Hi friends,
Reading great books doesn’t have to be a solitary activity. As if to prove that reading is a social function, the public library’s ambitious “Our Community Reads” program kicks off next week for a monthlong series of events. Find a way to get your copy of Dave Eggers’ “The Monk of Mokha.” Oh, and if you love coffee, that’s a bonus.
Also, if you’re free, come visit us at Lookout HQ in downtown Santa Cruz for a free pre-event wine/cheese reception for author Clifford Henderson, who’ll be reading from her new novel at Bookshop Santa Cruz. That’s tonight (Thursday) at 6 p.m., an hour before the event at Bookshop.
Now, on with the show.
An enlightening historical debate is coming to the Music Center Recital Hall on the campus of UC Santa Cruz. A trio of academics, including UCSC history professor Greg O’Malley, will be on hand for a presentation of The Humanities Institute and Bookshop Santa Cruz called “What Actually Happened in 1619: The Origins of Slavery in North America.” The free event takes place Feb. 1. The popular TEDx Santa Cruz series picks up again for the first time since the pandemic, coming to the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo College on April 13. Cabrillo’s big spring theater production, “Marie Antoinette,” opens April 12. That same date, Ben Lomond country star Jesse Daniel plays The Catalyst. And, way out in the future, on Nov. 9, Felton Music Hall hosts a tribute to the Bee Gees, titled “You Should Be Dancin’.” Of course, that’s four days after the presidential election, so who might be in the mood for dancing is an open question.
Be sure to check out Lookout’s carefully curated and constantly updated planning guide, Down the Line, for the staggering riches and amazing choices awaiting Santa Cruz audiences. It’s our look ahead at the best shows, concerts and events through the rest of the year at clubs, stages and venues all over the county.
Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the midwinter B9:
Korean flavor at Santa Cruz Symphony
Perhaps it’s an indication of the Santa Cruz Symphony’s internationalist mindset, but, in this weekend’s concert program, sandwiched right there between two luminaries of the Western canon, Mahler and Ravel, is a showcase of the finest in contemporary music from the Korean peninsula.
The symphony — on Saturday night at the Santa Cruz Civic, and again on Sunday at the Mello Center in Watsonville — will host the U.S. premiere of Jean Ahn’s concerto “Jajang, Jajang (Hush-Hush).” Ahn, 48, is a Korean-born composer now based in the Bay Area, whose work is inspired by traditional Korean music. In this case, it’s the zither-like instrument known as the gayageum. And, brought into the fold as a guest soloist is Korean-born Hwayoung Shon, a master of the instrument who has performed in many kinds of musical idioms, from jazz to K-pop.
So, sure, come for the Mahler and Ravel, but stay for the haunting and ethereal sound of the gayageum, in the hands of musicians who know a thing or two about how to make it sing — Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Civic, and again Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Mello.
It’s ‘8 Tens’ time
Forget Super Bowl season. In Santa Cruz, the end of January means “8 Tens” season. The celebrated 10-minute play festival in downtown Santa Cruz is upon us again, featuring as robust a slate of plays as it did last year.
This year’s play festival opens Jan. 19 — that’s Friday, folks — and runs a month, through Feb. 18, with two separate programs, each with eight 10-minute plays, all at Actors’ Theatre at the Art Center in Santa Cruz.
If you’re a veteran of the theater scene, you know how this goes: For the price of a ticket, you get eight fully staged live plays, usually a deft blend of comedy, melodrama, farce and other forms, by turns ironic, scary, moving, funny or illuminating. You don’t like one, just wait a few minutes and another unrelated one comes down the pike. It’s a theatrical buffet table of goodies.
To get the full-on experience, you’ll need two tickets — the Part 1 show and the Part 2 show. On Saturday, you can tick off both boxes, catching one show in the afternoon and, after a dinner break, the other one in the evening. (I did that last year and it was a blast.)
Get out your calendar, and get your tickets.
