Saffron Restaurant

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Saffron Restaurant

Photograph by Michael Amsler

Saffron Satisfies

Flavors with a Spanish twist

By Paula Harris

IT’S EASY to fall in love with tapas, those tasty, tiny Spanish appetizers that accompany a glass of wine and beer and stave off hunger pangs between meals. In Spain, a typical day’s intake of tapas could easily involve cured ham and sheep’s cheese on rustic bread, a saucer of shining piquant olives, an array of crisp-fried fishes, a slice of tortilla, hot mussels grilled with olive oil and topped with breadcrumbs, thumbnail-sized baby clams immersed in white wine broth, and an earthenware pot of bubbling white beans and artichoke hearts cooked in fragrant amontillado sherry.

Just back from a recent trip to Seville, I still crave those distinctly Spanish flavors, and so I began a quest to replicate some of these tastes locally.

Enter Saffron Restaurant in Glen Ellen. Now, Saffron isn’t a Spanish eatery, although the name leads to that conclusion; and although it doesn’t technically serve tapas, it does serve a number of dishes with an unmistakably Spanish influence.

It also boasts a varied selection of Spanish wines.

Saffron, which opened last fall, occupies the former Mes Trois Filles space along the small town’s impressive “restaurant row.” The long, narrow dining room and sectioned-off kitchen has an intimate bistro feel that lures romantic couples rather than raucous clans.

There are burgundy tablecloths, and a heavy burgundy curtain conceals the restrooms. Tables are set with tea lights and miniature fresh flowers. An antique wooden sideboard is decorated with flickering candles.

A promising start to the meal is the green lentil soup of the day ($4.95) served in an oversized teacup. The lentils are whole and have a rich, thick consistency. The dish is similar to a wholesome lentil soup with carrots, onion, and garlic that I ate in Spain, except this version includes a mild hint of curry and is topped with crispy slivers of deep-fried onion.

Now there’s an old saying: “A man who is stingy with the saffron is capable of seducing his own grandmother.” That’s a scary thought. Fortunately, this chef’s steamed mussels with saffron, sherry, parsley, and garlic ($9.95) doesn’t stint on this precious spice–there are visible red-gold threads throughout the tasty broth. One qualm, though: some mussels are plump and juicy, but others appear to be dried out and don’t look appetizing. Maybe they were left too long under some heat source. We note, however, that on an earlier visit the mussels were fine.

Back on the search for food with Spanish spirit, the big attraction of the baby spinach salad ($8.95) is that it contains not only dried cherries and walnuts, but also Spanish Manchego cheese (also a fixture on most Spanish tapas menus), although we’d have preferred whole triangles of the tangy sheep’s cheese rather than just a mere grating. Still, our server thoughtfully brought over an extra bowl of grated cheese after we mentioned this. (It’s been a while since we’ve encountered such enthusiastic and willing-to-please wait staff.)

All in all, an excellent salad dressed in a subtle pomegranate vinaigrette.

Vegetarians with lumberjack appetites may enjoy the decadent house-made Stilton ravioli with chard and an herb-cream infusion ($13.95). The tomato pasta squares are crammed with Stilton cheese that’s pleasingly gooey in the middle. There’s more cheese in the creamy cheddar sauce, a blend of cream, thyme, white wine, and grated sharp cheddar. Quite a sinful little number.

THE DAY’S SPECIAL is roast squab ($22.95). The game bird is roasted and halved and served in a red currant sauce with baby corn, fava beans, diced red pepper, and roasted fingerling potatoes. The dark, steaklike meat is pleasingly tender, with a mellow flavor that’s stronger than chicken, milder than duck.

A good-sized, mid-priced wine list includes five Spanish whites (three by the glass) and nine Spanish reds (three by the glass).

If you want to splurge, the 1997 Guelbenzu EVO ($38), a Spanish red wine from Navarra, composed of 70 percent cabernet sauvignon, 20 percent temperanillo, and 10 percent merlot, is smooth with a bitter dark-chocolate aftertaste reminiscent of cocoa powder on top of tiramisu.

Fresh-faced pastry chef Lindsey Ayers is youthful, but excludes real confidence and pride in her creations. She personally comes to the table to talk desserts and take orders. She then can be glimpsed in the kitchen lovingly assembling her edible art.

The Valrhona chocolate bread pudding ($6) has panache. The dessert is color coordinated, with hues of banana slices, caramel, chocolate sauce, and mocha gelato, all decorating a rich brownielike bread pudding.

The red rice pudding ($6) features Indonesian red rice layered with coconut tuile cookies and fruit salsa–a colorful cache of exotic fruits, including mango, kiwi, and papaya. It’s a cool creamy pudding with a slight bite of rice grains. A lovely summertime sweet.

Finally, don’t miss the heart-meltingly luscious Meyer lemon cheesecake ($6), one of the most heavenly desserts around. Add an after-dinner drink of Spanish Antonio Barbadillo dry sherry ($5.50) and you could almost believe you’ve dined in Seville.

Saffron Restaurant Address: 13648 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen; 938-4844 Hours: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 5 to 9 p.m. Food: Imaginative American cuisine with Spanish and French influences; great desserts Service: Excellent– enthusiastic and knowledgeable Ambiance: Intimate bistro Price: Moderately expensive Wine list: Fairly extensive, including several Spanish wines Overall: 3 stars (out of 4)

From the May 18-24, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Summer Arts

Bohemian.com
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Summer Arts

Hot time: Elaine Marlowe puts some sizzle into the summer during the FlamencoArts performances.

Heat Wave

Summer brings hot times to the North Bay arts scene

By Heidi Blankenship, Greg Cahill, Paula Harris, Shelley Lawrence, and Patrick Sullivan

READY, SET, kawabunga! Like a smiling swimmer leaping from the high dive into the sparkling waters of your local swimming pool, we’re taking another exuberant belly flop into the season of warm weather, cold drinks, and lazy days at the beach. As always, under this hot sun a thousand flowers bloom across the North Bay art scene. Music festivals, parades, art shows, dance performances, studio tours: they’re all there, waiting for you to shake the sand from your swimsuit and point your feet toward fresh sources of fun–so dive right in!

May

Rose Parade

Happiness is . . . the 106-year-old Luther Burbank Rose Parade Festival–which this year pays tribute to the late Charles Schulz and his lovable Peanuts gang. Celebrating the theme will be a bevy of special grand marshals: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, and Schroeder, who will lead more than 4,000 marchers in 120 units. Among them will be floats, drill teams, bands, clowns, cars, and equestrians. The Peanuts characters step off the parade at 10 a.m. at Sonoma Avenue and E Street. Curbside viewing is available along the entire route: E Street, Third Street, and Santa Rosa Avenue. The event also offers an assortment of food, music, exhibits, an Italian street painting gallery, and other activities along First Street between Santa Rosa Avenue and D Street. May 20. The festival continues from 11 a.m. to a finale at 4 p.m., when a massive Snoopy balloon on loan from Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade will float taller than City Hall! Free. 542-7673.–P.H.

Petaluma Adobe Living History Day

Step back into the 1840s as the Petaluma Adobe Ranch brings history to life. Traditionally dressed volunteers demonstrate the crafts and trades of the period, including brickmaking, basketry, corn grinding, candlemaking, the firing of flintlock muskets, and homemade banjo playing. May 20, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 3325 Adobe Road, Petaluma. $3 for adults and $2 for children 7 to 11. 769-0429.–H.B.

Backyard Concert Series

KRSH radio celebrates summer’s return with a series of free concerts every few weeks. Vagabond Lovers perform on May 22, and John Eddy on June 12. Musicians are still being chosen for the concerts in July, August, and September, but possibilities include Nina Storey and Sumac. The music runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. behind the KRSH studios at the Station House, 3565 Standish Ave., Santa Rosa. Free. 588-0707.–S.L.

Sonoma County Crushers

Big-league names grace the Crushers lineup in the team’s sixth season of minor league baseball. Former Giants superstar Jeffrey Leonard is managing the team, and former Giants slugger Kevin Mitchell is going to bat for them. The season opens on Friday, May 26, at 7:05 p.m. when the Crushers face off against the Zion Pioneerzz. The action continues through early September. Rohnert Park Stadium, 5900 Labath Ave. $5 to $13. 588-8300.–P.S.

Santa Rosa Downtown Market

The popular event once known as “Thursday Night Market” now continues on more family-friendly Wednesday nights. Grope the fresh produce, ogle the community arts and crafts, and take in a little live entertainment. Wednesdays, 5 to 8:30 p.m. May 31-Sept. 6. On Fourth Street between B and E streets. Free. 524-2123.–P.H.

Healdsburg Jazz Festival

If you’re looking for an antidote to the endless river of smooth jazz poisoning America’s airwaves, here it is. This annual festival opens on May 31 with a gala dinner and solo piano concert with Fred Hersch ($125), who also performs two sold-out shows on June 2 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater. On June 1 at 7 p.m., film archivist Mark Cantor serves up a “Jazz Night at the Movies” at the Raven. The fun continues on June 3 at 1 p.m., when the George Coleman Quartet and the acclaimed Pharoah Sanders Ensemble perform outdoors at the Rodney Strong Vineyards ($32.50). On June 3 at 8 p.m., the Von and Chico Freeman Quintet hits the Raven ($22.50); and on June 4 at 1 p.m., the Charles Lloyd Quartet performs outdoors at the Geyser Peak Winery ($22.50). Tickets are available at Levin & Co. in Healdsburg. 433-3615.–P.S.

June

José Galván and FlamencoArts

Direct from Sevilla, Spanish dance master Galván and guitarist Manuel Parejo join forces with Flamenco Arts for another season of passionate dance, from the piercing wail of siguiriyas to the joys of alegrías. June 2 at 8 p.m. at the Community Center, 390 Morris St., Sebastopol (823-1511). June 3 at 8 p.m. at LBC, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa (546-3600). June 4 at 2:30 p.m. at the Sebastiani Theatre, 476 First St. E., Sonoma (996-9756). $20 in advance, $25 at the door. 544-0909.–P.S.

