ENTERTAINMENT

Peace Child

One of Metropolitan Detroit's
Most Beautiful and Exciting
Restaurants

Continued from preceding page

OUR FAMOUS

NEW ENGLAND
LOBSTER
FEAST
MONDAY THRU THURSDAY

• SOUP

•
•
•
•
•
•
•

,

SALAD
1 LB. LIVE LOBSTER
KING CRAB LEGS
STEAMER CLAMS
MUSSELS
REDSKIN POTATOES
CORN-ONTHE-COB

$ 22 50 per person
DANCING TUES. THRU SAT.

SUSY u DAN

28875 FRANKLIN RIA at Northwestern Hwy & 12 Mile
Southfield
358-3355

RiSTORANTE

ortina

c 0

'LA CUCINA CEASSiCA'

OUR BEAUTIFUL EUROPEAN GARDEN ROOM
AVAILABLE FOR ...Weddings, Rehearsals, Showers
Graduations, Etc....Outside Catering Also Available

Party Consultation By Your Hosts, Rina & Adriano Tonon

474-3033
Fireside Room
30715 W. Ten Mile • Farm. Hills, MI
Available

If you don't have room
for your guests, have them
join us at the Club.

The Compri Hotel is a wonderful place to
send your guests. It'll make them feel
comfortable and important. Especially with
everything they'll enjoy at the Compri Club.
Like a hosted Director's Reception, late
night snacks and a full, cooked-to-order
breakfast in the morning.

And the guest rooms are just as impressive
as the Club.
So if you've got guests coming, have them
join us at the Club. Call for special holiday
or weekend rates.
26000 American Drive, Southfield, MI 48034.
(313) 357-1100 or Toll Free at 1-800-4-Compri.

(Comiari)l Hotel

Subject to availability, some restrictions may apply.

Open For
Lunch & Dinner
Serving

AUTHENTIC

Thai Food
and
Cocktails

it

Bangkok
Club

11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mon. Thru Thurs. • 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fri. & Sat.

I

OPEN SUNDAY 5 p.m TO 10 p.m.

29269 Southfield Road north of 12 Mile
In The Southfield Commons

70

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1991

569-1400

don meeting with Mr.
McKern • with some
trepidation.
"It was a little scary to me,
because when he walked in
he said, 'Let's talk privately
in the studio.' I said OK. He
said, 'Will they be listening in
the control room?' I said, 'Not
if we don't want them to
"I thought something was
up, and I thought whatever it
was, I was going to agree.
Change of terms, anything."
They went into the control
room, Mr. McKern opened the
script and asked for three
small changes. "It became
clear," Mr. Rubin said, "that
he had prepared very
thoroughly. He's just such a
pro. He had caught every lit-
tle nuance, every little joke.
He was on top of it. He had a
wonderful timer'
The Brass Band is a lot like
an idyllic summer afternoon.
It makes you feel like the sun
is shining, the band playing
in the park, and children run-
ning through the grass. Only
as the band plays, a gruff,
kindly Englishman jokes
with you, explains to you,
tells you a funny story and
makes you want more.
Mr. Rubin, who went to
Kalamazoo College after
graduating from Berkley
High School, thought he
would be a child psychologist.
But two weeks of graduate
school at the University of
Washington convinced him
that graduate school
psychology wasn't for him.
"I found I hadn't the
academic discipline, the
academic interest, the moti-
vation," he said. "I had been
sheltered, and kind of misled
by my undergraduate train-
ing. That sounds negative,
but it's not. I was actually do-
ing a lot of stuff, getting into
theater because my room-
mate was in theater and he
dragged me in and I got to en-
joy it. I was doing photog-
raphy because it was some-
thing I liked to do.
"I was a shy person, so I
really, honestly, sincerely give
a lot of credit to the liberal
arts tradition and the small
college. It worked for me. I
found a lot of things I liked.
But what I wasn't doing was
being very academically
serious.
"The change in level of
discipline and work required
in grad school was huge.
Within one minute of grad
school I knew this was not go-
ing to work."
The year was 1968 — the
Vietnam era. Mr. Rubin had
been getting progressively
more disenchanted with what
was going on in the United
States and had been thinking
about Canada. "Junior year

