This duo’s name implies a struggle between aggression and compassion, though they rarely expressed any tension, being fully dedicated to money, hoes and flossin’. That is, until United States of Atlanta. Much has been made of the album’s first single, “Wait,” which not only almost started a whispering trend in rap, but inspired a panel at the CMJ conference on rap misogyny. This is to say nothing of tracks like “Bedroom Boom” and “Hoes,” but you get the picture. That said, “Long Time” is a soul/gospel throwback where the Twins take a righteous path, with help from Anthony Hamilton. “Ghetto Classics” is a bumpin’ attack on violence at home and abroad set to a clever manipulation of Art of Noise’s “Beatbox.” Since the Twins’ newfound predilection for conscious lyrics isn’t tied to any social or political agenda, it could as easily be a PR ploy as a sign of maturity. Whatever the case, by pursuing a new direction, they’ve achieved a genuine expression of yin/yang theory, not of dichotomous forces but of complementary opposites. They share a bill with Chingy. Vanderbilt University Memorial Gym This duo’s name implies a struggle between aggression and compassion, though they rarely expressed any tension, being fully dedicated to money, hoes and flossin’. That is, until United States of Atlanta. Much has been made of the album’s first single, “Wait,” which not only almost started a whispering trend in rap, but inspired a panel at the CMJ conference on rap misogyny. This is to say nothing of tracks like “Bedroom Boom” and “Hoes,” but you get the picture. That said, “Long Time” is a soul/gospel throwback where the Twins take a righteous path, with help from Anthony Hamilton. “Ghetto Classics” is a bumpin’ attack on violence at home and abroad set to a clever manipulation of Art of Noise’s “Beatbox.” Since the Twins’ newfound predilection for conscious lyrics isn’t tied to any social or political agenda, it could as easily be a PR ploy as a sign of maturity. Whatever the case, by pursuing a new direction, they’ve achieved a genuine expression of yin/yang theory, not of dichotomous forces but of complementary opposites. They share a bill with Chingy. Vanderbilt University Memorial Gym —MARK MAYS Music Thursday, 13th METRIC It’s anyone’s guess when mainstream U.S. audiences will go Metric; the Canadian band fill a void in pop’s dumbed-down, cliché-ridden wasteland. This is Day-Glo dance pop with an IQ: slick, sexy and simple, buzzing with new-wave synths and electroclash beats that should have made for instant club anthems. But instead of the usual femme-fronted coyness à la Letters to Cleo or Veruca Salt, singer Emily Haines delivers smart, pointed lyrics that go lookin’ for a fight, whether it’s from a lover, pop culture or the current U.S. president. Exit/In —TRACY MOORE THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC This band sounds like a group of friends who grew up listening to a lot of the same records together and heard a little something different in each—which is more or less what they are. As their name suggests, there’s a calmness to their music, a slightly alienated kind of blissful striving and doubt. With song titles like “The Protagonist Suddenly Realizes What He Must Do in the Middle of Downtown Traffic,” there’s also an element of arty playfulness. With its jangling guitars, backward loops, whispered beatbox and charming vocals, The Most Serene Republic’s Underwater Cinematographer is a fetching blend of pop influences old and new. Exit/In —STEVE HARUCH JENNIFER NICELEY Stevie Nicks played the “mystical chanteuse” card to great effect, but singer-songwriter Niceley doesn’t seem to be playing any cards—it’s just that her ethereal voice makes it seem like there’s a light breeze swirling around her (and without the aid of fans blowing from the foot of the stage). Her Seven Songs CD features arrangements and production as unfussy as its title, letting her gossamer melodies float along and gently weave their spell. If this were electronica, you’d undoubtedly find it in the downtempo section; words saunter by so gradually at times that you might have trouble recalling where the verse began. But that only adds to the music’s visceral, hypnotic quality. Like Margo Timmins, Niceley is a live performer who commands attention through hushed understatement. Family Wash —JACK SILVERMAN Friday, 14th DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS This hard-touring Alabama five-piece may have inherited Skynyrd’s Southern rock mantle, but it’s the words that signify. The Truckers’ dispatches from the class divide give voice to society’s underrepresented—mostly working-class, mostly Southern—margins. It helps that the band boasts three more than capable songwriters. De facto frontman