Arts & Entertainment
About
On The Fringe
For 13+ hours on April 5-6, a celebra-
tion of experimental music and dance, art
and fashion and other cultural oddities
will take the stage at Music Hall Center for
the Performing Arts in downtown Detroit
as the 2008
Detroit Fringe
Festival presents
a wide array of
artists, perform-
ers and cultural
experimenters
who will blur the
boundaries of the
artistic status quo.
Expect your sens-
es to be altered
Sandra Bernhard
with a non-stop
torrent of cut-
ting-edge DJs, performance art companies,
future-now fashion and experimental
independent films — and at the end, don't
be surprised to have your preconceptions
altered about the age-old question, "What
is art?"
Taking place 2 p.m. Saturday to 3 a.m.
Sunday, one of the city's most unique and
diverse innovative
cultural festivals
will be hosted by
Flint-born Jewish
comedienne, actress
and social raconteur
Sandra Bernhard,
whose acerbic stand-up comedy pushes
the PC envelope to the limit.
Other Jewish participants include
CCS glass artist Jaclyn Schanes (Minnie
Krueger) of Minnie Krueger Buys The
Farm, a five-piece Detroit band fronted
by the artist-actress-singer that com-
bines rock, art and theater; Niagara,
the former chanteuse of the legendary
Destroy All Monsters and Detroit native
who has carved out her own post-pop
niche with her pulp narrative Niagara
Girls paintings; Jerry Vile (Peterson),
former publisher of Orbit magazine and
creator of the yearly erotic art exhibition
"The Dirty Show," who stretches the fin-
est line between good taste and fine art,
provocation and pretension with child-
like imagery that alternately humors and
repulses the viewer; and disk-spinners
DJ Jenny La Femme (Moscow-born Jenny
Feterovich) of Detroit
and Chicago-based
Russian-American DJs
Keith Lotta and Dmitry
Lovebone of KGBeats.
Tickets are $35 and
$20 for students with
valid ID and are available at the Music
Hall Box Office, located at 350 Madison;
by phone at (313) 887-8500; or through
Ticketmaster. For more information, go to
musichall.org or detroitfringefestival.org .
Blackbird
A six-member ensemble widely lauded
for its performing style, eighth blackbird
(preferring the lower-case spelling) often
plays from memory with virtuosic and
theatrical flair. The group won the 2008
Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music
Performance for its most recent recording,
Strange Imaginary Animals; its producer,
Judith Sherman, was honored as Best
Classical Producer of the Year. The group,
whose name is derived from the eighth
stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird',' also has
been praised for its efforts to make new
music accessible to wide audiences.
The University Musical Society presents
eighth blackbird in its UMS debut in two
back-to-back performances Thursday,
April 10, at 7 and 9:30 p.m., in the Lydia
Mendelssohn Theatre, located at 911 N.
University, in Ann Arbor. The members of
eighth blackbird have been working with
Ann Arbor area high school and university
students for the past year. These perfor-
mances are the culmination of eighth
blackbird's 12-day residency, conducted in
October, December and February, at the
U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
Audiences can anticipate provocative
and engaging performances. As the New
York Times raved, "eighth blackbird's
performances are the picture of polish
and precision, and they seem to be thor-
oughly engaged ... by music in a broad
range of contemporary styles." The New
Yorker describes the ensemble as "friendly,
unpretentious, idealistic and highly
skilled."
Since its founding in 1996, eighth black-
bird, which has appeared several times
with the Great Lakes Chamber Music
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.
Jews
4.0
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
All Is Fair
While I am sure it's by chance, the
April issue of Vanity Fair magazine
has so many articles by or about
(11) famous Jews that it could be called
its "Salute to Passover" issue. The
cover features an
article about 12
famous female
comedians, and half
of them are Jewish:
(11)
Sarah Silverman,
Susie Essman, Maya
Rudolph, Sandra
Bernhard and
Joseph
Chelsea Handler.
Stiglitz
Amusing Annie
Leibovitz photos, in which all the
comedians are made up to look like a
pop icon (Silverman imitates singer
Amy Winehouse), accompanies the
text of the article.
Elsewhere in the issue you'll find
dlo
April 3 • 2008
a story about media mogul Barry
Diller (the husband of fashion design-
er Diane von Furstenberg). Following
the Diller piece is an article on the
cost of the Iraq war co-written by
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-win-
ning economist. Flip along a bit, and
you'll find an article saluting famous
photographer Robert Frank, 83, on
the 50th anniversary of the publi-
cation of his book The Americans.
A flop when it first appeared, The
Americans now often is recognized
as the most influential photography
book of the last half century.
Toward the back of the issue, there
is an excerpt from Rebel Angels, a
new biography about three of the
most important female singer-song-
writers of our time: Carole King,
Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon (who
recently referred to herself as bio-
logically "a quarter Jewish" though
she does not identify that way).
Mitchell's early career was greatly
aided, the piece says, by contacts
she made during romantic affairs
with Jewish rockers Roy Blumenfeld
and Al Kooper.
The issue concludes with a long
profile of Calvin Klein, who sold his
fashion business in 2003 and now is
mostly into interior design.
A couple of these articles also can
be found on the Vanity Fair Web site,
www.vanityfair.com .
Radnor Reveals
The CBS sitcom How I Met Your
Mother got a huge ratings boost
when Britney Spears, who is a fan
of the series, recently appeared in a
small guest role. It is easy to forget
that Spears really does have some
talent (unlike Paris Hilton), and she
did just fine playing a medical secre-
tary who has a crush on Ted Mosby,
the show's lead character, played by
Josh Radnor.
Radnor, who is 33, recently sat
down for a long interview with the
Forward newspaper. He told the
Forward he grew
up in the "most
Jewish" suburb of
Columbus, Ohio. He
added that he went
to the Columbus
Torah Academy
through the eighth
Josh Radnor
grade and spent a
year studying in Israel via the Livnot
program.
Radnor is a member of Reboot, a
foundation-funded network of young
Jews, many of whom are artists and
writers. Reboot puts out a quarterly
magazine, Guilt & Pleasure, and
sponsors seminars in which members
go to "Reboot camp" to discuss con-
temporary Jewish issues. This winter,
Radnor spent three days at a Reboot
camp in Texas. He told the Forward:
"The thing I love about Reboot is
that it's a genuinely conflicted place.
If there's one thing I love about
Judaism, it's that 'wrestling with
angels' aspect."