The Hive takes on ‘The Muse’
The annual poetry tradition “In Celebration of The Muse” has led a cat-with-nine-lives existence in Santa Cruz going back more than 40 years. And now, the event has found yet another new lease on life.
The Hive Poetry Collective — the KSQD radio crew that grew out of Danusha Lameris’ stint as the county’s poet laureate — recently announced that it was assuming responsibility for staging “The Muse,” the storied poetry reading designed to amplify the voices of Santa Cruz’s women poets.
The Hive also announced that the 2024 version of “The Muse” will take place April 26 at Cabrillo College … and that all women, women-identified or nonbinary poets and writers are encouraged to apply for a slot in the reading. (The deadline to apply is Feb. 16.)
“The Muse” goes back to the early 1980s, when Wilma Marcus Chandler conceived of the event as a way to counterbalance the rich but male-dominated poetry scene at the time. Put together for years by poets Patrice Vecchione and Gael Roziere, the event has showcased scores of accomplished women writers, including a few stars in the field such as Adrienne Rich, Tillie Olsen, Ellen Bass, Ekua Omosupe, Lucille Clifton and bell hooks.
The announcement of this year’s slate of readers will come March 22. We’ll keep an eye out.
Squid-Fest cometh
Speaking of KSQD, the community radio station’s Squid-Fest fundraiser is on track, this year for March 2. Squid-Fest will be a big live-music party at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, and will feature local favorites Keith Greeninger, Tammi Brown, Coffee Zombie Collective, Lucas Lawson, Coast Ridge Ramblers and plenty more.
Tickets are now on sale, though squid cosplay is optional.
Breen on ‘Fresh Air’
I had the pleasure to interview UCSC history professor Benjamin Breen last week about his new book, “Tripping on Utopia.” It turns out I wasn’t the only media person who wanted a piece of Breen. He got a much wider audience with his interview with Terry Gross of “Fresh Air.” (Hey, I’ve heard of her.) Here’s a link to that conversation.
Earworm of the Week
A month ago, you might remember, in the teeth of the holiday season, something unexpected happened: Brenda Lee’s 65-year-old ditty “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” hit the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100. Is it a trend? Well, the Christmas angle is kind of a cheat, but non-holiday (not-quite-as) oldies from Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac, among others, have weirdly come back onto the charts after decades in mothballs. Since then, I’ve been looking for the old hit that is least likely to ever make the charts again. And I think I found it. It’s called “Wives and Lovers,” and it’s a 60-year-old song from half-forgotten 1960s crooner Jack Jones, written by the legendary tandem Burt Bacharach and Hal David. It’s not a bad record, really. The arrangement is pretty tight, and Jones (who is still alive) is a fine singer. But the gender politics of the song is from another planet. It’s essentially a condescending lecture to a stay-at-home wife that she had better maintain her attractiveness lest her busy, distracted, high-achieving husband follow his wandering eye to a more pleasing option. “Day after day/There are girls at the office/And men will always be men.” This is a song that even Weird Al couldn’t parody. Incredibly, it won a Grammy in 1964, and perhaps even more incredibly, it’s been covered a number of times, including by female artists such as Dionne Warwick, Lena Horne, Nancy Wilson and Ella Fitzgerald. There is no other song I know more out of place in 2024, yet still fun to discover as a curio from another time.
Santa Cruz County Trivia
The namesake of the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park was known during her lifetime for the production of what product?
Last week: What long-defunct Scotts Valley venue once hosted concerts by Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, among others, and was a notorious hangout for Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters? The place was known as The Barn, and it was owned and managed by a former psychologist and native of Lithuania named Leon Tabory. The Barn, just off Highway 17 at Granite Creek Road, was a hippie stronghold, famous for its psychedelic light shows, in the mid to late 1960s before it closed its doors under pressure from the Scotts Valley City Council in 1969. Tabory was in and out of court for a number of years after that, but The Barn took its place in Santa Cruz counterculture.
***
That’s all I got, friends. Come at me with comments, ideas, complaints, or thundering insights. Thanks to all Lookout members for your faith and support, and please, spread the word on what we’re doing.