Black Bart Festival

Cloverdale’s Black Bart Festival has the proverbial something for everyone. And if ya don’t believe us, here’s the rundown: Gold Rush Race (10K and 3K walk/run), open-air antique show, art show, crafts, winetasting, food booths, a variety of live music–including rock ‘n’ roll, country, jazz, opera arias, and easy listening. There’s also entertainment like the Black Bart Gunfighters, a Civil War re-enactment, the bathtub races, a cow-chip doubles competition (Uncle Stan’s favorite), a live Cinderella preview, clowns, an era fashion show and costume contest, a barbecue, a balloon jump, street dancing, break dancing, and much more. Phew! June 3. Races start at 8 a.m.; everything else runs from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Western dress is encouraged. Free. 894-4470.–P.H.

Beerfest

Over 30 of Northern California’s microbreweries are represented at the ninth annual Beerfest, an afternoon of brew sampling, snacking, and live music from the Uncle Wiggly Band. All proceeds benefit Face to Face, a nonprofit organization providing services to men, women, and children living with HIV and AIDS in Sonoma County. Gourmet food tasting, unlimited beer, and a spiffy souvenir glass are included in the ticket price. The Beerfest takes place rain or shine on June 3 from 1 to 5 p.m. in the Luther Burbank Center’s mall and courtyard, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. $24 in advance (tickets available at Face to Face and Third Street Aleworks in Santa Rosa, or through BASS) and $28 at the door. 887-7031.–S.L.

Art at the Source

This annual event provides a firsthand look at working art studios and the opportunity to meet and talk with 79 of Sonoma County’s finest artists while they do their thing. Free maps are provided at locations throughout the county (including the Sebastopol Center for the Arts and Copperfield’s Books). June 3-4, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A preview exhibit of work by participating artists is open through June 4 at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 6821 Laguna Park Way. 829-4797.–S.L.

Valley of the Moon Arts

Enjoy a weekend of fine arts and crafts, jazz, and good food at the Valley of the Moon Art Association’s 39th annual art and craft show. More than 100 Northern California artists will display and sell their work during the event. Added attractions include music by Ancient Winds. June 3-4, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. On the Plaza, Sonoma. Free. 453-1656.–P.H.

Dry Creek Vineyard Summer Celebration

Indulge your senses with a variety of wine and food samplings. On offer are current wines, barrel tastings, and library selections, plus gourmet products from purveyors such as Fling Goat Coffee, Howler Sorbet & Gelato, and DaVero Olive Oil. Visitors will learn to blend their own meritage from the winery’s 1999 red-wine barrel samples. The event also features live jump, jive, and swing music from the Hucklebucks. June 3, noon to 5 p.m. 3770 Lambert Bridge Road, Healdsburg. $35 in advance (if purchased by May 22), $40 at the door. 433-1000.–P.H.

Summer Concert Series

Smooth jazz comes to the outdoors in this series of musical performances at Rodney Strong Vineyards. On June 4 at 3 p.m., catch Craig Chaquico, Willie & Lobo, and Slim Man. On July 15 at 5 p.m., see Peter White and Rick Braun. On Aug. 6 at 4 p.m., enjoy Richard Elliot and Avenue Blue. On Aug. 19 at 4 p.m., Dave Koz and Joyce Cooling perform. Finally, on Sept. 17 at 3 p.m., Ottmar Liebert and Acoustic Alchemy bring their sounds to the great outdoors. 11455 Old Redwood Hwy., Healdsburg. General lawn seating is $30; Golden Circle chair seating is $35. 433-0919.–P.S.

Italian Street Painting Festival

Hundreds of professional and amateur artists take to the streets to create 30,000 feet of colorful frescoes during this annual event. The festival also features Italian food, musical entertainment, and more. June 10, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; June 11, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Downtown San Rafael. Free. 415/457-4878.–P.S.

Zarzuela Festival

Hand-picked student artists take part in a four-week immersion program for training in voice, dance, theater arts, and acting that culminates in full-scale productions of two zarzuelas, or Spanish light operas. The productions will feature 30-piece orchestras and authentic colorful costumes. Water, Candy & Brandy (Aqua, Azucarillos y Aguardiente), a humorous musical comedy by composer Federico Chueca, will be performed June 9 and 10 at 8 p.m. The Troublemaker (La Revoltosa), another musical comedy, this time by composer Ruperto Chapí, runs June 16 at 8 p.m., June 17 at 8 p.m., and June 18 at 2 p.m. Jarvis Conservatory’s theater, 1711 Main St., Napa. $40 for adults and $30 for students; $70 for season ticket for performances on June 10 and 17. 255-5445.–P.H.

Save the planet: Environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill speaks June 11 at the 22nd annual Health and Harmony Festival.

Health and Harmony Festival

Now in its 22nd year, this two-day festival features multicultural entertainment and hundreds of exhibits promoting healthy and harmonious lifestyles. On June 10, hear a speech by Ralph Nader and music by Wailing Souls, Jai Uttal and the Pagan Love Orchestra, Motherhips, and others. On June 11, hear a talk by tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill and performances by jazz drummer Pete Escovedo; singers Roy Rogers, Shana Morrison, Joanne Rand; and many others. June 10-11, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. $15 for adults in advance ($8 for seniors and teens 10-16), $18 for adults at the door ($10 for seniors and teens 10-16), and $25 for both days. Kids under 10 get in free. 575-9355.–P.H.

Marin Art Festival

The North Bay’s most eclectic lawn party presents work by 150 professional artists, including painting, sculpture, prints, and jewelry. Also on offer are international cuisine, face painting for the kids, and a wide array of entertainment. On Saturday, enjoy performances by the Napa Valley Taiko and the Murasaki Ensemble. On Sunday, the Nob Hill Trio, Lloyd Gregory and Friends, and a daring display of stilt stunts by Danger Ha Ha! will provide the pleasure. June 17-18, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Lagoon Park, Marin Center, Civic Center Drive, San Rafael. $6. 415/472-3500.–P.S.

High note: Blessid Union of Souls hit the Sonoma County Fair on July 28.

Sonoma-Marin Fair

“Tracks to the Future” is this year’s theme for Petaluma’s annual fair. John Kay and Steppenwolf perform on June 16 with the Nelsons; June 17 features Chris LeDoux (Williams & Ree open); June 18 highlights War and Freddy Fender. The fair also boasts a carnival, family entertainment, arts and crafts, food, chef’s demonstrations, and . . . pig racing. June 14-18, noon to 10 p.m. 175 Fairgrounds Drive, Petaluma. $7 for adults, $3 for juniors, and free for kids under 6. 283-FAIR.–S.L.

Russian River Blues Festival

Voted Sonoma County’s best musical event in 1999, the blues festival on the river offers topnotch musicians in a lovely outdoor setting. On June 17, check out the Average White Band, the Funky Meters, Bobby Murray, Tommy Castro, and Little Milton. June 18 features the talents of Los Lobos, the Duke Robillard Band, Etta James & The Roots Band, Angela Strehli, and Mighty Mo Rodgers. The music starts at 11 a.m. both days. Winetasting, gourmet food, and snacks will be available, along with vendors of arts and crafts. It gets hot during the day and cool at night, so be prepared. Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville. A portion of the proceeds goes to local nonprofit organizations. $40 for one day and $75 for both days, with discounts for advance purchase. 510/655-9471.–H.B.

Duncans Mills Festival of the Arts

The turn-of-the-century village of Duncans Mills annually holds a charming festival incorporating the best of Sonoma County. The event features arts and crafts, wine and microbrew tasting, a wide array of food, and two stages of entertainment from such musicians as Pamela Rose, Solid Air, and Jessie Turner, as well as performances by puppeteers and jugglers. And, of course, you can’t miss the ever-popular Duncans Mills duck races, where participants race yellow rubber duckies on a waterway for hefty prizes. June 17, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; June 18, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Head for the meadow next to the village. Proceeds benefit Stewards of Slavianka, a state park association. $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and free for children under 12. 824-8404.–P.H.

Garden Expo

Historic Luther Burbank Home and Gardens plays host to an old-fashioned garden party featuring green thumb experts, specialty flora, live music, kids’ activities, food, and demonstrations. Come revel in the flowers and silently thank ol’ Luther for another first–making Sonoma County the world’s No. 1 spot for allergies. June 17, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, Santa Rosa and Sonoma avenues, Santa Rosa. $3 for adults; children 12 and under get in free. 524-5445.–S.L.

Cotati Jazz Festival

This pleasant low-key institution has earned a reputation as “the biggest little mainstream jazz festival in the North Bay.” This year marks the fest’s 20th anniversary with bebop combos, vocalists, trios, quartets, and quintets enlivening a half-dozen downtown cafes, saloons, and coffee shops. Scheduled performers include (on Saturday) gut-bucket blues singer Brenda Boykin (worth the price of admission alone), the Eddie and Madeline Duran Quartet, and vocalist Kitty Margolis; and (on Sunday) pianist Dick Conte (of the now-defunct KJAZ-FM), trumpeter Peter Welker, and Chuck Sher and his Latin Sextet. June 17-18, from 1 to 6 p.m. at various locations in downtown Cotati, including the Inn of the Beginning, Tradewinds, North Light Books, and Dos Amigos restaurant. $15 for one day and $25 for both (tickets available only at the bandstand in La Plaza Park during the event).–G.C.

Grassroots Gourmet

A sure-fire sellout every year, Sonoma County Conservation Action’s annual Grassroots Gourmet Celebration features a gourmet dinner, premium wines, a silent auction, live music by the Pulsators, and the presentation of the Upstream Swimmer environmental award to a tenacious local official who’s shown “leadership in the face of adversity.” June 24, 6 p.m. Odd Fellows Temple, 545 Pacific Ave., Santa Rosa. $30 in advance and for members, $35 at the door (if tickets available–but it’s not likely). 571-8566.–P.H.

Scrapture

Talking trash takes on a whole new meaning at “Oh, Rapture, It’s Scrapture,” Garbage Reincarnation’s 14th annual junk-art scrapture competition. In addition to sculpture made from items normally dumped in the bin, the event features live entertainment from local musicians. Aspiring artists are invited to participate, but you must register by noon. June 24, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. La Plaza Park, Old Redwood Highway and West Sierra Avenue, downtown Cotati. Free. 584-8666.–P.H.

