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May 10: Elizabeth Warren at Angelico Hall
Elizabeth Warren got her first look at the workings of Washington, D.C., when she was called in to advise Congress on rewriting bankruptcy laws. The Harvard law professor fought against political dysfunction, retooling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to better protect the working and middle classes, and ran for Senate in 2012. Now the senior senator from Massachusetts has written A Fighting Chance about the experience and how the government can do better for working families. Warren reads from and signs her new book on May 10 at Angelico Hall, Dominican University, 50 Acacia Ave., San Rafael. 4pm. $35. 415.927.0960 x1.
May 10: Ballet Zempoalxochitl at Jarvis Conservatory
Named for the Mexican marigold, the Ballet Zempoalxochitl reflects the traditional cultures of Mexico in their movements and style. This week, Napa Valley’s Ballet Folklorico dance company unveils its new production, Bailes de Mi Tierra (“Dances of My Country”). The show is choreographed and directed by Pete Peralez and accompanied by live mariachi music. The performance is set for May 10 at the Jarvis Conservatory, 1711 Main St., Napa. 7pm. $10. 707.255.5445.
May 9: General Smiley at Whiskey Tip
You know those songs where someone chants over a beat, talking rather than singing? Well, in the genre of dancehall music, that’s called “toasting.” And in the world of toasting, General Smiley was one of the first and remains one of the best. General Smiley is still at it today, currently on a West Coast tour with Ragga Lox and others, and stopping in on May 9 at Whiskey Tip, 1910 Sebastopol Road, Santa Rosa. 8pm. 707.843.5535.
May 8: Jayme Stone at Throckmorton Theater
Award-winning banjoist and composer Jayme Stone knows the banjo’s role in the world like few others. Stone’s latest album, The Other Side of the Air, reinvents music he learned in West Africa, Peru and India. Joined by a backing trio, Stone transforms classic melodies into accessible and compelling works. He performs twice in the North Bay this week: May 8 at Throckmorton Theater (142 Throckmorton Ave., Mill Valley; $20—$24; 8pm) and May 10 at the Occidental Center for the Arts (3850 Doris Murphy Court, Occidental. $30; 8pm).
Long Live Mother Jones
Mother Jones. That name, if it’s recognized at all these days, is best known for the left-leaning magazine that bears it.
But Mother Jones—the sobriquet of Irish-American union activist Mary Harris Jones—was once a household name, alternately praised and vilified for her lifetime commitment to workers’ rights in the factories and mines of America.
Those causes, and more, are the primary focus of a rousing new play by folksinger-playwright Si Kahn. In Mother Jones in Heaven, running through May 18 at Main Stage West, Kahn has accomplished two notable things: giving voice to this somewhat forgotten historical figure, and crafting the perfect vehicle for actor-singer Mary Gannon Graham. As Mother Jones, Graham is sensational, adding another indelible character to a growing list (Patsy Cline, Shirley Valentine) that the Sebastopol actress has claimed as her own in recent years.
Set in a whiskey bar somewhere in the clouds of paradise, the play begins with Mother Jones expressing surprise at having ended up in heaven. She’s worried that she might be lonely without all her old activist friends, who’d spent their lives being told they were headed straight for hell.
Not only does Mother Jones have company, she gets free whiskey and beer whenever she wants it, and a full-on Irish folk band (led by Jim Peterson) to back her up whenever she feels like bursting into song. For Mother Jones, Kahn has written a dozen or so original songs (maybe two more than necessary), nicely underscoring Jones’ emotional life with words and music ranging from the playful and sweet to the heartbroken and angry.
The show unfolds as a series of loosely connected stories from Jones’ life. Especially powerful is her story of losing her husband and four children to yellow fever. That loss was an overwhelming source of grief, which fueled Mary Jones’ passion for sticking up for the poor, the hard-hit and the underserved. Graham relates this and other tales with a skill and emotional honesty that is at times utterly breathtaking.
Directed by Beth Craven with sensitivity and some strategically placed whimsy, Mother Jones in Heaven has very little actual plot, but plenty of power. Before it’s over, audiences might find themselves longing for the Great Beyond themselves, just so they could seek out this legend and share a whiskey or two with her.
Rating (out of 5): ★★★★½
Stags Leap Year
Stags Leap District is a little slice of Cabernet paradise and a copy editor’s headache. Is it Stag’s Leap, Stags’ Leap or Stags Leap? All three are true, in their own way.
