MuseFlashes

Compiled By BONNIE WELLS

Published on November 09, 2007

Raising The Dead at UMass next week

Continuing with the Halloween spirit, the University of Massachusetts intends to raise The Dead next weekend - The Grateful Dead, that is.

On the 35th anniversary of the Dead's landmark albums "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty," UMass is hosting the conference "Unbroken Chain: The Grateful Dead in Music, Culture and Memory." The gathering of authors, musicians and members of the Grateful Dead's inner circle and extended family Nov. 16-18 combines academic inquiry and performance in a multi-disciplinary, multimedia program, including gallery exhibits, film screenings, performance art and participatory oral history gatherings. The weekend also includes two concerts open to the public.

First up, Nov. 16 at 8 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center Concert Hall, the "American Beauty Project," is a special tribute concert to the Dead's album by the same name as well as "Working Man's Dead," both of which marked a departure from the band's original jam sound toward an exploration of folk and bluegrass traditions.

Last January, an all-star lineup of musicians that Relix magazine called "a dream team of performers" gave the premiere of the concert at the World Financial Center's Winter Garden in New York City. The project is the brainchild of artistic director and producer David Spelman, who was responsible for similar tributes to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

Tickets for the "American Beauty Project" are $35, $25 and $15; $15 for five-college students and youth under 17.

The second concert takes place Nov. 17 at 8 in the Concert Hall and features the Dark Star Orchestra, performing Grateful Dead classics. The group has been touring nationwide for 10 years, drawing this comment from Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir: "A couple of times when I had my back to John [Kadlecik] onstage and he started to sing, I had this weird sense that it was Jerry [Garcia]."

Tickets to the Dark Star Orchestra concert are $30, $25, $20; $20 for five-college students and youth under 17. Tickets for both concerts are available at the FAC Box Office at 545-2511. For more information about the concerts and conference, visit www.fine artscenter.com.

Grace Church unveils choral work project

Talk about a joyful noise.

Saturday night, Nov. 17, at 7:30 p.m., Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst unveils its "Creation Mass," a collaborative choral composition featuring jazz and gospel music by gospel scholar and UMass professor emeritus of music Horace Clarence Boyer, with additional movements by eight other local composers, all members of Grace.

Organizers say the choral work was inspired by the Paul Winter "Missa Gaia." Boyer wrote the "Ordinary of the Mass" - the customary Mass movements of Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei - while other composers contributed hymn arrangements and improvisatory movements.

The roster of composers includes Brooks Williams, Robert Jonas, Richard Damon, Tyran Grillo, Sam Lowry, Lloyd Craighill and Diana Ransom Brown. Elizabeth Hart, well-known local conductor and director of music at the church, has coordinated the project, composed music for the work and will conduct the performance.

The piece features a jazz band, including Grammy-winning pianist Jeff Holmes, bassist Avery Sharpe, drummer Alvin Terry and saxophonist Fred Tillis. There will be African dancing and drumming, a Japanese bamboo flute, handbells and a violin made from the wood of the katsura tree that formerly stood on the church property. There will be oversized puppets made by Grace Church adults and children, video images of creation and opportunities for the audience to join the singing.

The performance is free and open to the public in the church sanctuary off the Amherst Common.

Jewish identity explored in German film series

The North American premiere of the film "While All Germans Sleep" is included in a free Five College film and lecture series Nov. 14-18 in Amherst, highlighting the work of the late East German Jewish writer Jurek Becker.

Becker (1937-1997) spent his childhood in the Jewish ghetto of Lodz in Poland and survived the Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. His debut novel, "Jacob the Liar," was translated into 20 languages, securing his reputation worldwide. Many of Becker's novels, short stories and scripts for television and film productions explore Jewish identity.

The 1994 film "While all Germans Sleep," directed by Frank Beyer, is based on Becker's short story "The Wall." It follows the chilling journey of two young boys who leave a Polish transit camp one night in 1942 to get some toys they left back in the ghetto. The film will be presented Nov. 14 at 4:15 p.m. in Dwight Hall 101 at Mount Holyoke College, and again at 7:30 p.m. at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst.

The series, organized by the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts, continues as follows:

Nov. 15, 4 and 7:30 p.m. - "Bronstein's Children" in Stirn Auditorium at Amherst College.

Nov. 16, 4 p.m. - "Shortcut to Istanbul" at the UMass Max Kade Center, Thatcher.

Nov. 18, 2 p.m. - "Jacob the Liar" at the Amherst Cinema Arts Center. $7.50; $6.50 students and seniors; $5.50 cinema-center members.

Becker's widow, Christine Becker, will be on hand to introduce the films, which are shown with English subtitles.

