Our Critics Picks
Grammy-nominated Don Hart is one of those slightly hidden Nashville treasures: an accomplished studio arranger and orchestrator who makes everyone sound better. His work has been heard on albums by Martina McBride, Marty Stuart, Collective Soul and Bering Strait; he’s been a steady presence in the gospel and choral music fields; and he’s contributed incidental music for various TV broadcasts as well. Now Hart steps into the world of dance, having been commissioned by Nashville Ballet to compose the score for the company’s new rendition of Margery Williams’ 1922 children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit. Ballet artistic director Paul Vasterling worked in close collaboration with Hart, both of them freely exchanging musical and choreographic ideas as they searched for the appropriate depth and rhythmic complexity that would best express Williams’ popular tale of a cherished toy bunny. Hart’s final product is an eclectic, harmonically rich cascade of orchestral timbres, whimsically accented by horns, oboe and percussion, but just as often movingly tuned in to a string-laden nostalgia for childhood things. Rachel Ellis and Chris Stuart are the featured dancers, and the production is enhanced by Shigeru Yaji’s costumes and Jason Facio’s set design. Also included in this program is another Vasterling piece, first presented locally in 2001, danced to themes from George Frederic Handel’s Messiah. The Nashville Symphony provides the accompaniment for both works, April 7-9 in TPAC’s Jackson Hall. Phone 255-ARTS for tickets. —MARTIN BRADY
MUSIC
THURSDAY, 6TH
OTIS GIBBS This Indiana seed planter brings a breezy melodicism to acoustic songs with a leftist bent, which aligns him with the Seeger tradition of calling workers to unite while singing sweet, easy tunes that invite people to sing along. He stretches his deep, jowly voice when necessary, going from conversational lyrics to opening up for emphasis. With his long beard and denim-overalls style, he’s an agrarian Billy Bragg who cuts his protest songs with wit and a tender sense of the comforts of love. The Basement has become a home away from home for the well-traveled troubadour, and lately he’s been testing new material for the follow-up to 2004’s One Day Our Whispers. (www.otisgibbs.com) The Basement —MICHAEL McCALL
FRIDAY, 7TH
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ROBERTA FLACK/YOLANDA ADAMS One of pop’s most tender and sophisticated artists, Flack became one of the most influential stars of the ’70s by infusing soul, gospel and jazz into radio tunes that joined the work of Carole King and Joni Mitchell to bring a more mature perspective to pop and rock. With her warm, liquid tone and wide vocal range, the North Carolina native tempered a tumultuous decade with tunes steeped in love, tenderness and spirituality. Revived in recent years by The Fugees and Black-Eyed Peas, who cut new hits based on the hooks of her classic version of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and her duet with Donny Hathaway, “Where Is the Love,” Flack is currently touring behind the release of a new career compilation, The Very Best of Roberta Flack. She’ll be joined by Adams, one of her many acolytes, whose similarly sophisticated take on gospel themes has made her one of the most enduring voices in contemporary Christian music. ( www.robertaflack.com ; www.yolandaadams.org ) Ryman Auditorium —MICHAEL McCALL
CARLY PTAK Ptak is one-half of the Baltimore avant-noise outfit Nautical Almanac, whose work extends into the realms of music, performance art and visual art. Currently on tour solo, Ptak is spending a week at a time in each city, where she’s collaborating on an improvised performance piece with a local artist. In Nashville, her collaborator is Angela Messina of the group Taiwan Deth, who’s mounting an accompanying exhibit by local women artists, including Bridget Venuti, Elizabeth Cesarini and Kate Csillagi. The show opens at 7 p.m., with Messina and Ptak performing their collaborative piece, “The End of the Horizon.” Then, starting at 9 p.m., comes a night of music, with sets by Ptak, The Body, Bonedust and Taiwan Deth with Bridget Venuti. ( www.heresee.com ) Ruby Green Contemporary Art Center —JONATHAN MARX
