By Dawnell Smith
Daily News Reporter

Things got sketchy at Bernie's Saturday afternoon when people armed with sketch pads and pencils arrived to a locked door at 2:15 p.m. for an art event meant to start at 2 p.m. Oh well. We just banged the door until someone ushered us to the patio to wait. Apparently, Dr. Sketchy wasn't ready just yet.

Yet the patient among us watched while his minions swept the debris from the Paradise Lounge and finally waved us to the entrance. Sadly, two of us had no cash for admission.

Still ready to do art, we ran an errand at the train station and got cash at an ATM, but got waylaid at the downtown market when a faulty stem drained the air from my tire. So instead of going back to Bernie's for a life drawing class, I walked my congested head and deflated bike back home.

By Sarah Henning
Anchorage Daily News

“When I say the word Muslim, what’s the first word that comes to mind?” asks the professor.

“Terrorists.”

Here, the professor pauses. But he doesn’t boil over. Instead, he says: “Every religion has its plague of fanatics, and Islam is not immune … but what you see on T.V. is not Islam.”

From page one of her script, playwright Suehyla El-Attar unflinchingly confronts Muslim stereotypes. Although “The Perfect Prayer” is, at its core, a comic coming-of-age story, El-Attar makes sure non-Muslim viewers leave the theater with Islam 101. Somehow, she does it all within a completely relatable plot packed with laughs.

Local dance recitals, organ concerts, the Midnight Sons' barbershop extravaganza. What did you see in the past few busy days?

Yeorim Kim with her MTNA award in the UAA Recital Hall.

I'll kick it off with a report from the recital of winners of local music competitions sponsored by the Anchorage Concert Chorus at the UAA Recital Hall on Saturday night. College division winners of ACC Vocal Scholarships included Syndee Waggoner (1st), Dorothy Freeman-Wittig of Fairbanks (2nd), and Jane Park Drebert (3rd). High School Division winners included Bronwyn White (1st), Elena Jarlson (2nd) and Nicole Chamberlin (3rd).

By Sarah Henning
Anchorage Daily News

Although the state Legislature has been contemplating a revision of the Silver Hand Program for four months, lawmakers adjourned Wednesday without acting and the program will remain as-is until next year.

The Silver Hand Program, which authenticates Alaska Native art, was established in 1961 to protect consumers from unknowingly purchasing fraudulent reproductions of Alaska Native art. The program has since expanded its goals to improving the economic position of Alaska Native artists.

Senate Bill No. 97 was introduced in February to update the Silver Hand program. Proposed changes include:

Alaska Theatre of Youth's new season will include an old favorite, “A Christmas Story,” based on the evergreen made-for-television movie. The popular seasonal show will be presented Dec. 6-16..

ATY will begin its season with “Ramona Quimby,” adapted from the series of children’s books by Len Jenkin. Janet Stoneburner will direct the production, which will run from Oct. 18-28.

A musical version of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories” will be presented Feb. 21-March 2, 2008. And Paul Schweigert will direct Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” April 24-May 4, 2008.

By Sarah Henning
Anchorage Daily News

The audience sat in blackness. The cheerful lilt of “I’m Into Something Good” began playing over the theater speakers.

Then, the babies started howling.

The recorded, cringe-inducing cries juxtaposed against the feel-good golden oldie set up “Yo! Mama” as a hysterical and poignant play about new mothers commiserating in a post-natal yoga class.

But once the monologues started Friday at Out North, it became clear this production would not live up to its potential.

The script treads a lot of the ground already covered often and better by TV shows and magazine essays, and the characters’ grousing often doesn’t outweigh their sometimes feeble assertions that they love being parents.

Painter Rie Munoz, 83, has won a $25,000 Distinguished Artist award from the Rasmuson Foundation.

"High Kick" by Rie Munoz

Muñoz intends to use the grant to revisit many of the remote villages of Alaska that she painted early in her career.

In 1950, Munoz traveled to Alaska from Los Angeles. She stepped off a passenger ship in Juneau, and never left. By the 1970s, she was one of the few full-time artists supporting herself in Alaska.

Her prints are carried in nearly every gallery in Alaska, including her own Rie Munoz Gallery in Juneau. Her colorful, slightly abstract prints of Alaskans at work and play hang in homes all over the state and she has a national following, especially for her children’s book illustrations.

Jabali African Acrobats

Alaska Junior Theater’s 2007-2008 season is hauling in professional artists from as far away as Africa and England to entertain Alaska’s kiddos. Here’s the lineup:

Oct. 26: “Aesop Bops” Aesop’s most beloved tales including “The Lion and the Mouse” and “The Fisherman and His Wife” told by master storyteller/musician/poet
David Gonzalez.
Recommended for ages 4 and up/grades K-5.

By Anne Herman

In an early celebration of Cinco de Mayo, Ballet Folklorico “Quetzalli” de Veracruz brought the sights and sounds of Mexico to Alaska Friday night, May 4.

Lively movements and songs, colorful costumes and happy voices filled the Atwood Concert Hall in a fiesta of traditional Mexican folk dance and music.
It was hard not to get caught up in all the action onstage. The dancing was rhythmic, the singing and music infectious, and the atmosphere full of laughter, good times and great company.

Much of Ballet Folklorico’s dances reflected the influence that Spain and Africa had on the peoples of Mexico’s Veracruz and Guerrero regions.

