TOP PICKS FOR THE WEEK
You undoubtedly read last week in this section about the New Mexico Museum of Art entering its centennial year. On Sunday, the Brentano String Quartet is presenting a concert in celebration of that milestone.
The 3 p.m. concert in the museum’s St. Francis Auditorium, 107 W. Palace Ave., will include Haydn’s “Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, No. 1”; Beethoven’s “String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1”; and a new work by Stephen Hartke. So, appropriately, it sounds as if the acclaimed foursome is combining the old with the new.
Tickets are $20-$70, available through www.ticketssantafe.org or the Santa Fe Pro Musica box office at 988-4640.
WRITE AND SING: AMP Concerts and the Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St., are presenting “An Evening with the Songwriters” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. And they’ve got quite a powerhouse line-up: James McMurtry, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore will regale the audience with songs they have written and the stories behind them. Alvin calls himself a “barroom guitarist,” but others call him a founder of the current Americana scene. McMurtry writes “like he’s lived a lifetime,” according to John Mellencamp. And Gilmore, with roots in Texas, combines philosophical inquiry with a down-home approach. Tickets are $34-$47, available through www.ticketssantafe.org or by calling 988-1234.
FUN DAY: The Lensic is presenting a free Family Fun Day at 2 p.m. Sunday, with games, prizes and a concert by Trout Fishing in America, with Dana Louise & the Glorious Birds opening. The Trout Fishing duo, Keith Grimwood on bass, and Ezra Idlet on guitar and banjo, has been called “the Lennon and McCartney of kids’ music,” so pack up the little ones and head on down.
MORE MUSIC: The all-female Zia Singers will present “The Melody in the Meter: Poetry in Song” at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in the Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel, 50 Mount Carmel Road. Tickets are $20 at the door (free for students). Hear how composers translate the rhythm of poetry into a song.
Meanwhile, Performance Santa Fe is presenting its free family opera, an abridged version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado,” at 7 p.m. today, and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Scottish Rite Center, 463 Paseo de Peralta. Reservations are required; call 984-8759 to see if any are available. The performers will include rising stars from the Fort Worth Opera Studio and PSF’s own EPIK Artists program.