Continuing its critical role as Nashville’s chief purveyor of contemporary dance, Vanderbilt University’s Great Performances series inaugurates the new year by bringing this cutting-edge British troupe into Langford Auditorium on Jan. 24. Choreographer Alston emerged on the London dance scene in 1968, later studied in New York with Merce Cunningham, then cut a creative swath through the U.K. and Europe during the ’80s and ’90s, conceiving new works for the Royal Danish Ballet, France’s Ballet Atlantique and the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. In 1994, he founded his present company, which has since grown into one of Great Britain’s most popular modern dance ensembles. RADC’s imaginative, delicately romantic and precise stylings exploit the music of diverse composers, ranging from Brahms to Shostakovich to pop tunesmith Hoagy Carmichael. Tickets for this performance are available through Ticketmaster at 255-9600; company members will also conduct a master class on Jan. 23, 3-5 p.m., in Memorial Gymnasium. For more information, call 322-2471. —MARTIN BRADY Music Thursday, 19th DUNCAN SHEIK This New York-based singer-songwriter did his undergrad at Brown, while he was there playing music with Lisa Loeb and the soft-spoken indie-folk cats in Ida. Like Loeb, who rocketed from college-coffeehouse renown to Top 40 stardom in 1994 astride her smash “Stay,” Sheik acquired quite a bit of MTV shine in ’96 with “Barely Breathing,” a plangent alt-pop tune that still sounds great on adult-contemporary radio today. The years since, though, have found Sheik charting a career trajectory closer to Ida’s: he’s made a couple of hushed, arty records (including a collaboration with playwright Steven Sater), and he’s established a healthy sideline writing music for films and the theater. This month Sheik is on tour supporting White Limousine, his first pop record in a few years. Not surprisingly, it’s hushed and arty, but it also contains one tune—the muscular, devilishly catchy “Shopping”—that might not sound out of place on the radio again. Of course, considering the possibility that the song is a veiled swipe at American consumerism, that might be wishful thinking. Belcourt Theatre —MIKAEL WOOD ACTRESS With their chiming guitars and staccato drums, the Chattanooga band Actress recall the halcyon days of post-punk. Though the influence of bands like R.E.M. and New Order predominates, Actress have a melodic sense that’s their own. On “Stay Gold,” while singer Aaron Ficchi’s bandmates alternate between sparse chordal accompaniment and a driving eighth-note pattern, his otherworldly voice soars above in a manner that’s as much Gregorian plainsong as “Finest Worksong.” Such dynamic interplay is typical of Isolation, the group’s debut, which was recorded at Atlanta’s Doppler Studios, the home of recent hits by OutKast and Kanye West. The record’s eclectic touches are likely due to Grammy nominated co-producer Matt Goldman, a self-confessed Queenophile. (www.myspace.com/actress) The Basement —PAUL V. GRIFFITH Friday, 20th THE DYNAMITES feat. CHARLES WALKER Late last year, this local 10-piece funk outfit played their first show, and only a few weeks later, they’re celebrating their first release. Fitting for a group whose music harks back to the days when soul revues regularly tore it up in sweaty clubs across the country, it’s a 7-inch vinyl record: “Come on In,” backed with the appropriately titled “Slinky.” Frontman Charles Walker, whose career dates back to the city’s R&B heyday in the ’50s, has a voice marked by timeworn grit, with the kind of power that can only come from years of experience, and he falls right in with The Dynamites’ greasy horn-fired grooves. According to Doyle Davis, who teamed up with Dynamites bandleader Bill Elder to put the record out on their Outta Site imprint, the single is currently being manufactured at the United Record Pressing facility, but should be done just in time for the show—hot off the presses, as they say. After this, plans for national touring are in the works. Mercy Lounge —JONATHAN MARX LOVENOISE SESSIONS VOL. 2 Despite the “Music City” moniker, Nashville’s a notoriously challenging town when it comes to drawing crowds for live music, which makes the ongoing success of Lovenoise, a weekly hip-hop/soul/jazz/spoken-word showcase Sundays at The Bar Car, even more impressive. This week, the event branches out to a different day and venue with Lovenoise Sessions Vol. 2, the second installation in what organizers say will be a quarterly event designed to serve as a preview of upcoming lineups. Performing at Vol. 2—which will be recorded for CD and DVD release—will be Casme’ (www.casmebarnes.com), a New Orleans native who brought down the house at a Lovenoise last September with a call-and-response prayer song for her devastated hometown; JC (www.jcsmoothmusic.com), a former member of the a cappella group Nu Image who sings smooth, contemporary R&B; Britten (www.myspace.com/britten1), whose pleasantly stripped-down soul suggests what a Stevie Wonder MTV Unplugged might sound like; poet, teacher and community activist Stephanie Pruitt (www.stephaniepruitt.com); and