Fall. The leaves change colors. The sleeves get longer. And enduring sad girls with guitars replaces tubing on the James as the recreational activity of choice. The new cultural season is almost here, and C-VILLE has selected the best bets in music, art, stage, film and more to keep you busy from now until December. Some names to remember: Zephyrus, Kiwirrkura Village, How to Marry a Millionaire, Roxana Robinson, Loudon Wainwright III and Bernarda Alba. All these and more will carry you from perfecting your summer tan to more intellectual, but no less excellent, adventures in the coming months. And check in every week to C-VILLE’s GetOutNow section to find out who else should be on your need-to-know list in our City’s culture club.
MUSIC
Some may harrumph and grouse about the supposed poverty of exciting bands slated to play the City this fall. Pop fans squealed in anticipation when a certain Ivy-based music website recently floated the rumor that Jewel had booked Starr Hill. It proved false (shocking!), and if your idea of excitement is a folk star turned dance diva, the coming months will indeed find you sorely out of luck. However, if you crave alt-country heroes, wild fiddlers, the return of ’80s pop stars, ’90s grunge rock beauties and, more importantly, the return of a beloved local musician, then start saving your pennies.
The Gravity Lounge, the Internet café/art gallery/performance venue recently opened in The Terraces, closes out this month with the return of Lauren Hoffman on August 30, hosted by well-known local performers Devon Sproule and Paul Curreri. Not long after the release of 1999’s From the Blue House, Hoffman—a former Virgin Records artist and one of the City’s cherished virtuosos—abruptly ended her “Shut Up and Listen!” concert series, quit the music scene and vanished. Even if briefly, she’s come home for an anticipated and, no doubt, well-attended performance. Hoffman plays again on September 18, joined by Jan Smith, who fills the venue’s Thursday night slots this fall. The next night Pat DiNizio of The Smithereens, the classic ’80s “new wave” band found on the Desperately Seeking Susan soundtrack, joins Lance Brenner, the lead singer of local group The Naked Puritans. Halloween may find you back at the Lounge to soak up the fiddling prowess of Laura Light, a nationally respected locally-based singer and composer.
DiNizio isn’t the only ’80s rock demi-god in town on September 19. Even Fridays After 5, the consistently rained-out series brought to us by the Charlottesville Downtown Foundation, has something to offer. Foreigner’s lead singer Lou Gramm, this year’s postponed superstar, finally graces the Downtown Amphitheater on his solo tour, and we pray he retains the good sense to sing “Double Vision” or “Waiting for a Girl Like You” through that frizzled mop of hair.
All the mindless ’80s music may send you screaming and full of thanks to The Prism, the bastion of Rugby Road and favored stop of solid, earnest, acoustic acts. September 25 brings together Darrell Scott, a Nashville singer/songwriter now known for penning Dixie Chicks hits recently crushed by pro-war bulldozers, and Beppe Gambetta, a lush Italian guitarist. The Athens, Georgia, group Dromedary visits on September 27 to play their eclectic and acclaimed music (Bolivia meets Spains meets Turkey meets Appalachia), before they hit the big time, at least as The Prism sees it, and country bluesmen Cephas & Wiggins settle down with harmonica and guitar on October 24.