Hot-Air Balloon Festival

Feel the rush and get a closer look at the beauties of the sky at Rohnert Park’s annual celebration, which features over 20 different balloons, car shows, an inflatable playground, hayrides, an antique airplane fly-by, and refreshments. June 24-25 at 6 a.m. Grossi Farms, near Sonoma State University. Free. 664-1602.–H.B.

Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival

This annual three-day event benefits noble causes in memory of the late singer/songwriter Kate Wolf. Artists on stage June 23, starting at 1 p.m., include the Modern Hicks, Greg Brown and Garnet Rogers, and Nina Gerber. On June 24, beginning at 10 a.m., the festival serves up music by New Grange, Eric Bogle, Laurie Lewis, Tom Rozum & Nina Gerber, and others. On June 25, starting at 10 a.m., check out Cheryl Wheeler, Hart Rouge, Utah Phillips, and others. Caswell Vineyards, 13207 Dupont Road, Sebastopol (rain or shine). Proceeds benefit the Leukemia Society of America, SEVA, KRCB, Friends of Free Speech Radio, and Bread & Roses. $20 on Friday and $37 on Saturday and Sunday, with special discounts for advance purchase and for kids and seniors. There is a small parking fee. 823-1511 or 829-7067.–H.B.

Hip-Hop Dance Camp

Kids 12 to 19 can pick up the hottest new tricks and moves when a visiting teacher holds two workshops at the Sebastopol Teen Center. The one-week sessions are held from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. on June 26-30 and July 24-28. 425 Morris St., Sebastopol. $90 for one-week session. 491-1568.–H.B.

Napa County Fair

Five days of festivities kick off with the Soroptomist Club’s champagne art preview at this year’s Napa County Fair. Other highlights include homemade-wine and barbecue contests; a destruction derby on June 30 at 7 p.m.; a country music concert by Blackhawk on July 3 at 8:30 p.m.; a motorcycle stunt show on July 2 at 3, 5, and 7 p.m.; hypnotists; musical acts; and a carnival and midway. June 30-July 4, noon to 11 p.m. daily. 1435 N. Oak St., Napa. $5 for adults, $2 for kids ages 6 to 11, and free for kids under 5. 942-5111.–S.L.

Sonoma Valley Shakespeare Festival

Once more into the breach, dear friends, for another summer of Shakespeare in the outdoors is upon us. This year’s festival offers three plays in revolving repertory: a comedy, a history, and something completely different. Twelfth Night plays on June 30, July 1-2, 22-23, 28, Aug. 13, 18, and Sept. 2. Henry V plays on July 14, 16, 21, Aug. 19-20, and Sept. 3 and 8. Good Night, Desdemona plays on July 7-9, 28-30, Aug. 19-20, and Sept. 3 and 8. Gundlach Bundschu Winery, 2000 Denmark St., Sonoma. $20 for adults and $18 for seniors and children; free for kids 2 and under. 584-1700.–P.S.

Bard in the yard: The Sonoma Valley Shakespeare Festival returns.

July

Art in the Park

Catch another summer of free outdoor music and theater furnished by the city of Santa Rosa starting in July. This year’s performances will be supplemented by culinary samples from some of our finest local eateries. The featured entertainers are keyboard artist John Allair on July 2, The Louisiana dance band Cajun Coyotes on July 9, the Afro-Cuban jazz outfit Quantum Pulse on July 16, Actors Theatre performing The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales on July 23, jazz musician Cat Austin on July 30, and the Santa Rosa Symphony Chamber Players on Aug. 6. All concerts begin at 7 p.m. in Juilliard Park, 211 Santa Rosa Ave., Santa Rosa. 543-3737.–S.L.

Play ball! The Sonoma County Crushers take the field for a new summer season.

Barbecue on the Lawn

Enjoy cool music in the warm outdoors during this summer series at Rancho Nicasio in Marin. Performers include Asleep at the Wheel on July 1, Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums on July 2, and Joe Louis Walker on July 23. It all wraps up on Sept. 3 with the Tee Fee Swamp Boogie Band. 1 Old Rancherio Road, Nicasio. Call for prices. 415/662-2219.–P.S.

Festival on the Green

It’s a curious combination when you think about it. Savor the sounds of American independence and music inspired by England’s most famous playwright at this brand-new summer music festival, which is co-produced by Sonoma State University and the Santa Rosa Symphony. There are two days of events. On July 4, at 4 p.m., “Independence Day on the Green” begins with jazz music, games for kids, appearances by historical characters, and wine and beer tasting. Then, at 7:30 p.m., the Santa Rosa Symphony offers an evening pops concert of patriotic music, followed by a fireworks show. On Aug. 5, a 7:30 p.m., “A Midsummer Night at the Green” features the symphony performing Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet and other Shakespeare-inspired music. It all goes down at the campus lakes at Sonoma State University, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. Ticket prices start at $25. 546-8742.–P.S.

Bernadette’s Witnesses is shown above) open their studios June 3 and 4 during Art at the Source.

Kenwood Pillow Fights

Mix together pillows, mud, and a bunch of feisty entrants clinging to a pole-spanning Los Guilicos Creek and you’ve got the recipe for an instant crowd pleaser. The feathers fly again as the 34th annual Kenwood Pillow Fighting Championships get under way this Independence Day. Other attractions are the Kenwood hometown parade, 3K and 4K foot races, live music by the California Cowboys and the Gig Jung Band, and games for kids of all ages. You must be at least 14 to enter the pillow fights. Pillows and mud are supplied. July 4. Races start at 7:30 a.m.; pillow fights go from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Plaza Park, on m Springs Road, Kenwood. $4; kids under 12 get in free. 833-2440.–P.H.

Sonoma Valley Poetry Festival

For three weeks, poetry breaks its chains and comes roaring out onto the streets of Sonoma during this quasi-annual event (it didn’t happen last year). North Bay poets of all shapes, sizes, ages, and reputations come together for three weeks of events, beginning with a Children’s Poetry program on July 9 at 2 p.m. in the courtyard of the Trinity Episcopal Church and ending on July 22 with two events: an appearance by nationally known poets at Readers’ Books; and Soapbox Poetry, which allows anyone to climb onto a soapbox in Sonoma and give voice to verse. In between, there’s Short Order Poetry, Poetry on the Menu, Song Line Sonoma, and much more at various locations around Sonoma. 935-7638.–P.S.

Smooth stuff: Peter White performs July 15 at Rodney Strong Vineyards.

The Sonoma County Millennium Showcase of Wine & Food

This series of food- and wine-related events is so much fun you’ll forget how much good you’re doing–proceeds go to Share Our Strength, a local hunger-prevention program and other local charities. There are many activities to participate in, including Appellation Tours & Tastes, a lunch and conversation with local vintners on July 13; the Barrel Auction & Dinner on July 14; and Taste of Sonoma County, which on July 15 offers a fine arts exhibit, gourmet tastings from local and internationally known chefs, and pourings from 70 wineries. Prices vary (but expect to dig deep). 586-3795.–H.B.

Wine Country Film Festival

Year 14 finds this annual cinematic extravaganza sprawling across the North Bay, screening films at theaters and vineyards in both Sonoma and Napa counties. Details about titles and special events will be available closer to the event. July 20- Aug. 13 at various times and locations. 935-FILM.–P.S.

Battle band: War strut their stuff on June 18 at the Sonoma-Marin Fair.

Sonoma County Fair

In addition to the standard attractions, this year’s fair offers big-name musical performers, including Sixpence None the Richer on July 26, Blessid Union of Souls on July 28, and the Blues Festival on Aug. 5. July 25 to Aug. 7, noon to midnight. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. Admission is $5 general; senior and kids’ rates are available. 545-4200.

Sonoma Salute to the Arts

Cirque du Salute is the theme for the 15th year of this celebration, an ultra-premium food, wine, and art extravaganza. Get out the glitz: organizers expect guests to dress as acrobats, lion tamers, and ringmasters. The opening celebration is July 28 at 6:30 p.m. (Buena Vista Winery, end of Old Winery Road, Sonoma; $75). The showcase event is July 29-30, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a Saturday night auction ($75) and a Saturday and Sunday winetasting (Sonoma Plaza, downtown Sonoma; $25). A gala opening, auction, and tasting package is $150; everything else is free. 938-1133.–P.H.

August

All-Nations Powwow

Celebrate Native American culture at this second annual gathering of artists and craftspeople from various Northern California Indian tribes. The event also features dancers, Native American flute music by Mary Youngblood, and Indian tacos. Aug. 5-6, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Petaluma Adobe, 3325 Adobe Road, Petaluma. $3 for adults and $2 for children. 769-0429.–H.B.

Marin Music Festival

The sixth year of this outdoor event is still in the planning stage, but performers booked so far include the Mickey Hart Band and the Steve Kimock Band. Watch out for surprise guests! Aug. 5, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Lagoon Park, Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael. Call for prices. 546-BASS.–P.S.

Petaluma Summer Music Festival

There’s something for everyone this year as the Cinnabar Theater hosts the best in local entertainment, with performers offering everything from Celtic music to Chinese rhythms. Tickle your funny bone at a presentation of The Star, Emmanuel Chabrier’s comic operetta. Hear music from some of the world’s greatest composers during the Candlelight Concerts. Enjoy four concerts in Petaluma’s finest vintage Victorian homes during Music in the Mansions. Aug. 5-26, at various times. Locations vary, but many performances take place at the Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Prices vary. 763-8920.–H.B.

Napa Town and Country Fair

Now 70 years old, the fair is taking this year to celebrate its birthday and the dawn of the millennium with a multicultural theme, “The Spirit of Joy.” Highlighting the main attractions are the Tibetan Monks of the Gyudmed Tantric Monastery, who are making their only public U.S. appearance. The monks will give demonstrations of sand painting, mandalas, and Thangka painting. All the usual fair stuff (including a carnival) and musical entertainment lights up the evenings. August 9-13, noon to 10 p.m. 575 Third St. (between Silverado Trail and Soscol Avenue), Napa. $7 for adults, $4 for juniors and seniors, and free for kids under 5. 253-4900.–S.L.