Patterson Hood’s exquisite sketches are complemented and strengthened by contributions from Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell. The group built their reputation in concert and have since cemented it with a catalog that grows deeper and more expansive with each release. Live, it helps that their three-guitar attack, grounded by an especially responsive rhythm section, allows the band plenty of room to stretch out, reminding us that songwriting is more than just words. Starwood Amphitheatre —SCOTT MANZLER DEVENDRA BANHART Cripple Crow, the latest album by this psych-folk-mystic, is filled with paternal longing. “Long Haired Child” emulates Donovan’s epistle to dippiness, encouraging parents to let their kids’ hair grow, while “I Feel Just Like a Child,” a simple enough rag to teach kids on tambourine, knowingly revisits kiddy naïveté. Banhart’s love songs are the album’s greatest strength, notably the bedside serenade “I Do Dig a Certain Girl” and “Dragonflies,” a whisper-weight duet with folk artist Matteah Baim. Equal parts Smithsonian Folkways and soft-focus ’70s pop, Banhart’s recordings make be-ins of “Heard Somebody Say” and “When They Come,” no matter the era. With an ode to his youth in Caracas, he adds the warmth of flamenco guitar and Spanish lyricism to an already intimate sound. Despite his penchant for filler, his fondness for tall tales and heavenly creatures suggest that Banhart would tell the best bedtime stories. Exit/In —KATE SILVER MARK FARINA This Chicagoan’s been one of house music’s most prolific and protean DJ/producers for the past decade. Growing up in the belly of the house music beast, Farina met Derrick May (one of the originators of techno) in the late ’80s. May’s funky, European-steeped techno influenced Farina’s early work, like “Mood,” the song that might have kicked off the ambient house trend, as well as the darker, groovier mixes that distinguished Farina from DJs spinning disco-ish house. Yet Farina was also listening to the sample-laden, mid-tempo rap of the day and did DJ sets of jazzy downtempo that he dubbed mushroom jazz (a tad less toxic than acid jazz), placing him as one of the early masters of lounge. As heard on the album Air Farina, his original music is a mélange of funky techno, ethereal house and percolating hip-hop. The diversity on that record is reflected in his live shows, where Farina isn’t afraid to drop tempo or toss on a disco classic behind a proper house beat. City Hall —MARK MAYS GENE BERTONCINI Unlike today’s favorite soft-jazz guitarist, Pat Metheny, Bertoncini earned his credentials the old-school way, playing alongside the first-generation bossa nova and fusion artists in the heat of creation. His subtle techniques may be evident only to the best-trained ears—for instance, enriching his chording with open-string tones. It’s his understanding of complementary textures within a song or among other ensemble instruments that’s made him an exemplary session player through so many evolutions of jazz styles, from backing Astrud Gilberto to being on call for Creed Taylor’s CTI factory. At the other end of the spectrum, Wayne Shorter chose Bertoncini to be part of a double rhythm section on his last, most far-out Blue Note sessions right before founding Weather Report. Nashville Jazz Workshop —BILL LEVINE CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH This Brooklyn band have generated a lot of word-of-mouth enthusiasm thanks to a glowing review of their self-titled debut earlier this summer on the Pitchfork Media website, and it’s easy enough to hear what listeners are drawn to: Clap Your Hands are steeped in the music of their indie-rock forebears—and of their ’70s-’80s forebears. Perhaps too much so, as it’s easy to make comparisons. (For one thing, there are times when singer Alec Ounsworth’s pinched, yelping voice sounds way too much like David Byrne’s.) And yet, at their best, it’s hard not to give in to the jangly guitars and jittery, forward-driving rhythms, which are offset with quiet moments and subtle instrumental textures. The Basement —JONATHAN MARX THE QUEERS While colleagues like Green Day and Rancid pose for Rolling Stone, second-generation punks The Queers, who are from New Hampshire, continue to win fans the old fashioned-way: one drunken, venomous bar gig at a time. It’s ironic that fame has eluded The Queers. Unlike the aforementioned bands, their careening arrangements mix hits like Tommy Roe’s “Yummy, Yummy” and The Ramones’ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” without sounding derivative. Too bad there’s not an MTV Music Award for that. The End —PAUL V. GRIFFITH Saturday, 15th SHEMEKIA COPELAND Both Ronnie Baker Brooks, the son of Lonnie Brooks, and Copeland, daughter of