Such respectable and shadowy tunes may not satisfy your urge to rock out or your deep-seated need for star identification. No Robert Plants have been confirmed, but Starr Hill Music Hall can offer you Loudon Wainwright III, one of America’s great, insolent singer/songwriters, and father of Rufus (a rising star in his own right), on September 13. For more insolence, The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash play the next week, on September 21, and no, they’re not illegitimate offspring, and no, they don’t sound like Johnny Cash, but they play newfangled country so well that the Man in Black would be proud. Recipients of critical accolades, Robert Walter’s 20th Congress unleash their top-notch brand of jazz and funk on September 23 to support the release of the new album Giving up the Ghost. The bagpipes and electric guitars of the Celtic modern rock outfit Seven Nations on October 1 precede the appearance of indie-punk superheroes Built to Spill on October 5. Flocked by leagues of loyal fans, Built to Spill love their Stratocasters and riff with electric distortion in maddeningly intricate ways. Then, of course, there’s Evan Dando. The little-grunge-heartthrob-who-tried and former Lemonheads lead drops by on October 12, in perhaps the season’s highest star wattage performance, to show off his solo album Baby I’m Bored. We hear Juliana Hatfield plays drums for Dando, too, and he’s sharing the stage with Georgia’s Vic Chestnutt, a legend in alt-country circles. Hot off a tour with Beck, The Black Keys spin hot, electronic sounds from their new record Thickfreakness on October 15, and then bluegrass superstar Sam Bush and his mandolin fulfill the City’s obsession with Americana roots music on November 1. On the local front, funk soul brothers Man Mountain Jr. hold a CD release party September 5 with hip-hopsters The Beetnix, while C-VILLE faves Vevlo Eel play September 19.
Thankfully, many of the aforementioned acts take Charlottesville audiences far afield of the loud, artless frat rock and dirty—pardon me, earthy—musicians with guitars and banjos that pervade the local scene. Wild card venues like Tokyo Rose and the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, whose schedules are more spontaneous, will undoubtedly showcase the exciting fringes of both local and national music. The Rose features Scene Creamers, a dark and funky neo-soul outfit, on October 14, and Palomar’s catchy bubble-gum pop on November 6. Indie rockers and electronic maestros and even a few worthwhile singing guitarists will fly low, under the radar, and wow you when you’re least expecting it. Stay tuned. —Aaron Carico
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Charlottesville continues to be the hub of classical music in Central Virginia this fall with a full concert season of series and single events.
The first major event is the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival at the Jefferson Theater in September and October. Excellent young musicians will perform a series of concerts of music from the 18th to the 20th centuries, including violinist/viola player Timothy Summers, cellist Raphael Bell, and pianists Judith Gordon and Lidija Bizjak, with renowned locals Pete Spaar and John D’earth contributing to the October 2 concert. The program goes as follows: September 18, music by Clara Schumann, Brahms and Dvorák; September 21, works by Beethoven, Dohnanyi and Golijov; September 25, music by Ravel, Kernis and Beethoven; September 28, works by Bach, Britten and Beethoven; and October 2, contemporary works by Kancheli, D’earth, Reich and Adams. The contemporary works, including the Kernis and Golijov, look to be of particular interest. The festival wraps up October 5 at the Woodberry Forest School with pieces by Schumann, Britten and Beethoven.
The Tuesday Evening Concert Series at Old Cabell Hall, always a sell-out, opens September 30 with a recital by the gifted young violinist Gil Shaham, accompanied by pianist Akira Eguchi, playing works by Copland, Bach and Fauré. On October 21 Colin Carr (cellist) with Lee Luvisi (pianist) performs works by Brahms and Schumann, and on November 18 the Talich String Quartet will play music by Schubert, Bartók and Dvorák.
On October 4 and 5 the Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of director Carl Roskott, inaugurates its season by performing a work by UVA professor Judith Shatin, Singing the Blue Ridge, as well as Mozart’s Oboe Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2. The soloist in the Mozart concerto will be Scott Perry, principal oboist of the Orchestra. The Orchestra performs next on November 15 and 16, with a program devoted to 20th century music, including Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by C.M. von Weber. Also to be heard are Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and selections from Copland’s Old American Songs with the University Singers conducted by Michael Sion.
Additional concerts include the UVA Chamber Music Series sponsored by the University’s music department, directed by Amy Leung and Ibby Roberts, and featuring classical and modern works, played on Sundays at 3:30pm in Old Cabell Hall by the Albemarle Ensemble and Rivanna String Quartet. Fall dates include September 21, performing Haydn’s String Quartet, Op. 54, Barber’s Summer Music, Britten’s Sinfonietta, Op. 1, and Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp. On November 9 the series feature a cello recital by Amy Leung.