The series is open to the public, and, except where indicated, admission is free. For more information, visit the Web site www.umass.edu/defa.

Music at Amherst hosts all-Brahms concert

The Music at Amherst concert series presents conductor and pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn in an all-Brahms concert Nov. 10 at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall at Amherst College.

Solzhenitsyn, son of the Nobel Prize-winning author and historian Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, is music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia with an active performance schedule throughout the world. Tickets are $25; $20 seniors and Amherst College employees; $10 students; $6 Amherst College students. They may be purchased in advance at (413) 542-2195.

Monthly Song & Story Swap focuses on 'age'

"Age" is the theme for this month's "Song & Story Swap" hosted by the Pioneer Valley Folklore Society Sunday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at the Nacul Center, 592 Main St. in Amherst. All types of storytelling and singing are welcome at the swap, and those also serve who only come to listen. The event is free, though donations are accepted.

The evening's guest performer is pantomime artist Chris Yerlig, aka Hoopoe. After studying at the Fool Time Circus School in his native England, Yerlig has been performing his mime, clown and magic shows all over the world for more than 20 years. He is also a member of the local Enchanted Circle Theater.

For swap information call Paul Kaplan at (413) 687-5002, or Jeff Lee at (413) 256-0433.

Slam legend Smith at Motherwoman's Mom's Night Out

Mother, grandmother, author and performance poet Patricia Smith will speak and perform at the third annual Mom's Night Out at the MotherWoman Cafe Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. at Union Station restaurant in Northampton.

The evening is presented by MotherWoman, an Amherst-based non-profit organization dedicated to supporting mothers in creating personal and social change for themselves, their families, their communities and the world. The Night Out, however, is all about Mom.

Dessert, coffee, a cash bar and silent auction are on the agenda as well as a talk and performance by Smith, who is a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. In addition to performing her poetry throughout North America and Europe, she appeared in the recently released film "Slamnation, and was a featured poet on the award-winning HBO series "Def Poetry Jam."

As an author, Smith has published several volumes of poetry as well as children's books, and is co-author of "Africans in America," the companion book to the PBS television series.

Her many honors include a Pushcart Prize and the Carl Sandburg Award.

The evening before Mom's Night Out, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m., Smith will host and perform at the second annual Women's Poetry Open Mic at el Mercado Cafe, 413 Main St. in Holyoke. A $15 donation at the door will benefit MotherWoman, Inc.

Tickets for Mom's Night Out are $35 if purchased in advance by calling (413) 253-8990 or visiting www.motherwoman.org; or $39 at the door. Limited scholarships to both events are available for low-income participants. To apply or for more information, call (413) 253-8990.

Film on the Peters map premieres next week

Anybody remember the 2001 West Wing episode that featured the Peters Projection Map? Though the real map, created in 1974 by German historian Arno Peters, is controversial among cartographers, the fictional proponents who gave the character Josh Lyman a presentation pretty much had him convinced of the importance of the the map, which shows land masses in proper size proportion.

Size matters, they argued. The Euro-centric Mercator Projection, developed in 1569 for nautical navigation, gives a distorted view of the relative size of land masses, showing Europe and North America much larger than Africa and South America, which has implications, they said, for world attitudes about the importance of those areas.

Now Bob Abramms, owner of ODT, an Amherst company that distributes the map, has produced a documentary about the map and its creation. The 30-minute film "Arno Peters: Radical Map, Remarkable Man" premieres Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. at the Media Education Foundation at 60 Masonic St. in Northampton, and will also be screened Nov. 13 at 6:30 and 7:15 p.m. at Amherst Community Television at 246 College St. The screenings are free and open to the public, and attendees will receive a copy of the map.

The film, co-produced, shot and directed by Abramms' mother, Ruth Abrams of Brookline, explores the history of the map's creation. The collaborative project of mother and son, six years in the making, was filmed in Peters' home in Bremen Germany as well as in Oxford, England and locations in the U.S, and includes the only English-language interviews ever conducted with Peters. He died in 2002, 15 months after the interviews were filmed.

For more information, visit www.ODTmaps.com.

Vermont mystery writer to speak at Jones Library

The Joe Gunther stories keep on coming. "Chat" (Grand Central Publishing, 2007) is the 18th book in the mystery series by Archer Mayor to feature the Vermont detective who manages to solve one crime after another. This one involves a car crash, the Internet, child predators, and two unidentified bodies found in a pair of Brattleboro hotels.The synopsis of "Chat" at Mayor's Web site, www.archermayor.com, reads:

"Shortly after the novel opens, Joe's mother and brother are seriously injured when their car slides down an icy embankment. But was this simply an accident, or an act of revenge for an arrest Gunther conducted a year earlier?" Meantime the body of a middle-aged man has been found floating in a local lake.