A young troupe shines in Shakespeare comedy and a Juneau clown takes a bow at Cyranos. Did you see something good lately? Here's your place to tell us about it.

(l-r)The band: Davee C, drums; Lennox Holniss, bass; Geoffrey Castle, violin/vocals; Adrian Xavier, guitar/vocals; Mark Cardenas, keyboards, before the show at Players House of Rock in Spenard on May 3. Photo by Leland Smith.

By Leland Smith

The former sleaziest nightlub in downtown Spenard has cleaned up to become sin strip’s hottest artistic lighthouse for original music.

Hold on to your hat: Geoffrey Castle’s back. How many six string electric violinists have you heard play Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” holding the fiddle behind their back lately?

David Sedaris

By Dawnell Smith

Since the David Sedaris reading a few hours ago, I can't seem to shake the one burning question that has kept me from making deadline. If zombie bites can kill dogs without turning them into zombies and yet change humans into relentless, hapless, mindless, slow-footed, poorly dressed, reanimated, flesh-eating visages of the immortally dead, then what does a zombie bite do to an ape or chimpanzee?

Do animals genetically similar to humans turn into zombies, too? And if so, should this influence our assumptions about the hierarchies, intelligence and rights of sentient beings?

Co-concertmaster Whitney Yang.

By Mike Dunham

Alaska has maybe six orchestras capable of playing classical music in a more-or-less presentable form. The Anchorage Youth Symphony is the second-most polished of the group and, at their best, the teenage players can give the Anchorage Symphony a run for its money.

In the arrangement of “The Dance of the Comedians” from “The Bartered Bride” by Smetana, which opened Tuesday night’s concert, the string section demonstrated an admirably professional sound. They raced through the cascading notes with superb accuracy and cohesion. The final bars could have come off a commercial recording.

Alisa Weilerstein

In 2007-08 the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra will continue to blend classical blockbusters with new music, which this season includes the world premiere of an ASO-commissioned violin concerto by Chris Brubeck, son of noted jazz pianist Dave Brubeck.

The guest artist roster features several up-and-comers including Tokyo-born Naoko Takada, a marimba player with an athletic style the Washington Post compared to martial arts.

Anchorage Symphony Orchestra
Classic Concert Series
Sept. 29-30: Includes Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” with Anchorage Concert Chorus, Alaska Chamber Singers, Alaska Children’s Choir and guest vocalists Anne Carolyn Bird, Thomas Trotter and Ryan Taylor.

By Maia Nolan
Daily News correspondent

Atwood Concert Hall audiences love a good standing ovation — the longer, the better. But the one bestowed on the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra’s Saturday night performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem was unusually long and enthusiastic, even by Atwood standards.

The audience’s ecstatic response to the performance was prompted at least in part to the sheer magnitude of the group assembled onstage. Between the symphony, the Anchorage Concert Chorus, the Alaska Chamber Singers and the guest soloists, the number of performers topped 200, with a sound to match the size of their ranks. But ovations are not won by numbers alone, and it’s safe to say the accolades were due to the fact that the performance was just really good.

By Mike Dunham
Anchorage Daily News

The high school auditorium in Kenai hosted a concert on Saturday night that any major musical organization would consider ambitious. The world’s pluckiest orchestra — rehearsals can require driving a couple of hundred miles on remote Alaska roads — and most casual audience — bib overalls were not out of place — were the first people on the planet to play and hear “An Alaskan Symphony” by Los Angeles composer Adrienne Albert.

That “first people on the planet” observation came from pre-concert remarks by Mark Robinson, who led the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra, Kenai Peninsula Community Chorus and Homer High School Concert Choir — about 200 performers — in the premiere.

By Sarah Henning
Anchorage Daily News

In “Music on the Edge of Madness,” Anchorage’s opera community challenged and surprised the audience, and not just because they saw an opera singer in a mesh tank top and fishnets. The program dusted off some rarely performed pieces that relied heavily on acting skills, and the artists responded with some truly inspired performances.

Friday evening’s program featured two 30-minute works sung in English: A devastating one-act opera, “Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night,” and a comic Baroque cantata called “The Schoolmaster.” The program was presented at Out North as part of Anchorage Opera’s Second Stage Series.

What live performance or art show did you see this weekend? Tell us about it here.

By Dawnell Smith

Hey, I know everyone just wants to shake and glide this weekend, but do some noble literary work first at the Hidden Alaska reading at 7 p.m. tonight at Borders Music and Books, when Alaskan poets and essayists share work from the latest issue of Alaska Quarterly Review.

For some far funkier action, check out the annual Spring Social and musical steamroll at 9 p.m. Saturday at Flori d'Italia (2502 McRae Road). Admission is $5 and the music is fiercely independent, singularly Spenard.

Call 243-9990 for more information.

Einstein brought back to life!

By Dawnell Smith

At last, the weekend of bootie begins!

Between the Dance Together Festival at UAA all weekend and the urban Street Smarts concert by the Underground Dance Company at West High on Sunday, no one can blame a lack of floor space or music for wasting away on idle backsides. You can shake some bootie on the fly by showing up at UAA Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but buy tickets in advance for the Underground dance concert. The place packed them in last time.

Go online to find out more about the dance festival or Street Smarts.