Two wineries wrangled over the designation in the 1980s until a California Supreme Court decision simply moved one of the litigant’s apostrophes. The spoils went to the lawyers. “Lots of Porsches were bought for college kids,” winegrower Richard Steltzner remarked during a panel discussion held on April 26 to commemorate the awarding of American Viticultural Area (AVA) status to Stags Leap District in 1989. By then, it seems, nobody was in the mood to champion an apostrophe.
If a map of Napa Valley’s sub-appellations looks a little like a butcher’s chart of meat cuts, divided into just about equal parts Oakville, Rutherford, St. Helena and others, Stags Leap District must fit into the top sirloin spot. One of the first to be recognized as an AVA. It’s Napa’s smallest sub-appellation, but it had an outsized reputation since before it was officially recognized. It was a Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon that outranked top Bordeaux contenders in the—say it with me now—1976 “Judgment of Paris” tasting that shook up the wine world.
Seated before a panoramic view of the rocky little appellation at Shafer Vineyards, panelists searched for words to define the region’s unique qualities. It’s the orography, said Kirk Grace, director of viticulture at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, the way cool winds from San Pablo Bay meet the hot, rocky palisades. It’s acidity and dusty, cocoa powder tannins, said Michael Beaulac, winemaker and general manager at Pine Ridge Vineyards.
To illustrate the famed accessibility of the area’s Cabernet Sauvignon, John Shafer relates a beloved old yarn about the time he debuted his 1978 Hillside Select at a tasting. “Every third person who came by the table asked me how much Merlot is in the wine,” Shafer recalled. Finally, one guy sidled up to him behind the table and whispered, “If you tell me how much Merlot is in there, I won’t tell anybody!”
Poured from Shafer’s library vintages, the all-Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 Hillside Select is soft indeed, and still tasting as young as this morning’s breakfast: perfectly browned toast and a spoonful of blueberry preserves. Similarly plush, the 2011 One Point Five ($75) has some grip and cool, chocolate mint notes that keep the brown sugar and ripe plum fruit in line. But there’s no need to sidle up and whisper, “How much Petit Verdot is in this wine?” It’s 5 percent.
Shafer Vineyards, 6154 Silverado Trail, Napa. Tasting by appointment only, Monday–Friday, 10am and 2pm. $55 per person. 707.944.2877.
New Frontier
Artist Desirée Holman has spent her professional life researching human behavior in a most unusual way.
She observes subcultures that seem outside the norm of society, but inform the mainstream.
Holman’s latest project examining these subcultures is her most out there—literally. “Sophont in Action,” a multimedia exhibit, looks at our fascination with the realms of pseudoscientific ideas and extraterrestrial icons. Her new work will be exhibited at Napa’s di Rosa gallery.
“This project is largely about this subculture gone mainstream, under the umbrella of New Age, which northern California has been seminal in dispersing,” Holman explains. The exhibit’s highlight is a striking series of portraits of “extraterrestrial” masks worn by human figures in front of an aura haze.
“This isn’t about my interpretation,” she says, “it’s more about our desire for [and] fantasy of extraterrestrials.”
In past works, Holman has examined the obsession with television and fascination with newborns. With “Sophont,” Holman seeks to understand how the collective vision of aliens has become so uniform and so familiar. “Why are popular visions of extraterrestrials always bipedal, always humanoid? “
Holman explains how this cultural phenomenon took place alongside other cultural milestones like the Civil Rights movement. Before the 1960s, aliens were often seen as tall, fair-skinned beings that looked more or less exactly like people. Then, following popular stories of sightings and alien abductions, they evolved into the gray, large-eyed creatures we all now immediately picture.
“We’re really homocentric,” says Holman. “The beings are other than us enough that we can project hopes and fears onto them, but similar enough that they’re easy to grasp emotionally and intellectually.”
Holman’s latest show also includes paintings of the luminous aura that some believe we all emit. Inspired by the work of Guy Coggins, the Peninsula-based inventor of the Aura Camera, Holman depicts the colorful energies, which are supposed to tell us about our emotional impact on the environment.
Holman counters this with a series of stunning starscapes, images one might find on a NASA website, peering deep into the galactic abyss. All three styles of paintings lead the viewer from the outer fringes of science into the realm of accepted alternative ideas and theories.
In addition, the show will boast a massive live performance on June 28, as community-based Ecstatic Dancers, Indigo Children and Time-Travelers take to the grounds and manifest a living utopia of science-fiction and New Age concepts made real.
One Shot Solution
On Jan. 17, 2006, Clarence Ray Allen was put to death in San Quentin State Prison’s death chamber, making him the last person executed in California.