Petaluma Quilt Show

Seven hundred colorful quilts decorate downtown Petaluma during the largest outdoor quilt show in California. Among the special attractions this year are appearances by talented quilt artists Robert Horton and Geneva Foote Carrol. Aug. 12, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Downtown Petaluma. Free. 769-0429.–P.S.

Gravenstein Apple Fair

Taste the bounty of local farms at “The sweetest little fair in Sonoma County.” The annual event offers displays of agricultural culture, cooking, hayrides, live entertainment, arts and crafts–and don’t forget the wonderful food. Aug. 12-13, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ragle Ranch Regional Park, Ragle Road (one mile north of Bodega Hwy.), Sebastopol. $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and $1 for kids. 571-8288.–H.B.

Bodega Bay Seafood, Art, & Wine Festival

This festival on the ocean offers lots to keep you busy, including arts and crafts exhibits, wine and beer tasting, live entertainment, puppets, pony rides, wetland tours, seafood specialties, and lots of salty air. Aug. 25, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Aug. 26, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Chanslor Ranch, 1 mile north of Bodega Bay on Hwy. 1 (follow the signs). $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, and free to kids under 12. 824-8404.–P.H.

Cotati Accordion Festival

Accordion aficionados, take note! This two-day extravaganza is your Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and wedding day all rolled into one tidy, wheezing bundle. The lineup for this year’s event is still to be announced, but expect the biggest names in squeeze play to be there to make your day. Aug. 26-27, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Downtown plaza, Cotati. $8 per day; $15 for both. 664-0444.–P.S.

Sonoma County Dixie Jazz Festival

Dixieland jazz seldom gets the respect it deserves, despite its important role as a spawning ground for mainstream jazz. Now in its 21st year, this dynamic festival draws fans from throughout Northern California for a high-energy showcase of some of the best Dixieland players around. The lineup includes the Grand Dominion Jazz Band, the Golden Eagle Jazz Band, the Black Swan Classic Jazz Band, the Devil Mountain Jazz Band, the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, and the Barkin’ Dawg Jazz Band. Aug. 25-27. Doubletree Hotel, 1 Red Lion Drive, Rohnert Park. $60 in advance (before June 30), $70 at the door. 539-3494.–G.C.

From the May 18-24, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

North Bay Symphony Conductors

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North Bay Symphony Conductors

Photos by Michael Amsler

Orderly Conduct

As North Bay symphonies prepare for the summer season, four conductors reflect on the state of the art

By David Templeton

Jeffrey Kahane Santa Rosa Symphony

JEFFREY KAHANE is telling a story. “I was reading this article,” he explains, perched comfortably on his sofa, sipping strong coffee while a cloud-challenged sun throws intermittent splashes of midmorning light across Kahane’s spacious Santa Rosa living room.

For an instant, a warm wave of sunshine washes over the family piano, illuminating the glowing white pages of two open songbooks: Bach’s Passion of St. Matthew and The Best of the Beatles–currently opened to the music for Yellow Submarine.

“Some college in the East had started a program to punish students,” Kahane is saying. “These are students who were having academic problems, and the punishment was that they were required, as an official form of detention, to go out and attend a symphony concert.”

Kahane, the conductor and musical director of the Santa Rosa Symphony, and also the conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, now laughs at the notion of classical music as state-sanctioned torture.

“My first reaction, though,” he admits with a laugh, “was that I got really pissed off. I was infuriated. But then, of course, as I continued reading I had to chuckle. The article went on to say that a lot of those young people, after finally giving in and going to a concert, ended up saying, ‘Hey! Wow! This is great!’

“But the idea that classical music would ever be conceived of as a punishment,” he says, “is pretty appalling.”

Kahane was already a world-renowned conductor and pianist when, in 1995, he came to Sonoma County to take over the Santa Rosa Symphony, which had been in existence since 1928.

Now the ninth largest orchestra ensemble in California, the symphony has seen a remarkable resurgence of local interest: ticket sales have more than doubled over the last five years, with a paid subscriber base of over 3,000 people. That’s 2 percent of the overall population of Santa Rosa.

Demand is so great that Kahane has added a third performance night to every scheduled event and is looking at adding a fourth, an act that will make the Santa Rosa Symphony the only orchestra in America within its size and budget category to have to play four nights.

On top of that, this summer will see construction begin on the new concert hall on the grounds of Sonoma State University. When the hall opens in 2002, the symphony will host an international music festival featuring ensembles from around the globe.

“A lot of orchestras have rolled up into a ball and died in the last decade or so,” says Kahane, “and many of those that are still alive are only barely so. But in Santa Rosa we are experiencing the exact opposite.”

The reason for this culture boom, he says, is a combination of factors, including a high level of local affluence, a culturally ingrained appreciation of the arts throughout the North Bay, and a staunch refusal on the part of the symphony itself to be run-of-the-mill.

In fact, Kahane’s ambitious choice of material–from last season’s spectacular presentation of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem to the recent program of radical works by Anton Webern–is far more likely to open eyes and ears and get the listeners’ hearts racing than to put anyone to sleep.

“Of course, with the Webern, a small number of people absolutely hated it,” Kahane says. “We even got one ‘Boo!,’ which was truly invigorating.”

He’s serious. Kahane loved getting booed.

“I’m not interested in towing the line down the middle of the road,” he says, “keeping everybody happy. It’s OK to annoy people once in a while. In fact, for an orchestra today, it’s vital.

“See, one of the problems with classical music is that it’s become too polite,” he adds. “It’s that old ‘snob phenomenon.’ It began a century ago, when symphonies somehow became the playthings of the wealthy, a symbol of status, a stuffy, upper-crust, upper-class, intellectual art form. But that’s absolute baloney. Classical music was never conceived of or intended that way.”

According to Kahane, the parts of the country where classical music is experiencing a resurgence, the North Bay included, are the very same places where young people are learning that classical music, often challenging and “in-your-face,” is anything but stuffy.

“It’s time,” says Kahane, “for young people to take back the music.”

Asher Raboy Napa Valley Symphony

ASHER RABOY has found what he’s looking for. Rising from the floor, he waves the CD he’s just extracted from the bottom shelf of a crammed music case. Gliding through his sunny, downtown Napa office, Raboy deftly sidesteps an antique Steinway piano and then maneuvers around a high-tech electronic keyboard-and-computer console on which he composes daily.

Next to his CD player sit the neatly stacked pages of a recent Raboy composition, “Orchestral Dances”–written for the 67-year-old Napa Valley Symphony Orchestra, of which Raboy has been musical director and conductor since 1990. The piece enjoyed its world premiere last month, in a rousing program that included an early work of Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo, a collection of French folk songs by Joseph Canteloube, and a symphonic tone poem by Antonin Dvorák.

Having loaded the CD into the player, Raboy steps back and waits. Two seconds later, the room is filled with the unmistakable voice and energetic melodies . . . of Bob Dylan.

“This is the CD that won all those Grammys a few years ago,” notes Raboy, appreciatively. “It’s really different for Dylan. It’s like 1950s music.”

Raboy, 43 years old and bursting with energy, hardly presents the staid, imperious, white-haired image one traditionally conjures up when thinking of a world-class symphony conductor. As adept at discussing the works of Bruce Springsteen as he is at dissecting Verdi’s operas or Dvorák’s symphonies, Raboy represents a new breed of classical conductor: young, feisty, and a little rebellious–definitely a child of the ’60s.

“I’m a born rock-‘n’-roller,” he confesses. “But I was a lousy rock-‘n’-roll musician.”

Born in New York, Raboy began learning the piano at the age of 5. He’s composed and conducted for orchestras around the nation, including the Hudson Valley Philharmonic.

As the director of the Napa Valley Symphony, Raboy has helped re-energize the North Bay music scene with distinctly unusual programming and performances that are designed to give classical music a shot in the arm. With a creative mix of old and new works–and irresistible events like the annual Labor Day Concert on the Bridge, where the full orchestra performs over the Napa River–the symphony has won increasingly enthusiastic fans.

With an aggressive outreach program in Napa Valley schools, Raboy hopes to inspire the next generation of classical rebels. Indeed, it’s the lack of widespread musical knowledge in the country that concerns Raboy the most.

“A century ago,” he says, “you were not considered civilized if you didn’t play the piano. By the time you heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony performed by an orchestra, you’d had your own fingers in that piece of music hundreds of times. Nowadays, there’s no pressing need to learn the piano because we can all just load our CD players instead. So the majority of people today no longer have a sophisticated knowledge of music.”

But, according to Raboy, changes are a-coming, led largely by the living composers of orchestral music.

“The new composers will be the salvation of classical music,” Raboy predicts, “because there’s a new breed of classical music that is very much like the music we grew up with in the ’60s and ’70s, in that it speaks directly to people today, with lots of energy and vitality. There are conductors who are now looking for that music, and we’re putting it on the stage, and the word is getting out.

“I think we’re about to see a complete revitalization of classical music,” says Raboy, grinning like a kid who just heard his favorite song on the radio. “You watch. The 21st century will be the century in which symphonic music moves to the forefront of the culture again.”

Gabriel Sakakeeny Cotati Philharmonic Orchestra

GABRIEL SAKAKEENY is standing tall. Literally. The lanky conductor and musical director of the fledgling Cotati Philharmonic has playfully clambered up onto a wooden bench (a pew, actually) to demonstrate the acoustics inside the beautiful sanctuary of St. Joseph Church.

A soaring wood-framed ceiling rises to a tentlike point 50 feet above Sakakeeny’s head. A series of orange-hued stained-glass windows saturate the 1,000-seat room with rich, coppery light. Birdsong floats through a shuttered opening in the roof.

“This is probably the best-sounding room in the county,” says Sakakeeny, arms out to his sides, speaking oh-so-softly while remaining clearly audible from anywhere in the room.

“When the new concert hall is built at SSU, of course, the philharmonic will have to settle for performing in the second-best-sounding building in the county,” he continues. “But I think we can deal with that.”

