Ray Collins Hot Club
Moe's Alley; $8 adv/$10 door; 8pm.
Contrary to popular stereotype, German musicians are not all about robotic, electronic soundscapes performed with precision, like the Nihilist synth band Autobahn in . In fact, if Ray Collins' Hot Club is any indication, that preconception couldn't be further from the mark. Attempting to rekindle the spirit of '50s rhythm & blues and jump swing music more often associated with early Ray Charles than the Eastern Bloc, the group tears into its catalog of classics with reverence and gusto. Formed in 2000, the nine-piece band has gained a large following in swing and rockabilly circles worldwide, and is currently on its first U.S. tour supporting their newest release, . Put on those dancing shoes and make it down to Moe's Alley for an upbeat swing party, but leave the black turtlenecks and "Trans-Europe Express" requests at home. (PD)
Mark O'Connor's Hot Swing
Kuumbwa; $22-$25; 7 and 9pm.
As a student of American folk tradition, Mark O'Connor studied with Texas fiddler Benny Thomasson and then moved on to French jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. This tutelage by two very different but equally talented musicians encouraged him to find his own voice. Beginning with , a recording featuring Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer, Mark drew attention from outside the folk/bluegrass world, culminating with the 2001 Grammy winning . His current band includes jazz guitarist Howard Alden, bluegrass guitarist Bryan Sutton, jazz bassist Jon Burr and jazz vocalist Roberta Gambarini. Swinging through orchestral, folk and jazz, this hot ensemble plays pop standards along with spectacular original compositions. (MM)
'Oh, Seuss! Off to Great Places'
Oct. 15-May 2006 at the Children's Discovery Museum, 180 Woz Way, San Jose. (408.298.5437)
Horton, the Cat in the Hat and a plethora of other Dr. Seuss characters will be the main attraction as the Children's Discovery Museum's newest exhibit, "Oh, Seuss! Off to Great Places.' This hands-on fun zone, borrowed from the Children's Museum of Manhattan, honors the great kids' book author on his Seussentennial.
Heavenly Bodies
San Jose Museum of Art; 110 S. Market St, San Jose; 408.294.2787; Tue - Sun, 11-5pm; show runs through April 9
In an affront to the static quality of oil painting, the video works in "Heavenly Bodies," in the historic wing upstairs at the San Jose Museum of Art, all embrace notions of time and change. In essence, the pieces in the show are experimental video shorts turned into installations pieces.
In You Called Me Jacky, a four-minute-long video, artist Pipilotti Rist lip-syncs with exaggerated gestures the title song while indistinct images flow and mutate behind her. The work may be a comment on bad music videos or it just may be a bad music video.
In similar fashion, Drew Brandt's Dance, Video, Dance (2002) subverts a battling-warriors video game called Soul Caliber into a disco video. Instead of attacking each other, two armor-plated Voldos with knife-blade hands engage in an intricate dance routine in the halls of some Lara Croft underworld full of columns, vaults and dragons.
Two large installations resonate to much greater effect. In one darkened corner, Ajna Joy Lichau's San Shi (Dispersion) consists of a large, faint wall-mounted photo of Angel Island on the wall; on the floor, a color image of a nude woman floats face down in the water. Subtly, the shifting reflections of light create a rippling surface. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the video is being projected on a bed of sand, which gives it a 3-D quality. Is this a murder waiting to be solved or the beginning of a transformation? The shimmer in the dark remains a mystery.
Ruth Eckland's Star Fields (2005) casts a six-minute montage of star bursts and silhouettes of persons and landscapes unknown. In time to a an electronica score, the video turns red, blue and yellow. The video is projected on a series of hanging translucent scrims before falling on a wall. The result--fragmented and layered--is like a hologram journey through deep space with flickering memories of Earth.
Local computer artist wiz Jim Campbell offers a Self-Portrait With Disturbances. A small black-and-white TV with its innards exposed broadcasts a grainy shot of the artist's head. As the viewer walks past the screen, a video camera records the movements and adds them to the feed, creating a ghostly trail of pixels, like an animated Etch-a-Sketch.
New media offers lots of possibilities, including the chance to flop. Bjorn Melhus' No Sunshine (1998) is a short video about two yellow-wigged proto-humans conversing in baby-talk gibberish until interupted by a pair of more (supposedly) evolved hairless beings in body suits. It is exactly this kind of avant-garde art-school indulgence that gave rise to the SNL parody Sprockets. As Dieter used to chide, "Your story has become tiresome." (MSG)
Corteo
Daily (except Mon) through Feb 19. Taylor Street Bridge; Taylor Street and Hwy 87, San Jose; 800.678.5440; Tue-Wed - 8pm; Thu-Sat - 4 and 8pm; Sun - 1pm; $40-$200
The latest installment of Cirque du Soleil is probably its most personality driven--a clown prepares its own funeral. Assemble under the blue and yellow tent for an evening of acrobatics, vaudevillian antics and whimsy. (TI)
The Lion King
Daily (except Mon) through Feb. 26. San Jose Center for the Performing Arts; 255 Almaden Blvd, San Jose; 408.998.TIXS; Opens Fri - 7pm; $29.75-$65.25.
In the fullness of its cross-media platforming blitz of the late '90s (when now-disposed Michael Eisner was something of a king of the media jungle himself), Disney turned its animated hit The Lion King into a Tony-winning Broadway musical. The show, directed by Julie Taymor (who made the Salma Hayek biopic Frida), captured the eyes of audiences with vibrant costumes and the ears (maybe less so) with an Elton John and Tim Rice score. The story of Mufasa, his son Simba and the various creatures of the veldt comes to San Jose in a traveling cast assembled by Disney Theatrical Productions and hosted by American Musical Theatre of San Jose. (MSG)
The Immigrant
Daily (except Mon) through February 26, 2006. San Jose Repertory Theatre; 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose; 408.367.7255; www.sjrep.org.
The epic of immigration that forms so much of American history is given a very personal treatment in San Jose Repertory Theatre's newest production, The Immigrant. Mark Harelik's play dramatizes the true story of the playwright's paternal grandparents, Russian Jews who escaped the pogroms of their homeland by moving to America in the early years of the 20th century. Instead of settling in the large Eastern metropolises that drew most immigrants, the family traveled all the way to Texas where a Baptist family aided them. John McCluggage directs this production. (MSG)
A Wealth Of Ideas
Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion; Stanford University Campus; 650.723.3563; Runs Jan. 31-May 6; open Tue-Sat, 11am-4pm; free
Liberal it ain't. Stanford's Hoover Institution is the gold standard of conservative think tanks. The well-endowed (with money—despite the phallic symbolism of the Hoover Tower) institution possesses a deep collection of unusual historical documents on the topics of revolution, politics and world leaders. As a prelude to a book about the institution's archives by fellow Bertrand M. Patenaude, the Hoover library is mounting an exhibit of some of its rarest holdings. (MSG)
