Arts & Ent.ertainment
&About
Pure Biss
Known for his artistic maturity, versatility
and performance of a diverse repertoire
ranging from Mozart, Beethoven and
Schumann to Janacek, Schoenberg and
works by contemporary composers, 26-
year-old Jewish pianist Jonathan Biss has
collaborated with such artists as Isaac
Stern, Andras Schiff, James Tocco, David
Finckel, Paul Katz, the Emerson and
Vermeer quartets,
and his parents,
Miriam Fried and
Paul Biss, both
professors at the
Indiana University
School of Music.
He has been
recognized with
numerous awards,
including the 2002
Gilmore Young
Jonathan Biss
Artist Award,
Lincoln Center's
Martin E. Segal Award, an Avery Fisher
Career Grant, the Andrew Wolf Memorial
Chamber Music Award and the 2003
Borletti-Buitoni Trust. He was the first and
only American chosen to participate in the
BBC's New Generation Artist program and
recently received
Hear Jonathan Biss
the 2005 Leonard
perform works by
Bernstein Award
Mozart, Schoenberg,
at the Schleswig-
Beethoven and
Holstein Festival
Schumann 8 p.m.
in Germany.
Saturday, Nov. 18, in
Recital and
a University Musical
Gail Zimmerman
chamber music
Society concert at Hill
Arts Editor
play a vital part
Auditorium in Ann
in Biss' artistic
Arbor. Tickets are
life. He made his
$10-$50; (734)764-
New York recital debut at the 92nd Street
2538 or umstix@umich.edu . A Prelude
Y in 2000 and has appeared in many of
Dinner at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18,
the great series in the U.S. and in major
features Biss on piano and speaker Steven
cities and venues across Europe. After
Whiting, associate professor of musicol-
his appearance at the Concertgebouw,
ogy at U-M, at the Alumni Center, 200
Amsterdam, a review in De Telegraaf
Fletcher St., in Ann Arbor. $40 per person;
said: "[Biss'] huge range only served to
(734) 764-8489 for reservations.
spotlight his beautifully controlled touch,
the richness of color that he attained and
the nervous expressive power with which
Musical Potpourri
he charged his interpretation."
This third-generation musician
A variety of musical styles fill the vener-
— Samuel Barber composed his Cello
able Ark in Ann Arbor during the upcom-
Concerto for Biss' grandmother, Raya
ing week.
Garbousova — is philosophical about the
New York-born, Ohio-raised Jewish
role of music in his life: "Music deals in
guitarist-pianist Ann Rabson has loved
the realm of the unknown and the mys-
the blues since she was a little girl and co-
terious:' he says."It heals the soul. Music
founded Saffire-The Uppity Blues Women,
can make me feel more strongly than
an acclaimed acoustic trio of middle-age
almost anything else in life."
women. They play the classic blues of
O
11 ■ 11.•112.11•1111010111,011111•111111• ■ •••111•11
Bessie Smith,
Ma Rainey and
other divas
who brought a
female perspec-
tive to the blues
in the 1920s and
1930s, as well
Anne Rabson
as traditionally
styled originals.
Saffire takes the Ark stage - 8 p.m. Friday,
Nov. 17. Tickets are $20.
Robbie Schaeffer, the Jewish singer-
songwriter best known as the guitarist
of the Virginia-based neo-folk acoustic
quartet Eddie From Ohio, offers a fam-
ily concert 1 p.m.
Sunday, Nov.
19. $8. He's just
released an album
for kids called
Songs For Kids
Like Us, featuring
such characters as
Carp (who lives in
the tub), Professor
Schnoodle and
Cowboy Bob.
In the early
1970s, Jewish
singer-guitarist
Robbie Schaeffer
FYI: For Arts related events that you wish to have considered for Out & About, please send the item, with a detailed description of the event, times, dates, place, ticket prices and publishable phone number, to: Gail Zimmerman, JN Out
& About, The Jewish News, 29200 Northwestern Highway, Suite 110, Southfield, MI 48034; fax us at (248) 304-8885; or e-mail to gzimmerman@thejewishnews.com . Notice must be received at least three weeks before the scheduled
event. Photos are appreciated but cannot be returned. All events and dates listed in the Out & About column are subject to change.
4114 WS
ems
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Fake Fur
Fur – An Imaginary Portrait of Diane
Arbus, which opens Friday, Nov.17,
in Detroit-area theaters, "invents
(3) characters and situations that reach
beyond reality to express what might
have been Arbus' inner experience on
her extraor-
dinary path,"
says the film's
Jewish direc-
tor, Steven
Shainberg
The real Diane Arbus
(Secretary).
The real Diane Arbus (1923-1971)
was the daughter of wealthy Jewish
parents who sold fancy clothes, includ-
ing furs. Diane and her husband, Allan
Arbus (later an actor who played
psychiatrist Sidney Freedman on the
TV series M*A*S*H), worked as fash-
ion photographers from 1946 until
they separated in 1959. In the '60s,
Diane became famous as the creator
111)
38
November 16 A 2006
of haunting and sometimes disturbing
photos of society's oddballs.
Yes, Diane's art photography and
her '60s bohemian lifestyle were big
breaks from her '50s life as a mar-
ried mother of two who styled fashion
shoots. However, her later career can
be conventionally explained.
Her cultured father hired art tutors
for the teenage Diane; she studied
with famous photographer Lisette
Model in the '50s; her husband was
pretty hip, and her lover and mentor
in the '60s was the innovative Jewish
photographer Marvin Israel; her
brother, Howard Nemerov, was a very
famous poet.
However, Shainberg's Arbus (Nicole
Kidman) is a stifled '50s "mad house-
wife." Her parents are materialistic
boors. Then, into her life comes a
former circus freak (Robert Downey
Jr.). He opens Diane's eyes to the lives
of society's freaks. Their completely
invented romance, the movie implies,
was the critical event in Arbus' artistic
development.
Fur may work as a magical tale but
not as a -biography or as a symbolic
explanation of Arbus' artistic growth.
Murder Inc.
In 1989, the beautiful young Jewish
actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who co-
starred in the TV series My Sister
Sam, was slain at her
doorstep by a celeb-
rity stalker who got
her address from the
motor vehicle depart-
ment. Her murder led
most states to make
Andrienne
DMV records priVate..
Shelly
I hope something
similarly good comes out of the mur-
der of actress Adrienne Shelly, 40,
in New York. Shelly had a modest, if
steady career in TV and movies; she's
best known for co-starring in the hit
indie films Trust and The Unbelievable
Truth. At the time of her death, she
was married to Jewish businessman
Andy Ostroy; they had a 3-year-old
daughter.
On Nov.1, Ostroy went to meet his
wife at an apartment Shelly used as
an office. He found her lifeless body
hanging from a shower rod above the
apartment's bathtub. Some members
of the press immediately called her
death a suicide, and the New York Post
piled on by digging out old quotes that
made her look totally suicidal.
Her husband and her parents felt
sure it was a murder. The police then
found a shoe print near the tub and
matched it to the shoe of a mainte-
nance worker in the building. When
confronted, he reportedly confessed
he had killed Shelly and hung her body
to make it look like a suicide. Ostroy
paused from sitting shivah to thank
the police.
Law and Order will probably fiction-
alize this case. I hope any dramatiza-
tion slams those who rushed to judg-
ment in libeling the dead.
Peter's Principle
Actor Peter Falk, 79, has just written
Just One More Thing, a collection of