Formed just last year, the Cotati Philharmonic is an all-volunteer orchestra that features some of the best professional musicians in the county, playing alongside highly skilled nonprofessional performers who come from far and wide for the opportunity to play full-blown orchestral music with a first-class ensemble.

Sakakeeny, who also donates his services, works full time as a video producer for Agilent Technologies, though his musical pedigree is outstanding. A former music director of the Houston youth ymphonies and ballet, Sakakeeny was also principal conductor of the Campanile Orchestra in Houston and has conducted with West Bay Opera and the Fremont Philharmonic.

When the idea of a Cotati orchestra was first posed in November of 1998, it was Sakakeeny who insisted the philharmonic be run as an all-volunteer organization–and that all concerts be free to the public.

The result of that decision is remarkable.

The first concert, held last July in the park–a program of American music, with works by Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and George Gershwin–attracted over a thousand people. Subsequent concerts have filled the seats at St. Joseph, where attendees, ranging from homeless people to entire families to curious professional musicians, often marvel at the quality and passion of the philharmonic’s spirited performances.

“I wanted people who would do this for love and not for money,” says Sakakeeny, back on the ground again. “I wanted to see what could happen if we rid ourselves of the concerns of having to meet a budget.”

Supported by a core group of like-minded musicians–including several who perform with other local symphonies–Sakakeeny and his associates drafted a charter that proclaims, “Our mission is to have the beauty of music and the power of community alive and available to everyone.”

“We wanted to start from the ground up,” says Sakakeeny, “to reinvent the symphony orchestra.

“This is a very musical little town, you know,” he continues. “The residents of Cotati strongly identify themselves with music, from the accordion festival to the jazz festival, to the Inn of the Beginning and the whole local history of rock ‘n’ roll.”

In this true community effort, orchestra rehearsals are held at nearby Congregation Ner Shalom. There is much mingling of orchestra and audience following performances. The performers can be easily persuaded to demonstrate their instruments for starstruck children.

“Who knows,” says Sakakeeny, “the future geniuses of classical music may be inspired after their parents bring them to a free concert in downtown Cotati.”

As Marin Symphony conductor Gary Sheldon has pointed out, exposure to the music is the first step toward keeping the art form alive.

“I think people are hungry for what art music has to offer,” Sakakeeny muses, now sitting in the soft light of the sanctuary. “When you come into the presence of a great piece of art, your mind stops and you’re just present to the beauty of the thing. You are in the moment and you feel a sense of respite in the middle of your day, a moment when you can be with something beautiful and be awed and overwhelmed and changed by it.

“That’s what great music does.”

Gary Sheldon Marin Symphony

GARY SHELDON, “between airports” for a few short hours, is walking-talking evidence that symphonic music is alive and well. It’s so alive, in fact, that the mighty maestro can hardly rest for a minute.

After conducting the final concert of the season just last week, Sheldon–musical director of the Marin Symphony for the last 10 years–immediately hopped on a plane to Ohio, where he also runs the popular Lancaster Arts Festival and will be conducting a world premiere for Opera Columbus.

Following that, there are a dozen or so conducting opportunities that will send Sheldon around the world until next fall, when he’ll be back in Marin to conduct Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor for the opening night of the Marin Symphony’s new season.

A few weeks later, he’ll be taking a sabbatical, during which he’ll hit the road again to conduct a number of operas and ballets in Europe, while preparing several of his own compositions for publication.

“Believe me,” he says, “classical music is thriving.”

Even so, Sheldon is at the forefront of musicians who believe that without vigilant effort and ongoing education, classical music could well end up losing some of the steam that is powering his own musical enterprises.

“I’m confident that orchestral music will remain an important part of our society,” he says, “but I believe it can only do that if we can find a way to keep up and keep pace with other types of entertainment–movies and television and computers and all the other forms of music that are out there. To that end, we are constantly reaching out to new audiences, looking for ways to draw first-timers into the concert hall.”

Like other North Bay symphony organizations, the Marin Symphony has put tremendous effort into local educational programs. Among the most notable is Sheldon’s own creation, a series of annual concerts for children based on the popular Carmen Sandiego video game.

Where in the World of Music Is Carmen Sandiego? incorporates history, geography, and classical music in an onstage extravaganza that has become one of the hottest tickets of the year. This season Sheldon also introduced the SEATS program: Symphony Education and Training in the Schools. In the ambitious three-step program, Sheldon and one of the symphony’s soloists visit Marin County schools to make initial presentations, followed by a concert at the school by a string quartet or brass quintet, after which free symphony tickets are offered to all students.

“Exposure is even more important than education,” says Sheldon. “Our principal challenge is to get people into the hall for the first time. After we get them in the seat, the music has a way of taking it from there.”

He’s seen it hundreds of times.

“When I talk to people, of any age, who’ve just come to their first concert,” Sheldon proudly reveals, “the phrase I hear most often is ‘I had no idea what I’ve been missing.’ ”

From the May 18-24, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Russian River Redevelopment

Stephanie Hiller
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Russian River Redevelopment

The man with the plan: West county Supervisor Mike Reilly supports the recommendations of a $100,000 study urging redevelopment of impoverished Russian River communities, but constituents are unsure about the ultimate cost.

River Watch

Russian River-area residents look the redevelopment gift horse in the mouth

By Stephanie Hiller

TO HEAR IT from Sonoma County Supervisor Mike Reilly, the redevelopment sounds like the best thing to come down the river since the steelhead left: Monte Rio and Guerneville, forested river towns suffering from depressed economies, sharing in an estimated $185 million in new tax money over the next 45 years and transformed into lively little hubs, with nice structures tastefully redesigned and a flourishing tourist industry.

According to Reilly, redevelopment means money for housing renovation, river restoration, a new park by the historic old bridge, a community center, a park and trail in Monte Rio–“amenities that both visitors and residents could enjoy.”

But the community isn’t buying it, or at least 90 percent of the community isn’t, by activist Brenda Adelman’s reckoning. “We care about different things, and they’re not things you can put a price tag on,” she says. “We don’t want to look like the rest of the county. And we don’t necessarily want more tourists here.”

At the first meeting of the Russian River Forum, held May 3 in the supervisors’ chambers to give the public a chance to comment on the redevelopment plan, which was released last November, Guerneville resident Steven Spector, who followed the plan closely, painted a grim picture of tall hotels and parking lots from Rio Nido to the Rio Theater, sort of a biggest little city in the west county–Reno without the gambling halls.

Activist Lenny Weinstein calls this plan “affirmative action for developers.”

Although he believes Reilly is “sincere,” Weinstein suspects political ambitions are the ulterior motive. Others have accused Reilly of being in the pocket of the developers, a remark that makes the embroiled supervisor laugh.

“When all this is over,” he remarks, “we’ll see who is in whose pocket.”

REILLY HAS MADE his name in these parts by doing good for people who need help. The head of West County Community Services for 10 years and a committed environmentalist, he is especially proud of the establishment of the Guerneville Senior Center, which he got built with what he calls “guilt money” from developers.

In his first campaign for the supervisor’s post, four years ago, Reilly stressed his commitment to urban growth boundaries. “I’ve always been a limited-growth person, and I’ve said that we don’t need to be taking major residential growth into the west county.” Then what’s all the fuss about redevelopment?

“Fear of change,” he calls it.

We are sitting at a table on the outdoor patio at Reilly’s favorite hangout, the Northwood Restaurant, located on the golf course outside Guerneville. With its rich green lawns and golfers, it’s the closest thing to a country club the west county has to offer. Alluding to the hectic day he has just spent driving up and down the freeway to cover his beat, Reilly orders a pint of fawn-colored ale.

“Redevelopment will result in little if any residential growth,” he says. “The only new residential development even anticipated in the 30 years of the plan is for affordable housing. Everything else is focused on rehab of existing units.

“If there’s residential growth, it’s not because of redevelopment.”

Business development will occur only within the current “commercial footprint.” And the plan “will have to live within the bounds of the present infrastructure.”

As for the towering hotels, “there’s only one that I know of right now”–that is Kirk Lok’s proposed 150-room edifice, twice the size of his new Sebastopol hotel. One hotel not only can add to the tax base, but also becomes an “umbrella” to support smaller bed and breakfasts. The goal is to bring back the 300 or so rooms that the river area has lost over the past 20 years with the demise of Southside, River Village, Donovan’s, Hexagon House, and the like.

“I don’t think bringing that many [rooms] back will break the back of the river community,” Reilly says.

Maybe not, but many locals continue to feel they are being steamrollered into something that will change the face of their community.

Jim Neeley, spokesperson for Guerneville’s fire district, runs a tax and securities business in Santa Rosa. Only 20 percent of property tax increases from redevelopment will go to the fire district, he says. Instead, “developers can get cheap money. Probably tax relief, too.”

THE DREADED proposed regional sewer plant will have to be built, Neeley believes, to supply needed infrastructure. Like other opponents, he challenges the definition of blight on which the plan is based. “How did Northwood get to be a blighted area? There are half-million-dollar homes there!”

And why won’t the county reveal the addresses of these so-called blighted homes, asks Roni Bourque, 62, who has found “thousands of pages” on redevelopment abuse around the country on the Internet, and “something like a million lawsuits against it.”

She’s worried that her property taxes will be higher than she can afford and she’ll have to move. And “the practice of eminent domain is horrific,” she says, though Reilly has said that the county is not retaining that right over residential properties.

But Bourque is not persuaded by Reilly’s assurances. “This [plan] is money-driven, it has to be.”

Attorney Barbara Barrett, president of the Guerneville Chamber of Commerce, acknowledges that there have been problems with redevelopment, mostly prior to 1993. Since then, she says, laws have gotten stricter. She challenges the assertion that 90 percent of local residents are opposed to the plan. Supporters agree that redevelopment anxiety might be allayed if citizens had greater input in its implementation.

To that end, Reilly promises to recommend the formation of a citizens’ advisory committee that will review all building proposals. The county Board of Supervisors will have the final say, but only on projects that the committee recommends.

“At least the committee will have the ability to say no, which is an important control mechanism,” he chuckles, “maybe the most important control mechanism.”