Texas guitar great Johnny Copeland, will be headlining at B.B. King’s in the coming week, literally proving that a new generation of blues artists has reached maturity. Only 26, Copeland puts all the new traditionalists to shame with a voice that can shout down the competition and overpower the most torrential horn charts. Having already released her fourth album, The Soul Truth, last summer, she’s relied on Stax vet Steve Cropper to surround her assertive, rangy vocals with a classic Southern soul palette. Yet her reference to the pleasures of  “New York cheesecake” reminds us that she grew up in Harlem; she slipped this bit of urban brashness into her version of Eddie Hinton’s “Something Heavy,” the most backcountry arrangement on her album. B.B. King’s —BILL LEVINE Sunday, 16th GREEN DAY Driving a car packed with 12-year-old girls screaming the chorus, “I don’t want to be an American idiot,” then hearing Green Day grunt out its punkish guitar riff, was among my favorite rock moments of 2004. A year later, the trio’s litany of hits from the never-say-die American Idiot continues to enliven the airwaves and restore faith in the album as a cohesive whole. Billie Joe Armstrong’s knack for capturing the petulant ennui of suburban youth ranks him among the more interesting songwriters of his generation, lifting Green Day above all the other pop-punk bands who mistake juvenile behavior for rebellion. Live, the trio have gained power by adding a second guitarist—and by taking full advantage of their moment of glory. Gaylord Entertainment Center —MICHAEL MCCALL Monday, 17th NEIL DIAMOND Perhaps America’s most baroque pop star, Diamond turns 65 in January, and word is his upcoming Rick Rubin-produced album will make hipsters reconsider an artist whose schmaltzy image too often obscures one of the great American song catalogs. Blender magazine once characterized Diamond as “the love child of Elvis Presley and Krusty the Crown,” a wisecrack that typifies why classics like “Cherry, Cherry,”  “Kentucky Woman” and “Cracklin’ Rosie” don’t get their due. Of course, overwrought goofs like “Crunchy Granola Suite” and schlock like “You Don’t Send Me Flowers” didn’t help, and Diamond’s shtick onstage may play well with the panty-tossing faithful, but it lost him respect among rockers. Still, few songwriters have been covered so widely, and for the subject of so many tributes—including Nashville’s beloved Denny Diamond—this is the chance to see the real thing in all his sequined, bombastic glory. Gaylord Entertainment Center —MICHAEL MCCALL CAT POWER “He War,” off the last Cat Power record You Are Free, demonstrates singer Chan Marshall’s knack for writing songs that are musically minimalist yet emotionally heavy, that never veer into indulgence or preciousness. It’s her voice, pained and detached, that makes it. Over a raw guitar and a driving beat, Marshall laments without sounding the least bit sorry. “I never meant to be the needle that broke your back,” she sings. “You were here, You were here, You were here / Don’t look back.” It’s tough to know what to expect at a Cat Power show. Reports of Marshall’s notorious shyness abound, and the singer is said to have played shows without completing a single song, instead spending considerable stage time conversing with the sound guy, or simply walking offstage and not returning. But it’s a risk worth showing up for, on the chance she’ll play any one of her simple, melancholic numbers all the way through. Mercy Lounge —TRACY MOORE Tuesday, 18th THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS/DESTROYER/IMMACULATE MACHINE Vancouver’s New Pornographers make a glorious noise—an exuberant rush of guitars and voices that draws deeply and widely from the pop and rock lexicon without ever calling attention to its influences. Much of the thrill comes from hearing chief songwriter A.C. Newman trade voices with fellow Pornographers Dan Bejar, Kathryn Calder, Neko Case and Nora O’Connor, and their songs are never more exciting when they all join together for well nigh unstoppable choruses. The band’s music is as sophisticated as it is immediate, betraying Newman’s interest in pushing the limits of his songwriting, but never at the expense of compromising the vigor of his songs. Several of Newman’s cohorts have their own musical endeavors—Case most notably among them—but they’ve all banded together for a tour that will allow both Calder and Bejar to take the stage with their respective bands. In Destroyer, Bejar offers his own brainy take on rock ’n’ roll, but with a wry, almost surly edge. Calder’s jumpy, keyboard-driven Immaculate Machine bring to mind the earnest urgency of ’80s new wave.  