studying in France was an
enormous eye opener for me
. . . realizing that the
American way was not the on-
ly way. The feeling that there
are other ways of looking at
things, other ways of doing
things.
"That was just at the point
that Vietnam was heating up
as a political issue. I was be-
ing very convinced by the
anti-war perspective, and at
the same time I was seeing
America from a distance, and
it wasn't thrilling!'
There was a school of
photography in Toronto which
seemed like the place for him.
"I did go (to Canada) because
of the change in career direc-
tion. I went before I was
drafted!' he said. "I was stall-

"I was a shy
person, so I really,
honestly, sincerely
gave a lot of credit
to the liberal arts
tradition and the
small college. It
worked for me."

ing the draft as long as I
could. I had applied for cons-
cientious objector, knowing
full well that it would never
be granted on purely
philosophical grounds. So you
stalled, not knowing what
would happen:'
What happened was that he
was in all automobile acci-
dent and was injured serious-
ly enough that he was
granted an army defernient.
By that time he had been in
Canada for a year. "I was
grateful to Canada for accep-
ting me and the other young
Americans who were coming
up, and I wanted to stay," he
said.
He does come back to
Detroit, all the time, to visit
family and friends. He is
always horrified by what he
reads in the newspapers.
"Guns in schools, atrocity
stories, everything to a dif-
ferent degree than what is go-
ing on in Toronto,"he said. "I
used to wonder, how can
anybody stand this, how can
you deal with this? I've since
come to understand. You
block it out. You accept it. I've
since come to feel that
Canada isn't all that much
better."
Mr. Rubin said, "Canada is
luckier. Its history is different
in certain ways. It hasn't had
the same pressures and
stresses. I'm disappointed
that in fact you wouldn't say
the Canadians are better peo-
ple. I would only say that they
haven't been pushed in the
same way, and if they were,
they'd react in the same way."

Mr. Rubin feels a profound
disenchantment not only
with his roots as an
American, but his roots as a
Jew.
"I went through the stan-
dard Hebrew school and bar
mitzvah, and I put up with it,
as did all of my peers,
although some few exceptions
actually learned and seemed
interested. I could never
understand it .. .
"What I would have felt
really good about was a
Jewish tradition that was
reaching out, as some were
doing, the social activists who
were taking a stand, who
were trying to deal with
racial issues, and political
issues, but this was very
much a rarity. The Judaism I
was -experiencing was subur-
ban, social, materialistic, and
very narrow-minded."
What Mr. Rubin would
rather talk about, what
makes him happy, is his work,
his music. As a producer of
documentaries and educa-
tional videos, it has always
been an essential part of his
life.
"I'm a frustrated non-
musician," he said. "I'd love to
know more. I'd love to play
something well, and one of
the things that would be high
on my list would be to study
music, to study composition.
To me, musical composing is
one of the highest art forms,
and one of the most magical
there is," he said. "One of the
pleasures of developing both
The Orchestra and The Brass
Band has been the opportuni-
ty to work.with composers, to
be able to kibbitz with them,
and throw in my two cents
worth, and then watch the
music being formed from the
idea stage to melody, to hav-
ing it on paper and then ac-
tually performed.
"I find that thrilling!'

❑

Musical Society
Sets May Festival

The University Musical
Society will conclude its
1990-91 season with the four
concerts of the 98th Annual
May Festival, 8 p.m. May 1-4,
in the University of Michi-
gan's Hill Auditorium. For
ticket information, call the
University Musical Society,
764-2538.
Kurt Masur and the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra
return for their third festival
residency: among the soloists
are Midori, violinist, and
Elisabeth Leonskaja, pianist.
Continuing the long choral
tradition of the May Festival
is the Musical Society's
Festival Chorus in an all-
Russian finale on May 4.