ADAM McINTYRE Nashville’s power-pop scene is about to get a little less powerful and a little less poppy. That’s because McIntyre, a Montgomery native who has released two albums of hooky, psychedelic rock during his 10 years in Music City, is packing up and preparing to take on Atlanta. His records, including last fall’s Nowhere Is Everywhere, demonstrate how he’s processed the influences of his role models The Kinks, Big Star and Brian Wilson through his appealing personality. But it’s onstage that he really catches fire, jacking up the riffage and opening up the songs to make room for some inspired soloing. You have at least one more chance to hear McIntyre toss a catchy chorus and a power chord up to heaven as a Nashville resident: this gig is a combination birthday bash and release party for his new five-song EP, Per Ardua. If we’re nice to him, maybe he’ll come back and visit sometime. ( adammcintyre.headphonetreats.com ) Windows on the Cumberland —CHRIS NEAL
AGAINST ME! On their new CD Searching for a Former Clarity, this Florida quartet admit to some anxiety about their status: “Please tell me I’m not the only one,” growls Tom Gabel, “that thinks we’re taking ourselves too seriously. Just a little too enamoured [sic] with inflated self-purpose.” There’s a weird pessimism in this record that’s hard to figure, as when Gabel sings, “Guitars exploding to a drum beat that’s driving / It’s pretty fucking boring.” Kind of like Auden saying that poetry makes nothing happen, though angrier and more self-doubting—even more so in “Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners,” a scathing condemnation of the music industry to which Against Me! have recently chosen to wed themselves by signing to a major label. The self-loathing feels real, but it also comes across at times like self-pity with a sneer. ( www.againstme.net ) City Hall —STEVE HARUCH
SATURDAY, 8TH
POCO/PINMONKEY If you seek a lesson in the durability of country-rock, this pairing of originators and acolytes should fit the bill. Formed in 1969, Poco have gone through several incarnations, and a hiatus or two. But original member Rusty Young keeps the harmonies sharp, and the band can still rock. Last year’s live album, Bareback at Big Sky, featured the group at their most assured and relaxed, and if material like “Cajun Moon” and “Rose of Cimarron” isn’t terribly profound, it’s intensely pleasurable. The same can be said for Pinmonkey, whose new Big Shiny Cars reveals a tight, intelligent band with an ear for nuance: perfect guitar fills, steady drumming and the most reliable of chord progressions. The keening vocals of Michael Reynolds float over first-rate material like Dolly Parton’s “Down,” which Pinmonkey turn into Appalachian power-pop. And like Poco, Pinmonkey can rock out in the manner of Buffalo Springfield or The Byrds—in other words, they’re masters of restraint. Sometimes restraint can become constraint, but country-rock is by definition a style of understatement and tact, and tactfulness isn’t a quality current pop possesses in abundance. If these groups share a commitment to formalism, it’s formalism with passion and brains, not to mention historical perspective. ( www.poconut.com; www.pinmonkey.net ) Mercy Lounge —EDD HURT
HOUSTON PERSON Maybe the last of his kind, Person continues to be among the most affecting soul-jazz tenor saxophonists. His deep melodic sound sings with the same quiet dignity of the late Etta Jones, the bluesy jazz singer whom he’d backed for years. When he broke out as a leader in the ’60s, Person’s hearty sound came out best when played off against a Hammond B-3. He continues to draw his material from the gospel, R&B and pop backlists, besides the bona fide standards favored by romantic tenors going back to Coleman Hawkins. Now 72, Person stills releases an album every year. On a recent outing, he lends lyrical gravity to his low-register interpretation of the Everly Brothers’ “Let It Be Me,” his lonely voice alternately modest and gracefully melodic. Belcourt Theatre —BILL LEVINE
CAREY OTT A recent signee to the local Dualtone label, Ott emerges with his well-crafted debut, Lucid Dream. Relying heavily on feathery vocals and country-tinged balladry, Ott smelts the steel mills and gravel roads from a dirt-caked Americana with soupcons of Starbucks commerciality. Ott’s beefy verse-chorus song structures and melodicism have drawn the attention of Grey’s Anatomy music supervisor Alex Patsavas, who used Ott’s strident “Am I Just One” in ABC’s hit series. While Ott’s talent might seem wasted on the half-baked sexcapades of television MDs, this set will feature him in more natural surroundings, stripped bare of Hollywood pretense. ( www.careyott.com ) Exit/In —JOEY HOOD
