Daily Loaf

Rarely are instrument and musician so closely associated that they become nigh inseparable in the minds of fans worldwide. Try this: When I say cellist, you say … Yo-Yo Ma. Perhaps the most famous man to bring bow to strings visits Ruth Eckerd Hall this fall, when he plays Bach’s Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites. Ma’s also got to be one of history’s hardest working musicians: He has 75 albums under his belt — 15 of which are Grammy winners — countless collaborators (including my personal favorite, Read the rest of this entry »

With the loud, dumb and often-disappointing summer movie season behind us, I go into fall with some optimism. There’s a good amount of work by reliable writers and filmmakers, which gives the season a lot of potential. And it’s our first bombardment of Oscar Bait, with many of the titles here angling for awards come the end of the year.

Read the rest of this entry »

A traveling exhibition organized by Chattanooga’s Hunter Museum of American Art, I Heard A Voice: The Art of Lesley Dill brings nearly 30 of the acclaimed contemporary artist’s works — with an emphasis on sculptural installations — to St. Petersburg. Poetic and psychologically charged, Dill’s constructions often combine fabric and figures (or dress forms) with text to spellbinding effect; works featured in I Heard A Voice respond to poetry by Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu and Franz Kafka. Expect to be moved by the artist’s ideas and awed by her craft. Oct. 10-Dec. 27, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 727-896-2667, fine-arts.org.

Pictured right: Dill’s Breathing Leaves (2004). Ink, thread, glue on tea-stained fabric. Courtesy of the Artist and Equinox Gallery, Vancouver, Canada

More of Lesley Dill’s artwork after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

August Wilson’s best play, Fences, is about Troy Maxson, an African-American rubbish collector whose bitterness and sense of lost opportunities make him a problematic husband and father.

Set in Pittsburgh in 1957, it’s also about a time when new opportunities for black citizens were slowly becoming real, but the indignities of the past were too raw to be forgotten.

As in all Wilson’s plays, the language is poetic, the characters are indelible, and the metaphors — including, in this case, the trumpet carried by Troy’s brain-damaged brother Gabriel — are brilliant. What happens to a dream deferred? Wilson’s answer is riveting.

American Stage, Sept. 25-Oct. 11, 163 Third St. N, St. Petersburg, 727-823-PLAY, www.americanstage.org.

Read more CL’s Fall Arts Preview.

It’s fitting that one of the most high-profile events of the fall arts season is a musical adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, because lately it’s seemed we’ve all been headed down the rabbit hole. The No-Bama crowd calls for the truth about healthcare, but traffics in outright lies. The president says the so-called public option is a key aspect of his plan, then says it isn’t, then says it is. The St. Petersburg Times wins a Pulitzer for PolitiFact, then backs a mayoral candidate, Bill Foster, who believes in such “facts” as this statement: “None of Darwin’s theories can be replicated or proven in a laboratory…”
So what’s all this got to do with the fall arts season? Easy. If you’re starved for the truth, start listening to artists. Read the rest of this entry »