Whats-Happening: Page 539

Pressing On

In the Schnitzer’s new exhibit, Under Pressure, more than contemporary art is on display, but also a challenging reflection of our times

Visual Arts
‘The Pastoral or Arcadian State: Illegal Alien’s Guide to Greater America,’ Enrique Chagoya, 2006

Playing devil’s advocate, I ask art collector Jordan Schnitzer how contemporary art can possibly fulfill us in an age of flickering screens and attention spans. Immediately I regret siding with the devil, even if only momentarily. Schnitzer’s response is so passionate, so righteous and, frankly, so absolutely correct that his indignation at the thought that art could ever be irrelevant reverberates through the phone.  Continue reading →

Selma – a study on MLK Jr. and the work of leading

Film

Ava DuVernay’s Selma starts off so calmly that, despite what history promises, it’s a shock when the first moment of violence arrives. Four little girls walk down the stairs of a church. You know what this means. But what happens next occurs in a flash, a moment never explained.  What’s to explain? They’re there, and then they’re gone. It’s like the bottom drops out of the world. At that point, a man in my theater began to cry and I’m not sure he stopped.  Continue reading →

A Year of Salads!

Gardening

Since I work at home a lot of the time I frequently eat lunch there. Lunch usually means salad, and many of the components come from my own garden. For the past three years I’ve been recording, month-by-month, what goes from the garden into my salads. Picking garden greens for lunch on a nearly daily basis, all year round, turns out to be one of the real pleasures of having a vegetable garden, and I probably eat salad more often because of it. Continue reading →

Nether Friend Nor Foe

Netherfriends

Music
Netherfriends

Even via email, I got the sense musician Shawn Rosenblatt (aka Netherfriends) enjoys a good put-on. Listen to his music and hear a keen pop sensibility, a voracious musical sense of humor and stylistic attention-deficit disorder. In 2010, Rosenblatt started the 50 Songs 50 States Project. “I started a year-long project where I played a show and recorded a new song in all 50 states,” Rosenblatt says. “For Oregon, I played a show and wrote a song in Portland.” Continue reading →

Music Today, Music Tomorrow

From the contemporary Music Today Festival to a John Williams’ score

Music
Branford Marsalis

Of all the music events happening in Eugene this month, perhaps none is more valuable than the University of Oregon’s Music Today Festival. In contrast to most classical music institutions, which over the past century have turned into moldering antiquities, endlessly recycling well-known works by long dead Europeans, the Music Today Festival is devoted to incubating the creative work of Oregon’s next generation of composers. Continue reading →

Brotherly Love

The Wood Brothers

Music
The Wood Brothers

Oliver Wood says you need to see his brother play the bass. “My brother is a world-class upright bass player,” he boasts. Wood, alongside his brother Chris Wood and drummer Jano Rixx, is one-third of hard-touring roots-Americana act, The Wood Brothers, who return to Eugene in support of 2013’s critically acclaimed record The Muse. Continue reading →

Go Ducks Go video

MusicSports

New blues rock video pays tribute to Oregon Ducks in honor of making the national championship game today. No credits on the video but we rcognize one Eugene musician,  Paul Biondi on sax. Anybody else? UPDATE: We hear from Paul Biondi that The Revelators recorded this song at the new Ninkasi Studios in the Whiteaker. Musicians include John Swan, Biondi, Skip Jones, Byron Case and Rick Markstrom. Continue reading →