SUNDAY, 9TH
DINOSAUR JR. It appears the age of the alt-rock reunion is upon us. First the Pixies mended fences, and now the classic lineup of Dinosaur Jr. has reconvened to make the eardrums of a new generation bleed. After forming the group in Massachusetts during the mid-’80s, guitarist and vocalist J. Mascis, bass player Lou Barlow (later of Sebadoh) and drummer Emmett Murphy shot to Lollapalooza-level stardom before slowly disintegrating as the ’90s wore on. Time mellows us all, even those who were once liable to clock one another with a guitar onstage—and so the band’s blend of punk, hardcore and proto-grunge has been rescued from extinction. City Hall —CHRIS NEAL
TUESDAY, 11TH
EDITORS Just as port tastes more like sherry than red wine, Editors sound more like other bands of their vintage—for example, Interpol—than like Joy Division, the germinal band to which they are often compared. Where Interpol fortify their Ian Curtis imitations with drams of Television-inspired guitar, Editors have chosen a slightly more Edgy concoction. And while Eds. certainly do wave a bleak flag around, they sound too polished to have spent much time at the despondent depths once plumbed by the band who became New Order. That said, Editors’ stylish, coal-hued soundscapes are dramatic, each song delivered in the musical equivalent of Cinemascope, making even banal statements like “all sparks will burn out in the end” seem larger than life. Listening to their album The Back Room yields many pleasures, few of them previously unknown. ( www.editorsofficial.com ) Exit/In —STEVE HARUCH
THE CODETALKERS FEAT. COL. BRUCE HAMPTON Decades before the advent of jam band culture, Hampton was creating loud, improvisational music. Described by some as “the Godfather of Southern Alternative Rock,” Hampton’s musical style is perhaps better explained as an amalgamation of psychedelic jam, jazz, funk and country. His current project, The CodeTalkers, finds him playing a supporting role to the younger, more versatile, Bobby Lee Rodgers, a former instructor at the Berklee College of Music. Rodgers writes much of The CodeTalkers’ material, offering a fluid balance to Hampton’s otherwise frenetic improvisation. ( www.thecodetalkers.com ) The End —DAVE RUDOLPH
THEATER
DRAMABLOG Vanderbilt University drama professor Jeffrey Ullom has a knack for pursuing innovative ideas, and the final show of the theater department’s ’05-’06 season is this unusual combined form, staged under his direction, whereby performance art meets the immediacy and personal opinionizing of Internet blogging. “I’m interested in providing a different theatrical experience,” says Ullom, “breaking away from the age-old processes for rehearsal and production and trying to explore the potential of this form of theater.” The experiment opens April 7 on campus at Neely Auditorium, and will continue over two weekends. For reservations, call 322-2404. —MARTIN BRADY
RAGTIME Nashville mayoral candidate Howard Gentry as a singing Booker T. Washington? That’s one way of taking political center stage. Gentry, who appeared as the mayor of New York City in a previous production at the Donelson Senior Center for the Arts, once again displays his theatrical chops in director Kaine Riggan’s mounting of this big, brawny Broadway musical based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel about the racial tension and social inequities of early 1900s America. The entrepreneurial Riggan has also gathered some other solid actors and singers for his cast of 50, including Dan McGeachy, Miriam Gray, Ella Glasgow, Tim Larson and Jack Hoke. The production, a Nashville premiere, will be performed April 7-20. Tickets are available online at www.seniorarts.org or by calling 883-8375. —MARTIN BRADY
NEW WORKS LAB Nashville needs more outlets for workshopping original scripts, but thankfully this Actors Bridge Ensemble project, now in its eighth season, has provided an opportunity for worthy writers to experiment with their budding ideas. The 2006 installment features Jerry’s Kids, a screenplay by Steve Taylor (The Second Chance), Matt Sterling and Clay Wombacher, in which a group of film students scheme to steal a copy of a previously unreleased Jerry Lewis movie; and Ordinary Heroes, a collaborative effort between Amun Ra Theatre and Actors Bridge, based on Nashville’s role in the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and ’60s. The latter script features musical, spoken-word and multimedia elements. The readings are at 7:30 p.m. on April 7 (Jerry’s Kids) and April 8 (Ordinary Heroes) in the Actors Bridge Studio at the Neuhoff site in Germantown. For reservations, call 341-0300 or email actorsbridge@comcast.net. —MARTIN BRADY
ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES This children’s puppet-show presentation by Wishing Chair Productions is an original adaptation of the classic adventure fable, commissioned at the special request of the children of Nashville’s Kurdish community. Performances are 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, April 7-29, in the children’s theater at the Main Public Library. For more information, call 862-5785. —MARTIN BRADY
ART
STEVE BENNEYWORTH “Large” may be the first and overriding impression of Benneyworth’s sculptures, but the native Nashvillian would say it is the underlying geometric relationships among masses and voids—not simply scale—that define his work. Perhaps most known for the enormous steel-and-concrete “catcher’s mitt” outside Sunset Grill on Belcourt Avenue, Benneyworth will unveil this weekend a show of five sublimely large public sculptures that will remain on display in and around the Vanderbilt campus until August 2007. The display of outdoor public sculpture opens Sunday at 2:30 p.m. with a reception at Sarratt Gallery and a tour of the works. —CARRINGTON FOX
JENNA MAURICE & VICKY PIERCE This year’s Photography Senior Thesis Exhibition at Watkins College of Art and Design features diverse work by two graduating seniors. Vicky Pierce has created an installation using charts, graphs and receipts to explore the ways that consumer culture permeates our lives. Jenna Maurice explores her family’s identity through a series of large-scale photographs that reference cinematic film stills in their staging and dramatic lighting. Tying the images together with a loose narrative thread, the individual portraits become a flip-book of separate impressions that create a sequential plot in the mind of the viewer. The exhibit opens Friday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.; the artists will give a talk at 7 p.m. —JOE NOLAN
NSCC SILENT AUCTION BENEFIT Nashville State Community College will hold a silent auction of photography by students and professors, 4-6 p.m. April 6 in the school’s Ed Clark Gallery. The photographs span a range of subjects, including landscapes, wildlife, flowers and travel images from Kathy Morgan, Emily Naff and Chris Hollo, among others. All proceeds will benefit the Cathy O’Bryant Scholarship, named for a beloved photographer who taught at Nashville State for 12 years; she died of breast cancer in 2002. For more info, call 353-3743. —JESSICA FRIEDMAN
BOOKS
SUE MONK KIDD When she wrote her debut novel, Kidd was already the author of several books of nonfiction, but it was selling 4 million copies of The Secret Life of Bees that introduced her to the top of The New York Times best seller list and Good Morning America’s book club. Last year’s follow-up, The Mermaid Chair, is set in the Carolina low country on bucolic and isolated Egret Island and tells the story of Jessie Sullivan’s return home when she’s “just old enough for the bottom to start falling out of things.” In this case “things” include her marriage, her mother’s mental stability and her romantic attachment to a Benedictine monk. Like the first novel, The Mermaid Chair includes a fiercely loyal and often quirky circle of older wise women, Catholic saints linked with mysticism, and the reckoning of secrets revealed. Though Kidd’s storytelling is marred at times by overly obvious symbolism and oft-repeated themes, her subject is worthy: Jessie may have spent 20 years “without any real idea of what it was to have possession of my own self,” but she’s determined to set things straight. Kidd reads at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on April 7 at 6 p.m. —LACEY GALBRAITH
CANDY PAULL/ART OF LIVING SERIES The Art of Abundance, Candy Paull’s collection of quotations and inspirational tidbits, was first published eight years ago, followed by The Art of Encouragement four years later. After her initial publisher went bankrupt, the Nashville resident secured the rights to the books and found a new publisher. Thus the reissues of the first two books and the arrival a new one, The Art of Simplicity. Paull plans three more books in the Art of Living series. She’ll sign her books 6 p.m. April 11 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, and she’ll also give a presentation and sign books 7 p.m. April 20 at the Southern Women’s Show. —MiCHELLE JONES
