Keb’ Mo’ is devoted to the works of the mysterious guitarist Robert Johnson, and even played Johnson in a movie once, and he was a major consultant on the recent PBS documentary series on the blues.
Articles by Eric Johnson
With its comic-book set and toy-piano background music, Auctioning the Ainsleys, the new production at TheatreWorks, creates a mood of absurdist unreality before the first words come out of the first character’s mouth. The fast-paced comic drama by Laura Schellhardt (directed by Meredith McDonough) opens with second-generation auctioneer Avery Ainsley (Heidi Kettenring) selling the last possessions of her domineering mentor father—a Stetson hat, a man’s coat and a pair of size-10 shoes.
Dave Douglas and Joshua Redman will perform at this year’s Stanford Jazz Festival, which features tributes to the music of Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck and Django Reinhardt, as well as a performance from blues legend Mose Allison.
The 1930s had their glitzy side, which Foothill Music Theatre has recaptured with its lavish production of Cole Porter’s 1934 musical Anything Goes. Complete with a 45-member cast and a live band, and in the capable hands of award-winning director Jay Manley, the show displays that era’s more glamorous aspects:
Belle Yang’s ‘Forget Sorrow’ (W.W. Norton; $23.95) exemplifies the graphic novel’s strengths as a strategy for telling family history. The local author and illustrator, who once studied at UC–Santa Cruz, has published books for both adults and children; this is her first graphic novel.
William Trost Richards’ best paintings, on display at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, depict depopulated seascapes with horizon lines that seem to stretch to a humbling infinity beyond the edges of the picture plane.
