Arts & Entertainment
About
Cohn Comeback
It's been more than a decade since musi-
cian Marc Cohn — 1992's Grammy Award
winner for Best New Artist — toured with
a full band and nearly nine years since he
released his last studio recording. This fall
he is doing both.
Cohn's new CD, Join the Parade, debuted
on Decca Records last month, and the
performer will bring his "Join the Parade"
Tour to Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater
7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5.
The album is the prod-
uct of the Jewish singer-
songwriter's personal
journey — through his
empathetic observations
after Hurricane Katrina
and from a 2005 inci-
dent during which Cohn
found himself the victim Marc Cohn
of a carjacking in Denver,
which left him with a
gunshot wound to the head.
The concert will feature his hits
"Walking in Memphis;' "Silver
Thunderbird" and "True Companion:' as
well as tunes from the new CD. "Playing
the older songs with a full band and now
doing some of the newer tracks from Join
the Parade for fans is going to be a lot of
fun," says Cohn,
married to ABC
News journalist
Elizabeth Vargas.
"It's been a while
since I've been
on tour with a
full band, and I'm
really looking for-
ward to it."
Tickets are
$26, $36 and $51.
(734) 763-TKTS or www.ticketmaster.corn.
Schubert. For information
and tickets ($21 general
admission, $18 seniors/
students), call (248) 788-
9338 or (248) 661-1348.
Puff Pastry
Ann Arbor's Performance
Network Theatre presents
the Michigan premiere of
a newly re-imagined ver-
sion of The Baker's Wife, a heartwarm-
ing musical tale about a new baker who
arrives in a rural French village with
Virtuoso Violist
his beautiful and much younger wife,
8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m.
Birmingham Temple's Vivace Series
Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, Nov. 1-
presents Israeli-born violist Yizhak
Dec. 23.
Schotten and his wife,
Writer Joseph Stein
pianist Katherine Collier,
(Fiddler on the Roof) and
with special guest mezzo-
composer-lyricist Stephen
soprano Deanna Relyea, 8
Schwartz ( Wicked, Pippin)
p.m. Saturday, Nov. 10, at the
have made revisions to the
temple in Farmington Hills.
1976 original several times;
Schotten — whom Strad
for this newest 2005 version,
magazine called "one of
Stein and Schwartz wrote new
America's finest viola play-
songs, dialogue and scenes,
ers" — is on the faculty at
Yizhak Sc hotten
strengthening the writing
University of Michigan and
and making cuts. With 18
also is director of Chamber
integral characters, The Baker's Wife will
Music in Ann Arbor.
be the largest show ever performed on the
The program will include works by
Performance Network stage.
J.S. Bach, Johannes Brahms and Franz
Paul Sorvino and Patty LuPone are
featured on the original cast album of
the show, which enjoys a cult following
but never actually opened on Broadway.
Tickets: $30-$42; discounts available.
(734) 663-0681 or online at
www.performancenetwork.org .
All Disney
Get ready to wish upon a star as con-
ductor Erich Kunzel leads the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra Pops in "The
Magical Music of Disney" — an all-
encompassing retrospective of music
from the great Disney songbook featur-
ing selections from 70 years of classic
Disney animated and live action films
— 10:45 a.m. and 8 p.m. Thursday,
8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3
pm. Sunday, Nov. 1-4, in Orchestra Hall
at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in
Detroit.
With songs from nearly every Disney
musical, the family concerts also fea-
ture the Wayne State University Concert
Chorale and a trio of three soloists,
who'll perform songs by an array of
composers — including Jewish tune-
smiths Alan Menken, Robert B. Sherman
and Randy Newman.
Tickets are $15-$71. (313) 576-5111 or
www. detroitsymphony. corn.
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.
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Katie's Connection
In 2004, Katie Couric, the anchor of
the CBS Evening News, disclosed to
Roger Friedman of FOX News that
her mother was Jewish.
According to Edward Klein, the
author of a new
714 Couric biography,
-
Katie: The Real
Story (Crown;
$25.95), Friedman
didn't know what a
scoop he had – she
ire Pedl Stcry
had never revealed
I
s.
that information to
any other reporter.
Klein says she did so because she
thought it would please Tom Werner,
a very successful Jewish Hollywood
TV producer whom she thought she
would soon marry (they broke up
late in 2004).
Klein does provide some interest-
ing background on Couric's parents.
Her father, John, comes from an
old Southern, slave-owning and once
wealthy family and is a Presbyterian.
C6
November 1 • 2007
Katie's mother, Elinor, grew up in
Nebraska, the daughter of American-
born Jewish parents of German
Jewish origin. Her father was a suc-
cessful architect. Klein describes
them as practicing Jews.
Katie's parents married in 1944,
and Elinor became a Presbyterian at
that time. Klein can only speculate
why she converted.
He does note that Elinor's Jewish
background was rarely discussed in
the Couric home, leaving Katie and
her three siblings to speculate that
she converted for the children's sake
– being a Christian was easier than
being a Jew in the South in the '40s
and '50s.
As for Katie, she rarely talked
about her mother's Jewish back-
ground with anyone; and even her
closest college friends were sur-
prised to hear about it when Klein
interviewed them.
Film Notes
Sleuth was a big hit on the stage
and as a 1972 film starring Michael
Caine and Laurence Olivier. British
Jewish playwright and screenwriter
Anthony Shaffer, who died in 2001
at age 75, wrote the script. (His
identical twin brother, Peter Shaffer,
who is still living, is famous as the
author of Equus and Amadeus.)
In the original version, Caine
played a handsome young man of
modest family background who trav-
els to the English country estate of a
very snobby English mystery writer
(Olivier). The young man is the lover
of the writer's ex-wife, and he is
invited to the estate on the pretense
of discussing something involving
this woman. There is an exciting
"cat and mouse" game that goes on
between the two and a famous trick
ending.
A remake of Sleuth, written by
Nobel Prize-winning English Jewish
playwright Harold Pinter, opens
Friday, Nov. 2. Pinter's screenplay
differs quite a bit in dialogue – and
in some plot points – from Shaffer
original. This time Michael Caine
plays the older fellow, and Jude Law
plays the young man.
Also opening on Friday:
Martian Child stars John Cusack
as a recently widowed writer who
adopts a troubled young boy (Bobby
Coleman) who believes he is from
Mars. As Cusack's character and
a close friend (Amanda Peet) par-
ent the boy, a series of odd events
make them believe the child may
really be from Mars.
Appearing in sup-
porting roles are
Richard Schiff
(The West Wing)
Harold Pinter
and British actress
Sophie Okonedo,
whose mother is
Jewish.
Wristcutters:
A Love Story – a
film filled with absurdist humor – is
based on a short story about sui-
cide by popular Israeli writer and
film director Etgar Keret, whose
own film, Meduzot, was a winner at
the recent Cannes Film Festival. An
aimless but amiable young man dis-
traught over his recent breakup with
his girlfriend decides to end it all. He
slashes his wrists expecting to find
solace but discovers an afterlife that
is not so different from his previous
life, just a bit worse.