several other Lovenoise mainstays. For more information, visit www.lovenoisenashville.com. 12th & Porter —JACK SILVERMAN JOSH ROUSE Marked as many are by the delicate juxtaposition of lush, melodic arrangements and a deeper melancholy, the same Josh Rouse song can be the soundtrack to a sunny spring day or a gray January morning. When he sings, on his latest album Nashville, “Life is good, sometimes it’s bad / It has its ups, it has its downs / Just sing a song and feel all right, cuz that’s just life,” it’s simultaneously reassuring and heartbreaking—a grown-up lullaby with no happy ending, except, perhaps, in the cathartic power of the music. Nashville is a welcome synthesis of the polished retro-pop of Rouse’s previous record and the wistful rootsiness of his early recordings. His well-crafted songs have deceptively simple lyrics, accentuated by just the right details, delivered with perfect restraint and often a touch of irony. His voice is pedestrian yet haunting—soulful in an understated, folky, white-boy way. It grows on you, just like Rouse’s music, which upon every listen nestles a little deeper into your mind—lingering as a resource no matter what life hands you. As of press time, this show was sold out. Belcourt Theatre —LEE STABERT Sunday, 22nd WHITEY JOHNSON An alter ego of Music Row vet Gary Nicholson, Whitey Johnson takes the stage as a long-forgotten holdout of the classic North Texas blues. Given Nicholson’s long record of collaborations with the likes of Delbert McClinton and members of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, this is a natural persona for him to assume, even if he has to don an oversized white suit and shades to do so. On Whitey’s self-titled release, he trades neatly embellished guitar licks with kindred spirit Colin Linden, fronting an acoustic quartet that gives a roomy cowtown feel to his snappy, contemporary hooks. “If you had stayed I’d be dead in my tracks / I still love you baby, but I don’t want you back,” he sings on “Better Off With the Blues.” Tight, well-sketched story lines do better than lyrics aiming for the big message, but the repertoire of unadulterated Texas blues licks holds surprises, like the recurrent riff that plummets into the diabolical terrain of “Jacksboro Highway.” 3rd & Lindsley —BILL LEVINE DUWAYNE BURNSIDE The son of the late bluesman R.L. Burnside, singer-guitarist Duwayne grew up steeped in the raw, rustic blues of the Mississippi hill country and the more uptown sound of Memphis soul. In addition to playing with his father, he also backed Junior Kimbrough and in recent years has toured and recorded with the North Mississippi All-Stars—a team-up that makes perfect sense, as both artists have taken the roots music of their surroundings and rendered something modern from them. In Burnside’s case, though, his recent Under Pressure CD eschews the All-Stars’ jammy inclinations for a harder-edged sound that connects the dots between rock ’n’ roll and the blues. Bourbon St. Blues & Boogie Bar —JONATHAN MARX Monday, 23rd WATERMELON SLIM “Authenticity” can be a cheap cliché in these days of blues revivalists who can’t find Clarksdale, Miss., on a map. Watermelon Slim (Bill Homans) and his band the Workers are hardscrabble Oklahomans, but check out the leader’s credentials: after serving in Vietnam and doing a forgotten one-off protest LP, he got a gig hauling industrial waste around his home state, and only in the past few years—while in his 50s—has he begun to tour nationally and won a Handy Award as Best New Artist. Singing with a hard-weathered grace and punching out rough harp chords, Homans long ago taught himself to play slide with a Zippo lighter while recuperating in a V.A. hospital. “Dumpster Blues” and other songs that come out of his lived experience—being overworked, rolled, broke, abandoned and burnt—aren’t just another spin on familiar themes. After all, this is a guy who’s got an M.A. in history and could’ve been a high school teacher. Instead, he’s lived the hard life for the past couple of decades seemingly to deliver the only message that matters to him: the blues can rise out of the pulverized soil of bare existence. Bourbon St. Blues & Boogie Bar —BILL LEVINE Classical BLAKEMORE TRIO The Blair School’s resident trio have dubbed this concert “Sound and Fury” after a piece on the program written for the group by MTSU professor Paul Osterfield, but the title applies to the rest of the program as well. Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G Minor (performed with the addition of violist Kathryn Plummer) is one of the composer’s most thoroughly realized works, carried forward by one stormy and impassioned phrase after another. Beethoven’s Opus 70 Trio (“The Ghost”) comes from his mature, heroic period, and was given this title because of the picturesque chromaticism of its slow middle movement, drawn from sketches the composer made for an unrealized opera based on Macbeth. The Blakemore Trio performs Jan. 20 at Ingram Hall. —DAVID MADDOX Theater HAIRSPRAY Theatrical history teaches us that sometimes the most untoward source material can be transformed into a successful musical. In this regard, Hairspray, based on John Waters’ 1988 film, is not all that different from Oklahoma! Waters has made a career out of turning his Baltimore hometown into a cinematic sideshow of campiness that usually verges on and quite often reaches the grotesque (Pink Flamingos, Polyester, etc.). Here it’s 1962, and teased-up, bouffant-sporting, plus-size teen Tracy Turnblad wins a coveted spot on a local Baltimore dance show much like American Bandstand. As only Waters can tell such a story, Tracy gains celebrity and tries to win the favor of heartthrob Link Larkin, though what she’s after most of all is doing her part in achieving racial harmony. This musicalization, featuring a book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan (Annie) and music and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, was a smash when it opened on Broadway in the summer of 2002. The road-show version won’t have a cast with the kind of twisted cachet that Waters could bring to his movie—which featured Ricki Lake, Debbie Harry, Jerry Stiller and the late Divine and Sonny Bono—but Nashville audiences should expect a firm commitment to the fearlessly extreme Waters spirit and a lot of good singing. Now onstage at TPAC’s Jackson Hall through Jan. 22. Phone 255-ARTS. —MARTIN BRADY MINTON SPARKS & FRIENDS TPAC launches a new spoken-word series, “The Voices of Today,” with an appearance by this Nashvillian whose recent career path has led to national radio exposure and a string of performances at universities, clubs, coffeehouses and arts festivals. Sparks, by day a psychology professor and creative writing instructor, has refashioned herself as a poet with a theatrical presence straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird. Her strangely evocative narratives are wedded to complementary musical backdrops crafted by frontline Music City artists such as Marcus Hummon, Steve Conn, Darrell Scott, Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile and others. Sparks’ CDs offer plainspoken recitations that conjure both comical and rawboned images of seedy motel rooms, pork ’n’ beans, pecan pie, aging relatives, the DAR, “bumpin’ uglies,” Chet Atkins, clucky females, bus travel and Christian fundamentalism—all delivered in a rustic lament that captures the elusive notion of Southern authenticity. On this inaugural Jan. 21 date at TPAC, the poet will be joined onstage by pianist Conn, guitarists Rob Jackson and Pat Flynn, and singer Maura O’Connell. Sparks’ Johnson Theater gig will be followed by similar dates at the same venue on Feb. 25, April 15 and May 13. A preshow gathering (with a cash bar) begins at 6:30 p.m., the performance is at 7:30 p.m. and a post-show reception includes rubbing elbows with the artists. Phone 255-ARTS for information. —MARTIN BRADY Art FUGITIVE ART CENTER: “ILLUMINATE” As the board and members of Fugitive Art Center continue to search for a new space in which to hold public showings of their work, a new development may provide a temporary solution: the Fugitive has partnered with LoftWerks to bring an exhibit to the top two floors of the Ambrose building on Fourth Avenue downtown. The show will feature painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, film, installation and video by Fugitive members Carol Mode, Patrick DeGuira, Lesley Patterson-Marx, Bob Durham, Julie Roberts, Bryan Hunter, Jack Dingo Ryan, Terry Glispin, Greg Pond, Mark Hosford, Iwonka Waskowski, Hans Schmitt-Matzen + Gieves and Lain York, along with works by other area artists, including Amanda Dillingham, Terry Thacker, Todd McDaniel, Sewanee professor Pradip Malde, Angela Messina, Derek Schartung, Chris Scarborough and others. There is a possibility that this event may lead to other opportunities for the Fugitive artists to bring the kind of cutting-edge shows they have been promoting for more than six years to other downtown spots. LoftWerks has brought sponsors like Nashville Scene, Scion automotive division, SunTrust, Village Real Estate Services and area restaurants together to create a one-night-only event of the best that downtown has to offer. The Ambrose building is at 162 4th Ave. N., between Church and Commerce. “Illuminate” will show 5:30-9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19. There is a suggested donation of $5 per person. —JOE NOLAN THE ARTS COMPANY ARTIST PREVIEW With the Fugitive’s “Illuminate” show happening this week as well (see pick above), downtown is becoming more and more of an art destination—something for which the Arts Company deserves some thanks. Now in its 10th year, Anne Brown’s gallery has been bringing a diversity of work to its affably cluttered rooms on Fifth Avenue North, and this Saturday’s opening will be no exception. Offering a glimpse of the artists to be featured throughout 2006, the Arts Company will be showing work by David Swanagin, Bill Neill, Budd Harris Bishop, Brother Mel, April Street, Lamar Sorrento, Jim Hubbman and the LIFE photographers (Ed Clark, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White) whose work has been featured here before. In addition, Elisa Cossonnet will display the works she created for the gallery’s