The Oratorio Society, under direction of Lance Vining, will perform Orff’s Carmina Burana at PVCC’s V. Earl Dickinson Hall on October 19, and will give its traditional Candlelight Holiday Concert in Old Cabell Hall on December 14. Zephyrus, Charlottesville’s own vocal-instrumental ensemble specializing in music before 1700 under the direction of Dr. Paul Walker, can be expected to offer a program at a local church, and organ recitals are often featured at some churches in town also.
Concerts are also regularly given at Piedmont Virginia Community College, and The Prism, usually devoted to jazz and folk music, sometimes presents classical concerts by rising young artists. Keep an eye out. All in all, classical music fans should expect to be kept very busy this fall.—Martin Picker
ART
The Charlottesville art scene is changing. With the closings of Gallery Neo and Nature, showing grounds for younger—if not better, at least more imaginative—artists have been drying up. At the same time, several events this fall suggest that on some level Charlottesville has reached a new plateau. Shows at Les Yeux du Monde and the UVA Art Museum, and the opening of Second Street Gallery’s new space in the City Center for Contemporary Arts (or C3A) are all important steps.
Of course, there will also be the standard fare of gallery shows. McGuffey Art Center’s fall schedule includes paintings by Gresham Sykes and the Virginia Watercolor Society (September); oil paintings by Caroline Cobb and stained glass designs by Vee Osvalds (October); and collage artist Susan Patrick and Leon Gehorsam’s watercolors (November). Bozart Gallery’s schedule includes member artists Anne Hopper’s oils (September), Amy Mitchell Howard’s work in mixed media (October) and Vidu Parta’s oils and acrylics (November). Both close the year with annual group shows.
The more compelling shows will be at the big venues. The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Center fall exhibitions include “Whichaway? Photographs from Kiwirrkura 1974–1996” and “Sacred Circles: The Tingari Cycle in Western Desert Art” (August 23–November). In the former, Jon Rhodes documents 22 years in the life of the Kiwirrkura village in Western Australia. The latter focuses on the symbolism of the graphic circles that represent the Dreaming, the ancestral journeys of the aborigines. Together they present an interesting balance between an outsider’s interpretation and the portrayal of ancient aboriginal lore.
With its recent exhibition “Modern Masters,” Les Yeux du Monde seemed posed to be a bigger commercial dealer. Is there any other for-profit space in the region offering up such art stars as Basquiat and Andy Warhol? With its fall roster of local artists that include photographs by Barnaby Draper (October), paintings by Lincoln Perry (November) and drawings by Beatrix Ost (December), Les Yeux du Monde will, for the moment, return to more local roots. With September’s “Hindsight/Fore-site Revisited,” works by the artists from the last year’s original “Hindsight/Fore-site” project will be exhibited. Many, like Todd Murphy and Barbara MacCullum, represent the growing number of area artists with reputations farther afield. With this exhibition, Les Yeux du Monde reminds us of the strong arts undercurrent running through the community.
Les Yeux also gets in on the 16th Annual Virginia Film Festival, showing a documentary about three VCU artists (October). This year’s festival theme, “$,” will also be the theme of the City-wide Fringe Festival—an all arts collaboration between the studio arts, art history, drama, dance, music, architecture, and creative writing departments at the University taking place October 17-November 2. The Fringe Festival showcases the work of student artists, as well as some locals. In the past, it has been a big, rambling affair with an art opening one night and a large dance party the weekend of the festival. Although the quality of the work is sure to be as varied as the work itself, it promises to be interesting.
Also in conjunction with the Film Festival, the UVA Art Museum will present “Third Memory,” a video installation by Pierre Huyghe (October 21–November 30). The rest of the museum’s scheduled exhibitions run the gamut from “Roads Taken: 20th Century Prints and Drawings from the Collection” (August 16–October 5), new work by Gay Outlaw—known originally for his sculptures built with pastries (August 30–October 12), O. Winston Link’s photographs of the dying railroad industry (October 11–December 21) and “The Moon has No Home,” Japanese woodblock prints (November 22–March 2004).