Mercy Lounge —JONATHAN MARX NIKKA COSTA As with Lenny Kravitz, this widely traveled soul-rocker can rely too comfortably on simplistic riffs and mannered flamboyance. But at times she flashes substance and smarts, and her live-wire performances show a convincing passion for connecting with the rhythm and getting a crowd on their feet. Her recent Can’tneverdidnothing paled next to its breakthrough predecessor, but she’s on a club tour and trying to catch fire again, and chances are she’ll come out wanting to prove she’s more than yesterday’s news. Exit/In —MICHAEL MCCALL Wednesday, 19th KATHY MATTEA Even at the height of her stardom, Mattea embraced the folkier side of country music, and that knack for smart, mild-mannered songs has helped her transition into a workable post-Music Row career. Her new album, Right Out of Nowhere, demonstrates her ear for strong material that benefits from her clear, believable alto and the personable warmth she exudes on record and onstage. Live, she fronts a band of superb musicians and singers who help her create arrangements filled with subtle ingenuity. Belcourt Theatre —MICHAEL MCCALL Classical NICHOLAS ISHERWOOD Vocal recitals usually involve a singer accompanied by a pianist, but there are bodies of classical music where a plucked instrument provides the accompaniment. For his Blair recital, bass-baritone Isherwood will be accompanied by Magnus Andersson on chitarrone, acoustic and electric guitar in a program that ranges over 400 years of music. The first section of the concert offers several 17th century Italian chitarrone songs, including one by Barbara Strozzi, one of the few female composers of her era remembered in history. Perhaps the most unusual programming will be the five Schubert songs that follow, accompanied by guitar. These are the kinds of songs associated with the usual piano-voice lieder format, but originally they were often performed with guitar in intimate settings. The concert includes contemporary pieces by Hans Werner Henze, John Cage, Giacinto Scelsi and Isherwood himself, and ends with Andersson picking up electric guitar while Isherwood sings the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” These last two selections might seem questionable, but the rest of Isherwood’s program is so intelligent that it’s worth granting him the benefit of the doubt. The recital is Oct. 14 at Turner Recital Hall. —DAVID MADDOX SUR SANGAM This program features pairs of players from both major traditions of Indian music, the southern Carnatic (V.K. Raman on flute and B. Ravishankar on mridangam) and the northern Hindustani school (tabla player Aditya Kalyanpur and Nandkishor Muley on santoor). The two schools share a great deal in common, such as similar ways of using scales and rhythmic patterns in improvisations, but they also differ in significant respects. Northern Indian music has somewhat more discrete movement between pitches, more like Western music. The performers on this concert include the students of leading practitioners within their respective traditions and instruments: flutist Raman was a student of N. Ramani, one of the best known Carnatic flutists, and Kalyanpur studied with master tabla player Ustad Zakir Hussein (one of the original members of the group Shakti). The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 14 at Sri Ganesha Temple. —DAVID MADDOX Theater FAUST For its season opener, Nashville Opera artistic director John Hoomes reaches into the repertoire for a work of passionate intensity and deep, dark human desire. French composer Charles Gounod’s 1859 opera, rich with mysterious textures and lush orchestrations, is based on Goethe’s classic play about a man’s quest for eternal youth and an ill-fated deal with the devil. Michael Hayes sings the title role, Chester Patton is the evil Mephistopheles, and gifted soprano Kelly Kaduce, who appeared in last season’s production of Carmen, sings the pivotal role of Marguerite. Presented Oct. 13 and 15 at TPAC’s Andrew Jackson Hall. —MARTIN BRADY THE GREAT TENNESSEE MONKEY TRIAL Vanderbilt’s Great Performances series presents this docudrama by Peter Goodchild, adapted from actual transcripts of the “trial of the century,” 1925’s Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes, which transfixed the nation with its evolution-vs.