The “cocktail” administered to Allen was similar to the one used in the April 29 execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma—a combination of a sedative, a paralytic and a heart-stopping dose of potassium chloride.
The Oklahoma debacle highlighted problems with lethal injection as California struggles to put its own death-house in order.
“This ought to be a warning to California as it contemplates its next protocol,” says Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law.
Semel highlights the state’s history of inadequate training and monitoring of corrections officials charged with administering lethal dosages, and “real questions about whether people have suffered” as a result.
When a federal judge halted executions in California in 2006, she notes, he did so in part because of evidence that six of 11 executions had gone awry.
Allen was sentenced to death in 1980 for orchestrating two murders while serving a life sentence for the killing of Mary Sue Kitts in 1974.
Allen’s attorney, Michael Satris, recalls that his elderly client was in such poor health that he “couldn’t even make it under his own strength to the chamber—they had to lift and carry him.”
Allen was administered a second dose of potassium in order to complete the execution, since his heart would not stop beating.
After the Allen execution, the state couldn’t find a medical technician willing to administer the drugs to the next person up for the ultimate penalty, Michael Morales.
Federal District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel ended the practice and directed the state to come up with new protocols. Seven years later, it hasn’t done so. Allen was executed in the former San Quentin gas chamber, and the state built a lethal-injection chamber in 2008 that remains unused.
Gov. Jerry Brown has pushed for the adoption of a single-drug protocol, but pharmaceutical companies have stopped selling the drug, sodium thiopental.
Meanwhile, former governors Gray Davis, Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian have thrown their support behind a proposed November measure that would sharply limit capital-case appeals and leave it to local drug companies to provide the drugs to San Quentin, outside of public scrutiny.
The ballot measure follows a national trend whereby officials have refused to reveal the source of the execution drugs.
Oklahoma had experimentally administered the short-acting sedative midazolam to Lockett. He regained consciousness in the middle of the procedure. Lockett eventually died of a heart attack.
Under the California ballot initiative underway, there would be no public review of the drugs’ origins.
Pharmaceutical companies have largely stopped supplying drugs for use in lethal injections. A 2010 Los Angeles Times story reported that Gov. Brown had purchased sodium thiopental sufficient for four executions, but the state refused to say where it had gotten the drugs.
“The more we know about the drugs being used, the greater we guard against the chance of this happening again,” says Semel.
Proposition 34, a 2012 ballot measure, would have ended executions in California and commuted the sentences to life without parole. It failed with 48 percent voting in favor. The close vote revealed that attitudes about capital punishment had tightened in a state where the practice has long been the costliest ($4 billion spent for 13 executions since its reinstatement in 1978, according to a 2011 study) and most inefficient in the country, owing to lengthy appeals and judicial review.
State Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, a Democrat who represents parts of Napa and Sonoma counties, supports capital punishment and says the Oklahoma debacle is less likely to happen here because of the lengths—excessive, in her view—the state has gone to protect the rights of the accused and reform its execution protocols since the Fogel ruling.
“California is a very thoughtful state,” she says. “We take a really long and deliberative review, to the point where it is all out of balance.”
The California appeals process, she says, doesn’t provide “justice for the victims. It is almost like we are re-victimizing the victims.”
A spokesperson for Yamada said she had not yet had the chance to study the proposed November initiative and had no position on it.
A few states have suspended capital punishment after death-row inmates were exonerated. A just-released study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that “if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely, at least 4.1 percent would be exonerated.”
In California, there were 741 people on death row as of late 2013. The NAS figures indicate that two dozen or more of them are innocent of the charge that put them there.
Despite its de facto moratorium, California led the nation in capital-crime convictions in 2013, as reported by the national Death Penalty Information Center. That year, 24 individuals were added to the ranks of the condemned.
Green Scene
With 34 shows in the 2014–15 season program, a 30 percent increase from last season, Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center is more than a kick in the head; it’s shaping up to be a very good year.
The opening night gala (Sept. 28) features Michael Feinstein in a tribute to Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, solidifying the New York connection made by former Carnegie Hall chairman and current GMC chairman Sandy Weill when he brought on former New York Philharmonic executive director Zarin Mehta this year as co-executive director with SSU administrator Larry Furukawa-Schlereth.
Yo-Yo Ma returns to the GMC for a third time. This season, Ma takes the stage in a solo performance of music by J. S. Bach. He’s the most celebrated cellist in recorded history playing music by the most celebrated composer of all time—don’t miss it. Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile from the Goat Rodeo Sessions (Ma’s bluegrass band) are also scheduled for this season.