This fall also marks the culmination of Tim Rollins’ residency at the University. This past year, Rollins brought the Kids of Survival (K.O.S.) project to Charlottesville. Rollins trained University students in his unique teaching methods and led workshops with the children participating in the University Art Museum’s summer program. The students made works based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. The result, “Purple with Love’s Wound” (September 19–November 9), is the final stage in the project. The exhibition features the large-scale collage made by the students in the workshops.
By far the most anticipated—and long-reaching—event of the fall will be the opening of Second Street Gallery’s new home in the C3A on Water Street. The old space will close with a fitting tribute to the community that supports it. “Artists Among Us: Art by Second Street Gallery Artists Members” (September 5–28) will feature—well, artist members. The new space will open with “30 Years: Three Decades of New Art at Second Street Gallery” (November 7–February 1), an exhibition of new work by 56 past exhibitors. The exhibition features national artists like Shelby Lee Adams, Emmett Gowin and Mel Chin. Regional artists will include Dean Dass, Sally Mann and Anne Slaughter.
It is a significant achievement to pass one’s 30th year as an alternative art space. This exhibition and the catalogue that accompany it should be viewed as an accomplishment for both the arts community and the City at large. It also signals the beginning of a whole new era for area artists.—Emily Smith
STAGE
What glistening treasures this fall await the theatergoer’s quest for entertainment? What juicy fruits will bloom on the trees of drama’s autumnal orchard? While dates remain hazy and program changes may occur, here are some first glimmers of what you can expect, what’s likely to seem important and be important, and a few predictions on the good, the bad and the ugly.
On September 19, Live Arts opens Coffeehouse 13, its last show in the company’s current home on E. Market Street before moving this fall to the City Center for Contemporary Arts—or C3A—currently being built on Water Street. The new theater isn’t finished, and funding is stretched tighter than Roseanne Barr’s trampoline, so expect the well-oiled Live Arts publicity engine to hype, hype, hype the new space. The hype is entirely justified, but for the general public this final coffeehouse is the more important event.
Coffeehouses were collections of locally written skits presented in a cabaret style. This show’s theme will be “diversity.” You may think Live Arts discussing diversity is like a cigarette company discussing physical fitness. But that’s the point. Coffeehouses past lampooned Charlottesville, the Downtown scene and Live Arts itself. It was a healthy corrective and a rare virtue in the modern world: ironic self-awareness. Some of the skits will fall flat, some of the acting will be bad, but Coffeehouse 13 should be entertaining overall. And for those of us who remember when the Downtown scene really was a scene and Live Arts a self-governing group of artist wannabes, Coffeehouse 13 will mark a bittersweet goodbye.
In early October UVA Drama opens The House of Bernarda Alba by Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. It’s about matriarchal domination and sexual repression. You thought Russian literature was depressing? Bring your elephant-strength intravenous Prozac boosters to this one.
Also in early October, Barboursville’s Four County Players will present Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, one of Simon’s sweet, gently comic autobiographical plays. Four County usually does a good job with this sort of material. Watch Bernada Alba and Brighton Beach on consecutive nights to see if the contrast will cause your head to explode.
In late October Offstage Theater opens A Fortune in Antarctica at a yet-to-be-determined location. It’s a story of explorers competing to rescue a fellow adventurer who has been taken captive by penguins. For those offended by C-VILLE’s theater commentary over the last couple years, bring tomatoes to throw. The script is by this paper’s regular theater critic—me. Maybe if you bring a clipping of a nasty comment I’ve written about you, Offstage will discount your ticket.
UVA’s second show of the season will be November’s Way of the World by William Congreve. It’s a Restoration classic, urbane and cynical, about a witty woman and a witty man who want to marry in a world where everyone else is a hypocrite or a fool. The big deal here is the show will be directed by visiting artist Sabin Epstein, former resident director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
Early December brings the opening of Live Arts’ new space on Water Street with Grapes of Wrath. The script by Frank Galati was apparently developed over several years by the famed Steppenwolf Theatre of Chicago. Of course, it’s from the John Steinbeck novel of the same name. Okies, forced from their Dust Bowl homes during the Great Depression, arrive in California to find their troubles have barely begun. Although Live Arts’ new theater isn’t yet finished, the proportions of the stage area are beautiful, and director Betsy Tucker’s reputation should ensure a good talent pool. Grapes should be a moving show.