From the May 18-24, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Daedalus Howell
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Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

Mind Games

Einstein meets the artist in ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile’

By Daedalus Howell

ONE WOULDN’T think that a man who launched his career with ye olde arrow-through-the-head gag could succeed with a stab at legitimate theater–but, oh, does he.

Steve Martin’s cash-cow Picasso at the Lapin Agile (now swabbing the floorboards of Sonoma County Repertory Theatre under the direction of Diane Bailey) has enjoyed rampant success by mixing highbrow notions of science and art with an imaginative premise and heaping spoonfuls of silliness that occasionally foray into theatrical eloquence.

The play (named for an actual cafe whose name translates as “nimble rabbit”) whimsically wonders what would have happened if twentysomethings Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso had strolled into the same Parisian bistro circa 1904.

Martin’s answer? A whole lotta self-congratulatory backslapping. And why not? Within months of Martin’s imagined meeting, Picasso would birth cubism with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and Einstein would publish his special theory of relativity.

Martin’s play portrays the duo as two wild and crazy guys–a pair of impassioned wags whose charm is proportionate to their talent. Interestingly, such depictions fly in the face of a recent spate of biopics suggesting that, at his worst, Picasso was a boorish womanizer and that Einstein was some order of emotional despot. But this ain’t history, bub, it’s theater.

SCRT’s production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile suffers a bit from uneven casting and takes a few missteps. Opening night was marred by jitters and cast members trouncing on each other’s lines. But the whole thing ultimately works, thanks to several hearty performances.

Xavier Lavoipierre does a brawny turn as the cubist-in-the-works Picasso. Clad in the ubiquitous black-and-white striped pullover that costume designers insist dominated Left Bank fashion in the early part of the century, Lavoipierre portrays the self-enraptured artist as both comic and impassioned, though he delivers a handful of his lines inaudibly (throughout, the players wage an often losing battle with the theater’s air conditioning).

Likewise, Eric Thompson’s ruddy-cheeked Einstein is a humorous amalgam of gee-whiz-can-do spirit and narcissistic conceit. His performance is especially satisfying when he lambastes the ineffectual intellects of the other characters.

In one of her many incarnations in this production, Trisha Davis turns in a droll and sexy performance as Suzanne, a Picasso groupie, who grows charmingly world-weary and wise as the show progresses.

Jonathan Graham proves himself the great overlord of bombastic delivery with his boisterous Schmendiman, an inventor whose lasting contribution to the 20th century turns out to be the use of the word cheese to elicit photogenic smiles. Gerald Haston’s wisecracking cafe proprietor, Freddy, is also a delight, as is Peggy Van Patten as his romantically adventuresome wife, Germaine.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile bears the unique distinction of being populist as well as provoking theater, sure to blossom in the capable hands of SCRT as its run continues and the inevitable kinks are worked out.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile plays Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. (with Sunday performances on May 21 and 28 at 2 p.m.) through June 10 at Sonoma County Repertory Theatre, 104 N. Main St., Sebastopol. $10-$15. 823-0177.

From the May 18-24, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Usual Suspects

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Pepper-spray lawsuit restored

By Greg Cahill

IN A CLOSELY watched pepper-spray case in which Humboldt County law enforcement officers sprayed and swabbed the potent chemical directly into the eyes of peaceful protesters, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 4 issued a decision that restores a lawsuit against police.

The lawsuit claims that in three separate incidents in 1997 Eureka police officers and Humboldt County sheriff’s deputies used excessive force to remove nine Headwaters Forest protesters from the Eureka office of Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Windsor, from a logging site, and from Pacific Lumber’s headquarters in the mill town of Scotia.

The forest activists were protesting an agreement between Pacific Lumber Co. and the federal government that allowed the timber company to increase logging of old-growth redwoods in exchange for the government’s $500 million purchase of 7,500 acres of ancient forest.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that their civil rights were violated, that they posed no threat or danger, and that they weren’t at risk of flight.

It is believed to be the first time pepper spray was used on peaceful protesters in the United States. The case is expected to set a new precedent for the use of chemical weapons on nonviolent protesters and for deciding immunity for law enforcement officers.

Riggs, an incumbent and rising star in the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress, decided against running for re-election after the incident. He was heavily criticized for characterizing the protesters as “reckless, wanton lawbreakers” who got what they deserved.

The case was appealed by the plaintiffs after jurors deadlocked 4-4 during the first trial. Federal District Judge Vaughan Walker–who had granted immunity to the police–dismissed the lawsuit.

The appellate judges ruled that Walker made a mistake when he granted immunity from damages to Humboldt County Sheriff Dennis Lewis and his deputies. “A reasonable fact-finder could have concluded that using pepper spray bore no reasonable relation to the need for force,” wrote appeals court Judge Harry Pregerson in the decision, adding that the decision to use the pepper spray “had nothing to do with the government’s purported interest in quickly removing the trespassing plaintiffs,” as had been argued.

In their decision, the 9th Circuit judges ruled that the plaintiffs have a right to a jury trial to determine if excessive force was used by authorities.

Eureka attorney Nancy Delany, who represented Humboldt County during the trial, reportedly plans to petition the court for a rehearing before the full panel of 9th Circuit judges.

Cinco de Mayo–No Más!

THINGS JUST KEEP getting curiouser and curiouser in this politically correct world. Usual Suspects received a phone call last week from the parent of a student at Lawrence Cook Middle School in Santa Rosa who complained that an announcement over the public address system last week had stated that any student displaying a Mexican flag or “authentic” Mexican clothing in celebration of Cinco de Mayo would be suspended.

“Our schools are teaching racism and I think it is inappropriate,” the distraught parent said.

Hmmm. A phone call to Principal Victoria Hewitt went unanswered, but a subsequent call netted a curious response from Assistant Principal Debra Cruz, who explained that the meaning of the announcement had been “misconstrued.” According to Cruz, children were allowed to celebrate at “breakout festivities” in classrooms and were permitted to bring items for that purpose. But a strict dress code policy that is “sensitive to gang colors” forbids the display of any flag: Confederate (understandable), Mexican (highly questionable), or American (whuh!).

“We need kids that are in khaki and white, or other colors besides blue or red or yellow or coffee brown [which are used to represent some street gangs], as directed by the Santa Rosa Police Department,” Cruz said.

And you were probably taught that the American flag is a symbol of unity. Did you ever think you’d see the day when Old Glory would be viewed as a threat to the Union?

Usual Suspects loves tips. Call our hotline at 527-1200 or e-mail us at In**@******re.com.

From the May 11-17, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Rural Heritage Initiative

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Rural Heritage Initiative

Wide-open spaces: Rohnert Park City Councilman Jake McKenzie is among those supporting the Rural Heritage Initiative.

Green Days

Battle lines being drawn in bid to save rural heritage

By Jeremy A. Hay

AN INITIATIVE intended to protect agricultural and rural land from development will likely qualify for November’s ballot–over the opposition of some of the Sonoma County’s largest agricultural interests, who say it may limit the future ability of farmers to do business.

The Rural Heritage Initiative, or RHI, needs 16,058 signatures by May 22 to qualify for the ballot. Supporters, hoping to provide themselves a wide margin of safety, plan to collect 22,000 signatures, and by the weekend had collected 20,000.

Should it win in November, the RHI would require voter approval of any proposal to redesignate or increase the density of any land that the county’s 1989 General Plan specifies as agricultural or rural. It would apply only to unincorporated areas, but would affect about 80 percent of the county’s land, or close to 800,00 acres.

Supporters say the initiative supports General Plan policies–backed by voters over the past several years in a series of urban-growth-boundary ballot measures–that call for “city-centered growth.” Without it, they say, the same technology industry-driven growth that has transformed Silicon Valley may well render Sonoma County unrecognizable 20, or even 10, years from now.

The reason for their concern is the region’s booming economy. According to the Association of Bay Area Governments, Sonoma County can expect a 47 percent increase in jobs over the next 20 years, along with 120,000 new residents.

“This is a rather simple idea,” says John Blayney, spokesman for the initiative effort. “What’s the future of this county going to be? Is it going to be Santa Clara County, or is it going to be a county that values its agricultural lands and open space?

“I think a lot of people in Sonoma County would agree that this is perhaps the biggest decision this county’s ever going to face.”

THE RHI IS sponsored by Citizens for Sonoma County’s Future, a coalition of the Sierra Club, Sonoma County Conservation Action, Greenbelt Alliance, and Friends of the Russian River. It is based largely on a similar initiative, Measure J, adopted in 1990 by Napa County voters and considered today a huge success by environmental advocates.

But while Measure J was backed by much of Napa’s agricultural industry, especially local vintners, the RHI may not enjoy the same support.

In what RHI supporters say was an unfortunate oversight, none of Sonoma County’s agricultural organizations were asked to help shape the initiative. Now those organizations, which include the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and the Sonoma County Wineries Association, are opposing the measure.

“The people who are going to be most impacted by it weren’t included or even consulted in the drafting of the ordinance,” says Judy James, executive director of the local Farm Bureau.

James notes that the architect of Measure J, Volker Eisele, was then president of the Napa County Farm Bureau. She says, “We didn’t have the opportunity here to help craft something that’s really good for agriculture.”

A rueful Peter Ashcroft, chair of the RHI steering committee, says James’ complaints are on target. “Some people were consulted,” he says, “but it’s clear in retrospect–and hindsight is always 20/20–that we should have done a better job of reaching out to the agricultural community.”

Ashcroft, who is chairman of the Sonoma County Sierra Club chapter, declines to say who was consulted, only that they were from local farming industries.

Jaimie Douglas, executive director of the Sonoma County Wineries Association, echoes James’ anger at being excluded from the initiative process. She suggests the slight may stem from “the grape-growing and wine-producing industries being kind of singled out as not being environmentally friendly, which is absolutely not the case.”

But Lynn Hamilton, former Sebastopol mayor and now director of the Town Hall Coalition, a recently formed citizens’ group that has crossed swords with grape growers over vineyard expansion, argues that the wine industry should welcome the initiative.

“This is really a chance to protect our ag lands for ag use, which I think the wine [producers] and grape-growing people should be wholeheartedly enthusiastic about,” Hamilton says.