newly minted 2006 calendar (available for sale), and resident artist Herb Williams will spotlight playful, colorful new sculptures made from his medium of choice: crayons. The opening runs 2-6 p.m. Jan. 21 at 215 Fifth Ave. N. —JONATHAN MARX “De’VIA: DEAF VIEW/IMAGE ART” This event, a juried show of work by deaf artists from Tennessee and eight other states, is reportedly the only exhibit of its kind in the country. Presented by the League for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing, it will feature work by 16 professional and amateur artists, who represent the best of 70 entrants from all over the United States; also on view will be work by nearly 20 young artists from across the state, selected from more than 50 submissions. Representing Tennessee in the adult competition are Gina Helms of Ashland City and Ken McBroom, a Vietnam veteran from the town of Seymour. The event kicks off with an address by deaf-art historian Deborah Meranski Sonnenstrahl at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 21, in Light Hall on the Vanderbilt campus, after which the winners of the juried show will be announced. A reception follows at the Vanderbilt University Hospital Mezzanine Gallery, where work by the artists in the adult competition will be on view through April 30; work by artists in the youth competition will be on view at the nearby Monroe Carrell Jr. Children’s Hospital through the end of April. For more information, call 615-248-8828 (V/TTY) or visit www.leagueforthedeaf.com Lectures DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. CONVOCATION Fisk University’s association with Dr. King is a long one, made stronger by a number of speeches the civil rights pioneer made on the campus during the 1950s. This year, Vernon Jordan will deliver the annual convocation celebrating Dr. King’s life and work. An attorney with a long involvement in the civil rights struggle, he was a member of the legal team that fought to integrate the University of Georgia, served as Georgia field director of the NAACP and led the Voter Registration Project; he’s also former executive director of the United Negro College Fund and the National Urban League. An Atlanta native, Jordan is currently a partner in the distinguished firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld (Washington, D.C.) and the investment firm of Lazard, Frere & Co. (New York). The convocation, which will also include remarks by retired Army Maj. Gen. Frank Miller, takes place at 10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, in the Memorial Chapel on the Fisk University campus. —MICHELLE JONES Film THE NEW WORLD In a just world, we’d be able to compare the longer version of Terrence Malick’s early-America epic—which has already played in larger cities—with the shorter cut the director trimmed for the hinterlands. In a perfect world, we’d get a theatrical release of the even longer cut Malick is reportedly readying for DVD. In this world, I’ll take a new Malick movie any way I can get it. Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale and newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher star in this retelling of the story of Pocahontas and Capt. John Smith. It starts Friday, not to be missed on the big screen. —JIM RIDLEY LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD In his first directorial outing since 1999’s The Muse, Albert Brooks plays our newly appointed ambassador of mirth to Pakistan, sent by none other than Fred Dalton Thompson to find out what makes Muslims laugh. (The answer: Jews.) The comedy starts Friday. Also opening: Kate Beckinsale in the second vampires-vs.-werewolves go-round Underworld: Evolution. —JIM RIDLEY NASHVILLE SCENE PICKS: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE Of all the movies that topped critics’ year-end lists of 2005’s best films, this is the most flat-out entertaining to watch and the most devious to discuss afterward. Amid all the praise for David Cronenberg’s taut, impeccably controlled direction, the strength of Viggo Mortensen’s performance got short shrift. But he triumphs as both actor and movie star in the role of a small-town family man who thwarts a fatal hold-up, only to rouse suspicion about his own past. It’s my choice for the Nashville Scene Picks series at the Belcourt, a recap of some of last year’s best movies selected by the Scene’s film writers. The series starts Friday (along with the films below). —JIM RIDLEY NASHVILLE SCENE PICKS: MY SUMMER OF LOVE Though Pawel Pawlikowski’s moody love story is funny, heartbreaking and thoroughly accessible, it’s still the kind of movie that’s more about how it sounds when a man pulls up a blade of grass than about who that man is. The three-way romance—between a Bible-thumper, his bratty sister and her rich friend—plays out like a biblical parable, with an Edenic small town having its peace threatened by a snakeskin-clad, apple-eating harlot. But Pawlikowski mainly uses the primal story hooks to pull the audience into a world of cinematic texture. The whole movie, which plays Jan. 18-19 at the Belcourt, has the quality of an unplanned nap on a grassy hill. —NOEL MURRAY