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FEATURED UCSF ARTIST| NINA'S ARTS NOTES 1st appeared 28 September 1998 Poets Among Us With this issue, DAYBREAK ARTS begins a Poetry section. We know there are a good many poets in the UCSF family and hope you will want to share your poems. We will do our best to persuade the Electronic Wizards who rule our lives to reproduce your poems as accurately as possible. The poems can be about anything you choose but have better chance of publication if they are fairly short. Please send them electronically or preferably via Campus Mail because it is better to see original punctuation, to Nina Beckwith, c/o Paula Murphy, Daybreak Editor, Box 0462 LHTS 103 or email paulam@itsa.ucsf.edu Here is our first DAYBREAK poem, appropriately entitled ODE TO MONDAYS I have no issues with Mondays. I have no issues with Mondays. I have no issues with Mondays. Monday. -- by Karen Attix, Manager, Arts & Performances Great Japanese Artworks San Francisco's Asian Art Museum is privileged to be the first place on the US mainland to host exhibitions of works by the two greatest creators of Japanese woodblock prints, Hokusai and Hiroshige, from the extraordinary collections of writer James A. Michener, who died in l997. These fascinating images will surely draw you back for several visits to the Asian, which is still in Golden Gate Park, not far from the UCSF Parnassus campus. Over many years, Michener's collections of precious ukiyo-e prints were given to the Honolulu Academy of Arts, which has sent 100 outstanding works of each artist for our delectation. Because these exquisite prints are too fragile to be shown for more than an eight-week period, the Asian's Great Japanese Prints has been divided into a series of two exhibitions: Hokusai opened on September 23 and will be on view until November 15. Hiroshige will be on view from November 21 through January 17, l999. Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was the innovative master who turned landscape into a woodblock print genre, producing most of his monumental work when he was already in his 70s. You will see some of his most beloved prints in this show, such as "Great Wave," "Thunderstorm Beneath the Summit," and "Mount Fuji at Dawn." And only this Michener collection lets us enjoy all ten of the extremely rare prints in Hokusai's Imagery of Poets series. The exhibition curator and author of its beautiful catalogue, Dr. Yoko Woodson, who is also responsible for the excellent audio tour which is free with Museum admission, informs us that Hokusai was influenced in creating perspective by seeing 18th-century Dutch copperplate engravings: the Dutch and the Chinese were the only peoples permitted to trade with Japan during the 250 years when it was closed to the rest of the world. For college and university students and educators, a special evening reception and free viewing of Hokusai will be held on Thursday, October 1st from 6 to 8 p.m. RSVP by September 29 to 379-8898. On Saturdays and Sundays from 11 to 3 you may attend demonstration/workshops of Japanese papermaking and printmaking in the Museum's Gruhn Court -- and even try your own hand. For reservations phone 379-8879. Regular Asian Art Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 9:30 to 5; on first Wednesday of the month hours are extended until 8.45 p.m. and admission is free. * * * * * Going for Baroque Judging by its first concerts September 12-18, devoted to Handel's oratorio Solomon, the new Philharmonia Baroque season will continue to give us the kinds of treasures which have established its stature as "the country's leading early-music orchestra" (New York Times) over its past 17 seasons of superb performances. Music director Nicholas McGegan, an authority on baroque and classical music who also has a delightfully winning personality, will conduct the October concerts of varied English music. The program includes Henry Purcell's Suite from Abdelazar or The Moor's Revenge; two rare concertos by Capel Bond; William Corbett's playful Al'Irlandese and Alla Milanese; Concerto No. 6 in D by Charles Avison, and in a short voyage to Italy, two violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi to be performed by the Orchestra's virtuoso, Elizabeth Blumenstock. As is customary for our own Philharmonia Baroque, performances of each program are given around the Bay Area, in this case in Berkeley on Oct. 17 and 18, in San Rafael on Oct. 21, at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco's Civic Center on Oct. 23, and in Palo Alto on the 24th. November will bring the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K.491 played by Robert Levin on the fortepiano, and two works by Beethoven: Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus and the Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21, also conducted by Nicholas McGegan. The November concert in San Francisco is on Friday, the 13th, at the Herbst Theatre. In various Bay Area venues from December 10 through 18 -- the 18th is the San Francisco date -- McGegan and the Orchestra will play Mozart's Symphony No. 34 in C and be joined by vocal soloists and the Philharmonia Chorale directed by Bruce Lamott for Mozart's glorious Mass in C Minor and his Exultate, Jubilate. For Philharmonia Baroque tickets call 392-4400. More information at www.philharmonia.org * * * * * Lecturing Artists With the recent world premiere in San Francisco of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, more stars have been added to the crown of Sir André Previn, who was knighted in l996. A conductor of the world's leading orchestras and composer of concert music, film scores, and jazz, as well as a virtuoso pianist and recording artist, Previn is also an illuminating speaker and diverting raconteur. He will be heard in conversation with SF Opera's general director, Lotfi Mansouri, also a great talker, in City Arts & Lectures Fall cultural series on October 1. Next up is Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus and Maus II "Comix 101" in a lecture with slides on October 13. On October 19 the series will welcome the remarkable novelist and activist Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, By the Light of My Father's Smile, and other fine books. It would be impossible to list here all the brilliant novels, poetry, essays, and other literary works of the prolific Joyce Carol Oates, who will appear on November 2. She is also a fascinating speaker. SF Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, who is just as entertaining as he is enlightening, closes this series on December 14 in a conversation with piano. All programs at the Herbst Theatre, 8 p.m. Single tickets $17 from City Box Office, 153 Kearny Street, SF, 94108, phone 392-4400. A San Francisco resident for 20 years, Nina Beckwith is a longtime arts writer and music critic and a former Time magazine overseas correspondent. She was founding editor of the UC Berkeley Library newsletter Bene Legere and worked for six years with the late Dr. Peter Ostwald, Director of the UCSF Health Program for Performing Artists. |
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