Its detractors also criticize the initiative for being, as Judy James puts it, “so general and vague that it’s going to cause unintended consequences for agriculture.”

Among examples of those consequences James cites the possibility that a dairy farmer deciding to also produce cheese, or perhaps ice cream, might be prevented from obtaining the required use permit; or a farm family with producing vineyards might also, under the ordinance, be unable to obtain the required permits.

“There are a lot of gray areas in the initiative, such as the question of getting use permits for ag projects in the future,” James says, “and we really need them to be in black and white.”

Blayney says such concerns are unwarranted, because use permits are governed by specific zoning ordinances, not the General Plan. The zoning ordinances are more detailed land-use rules that are separate from the General Plan land designations and policies, although they are supposed to implement those policies.

“The only thing the ordinance would regulate is a change in the designation of land the General Plan designates as an agricultural or rural resource, or an increase in density,” Blayney emphasizes. “It does nothing to change the existing zoning ordinance.”

LAST FRIDAY, in a letter to Ashcroft, the Farm Bureau and the Wineries Association, joined by the Sonoma County Farmlands Group and United Wine Growers, urged a halt to the initiative effort.

The letter calls the RHI “flawed in substance and process” and says: “Only by withdrawing the initiative will it be possible for the agricultural community to join with your group . . . in pursuit of consensus regarding long-term agricultural preservation policies.”

Ashcroft says the steering committee discussed the possibility of delaying the initiative process, but concluded it “would be breaking faith” with the 20,000 people who signed petitions in support of the RHI, as well as with “the hundreds of” signature gatherers.

Blayney says he hopes to continue to meet with representatives of the agricultural community to allay their fears. “We don’t necessarily expect everybody to support [the initiative],” he says. “We just don’t want people to misunderstand it.”

From the May 11-17, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Salsa

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Salsa

Salsa Savvy

Finding new ways to assess the sauce

By Marina Wolf

WELL, IT’S OFFICIAL: Salsa has become an all-American institution. In 1996 it surpassed ketchup as the most-used condiment in the United States, and now it is turning up in that most patriotic of pastimes: the food contest.

Some cynics might consider this just another example of America’s appropriation approach to food: take it in and make it ours. But I see it as a triumph, a major leap forward in our country’s consciousness about its own ethnic, cultural, and culinary diversity.

We have moved beyond hot dogs and apple pie–not a great diet to begin with–into an open acknowledgment of enchiladas, burritos, and spicy sauces as important additions to the American table.

A healthy debate on the merits of various salsas is appealing (though actually tasting 15 salsas in a row is, to me, as enjoyable as licking a scrubbing pad for an hour). Unfortunately, the consensus of most American eaters seems to have settled on one of two manifestations of the salsa ideal: (1) diced underripe vegetables stewing in a swamp of citric acid, or (2) boiled and bottled tomato pulp, whose most authentically ethnic quality is the artwork on the label.

The reality of salsa is much more interesting. Salsa in Spanish simply means sauce, and can apply to any number of sauces, some of which have been around as long as chile peppers have been cultivated: thousands of years. Salsas may be stewed, raw, roasted, grilled. Chile peppers are the defining ingredient, but the type and amount vary wildly. Tomatoes are usually indicated in traditional Central and South American salsas, but in the wake of fusion cooking and the increased awareness of regional specialties, even this boundary has been blown wide open, making room for such ingredients as corn, tomatillos, mangoes, apples, strawberries, and even sweet potato.

In the face of such anarchy, salsa competitions are a natural response, a community’s attempt to impose meaning and order on an unruly universe of possibilities. But the pressure is on to assess the entries according to the old rules, the Pace-based paradigm. Too often we elevate one or two of the simpler characteristics to the sole deciding factor and downplay others that are as important, or at least as interesting, to the avid salsa consumer. Tomato and nontomato is a cliché, as is the line between commercial and home-cooked (who exactly is being served by that distinction?). But what about chunky vs. smooth? Such vastly different approaches require almost completely different strategies in order to assess texture and flavor. (Peanut-butter aficionados will understand what is at stake here.)

What of the many gradations of heat? To keep “chile bullies” from dominating the field, we could just as easily divide and judge entries according to scientifically measured Scoville heat ratings.

Or–stay with me here–we could rethink the whole angle of competition altogether, make it less ferocious and more functional. The question would not be which salsa is best, but how well a given salsa works for the purpose for which it was mixed. Is it a dip, a side dish, a last-minute condiment, or an essential ingredient in a casserole? Is it served at parties or just at family dinners?

These are essential questions in determining the feasibility of a salsa.

FORM SHOULD follow function, in salsa as in everything. Smooth salsa is tricky in social situations: the liquid responds to gravity and the incline of a chip much more dramatically than does its chunky-cut counterpart. Considering the distance between the lips and the dip bowl, and the peculiar attraction between salsa and clothing (especially white silk T-shirts), party salsa should be chosen and created carefully.

A good party salsa has distinct flavors and crisp textures, whatever the ingredients, and enough substance to rest sturdily on a chip. In a casserole, however, this chunky salsa only confuses things. There’s too much going on, too much separateness and disunity. A smooth salsa, on the other hand, is just the thing to provide a common backdrop for the dish’s constituent parts.

The “topper” category would be the most challenging, if only because of the size of the pool. Every new restaurant has at least one kind of salsa on the menu, trailing artistically on or around a piece of protein. The field is wide open for contenders: smooth and chunky, cooked and fresco, fruit and vegetable. The salsa could be simply chile peppers moistened with tomato juice, or it could be the reverse, a tomato salad with a hint of heat.

But the judging would be simple: put a spoonful of each entry over a tiny piece of fish. Does it overpower or enhance? Does it clash or complement? Is it super or just superfluous?

I understand that this might be a difficult proposal for Americans to swallow. The whole thing smacks of socialism, of a touchy-feely “we’re all OK” mentality that is anathema to the fine American tradition of no-holds-barred competition.

But I would urge organizers of salsa contests to take the plunge, even if it does mean encouraging the sweet-potato crowd. The soul of salsa is in its diversity. And salsa lovers everywhere deserve a bite of the whole enchilada.

From the May 11-17, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Rene di Rosa

Richard von Busack
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Rene di Rosa

California dreaming: A self-described “artcoholic,” Rene di Rosa has assembled a collection of California art that is as eclectic as it is eccentric–and it’s all on view to the public at the di Rosa Preserve in Napa.

Artful Refuge

California art finds a home at the di Rosa Preserve

By Richard von Busack

RENE DI ROSA is a tall, elderly man in farmer’s clothes, with the kind of nose you see in portraits of the Medicis. None of us, I think, recognized him as the man who ran the museum until he spoke up abruptly.

When addressed by a stranger, most urbanites look at their shoes. We studied ours as di Rosa started talking to the cluster of about two dozen visitors in the Gatehouse Gallery, on the grounds of the private art preserve that bears his name.

“I hope you’ll enjoy what you see,” di Rosa said. “This shuttle here”–he gestured out to the driveway where a jitney was waiting–“it takes you up to where I used to live.”

The Rene and Veronica di Rosa Preserve–located in the hills of Napa County–has to be the only world-class art collection whose proprietor greets you before you tour it.

From the gatehouse, it’s a short ride up the hill along Winery Lake to the three-story house and main gallery, which lies within sight of the busy Carneros Highway, not far from the Napa/Sonoma county line.

Nothing in the di Rosa preserve stops traffic. The gatehouse doesn’t look much different than the new prefab aluminum or steel barn buildings in surrounding vineyards. What most tourists would have eyes for is the pretentious jumbo replica of a French chateau that stands across the road.

But when you get away from the highway, you can see that di Rosa’s preserve is a very fine piece of property. In the 35-acre lake stand some of Veronica di Rosa’s steel sculptures of multicolored cows.

Veronica, an artist and writer, died in Normandy in 1991, falling from a path where she was picking wildflowers. The loss of his wife changed Rene di Rosa, it’s said. Once he was the kind of extrovert who’d wear a gorilla suit to public meetings to protest Sonoma County real-estate development. Now his energies are turned toward completing what could be described as a countercultural Hearst Castle.

It was a leaky barn when di Rosa found it; after much remodeling, it’s a handsome but not ostentatious turreted country manor overlooking the one-story steel gallery where most of the di Rosa’s art is displayed.

In addition to being a major gallery, the di Rosa Preserve is also a bird refuge. Waterfowl float on the lake. Padding in between the main gallery buildings are the peacocks, their fine feathers shining from the recent rains. I stopped counting after 20; later I learned there was 60, including a few calicos. “Mulattos,” di Rosa told me later. “There was a solid white one I had once, but they’ve interbred.”

IS THERE SUCH a thing as Northern California art–something in the people, as in the landscape, that makes Northern California special? Questions like these are best mulled over at the di Rosa Preserve. This private museum spells out its function in big chiseled stone letters: “divinely regional, superbly parochial, wondrously provincial . . . an absolutely native glory.”

Here in a group of buildings are some of the di Rosa Foundation’s 1,700 pieces of art–paintings, sculptures, and photographs by 600 artists, almost all from Northern California. The museum has been open for only the last three years, and the preserve is still little known because of rationed access caused by a traffic-retarding deal struck with the county.

With a collection this size, it’s hard to sum up the highlights. As collectors, Rene and Veronica had good instincts and an immunity to shock.

What stands out most are two works by the animistic yet feminist artist Joan Brown. Her 1975 Woman Preparing for a Shower sums up the tension of a placid, pretty woman on the edge of something otherworldly; it’s a bathing-woman painting without tease. Next to her, a strange dog stands on his hind legs, offering her a towel in his teeth.

Enrique Chagoya’s furious charcoal drawing, When Paradise Arrived, is an indelible satire of Southern California nativism. The colossal hand of Mickey Mouse prepares to flick aside a small dark-skinned girl, as if she were a sowbug.

Roy De Forest’s sculpture in the main gallery is both charming and disturbing, a prehensile-eyed, asymmetric critter sprouting wooden spindles, brushes, and a series of counterweights and pendulums to stay on its feet.