-creationism debate and the epic arguments between opposing advocates William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. Nashville is the first tour stop outside California for this L.A. Theatre Works production, which runs 8 p.m. Oct. 19-20 at Belmont University’s Curb Event Center. The cast includes Ed Asner, John de Lancie and Alley Mills, and there’s a guest appearance by Vandy theater major Jason Scott Dechert, who plays a student called to the stand to testify. Related programs include discussions with actors and a forum on the Scopes Trial’s relevance to modern-day America. For more info, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/sarratt/great. —MARTIN BRADY WORDS OF ALBERT SCHWEITZER AND THE MUSIC OF BACH This multimedia celebration of genius, musical art and high-minded philosophy returns for a performance in Nashville, where the idea first took flight 10 years ago under the auspices of Thurston Moore’s Tennessee Players. The 90-minute production features 160 video images, music by organist Gail Archer, and dramatic readings by TV and film actor Hugh O’Brian, local performer Rob Wilds and Naomi Tutu, the daughter of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu. Performances are 8 p.m. Oct. 14 and 15 at the Scarritt-Bennett Center. For information, phone 868-3738. —MARTIN BRADY MACABARET Robert Hartmann and Scott Keys’ ghoulish musical revue has been around for at least 10 years, enjoying successful regional runs, in particular in Chicago. The cabaret-style show promises to offer appropriately entertaining adult Halloween fun, with its gallows humor, irreverence and darkly comic songs. Street Theatre Company presents the Nashville premiere, Oct. 14-30 at PLAY on Church Street. Cathy Sanborn Street directs, Dietz Osborne is the choreographer, and pianist Chris Smallwood provides the accompaniment. For times and tickets, phone 319-9661 or visit www.streettheatrecompany.com. —MARTIN BRADY Comedy KEITH ALBERSTADT Native Nashvillian Alberstadt seriously embarked on a show-biz career a few years ago. He did sketch comedy and improv and sports PR, among other sidelines, before declaring himself a full-time standup comedian. He’s since logged thousands of miles on the road, he’s been featured on TV and radio, and in three weeks he departs for Iraq to entertain the troops. An engaging, smart performer with a gift for knowing sarcasm, he headlines at Zanies on Oct. 13 at 8 p.m. For reservations, call 269-0221. —MARTIN BRADY Art “MISLEADING TRAILS” In the progress of globalization, China and the United States move closer together as they compete for resources and begin to emerge as rivals in economic power and cultural influence. Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery’s latest show reflects that world context by bringing together four Chinese artists and three from the U.S. All seven have strong strains of social protest in their work, but it takes different forms. The American artists tend to critique their country’s impact on the rest of the world, while the Chinese artists turn more of their criticism inward, on their country’s fetishizing of its own cultural past and the emptiness of the new-built Chinese society. The show opens with a reception on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 5 p.m., with a lecture by Dan Mills at 5:30. —DAVID MADDOX CARLTON WILKINSON: “COMING HOME” Photographer Wilkinson wants to reclaim the African American body as a source of beauty and admiration in terms that would be familiar in classical art, so his retrospective at the Parthenon is very fitting. His works will be on display downstairs from the reproductions of classical sculptor Phidias’ celebration of the human form, which Wilkinson saw as a child growing up in Nashville. As a developing artist, he became aware of the ways the black body was depicted with a mix of fear and sexual desire, and fundamentally with disrespect, unlike those images of the glorified and white human body upon which Western art is founded. One of his ongoing purposes has been to offer an alternative world of images, particularly of black men. This retrospective exhibit brings those images home to a place that represents a source for Wilkinson in several ways, and it also includes photos from a recent trip to Africa, another sort of homecoming for him. The show opens with a reception 6-8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13. —DAVID MADDOX “YOU ARE HERE” A group of international artists explores human identity divorced from post-global national geography in Ruby Green’s latest exhibit, curated by Nashville artists Armon A. Means, Julie Roberts and Anderson Williams. All three artists, who’ve shown strong work around town, have pieces in the show, along with works by Aaron Anderson, Dave Dauncy, John Donovan, Thomas Knauer, Steve Murakishi, John Pickel, Corine Vermeulen, Elizabeth Roberts-McFalls, Barbara Yontz, Dawn Nye, Mike Richison and Jamie Tracey. Doug and Mike Starn’s tea-stained silver print “Ganjin Head” is a highlight of the exhibit. Ganjin was a Buddhist priest who founded the Toshodaiji temple, where a statue of his image is considered one of the most important sculptures in Japan. The Starns’ “Ganjin Head” raises post-global questions about the sacred, the