Also in early December, Four County Players presents an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. This is a family-oriented show, of course, meaning children will be enthralled, adults will be relieved, and teenagers will feign petulant embarrassment.
In middle-to-late December, Offstage will present a satirical Christmas show for the Scrooge in all of us, with any luck in the new space being completed behind Rapture restaurant.
Staunton’s Shenandoah Shakespeare company also has a full slate this fall in the Blackfriars Playhouse, including continuing summer fare like King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing and Knight of the Burning Pestle (September through November), followed by Moliere’s farce Tartuffe, the world premiere of The Holiday Knight (based on Pestle and featuring holiday songs throughout the ages), and the annual A Christmas Carol. In 2004 look forward to Antony and Cleopatra, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Importance of Being Earnest and Henry IV, Part One.
Also keep your eyes open for shows from Piedmont’s ever-improving drama department, student projects in UVA’s Helms, offerings from the sporadic ACT I and Scottsville’s Horseshoe Bend Players.
Looking ahead to 2004, look for Live Arts to stage the regional premieres of Pulitzer Prize-winner Topdog/Underdog and David Mamet’s Boston Marriage (January), as well as current Broadway smash Nine (based on Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, March), The Play About the Baby (April) and artistic director John Gibson’s labor of love, Angels in America: Part 1, finally comes to Charlottesville in June.
As for quality, most of the plays above will be too long with too many “deep” melodramatic pauses and way too many slow cue pick-ups. There will be nasty backstage gossip, pretentious stupidity, and zeppelin-sized egos. But there will also be some beautiful scenes, some honest performances, and several shows that hint—and perhaps one which even proves—that theater could theoretically create a form of communication richer, broader and more entertaining than movies or pop songs.—Joel Jones
BOOKS
While spring’s Festival of the Book draws literati types like bees to honey, the fall offers plenty of book events featuring both nationally touring authors as well as the home-grown variety.
Like John Grisham, whose literary fame mandates number-taking at his New Dominion book signings. Grisham releases his new book Bleachers, an earnest tome about Southern high-school football, on September 9, but the tedium of adoring fans has led him, at least this time, to just hand over signed books to New Dominion—no more face-to-face interaction. September 30 brings Roxana Robinson, a realist author and critic’s favorite, to the bookstore to read and sign Sweetwater, which tells of family conflict in New York City and the Adirondacks. Local hiker George Meek and his book Time for Everything: A Six Year Adventure on the Appalachian Trail arrive on October 4 to reassure the audience that he did not, in fact, get terrifically lost. Don Webster, a National Geographic correspondent, discusses the harrowing defense of China in World War II from his Burma Road on October 15. And An Imperfect God exposes the truth behind George Washington’s relationship with slavery, as local historian Henry Wiencek discusses on October 23.
The corporate giant we all love to hate—or really, just love—Barnes & Noble brings in the authors to please the masses. Preeminent Civil War historian and UVA professor Gary Gallagher discusses The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 on September 18, followed on September 20 by the inspirational churnings of Tommy Reamon, who wrote Rough Diamonds: A Coach’s Journey. The Madam, a novel about a West Virginia whorehouse filled with quirky characters and stilted writing, and its author Julianna Baggott appear on September 29. Barnes & Noble realizes the season would be incomplete without an October 3 reading by David Baldacci of his new book Split Second and a November 4 discussion by Rita Mae Brown of her Full Cry.
If the populist fluff has your elitist heart yearning for depth, fear not. UVA will supply. Historian Andro Linklater reads from his riveting new look at the American dream of property ownership, Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy on October 7. Don’t forget your coffee, in case he decides to read the title. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 receives attention in a reading by beloved UVA History Professor Ed Ayers on November 6. The horrible yet titillating issue of killer children is the focus of Joan Brumberg’s Kansas Charley: A Boy Murderer from the American Past, about a homicidal 15-year-old in 1890 and his execution, in her reading on November 19.