The tales gain in depth and authenticity by virtue of Mayor's real-life roles as death investigator for Vermont's chief medical examiner, deputy of the Windham County Sheriff'sDepartment, volunteer firefighter and EMT captain for his local rescue squad.

Mayor has been called "one of the most sophisticated stylists in the genre" by the New York Times; the Chicago Tribune described the Gunther novels as "the best police procedurals being written in America." He is also the 2004 winner of the New England Independent Booksellers Association Award for best fiction.

The Newfane, Vt. mystery writer will visit the Jones Library in Amherst Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. to chat about "Chat." Mayor's visit, co-sponsored by the Jeffery Amherst Bookshop, is free and open to the public in the third-floor Trustees Room at the library at 43 Amity St. For more information call reference librarian Janet Ryan at (413) 259-3223 or e-mail ryan@joneslibrary.org.

Museum10's series looks at books past and future

Next week Mount Holyoke College, a Museums10 member, looks at the future of the book in the digital age with a two-day festival of events titled "Books to Blogs and Back."

Museum10 is a three-year-old partnership among college and independent museums in the Valley to promote the cultural wealth of the area. The weekend is the last in the consortium's fall series "Bookmarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book."

Festivities get under way Thursday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. in Gamble Auditorium at the college's art museum with a keynote speech on "Research in the New Age of Information" by Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library.

Friday, Nov. 16, begins with a Books to Blogs Expo, featuring interactive activities and exhibits relating to the history of book creation, 9 to 11 a.m. in the Information Commons at the Mount Holyoke College Library. The expo includes a bookbinding display with Peter Geraty of Praxis Bindery in Easthampton, a letterpress printing demonstration by master printer Carl Darrow of Historic Deerfield, as well as information on "Zines," blogs and assistive technology.

At 11 a.m. Jason Epstein, founder of The New York Review of Books, speaks on "Farewell to Gutenberg" in Dwight, 101. A panel discussion on "The Past and Future of the Book" follows at 1:30 in Gamble Auditorium, and is followed by a reception at 3:30 in the Williston Labrary Courtyard at the college.

Other Museums10 "Bookmarks" events next weekend include a Nov. 16, 7 p.m. opening reception for the exhibit "Children Should be Seen: The Image of the Child in Picture Book Art" at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 W. Bay Road in Amherst.

On Nov. 17, Historic Deerfield hosts a daylong hands-on demonstration titled "The Printer's Apprentice" at theWilson Printshop in Historic Deerfield, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke hosts a 2 p.m. talk and book signing by Vanessa James, author of "Shakespeare'sGenealogies."

James is an associate professor of theater at Mount Holyoke College, and has served as an art director for film, television, and stage productions, as well as shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For a full schedule and more information about Museums10 and the "Bookmarks" series visit www.museums10.org/BookMarks.

First Do No Harm,' preserving papers is topic of Saturday talk

The Emily Dickinson Museum sponsors a talk on preserving family papers Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. at the Woman's Club of Amherst.

Daria D'Arienzo, head of archives and special collections at Amherst College, will speak about the diaries, letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and other documents that chronical family stories, and will outline steps to help preserve them, including information about the "evils" of cardboard boxes, manila envelopes and (gasp!) metal paper clips.

The talk is free and open to the public at the Woman's Club at 35 Triangle St. in Amherst.

UMass professor's book looks at China's Hunan

Stephen R. Platt's book "Provincial Patriots:The Hunanese and Modern China" (Harvard University Press) comes along at a time when China is frequently in the news, when the relationship between the U.S. and China is the focus of ongoing and intense discussion and debate, and when China is expected to play an increasingly critical role as a world power.

As central a place as it occupies in today's political landscape, China remains little known to the vast majority of Americans - and it's probably safe to say that most of us think of it simply as a huge, monolithic entity.

Platt, an assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has written about the region of China called Hunan, and the role it played in shaping the nation's history. As a region that was relatively free of foreign influence, Hunan was home to many prominent figures, including communist revolutionary Mao Zedong.

The region was an area that nurtured a distinct grassroots nationalism, Platt writes, and it was "a major engine of change and a fundamental source of new ideas and energies."

Joanna Waley-Cohen of New York University says that Platt shows "that for many Hunanese the province took precedence over the nation, radically undermining nationalist narratives claiming the inevitability of China's historical trajectory from empire to nation-state." Don C. Price, a scholar at the University of California, Davis, writes that Platt has made "a major contribution to our continuing efforts to understand the big issues of tradition, modernity, province, and nation in modern China."

- SUZANNE WILSON