secular, the authentic and the fabricated. The opening reception is 6-9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15. —JOE NOLAN APRIL STREET: “THE SWIMMERS” The work of April Street could be deemed lush eye candy, with its bright colors and dreamy, surreal environments of fantastical flora and fauna, but it’s got some attitude and substance, too. Her mixed-media paintings on wood are marked by a psychological tilt, and she often leaves the slick veneer of the wood grains and knots to be absorbed into the composition’s complex patterning and layering of imagery. “The Swimmers,” Street’s newest series, returns to her interest in figurative work and how the individual arranges history and fantasy in a cause-and-effect relationship. From women in an Alice in Wonderland-like super-sized field of poppies to groups of people in a cityscape, Street gives her characters emotional charge in the way they interact with their illusory surroundings as well as one another. The exhibit opens 2-6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at The Arts Company with a reception in the downstairs gallery; at 4, the artist will talk about her work. —NICOLE PIETRANTONI “NEW-BROW: NEW WORKS BY MR. HOOPER AND KATE BARRERE” Mr. Hooper is a Nashville artist who borrows from folk art without claiming that his work is the thing itself. Instead, he’s a latter-day Pop artist who makes conscious use of a naive style to explore celebrity culture in his own graphically stylized renderings. New Mexican Kate Barrere’s work owes a debt to graffiti culture, but she combines a graphic sense of composition with an Expressionist exuberance to yield a unique style: familiar cartoon renderings juxtaposed with the bold line of a confident painter. TAG Gallery continues a string of strong shows as it prepares to represent Nashville’s Chris Scarborough and others at the AAF Contemporary Art Fair in New York City at the end of October. Make the trip downtown for the opening reception, 6-8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15. —Joe Nolan JUDY BARIE AND ANN WELLS: “CLOSER INSPECTION” Cumberland Gallery presents two artists whose works deal with texture, pattern and the kind of introspection that such work inspires. Painter Barie, from Bridgeville, Pa., uses color to tie together dichotomous patterns and dissonant, multiple images. Wells, a talented local sculptor, creates organic forms that allude to the ecstatic potential that resides in living things. The opening reception is Saturday, Oct. 15, 6-8 p.m. —JOE NOLAN “MURANO: GLASS FROM THE OLNICK SPANU COLLECTION” Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu fell in love with glass in the mid-1980s. Their collection now includes more than 500 pieces from the Italian city of Murano, a glass-making powerhouse since the Middle Ages. The Frist Center’s Murano glass exhibit features 200 objects, mostly 20th and 21st century vases and other vessels in brilliant colors and patterns. Olnick and Spanu discuss their collection with associate curator Katie Delmez-Welborn, 2 p.m. Oct. 15, the opening day of the exhibition. —MiChelle Jones Books DAVID McCULLOUGH With Pulitzer Prizes for books about John Adams and Harry Truman, and with previous subjects ranging from the Johnstown Flood to the Brooklyn Bridge, historian David McCullough has set a high standard for educating Americans about their all-too-often-forgotten past. Now, in 1776 (Simon & Schuster), he turns his attention to the man who still, after 200 years, is readily identified around the globe as the American—George Washington. In recent years, Washington has often been portrayed as just another rich slave owner whose status as a founding father should at best be tolerated. McCullough will have none of that and backs up his open admiration with facts presented in a narrative as clear and compelling as a good novel. And while pages go by without mention of Washington, McCullough never lets the reader forget that the general is the central character of both the book and the birth of the nation. 