David Best’s art cars, a favorite, are studded with familiar objects, including poker chips, Stratego tiles, statuary, and spent ammo from a machine-gun belt. One hood ornament is a life-sized head of a rhinoceros. “Just cars with stuff on them. They ask nothing from the observer,” Best notes, as quoted in a recently published profile of the di Rosa Preserve, edited by di Rosa himself: Local Color: The Di Rosa Collection of Contemporary California Art (Chronicle Books; $35).

It’s a trick of the di Rosa gallery not to name the artists with the customary plaques. Instead, small notebooks in every chamber of the preserve have the names, titles, and dates.

This system could be seen to take away the identities of the artists, but di Rosa says he avoided title cards because it irked him to see visitors at a museum paying more attention to the text than the image. And the lack of captioning is meant to fit in with the origins of the di Rosa Preserve as a private home expanded to museum size.

The Yankee streak is still visible in the Boston-born di Rosa, in the way he laconically pronounces the name “San Fran-cis-co” when talking about the decline of the art scene there.

He was born in 1919, the son of the Italian consul and a Philadelphia woman. He went to Paris to write; couldn’t finish his novel; then came to San Francisco to work for the San Francisco Chronicle. During the 1950s he lived in North Beach, but he didn’t feel kinship with the beat scene.

“I’d come here from the Left Bank,” Di Rosa said, “not the left bank of the Sacramento River–and there didn’t seem to be a center of rebellion in San Francisco, or any artistic center. It wasn’t established. A new community hadn’t established itself yet.”

Years ahead of the back-to-the-land movement, di Rosa decided to become a farmer. He headed for the higher ground near the Sonoma/Napa county border on Carneros Road. In 1960, grapes hadn’t been grown in the area for almost 30 years. What phylloxera hadn’t ruined, Prohibition did. Planting cool-weather pinot noir and chardonnay grapes, di Rosa became a successful grape grower. In 1986 he sold 250 acres to Seagram’s and got out of the grape business.

Since then, di Rosa has been fully involved in the collecting of art. The self-described “artcoholic” has purchased about three dozen pieces in the last few months. A favorite prowling ground is student shows. He told me about a pair of a mixed-media pieces he acquired from Sonoma State University art shows.

“I like finding an emerging artist and acquiring their piece,” he explains. “It’s also art I can afford. Established artists are a little beyond my wallet.”

STUDYING agriculture at UC Davis in the 1960s, di Rosa became acquainted with some of the artists working in the art department there, including William Wiley and Roy de Forest. The Funk School, it’s been called. It’s very accessible art–playful, colorful, and insouciant.

Abstract expressionism has a seriousness of intent similar to the scholarly saxophone jazz of the era. Funk art is more like jug band music, with kazoos and banjos. The di Rosa collection has that homey streak; much of the collection is on the walls of the main house’s living rooms and bedrooms.

In the large gallery of the di Rosa Preserve is a bust by Terry Allen. Shoe is a bronze of a businessman with an upside-down shoe in his mouth. The footwear has been jammed in so forcefully that the ends of the man’s tie still swing in the breeze.

Allen is also a songwriter, the composer of an anti-New York art scene anthem called “Truckload of Art,” recently recorded by the Austin Lounge Lizards. In it, a truck of overvalued, blue-chip art from Manhattan crashes and burns: “A truckload of art is burnin’ near the highway/ And it’s raging far out of control./ What the critics have cheered are now shattered and queered/ and their noble reviews have been stewed on the road.”

If anything could sum up the di Rosa Preserve’s collection, it’s that song. Di Rosa’s unwillingness to act through curators and experts, along with his decision to go local and go for what he likes, is an example of the countercultural, eclectic, and unwilling-to-behave spirit that I’ve always honored and revered in Northern California.

This spirit of liberty and self-expression sometimes seems to be going the way of affordable housing. Still, a trip to the di Rosa Preserve revives those feelings of leisure and contemplation that ordinary life smothers.

You’ll find the Rene and Veronica di Rosa Foundation at 5200 Carneros Hwy. (Hwy.121), Napa. Tours are by reservation only. Call 226-5991.

From the May 11-17, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Henry IV’

Daedalus Howell
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‘Henry IV’

Henry IV, Part 1.

Regarding Henry

Thoughtful ‘Henry IV’ makes history

By Daedalus Howell

A LONG TIME AGO, on a stage far, far away–ages before Star Wars and long before the upcoming troika of Lord of the Rings flicks–William Shakespeare was busy inventing the epic trilogy with his trio of history plays: Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V.

Marking the conclusion of the Cinnabar Theater’s Falstaff Festival, the Quicksilver II Theater Company presents Henry IV, Part 1, arguably the most successful play of Shakespeare’s tragical-history tour.

Directed by Deborah Eubanks, this production of the first installment of the Henry plays (which has been enhanced by adding a few lines from the other two plays in the series) is more concerned with the reformation of wayward Prince Hal (Jereme Anglin) than with his royal father, Henry Bolingbroke (soberly played by Lucas McClure), for whom the play is named.

Hal is a waggish wastrel who cavorts with thieves, drunks, and whores before “going straight” to quell the attempt of the young Hotspur (Rick Codding) to depose the king.

Anglin’s rebel-with-a-crown is an adept portrayal of the “nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales” drawn so absorbingly in Shakespeare’s text. The actor employs a decidedly subtle approach as his character incrementally inches toward salvation. Instead of an aboutface from his once ne’er-do-well self, Hal evolves organically through a series of well-paced revelations that add credibility to his character arc and testify to Anglin’s stage-borne skill.

Al Liner’s fustian Falstaff has all the chutzpah of a New York City cabbie and a more innate understanding of the human heart than a cardiologist. Both riotous and disquieting, his rendition of Plump Jack’s famed “What is honor?” monologue marks an exquisite moment for local stages as he deftly treads the tightrope from humility to humanity before passing out drunk in the arms of a wench.

Rick Codding’s Hotspur–despite the “space-villain” duds designer Maureen O’Sullivan garbs him in–is a consummate depiction of a young man racked by his own ambition. Slicker than a sociopath with a charm-school certificate, Codding’s Hotspur is a note-perfect creep. This is one of the production’s breakout performances.

In a scene in Hotspur’s love lab, April Daniels shines as his wife, Lady Percy. She expertly traipses through a complicated array of emotions within the span of one finely crafted scene that is as much a credit to Eubanks’ direction as the players’ native panache. And Sean Casey’s comic, Pythonesque pepper-pot squawking as Westmoreland is well matched with Sam Misner’s ruddy-nosed rapscallion Bardolf.

Unfortunately, the swordplay between the various players that comes at the climax of the second act is a bit of a misstep, often looking like what would result if the Three Stooges did the Ginsu Knives commercials. And though this production is certainly more of a “sleeper” than a yawner, the fact remains that it sometimes seems like more of an endurance test (for both the actors and the audience) than entertainment as it creeps around the three-hour mark despite the obvious pains Eubanks took to prune the behemoth into a tidy evening of theater.

In the end, however, the production is more pensive than ponderous and, like the profligate prince’s line “redeeming time when men think least I will,” it also redeems itself with the sheer talent of its cast.

Quicksilver II Theater Company presents Henry IV, Part 1, through May 27, on Fridays and Saturdays at 8, and Sunday, May 14, at 3 p.m. at the Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. $9 to $14. 763-8920.

From the May 11-17, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Saffron Restaurant

Photograph by Michael Amsler Saffron Satisfies Flavors with a Spanish twist By Paula Harris IT'S EASY to fall in love with tapas, those tasty, tiny Spanish appetizers that accompany a glass of wine and beer and stave off hunger pangs between meals. In Spain, a typical day's intake...
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Summer Arts

Hot time: Elaine Marlowe puts some sizzle into the summer during the FlamencoArts performances. Heat Wave Summer brings hot times to the North Bay arts scene By Heidi Blankenship, Greg Cahill, Paula Harris, Shelley Lawrence, and Patrick Sullivan READY, SET, kawabunga! Like a smiling swimmer leaping from the high...
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North Bay Symphony Conductors

Photos by Michael Amsler Orderly Conduct As North Bay symphonies prepare for the summer season, four conductors reflect on the state of the art By David Templeton Jeffrey Kahane Santa Rosa Symphony JEFFREY KAHANE is telling a story. "I was reading this article," he explains,...
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Russian River Redevelopment

The man with the plan: West county Supervisor Mike Reilly supports the recommendations of a $100,000 study urging redevelopment of impoverished Russian River communities, but constituents are unsure about the ultimate cost. River Watch Russian River-area residents look the redevelopment gift horse in the mouth By Stephanie Hiller ...
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Picasso at the Lapin Agile

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Usual Suspects

Pepper-spray lawsuit restored By Greg Cahill IN A CLOSELY watched pepper-spray case in which Humboldt County law enforcement officers sprayed and swabbed the potent chemical directly into the eyes of peaceful protesters, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 4 issued a decision that restores a lawsuit against police. The...
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Rural Heritage Initiative

Wide-open spaces: Rohnert Park City Councilman Jake McKenzie is among those supporting the Rural Heritage Initiative. Green Days Battle lines being drawn in bid to save rural heritage By Jeremy A. Hay AN INITIATIVE intended to protect agricultural and rural land from development will likely qualify...
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Salsa

Salsa Savvy Finding new ways to assess the sauce By Marina Wolf WELL, IT'S OFFICIAL: Salsa has become an all-American institution. In 1996 it surpassed ketchup as the most-used condiment in the United States, and now it is turning up in that most patriotic of pastimes: the food contest. ...
Read more

Rene di Rosa

California dreaming: A self-described "artcoholic," Rene di Rosa has assembled a collection of California art that is as eclectic as it is eccentric--and it's all on view to the public at the di Rosa Preserve in Napa. Artful Refuge California art finds a home at the di Rosa Preserve By Richard...
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‘Henry IV’

Henry IV, Part 1. Regarding Henry Thoughtful 'Henry IV' makes history By Daedalus Howell A LONG TIME AGO, on a stage far, far away--ages before Star Wars and long before the upcoming troika of Lord of the Rings flicks--William Shakespeare was busy inventing the epic trilogy with his trio of history...
Read more
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