Stewart Copeland (yes, the drummer from the Police) and Jon Kimura Parker (yes, the pianist who recently performed The Rite
of Spring as a solo piece) team up March 8 for an evening of drum set and piano magic that will include some of Copeland’s Police hits and Parker’s virtuosity.
A cappella legend Bobby McFerrin performs on April 10, and five-time Tony-winning actress and singer Audra McDonald takes the stage Dec. 5. The SFJAZZ collective brings musicians from around the world together for a Joe Henderson retrospective on April 17.
Experimental multimedia pioneer Laurie Anderson used harmonizers way before Imogen Heap made it cool. She’s kind of like a cross between David Bowie at his most conceptual and David Byrne at his most poetic. She performs “Language of the Future,” a collection of songs about contemporary culture, on Oct. 25.
The year-end holiday season will be especially joyful this year with a performance of Handel’s Messiah by the American Bach Soloists (Dec. 21), a smooth jazz show by saxophonist Dave Koz (Dec. 22) and the one and only Johnny Mathis with a 35-piece orchestra playing Christmas favorites (Dec. 19).
The season also marks the opening of the 250-seat Schroeder Hall. The smaller recital hall is designed for student and choral ensembles, and was the original idea by the center’s namesakes, Don and Maureen Green, for their beloved Sonoma County Bach Choir (though the 1,400-seat main hall isn’t half bad, either).
May 10: Elizabeth Warren at Angelico Hall
Elizabeth Warren got her first look at the workings of Washington, D.C., when she was called in to advise Congress on rewriting bankruptcy laws. The Harvard law professor fought against political dysfunction, retooling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to better protect the working and middle classes, and ran for Senate in 2012. Now the senior senator from Massachusetts has...
May 10: Ballet Zempoalxochitl at Jarvis Conservatory
Named for the Mexican marigold, the Ballet Zempoalxochitl reflects the traditional cultures of Mexico in their movements and style. This week, Napa Valley’s Ballet Folklorico dance company unveils its new production, Bailes de Mi Tierra (“Dances of My Country”). The show is choreographed and directed by Pete Peralez and accompanied by live mariachi music. The performance is set for...
May 9: General Smiley at Whiskey Tip
You know those songs where someone chants over a beat, talking rather than singing? Well, in the genre of dancehall music, that’s called “toasting.” And in the world of toasting, General Smiley was one of the first and remains one of the best. General Smiley is still at it today, currently on a West Coast tour with Ragga Lox...
May 8: Jayme Stone at Throckmorton Theater
Award-winning banjoist and composer Jayme Stone knows the banjo’s role in the world like few others. Stone’s latest album, The Other Side of the Air, reinvents music he learned in West Africa, Peru and India. Joined by a backing trio, Stone transforms classic melodies into accessible and compelling works. He performs twice in the North Bay this week: May...
Long Live Mother Jones
Mother Jones. That name, if it's recognized at all these days, is best known for the left-leaning magazine that bears it.
But Mother Jones—the sobriquet of Irish-American union activist Mary Harris Jones—was once a household name, alternately praised and vilified for her lifetime commitment to workers' rights in the factories and mines of America.
Those causes, and more, are the primary...
Stags Leap Year
Stags Leap District is a little slice of Cabernet paradise and a copy editor's headache. Is it Stag's Leap, Stags' Leap or Stags Leap? All three are true, in their own way.
Two wineries wrangled over the designation in the 1980s until a California Supreme Court decision simply moved one of the litigant's apostrophes. The spoils went to the lawyers....
New Frontier
Artist Desirée Holman has spent her professional life researching human behavior in a most unusual way.
She observes subcultures that seem outside the norm of society, but inform the mainstream.
Holman's latest project examining these subcultures is her most out there—literally. "Sophont in Action," a multimedia exhibit, looks at our fascination with the realms of pseudoscientific ideas and extraterrestrial icons. Her...
One Shot Solution
On Jan. 17, 2006, Clarence Ray Allen was put to death in San Quentin State Prison's death chamber, making him the last person executed in California.
The "cocktail" administered to Allen was similar to the one used in the April 29 execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma—a combination of a sedative, a paralytic and a heart-stopping dose of potassium chloride.
The...
Green Scene
With 34 shows in the 2014–15 season program, a 30 percent increase from last season, Sonoma State University's Green Music Center is more than a kick in the head; it's shaping up to be a very good year.
The opening night gala (Sept. 28) features Michael Feinstein in a tribute to Ol' Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, solidifying the New York...