1776 captures the man in all his complexity—acting with audacity born of conviction and depending for success on a mixture of leadership and luck more than experience or firepower. That this history shows a flawed human being rather than the demigod portrayed in the early years of the Republic actually increases, rather than diminishes, Washington’s stature. Despite his obvious shortcomings, he accomplished what may be reasonably described as a miracle, risking his life and fortune to form a nation in which his birthright would count for less, not more, than it did under King George III. David McCullough will give a free public address at the Main Library at 10 a.m. Oct. 15. —CHRIS SCOTT Events COMMUNITY FORUM: THE CRISIS IN DARFUR The bloody civil war that ravaged Sudan for 21 years ended with the signing of a peace agreement this January, but bloodshed and violence persist in the region of Darfur, where government-backed militias have been waging a genocidal campaign against rebels fighting for fair representation. Millions of people have been slaughtered or displaced, and death and disease persist at an alarming rate. A group of Nashvillians have convened a forum on the subject to raise awareness and to let Americans know what they can do to make a difference. Nashville, like many cities, is home to a number of Sudanese refugees uprooted by the civil war, so the subject hits closer to home than we might realize. Regardless, if the lessons of Hitler, Pol Pot and Rwanda have taught us anything, it’s that when the threat of genocide looms, the rest of the world has an obligation to stop it. The event starts at 2 p.m. Oct. 16 in the Fisk University Memorial Chapel, followed by a reception at the school’s Race Relations Institute. Featured speakers include Jerry Fowler, executive director of Committee on Conscience, and Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action. —JONATHAN MARX HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL GROUND-BREAKING With each passing year, fewer Holocaust survivors remain to ensure that the period’s horrors and lessons are not forgotten. On Sunday, Oct. 16 at 5 p.m., Nashville will begin the construction of a Holocaust memorial garden on the grounds of the Gordon Jewish Community Center. A walkway will feature inscriptions recognizing the hometowns and countries of those survivors living in Nashville, surrounded by memorial walls marked with the names of loved ones who died in the genocide as well as survivors who have since passed. The sculptural centerpiece was constructed by Nashville metal artist Alex Limor and will be unveiled at the groundbreaking. Holocaust survivor Esther Loeb will speak at the ceremony, as will architect Manuel Zeitlin (who donated the memorial’s design), Congressman Jim Cooper and Mayor Bill Purcell. Contributions can be mailed to The Nashville Holocaust Memorial, 801 Percy Warner Blvd., Nashville 37205. Contact Felicia Anchor at 473-9535 or 356-5497 for more information. —DAVE RUDOLPH Film NASHVILLE FILM/TV/DOCUMENTARY CONFERENCE 2005 So you’ve got that dream script (“It’s Donnie Darko meets NASCAR!”) or can’t-miss sitcom pitch (“The Jetsons in Kabul”). Whaddaya do now? For a start, attend FilmNashville’s symposium Saturday and Sunday at Watkins Film School, which covers all aspects of creating and distributing features, TV shows and documentaries. The emphasis is on locally owned productions, in hopes of funneling more work and revenue into the community. Speakers include veteran entertainment attorney Andy Velcoff (Turner Entertainment Group); producer Mitchell Galin (Frank Herbert’s Dune); producer-directors Curt Hahn (No Regrets) and Tony Vidmer (High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story); author and former development/production executive Jeffry Stein (Dead Ringers); Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission executive director David Bennett; and documentarian Tom Neff, president and CEO of the new Documentary Channel. (See the related story on the channel on p. 9.) FilmNashville president Andy van Roon will moderate. A $10 donation covers the conference; for info, see www.filmnashville.org. —JIM RIDLEY ELIZABETHTOWN On his way home to Elizabethtown, Ky., for his father’s funeral, a disgraced young executive (Orlando Bloom) finds a flicker of hope with a flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) in the characteristically heartfelt new comedy-drama by writer-director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire). Our critic Noel Murray saw the longer cut that got such a drubbing at the Toronto Film Festival and thinks it got a bad rap; he’ll compare the two versions next week, after the movie opens Friday. Also starting this weekend: the toppling Domino and the remake of The Fog. —JIM RIDLEY EL CRIMEN PERFECTO A very funny black farce from Alex de la Iglesia, the former Pedro Almodóvar protégé who’s developed a gift for macabre horror comedy and florid pulp. Guillermo Toledo plays a department-store Lothario who accidentally offs a colleague in his bid for career advancement, only to end up at the mercy of the only witness: a love-starved, psychotic, sexually insatiable wallflower (Mónica Cervera). The real (and better) title translates as Ferpect Crime, which says it all. The movie opens Wednesday at the Belcourt. On Friday, the theater also opens one of the year’s best documentaries, Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. —JIM RIDLEY