events, rather than the events themselves. But LaMontagne has a plain-spoken, almost but not quite cliched, way with words that draws the listener in. There were touches of Townes Van Zant and Neil Young in his work during the show, which encompassed material from his three albums, and the influence of the former was most obvious when (following a digression about LaMontagne's uncle, and seeing Van Zant with him) LaMontagne launched into a lovely version of Van Zant's gorgeous "Loretta," a song of romantic contentment, followed by LaMontagne's own "Winter Birds," an equally beautiful piece of New England-set pastoralism where natural and romantic imagery sat side-by-side in a tradtional yet seemingly new way. As LaMontagne hid under a cowboy hat for most of the show, it was incongruous to hear his voice - call it an incredibly loud whisper, for lack of a better term - coming from such an impassive spectre. His ability to emote credibly gave such simple moments as the ending of "Jolene" a power that a lesser performer couldn't hack. And the visual simplicity was accented by a small screen behind him, where a series of images - a gloomy canal, some railroad tracks, some abstractions - were projected. And that was it. Some of the songs missed Ethan Johns's excellent production touches from the recorded versions, and an hour-plus solo acoustic show is always going to feel a little long by the end. Still, LaMontagne finished strong, with the best-known stuff coming out at the end. Highlights in the alte going included the country influences and detail of "Jolene"; the Memphis soul-influenced hit "Trouble," with LaMontagne showing his greatest vocal power of the night; a just-hanging-together wave at "Shelter"; the shouting blues of "Henry Nearly Killed Me" and the encore of "All the Wild Horses," dedicated to his apple-picking compatriot as a memoir of wild youthful times. Opener David Gutter, the singer of the Maine-based Rustic Overtones, mixed solo and band material, including songs from the new band disc that comes out Saturday. His voice was strong - somehow simultaneously luminous and sandpaper-like. The songs worked best when they stuck to detail - the emotional wallow of "Oxygen" felt unearned. But the homesick-soldier blues of the band's "Dear Mr. President" was affecting; "The New Way Out," the title track from the new band disc, was a song of burgeoning possibility, and the solo song "Shorty" was an entertaining bit of cultural defamiliarization.
MOLLY IVINS: A Rebel Life,
Molly was Smith educated, with a junior year in Paris and an advanced degree from the Columbia School of Journalism. She was worldly, yet skillfully cultivated her down-home Southwestern story-telling image that reminded people of Mark Twain. She became a political raconteur, with a seamless delivery. She found her voice, first interpreting Lyndon Johnson, then the oil oligarchy, and finally the Bushes for her East Coast audience. Her insider's take on Texas culture and its influence on Washington fueled her career. Her speaking engagements multiplied. Molly was syndicated in 400 newspapers. Her books on Texas and the Bushes (Remember "Shrub"?) became bestsellers.
MASTER OF SHADOWS: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter
In addition to being the foremost artist of his day, Rubens, it turns out, was a top-notch spy, shuttling between Flanders and Spain, England, and France on behalf of his Queen Isabella, in the seemingly impossible task of sorting out the baroque intricacies of the religious and political conflicts of the day. Among the cast of characters here are Cardinal Richelieu, Britain's James I and Charles I, King Philip of Spain, and assorted Hapsburgs and functionaries from the Holy Roman Empire.
November 2
Jazz singer Daryl Sherman, a Woonsocket native living in New York, will be included on the soundtrack to the film "Johnny Mercer: The Dream's On Me," a documentary tribute to the songwriter executive-produced by Clint Eastwood and produced and directed by Bruce Ricker. The soundtrack includes Mercer songs performed by a variety of singers, including Ella Fitzgerald doing "Midnight Sun," Tony Bennett and Bono on a duet of "I Wanna Be Around," Queen Latifah on "Trav'lin Light" and Sherman singing "I Thought About You." The film will premiere Nov. 4 on Turner Classic Movies. It will be re-aired Nov. 18, also on TCM, and will be available on DVD Dec. 8.
LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER
"Twisted River" gives us everything Irving -- ornery characters, accidents of fate that echo down the generations, a labyrinthine plot line that grabs lightly at key moments in American history. Irving follows the intertwined fates of three generations of men in one family, beginning with the cook in a logging camp on Twisted River in New Hampshire in the 1950s. A logging accident, a love triangle, an accidental shooting, and a vengeful ex set the stage for all that follows.
October 31
BY RICK MASSIMO PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Method Man and Redman, two of the most prolific artists from the Wu-Tang Clan hip-hop collective, came to Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel Friday night on the heels of last spring's "Blackout! 2," the sequel to their first duo collaboration, "Blackout!," from 1999. And if 10 years was a long time to wait, they made it seem like the time flew by in their set opening for Snoop Doog (who was in fine form early in his set when I had to leave). Starting with three songs from the new disc - "Errbody Scream," "City Lights" and "A-Yo" - the Meth-&-Red chemistry was intact, with Method Man providing a gruff bark of a voice, Redman a more nasal staccato, various producers a lean-and-mean sound with sinister organ and sinuous beats, and a very pot-friendly ethos. After that, the duo turned to their back catalog, both with Wu-Tang and as partners, as well as their solo records - reaching back to 1992 for "Time 4 Sum Aksion" and 1994 for "4:20." The new and old material worked together side-by-side, although - I can't believe I'm saying this - it could have been louder in the crowded club. It was fairly straightforward, although the off-kilter beat of "Da Goodness" was a nice change of pace. And of course they paid tribute to their late Wu-mate Ol' Dirty Bastard, getting the crowd going on the hook of "Shimmy Shimmy Ya." Before launching into "Part II," the two rappers mentioned the other sequel on everyone's mind, claiming to be working on the movie "How High 2." (Later, Redman explained that he didn't understand why Universal was "sitting on this," saying that the original film had come in under budget and claiming it brought in $25 million and adding that they might make their own movie if it comes to that.) They got the crowd into a chant of "Blackout 2" and "How High 2" before finishing up with "Da Rockwilder," from the original "Blackout" disc. After the set, Redman also recounted his experiences in Providence, one of the first towns he played frequently as a solo artist, and said that the 10-year wait for "Blackout! 2" was because he and Method Man "don't need to drop an album; we live on the road," adding that record sales don't matter much in the Internet age anyway: "The game is going through changes." Still, he says he enjoys working with Method Man enough that "Blackout! 3" is already in the works, and that after finishing the sequel (!) to his "Muddy Waters" disc, he doesn't plan on recording solo again: "We'll be Cheech and Chongin' it," he said of himself and his partner. "We got a job to do; we gotta hold the balance" between underground hip-hop and commercial fluff, he said. "It's a big responsibility." rmassimo@projo.com / 277-7206
October 30
BY RICK MASSIMO The musical formula is pretty simple: grand, power ballad-like chord progressions over a hard-charging punk-pop tempo and beat. But on record, Disney Channel TV star ("Sonny With a Chance") Demi Lovato's voice gets squashed into a harsh rattle. In performance at the Dunkin' Donuts Center Friday night, though, it was a different story.
wrote, David continues to amaze and astound me with his growing stage skills and the glorious tone of his VOICE! (He looks awesome, too!) I am... Read the rest, write another...
THE PROFESSIONAL
All of Robert Parker's Spenser novels seem to begin with his erstwhile detective about to begin a new case after wrapping up another (much like the way Parker writes books these days), and "The Professional" is no exception. This time out, Spencer encounters four women who all had an affair with, and are now being blackmailed by, the same gigolo. Given his aura of roguish nobility, such a case seems right up his alley, even though none of the women know the con man's real name or how to find him.
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