By this time, you’ll probably need to escape into poetry and fiction, which is provided with readings by UVA professors Debra Nystrom, from her long-awaited new verse collection Torn Sky, and fiction writer Christopher Tilghman on November 20. And although the dates must still be confirmed, superstar authors Francine Prose and Anne Carson visit for readings this fall, too.—Aaron Carico
FILM
Just like the next Matrix sequel, fall is coming quickly, and eager cinema buffs will have a full menu of interesting choices to peruse this season, both from the local camera and national lens.
First and foremost, the 16th annual Virginia Film Festival takes over town October 23-26, and the weekend-long event—an increasingly star-studded venture, with Nicholas Cage and the omnipresent Roger Ebert among last year’s attendees—promises to live up to its established standard of topicality.
While last year’s theme was “Wet,” which was on everyone’s mind given the drought that plagued the City, this year’s festival theme, “$,” tackles money in all its forms. With unemployment hovering around 6 percent nationwide—and also on the rise locally—corporate governance scandals on every horizon and deficits ballooning, the organizers have again shown an uncanny knack for getting right to what interests (or ails) us at the moment.
“Since many believe that our last theme helped bring about the end of the region’s drought,” Festival Director Richard Herskowitz modestly observes on the Festival’s website www.vafilm.com, “we’re hoping this year’s ‘$’ theme will turn around the economy.”
Films scheduled for the festival thus far include Greed, The Lavender Hill Mob, Citizen Kane, Wall Street, Take the Money and Run, How to Marry a Millionaire, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Gold Rush. Those who find themselves particularly burdened (or is that bird-end?) with money troubles will even have an opportunity to check out the cartoon legacy of Scrooge McDuck. Additionally, the festival will host presentations on such topics as film financing and the world of public funding for non-commercial media.
Speaking of the film festival, those of you who have been enjoying the retrospective of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s films at Vinegar Hill this summer will be glad to hear that more have been added to the agenda. According to Vinegar Hill management, the series, which showcases Kurosawa’s collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune and is itself a collaboration between the theater and the VFF, will show six more titles than had originally been scheduled. Instead of ending with The Seven Samurai on August 21, Vinegar Hill will show I Live in Fear, Red Beard, Sanjuro, Throne of Blood, The Lower Depths and an encore of The Seven Samurai, with the films being shown every other week on Wednesdays and Thursdays, wrapping up November 19 and 20.
In addition to moving to new digs in the City Center for Contemporary Arts in October, Light House, the local film mentoring program for teenagers, will continue its “youth media tower” at Whole Foods Market through September. The kiosk will show Home Again, a collection of short autobiographical documentaries made by young refugees from Togo, Afghanistan, Bosnia and other countries who resettled in Charlottesville. You might have caught the films when they premiered in June at Vinegar Hill Theatre. In September, Charlottesville Public Access Television picks up Home Again, along with Light House’s Reel Stories, which features teens’ thoughts and views on Charlottesville. Check your local listings for details.
The fall should also bring updates on local director Paul Wagner’s journey to screening his recently completed feature, ANJLZ, to an audience. As reported in this paper, ANJLZ was almost entirely a local production, funded with local dollars and with a cast and crew drawn largely from Charlottesville-based technicians and artists.
“Currently we have a very funny, very crazy rough cut of ANJLZ that runs about 90 minutes,” Wagner tells C-VILLE. “Over the next few weeks we’ll lay in some music and then present the film to a few small audiences to get some critical feedback and also to raise the funds we need to complete the post-production. We’re also starting to show the movie to people in the film biz beyond Charlottesville to set up distribution.
“Sometime this fall we’ll throw a private screening for the cast and crew,” he says. “The rest of Charlottesville will have to wait until we get the distribution in place, probably in early 2004.” Which gives us something to look forward to next year.—Paul Henderson