Arts & Entertainment
About
Op era Faye
In composer Georges Bizet's French-lan-
guage opera Carmen, the seductive gypsy
of the title woos the naive corporal Don
Jose; and he is unable to escape her siren-
like charms. When she shifts her attention
to the bullfighter Escamillo, Jose's life
crumbles and tragedy ensues.
With a libretto by Henri Meilhac and
Ludovic Halevy (his father had converted
from Judaism to Christianity before
Ludovic's birth), Carmen has a stirring
musical score that includes "Habanera"
and the "Toreador Song."
The Michigan Opera Theatre presents
a production of Carmen May 9-17 at the
Detroit Opera House. Mark Flint con-
ducts, and Ron Daniels directs.
The assistant direc-
tor of the production
is 29-year-old Jewish
Philadelphia native
Jonathon Loy, a gradu-
ate of the University
of Pittsburgh with a
degree in interdisci-
Jonathon Loy
plinary studies and
a focus on theater,
business and Italian. Loy spent time in
Italy studying the operatic repertoire and
the training of young singers. He'll again
serve as assistant director on Carmen
for a January 2010 production at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York City,
where Loy is on the directing staff for the
2009-10 opera season.
ilikaL :s..11
MOT performanc-
es are at 7:30 p.m.
May 9, 13, 15 and 16
and 2:30 p.m. May
10 and 17. Opera
talks begin one hour
before performances.
$29-$121. (313)
237-SING; www.
MichiganOpera.org .
Sounding Off
MotorCity Casino Hotel will host the
grand opening of its Club Sound Board,
featuring DJ Samantha Ronson and DJ
Jenny La Femme, on Saturday, May 9.
Doors open at 9 p.m.
Located within the
hotel, Sound Board is
an intimate live perfor-
mance venue featuring
VIP areas, dance floor,
stage, four bars and
private suites.
Ronson, born into
Samantha
a wealthy British
Ronson
Jewish family that
includes brother/music producer Mark
Ronson and twin sister/fashion designer
Charlotte Ronson, performs some of the
most high-profile gigs in the country. The
on-again/off-again girlfriend of actress-
singer Lindsay Lohan, Ronson's appear-
ances include the American Music Awards,
Playstation at the Super Bowl and many
more.
Opening the event
will be La Femme, a
Detroit-based, Russian-
born, house-music tour
de force once featured
on the cover of the
Detroit Jewish News,
who also is a success-
ful music producer and
songwriter.
General admission tickets are $20 and
on sale at all Ticketmaster locations,
as well as by phone, (248) 645-6666, or
online, ticketmaster.com . For more infor-
mation about ticket-hotel packages, go to
motorcitycasino. com .
Fun For Folkies
Jewish folk musicians come out to play
this month in droves at the Ark in Ann
Arbor. For information and tickets: (734)
761-1451 or www.theark.org .
• 8 p.m. Thursday, May 7, $10: "For
Pete's Sake: A 90th Birthday Tribute to Pete
Seeger" features nine singers on stage, one
for each decade, including Gemini (Laz and
San Slomovits) and Dick Siegel.
• 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 12, $30: Founder
Ray Benson brings his Western swing
band Asleep at the Wheel to town; the
group has a new CD out with Willie
Nelson, called Willie and the Wheel.
• 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, May
13-14, $47.50: Arlo Guthrie headlines
"The Lost World Tour:' featuring his son
Abe Guthrie and the Burns Sisters Band.
• 8 p.m. Thursday, May 19, $15:
Covering Jewish folk icons Arlo Guthrie
and Bob Dylan in their new CD, Blue on
Brown, teenage Ontario bluegrass musi-
cians the Abrams Brothers are recipients
of the Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin, given
to especially gifted young musicians in
honor of international
journalist and musi-
cian Daniel Pearl, who
was taken hostage
and killed in Pakistan
in 2002. The Abrams
Brothers, though not
Jewish, took the violin
to Israel, the Pearl
Ramblin' Jack
Elliott
family home, and per-
formed at the 2007 and
2008 Jacob's Ladder Folk Festival in Israel.
• 8 p.m. Friday, May 22, $20: Ramblin'
Jack Elliott — born Elliott Charles Adnopoz
into a Jewish home in Brooklyn, though
he always wanted to be a cowboy — has
mentored Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan and
Phil Ochs in his more-than-60-year career;
his new release, A Stranger Here, explores
Depression-era blues.
• 8 p.m. Saturday, May 30, $22.50: The
blues supergroup the Siegel-Schwall
Band, founded by harmonica wizard
Corky Siegel and guitarist Jim Schwall,
key figures in the 1960s blues revival,
has expanded today to include musicians
playing a wide array of eclectic 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.
Messages From Mom
New book collects funny and touching e-mails mothers
send to their children, who often live far from family.
DOREE SHAMIR
Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News
S
amantha Cohen, 26 and attending
graduate school in Los Angeles,
communicates with her mom,
Karen Tessler, who recently relocated from
Michigan to Scottsdale, Ariz., through e-
mails.
Sometimes, without her mom knowing,
she forwards them to her brother, Brad
Cohen, 23 and currently working and living
in Alaska.
One day, while surfing the Web, Cohen,
like her brother a graduate of North
Farmington High School, found the
C6
May 7 m 2009
site PostcardsFromYoMomma.com and
decided to share a computer message
from her mother.
The site invites postings from those
in their 20s and 30s, who offer up funny,
quirky and often touching e-mails from
their mothers.
Cohen submitted an e-mail about
plans for a seder she was to attend in her
mom's new home state, and that missive
was included in the new book Love, Mom:
Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages From
Home (Hyperion; $17.99). Doree Shafrir
and Jessica Grose, close friends who devel-
oped the site after exchanging e-mails writ-
ten by their own moms, planned the book
for a Mother's Day release.
"I stumbled on the Web site the day I
Samantha Cohen: "My brother and I forward my
mom's e-mails to each other a lot. This one [chosen
for the book] was funny without being too personal."
received that
particular e-
mail from my mom so I sent it in," Cohen
says. "I'm not sure I realized they were writ-
ing a book at the time.
"If I'd given it more thought, I might have
chosen a different e-mail, but it was kind
of a spur-of-the-moment thing. Actually,
I've since decided that it was a good one to
send because it was funny without being
too personal."
The Jewish authors have included other
e-mails with Jewish content, including
another about Passover and one about
seeing a doctor. They divided the book
according to many subjects: computers,
JESSIO:CIROSE