EVENTS
2006 CMT MUSIC AWARDS BLOCK PARTY Think of this downtown free-for-all as a down-home Dave Chappelle’s Block Party—only with Ben “Cooter” Jones from The Dukes of Hazzard. Between First and Second avenues on Monday, starting at 3:30 p.m., Lower Broadway becomes a circus of live music, dancing and food open to the entire city as the pedal hits the metal on this year’s CMT Music Awards. Jason Aldean, Van Zant, Little Big Town and Ryan Shupe & the Rubberband provide the music; the Coyote Ugly girls, the Tennessee Titans cheerleaders and dueling mascots T-Rac and Gnash deliver the spectacle, with help from Miss America 2004 Ericka Dunlap and CMT’s Lance Smith. —JIM RIDLEY
FILM
THE FUTURE OF FOOD Deborah Koons Garcia’s documentary blasts the multinational corporations that are strong-arming regional farmers and placing genetically modified foods on supermarket shelves. The doc and director Garcia have been traveling the country via a grass-roots network, and they’ll be at the Belcourt on Friday. Part jamboree, part town-hall meeting, the event includes music, a panel discussion and a reception preceding the film at 6:30 p.m. The night benefits the Tennessee Organic Growers Association; tickets were almost sold out at press time, but call 846-3150 for information. —JIM RIDLEY
NASHVILLE INTERNATIONAL BLACK FILM FESTIVAL Fisk University’s annual film festival continues through the weekend with panels, discussions and screenings. Among the local premieres are Red Dust, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Hilary Swank; Dodge City: A Spaghetto Western, starring Isaac Hayes; the Brazilian drama Daughters of the Wind; and the French animated folktale Kirikou and the Sorceress. Speakers include David Bennett, commissioner of the Tennessee Film, Music and Entertainment Commission; Ed Guerrero, professor of Africana studies at New York University; and Frank Dobson, director of Vanderbilt’s Bishop Joseph Johnson Cultural Center. For more info, visit www.nibff.com. —JIM RIDLEY
THE BOYS OF BARAKA In 2002, kids from a crime-ridden, impoverished Baltimore neighborhood were given “scholarships” to an experimental boarding school in Kenya, where they were expected to meet high standards of study and behavior. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s sobering documentary examines the success of the project, and the grim turn of events that sends the film in a different direction. A presentation of the Nashville International Black Film Festival, the film opens Friday at the Belcourt. —JIM RIDLEY
INGMAR BERGMAN FAITH TRILOGY The Belcourt helps Downtown Presbyterian Church close out its Lenten art and film festival with three movies by Ingmar Bergman: 1961’s Through a Glass Darkly, 1962’s Winter Light and 1963’s The Silence. Acclaimed for their intensity and honesty, all three films raise difficult spiritual questions that fall right in line with the church’s Lenten festival, which explores issues of faith and religious observance. The movies screen April 9-12 at the Belcourt, with a reception 6 p.m. April 12 before The Silence, in tandem with the closing of the art exhibit “The Silence of God.” A panel discussion will follow the film. —JONATHAN MARX
VINTAGE TV COMMERCIALS As with the “100 Artists See God” exhibit at Cheekwood, part of the intellectual engagement of the Downtown Presbyterian Church’s “The Silence of God” film series is figuring out how the various selections embody the theme. Tonight, listen for the Lord’s voice among the din of daft old advertisements. Show time is 6:30 p.m. Thursday, free and open to the public. —JIM RIDLEY
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING Slight but snappy, this crackling satire of Big Tobacco and its self-righteous foes has some of the biggest laughs in recent movies, thanks to Jason Reitman’s droll script (adapted from Christopher Buckley’s novel) and a dream-team cast. Aaron Eckhart delivers a star-making turn as a fast-talking cigarette-company PR filter tugged between duty and his adoring son. It starts Friday at Green Hills, along with the French war drama Joyeux Noel. —JIM RIDLEY
LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN Director Paul McGuigan’s yarn about a cool-as-a-cuke customer caught between rival crime bosses has a cast that makes it an odds-on favorite: Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis and Lucy Liu. The movie starts Friday. —JIM RIDLEY