San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
NEW CONCERT SERIES AT THE ATHENAEUM ART CENTER
The Athenaeum Art Center in Logan Heights is the setting for a new concert series curated by Daniel Atkinson, jazz program coordinator of the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, and filmmaker Omar Lopex, the Athenaeum Art Center’s bilingual director.
The 15-minute-long video episodes in the “Logan Lone Piano Series” are available for free viewing on the Athenaeum’s Youtube channel. As the title of the series suggests, the co-star along with the scheduled performers is a 1939 Mason & Hamlin piano. Last week, I streamed the debut episode, which featured San Diego-based pianist Irving Flores playing two of his own compositions and another by the late local jazz luminary Daniel Jackson. The Art Center is a quiet, contemplative space, sparse but not unlike in mood the Athenaeum’s La Jolla venue. In both places, it’s all about the music.
Also in this series: Mara Kaye and pianist Clinton Davis beginning last Thursday; pianist Joshua White beginning Jan. 15; and pianist Brenda Greggio beginning Jan. 29.
THEATER
The premise of an emotionally estranged father and son endeavoring seemingly against all odds to reconnect isn’t exactly novel, dramatically speaking. But playwright Amir Nizar Zuabi demonstrates that it can be done and, even more to its credit, be done in a Zoom-theater format. Zuabi’s one-act “This Is Who I Am,” which you can stream through today, is a co-production of Minneapolis’ famed Guthrie Theater, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, New York’s Playco, the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, D.C.
Rather than appearing as Zoomscreen talking heads, actors Ramsey Faragallah (as the father) and Yousof Sultani (as the son) are shown in kitchens, where they’re simultaneously preparing a favorite recipe of the wife or mother they’ve lost to cancer. The father is said to be in Palestine, the son in New York City, where he relocated just as his mother was dying. What begins as long-distance chatter quickly turns to scarcely veiled passive-aggressiveness, then openly expressed resentments and ultimately a torrent of emotions on both sides.
It can be argued that playwright Zuabi over-layers this story, or again that a father-son divide is a timeworn starting point. But the sensitive cultural undertones of “This Is Who I Am,” coupled with the nuanced performances by its two actors, elevate the production, Zoomed as it is, above the familiar.
Tickets for “This Is Who I Am” start at $15.
STREAMING
When the nominations for the next Academy Awards are announced in March, I guarantee that Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman will be among them for their performances in Netflix’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
The visceral nature of this adaptation of August Wilson’s 1982 play, as well as knowing that it’s Boseman’s final performance before his passing last August, makes “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” wrenching to watch at times. But if you can steel yourself and commit to the film’s power and poignancy, you won’t regret the 90 minutes spent in a dingy Chicago music studio, circa 1927.
This Netflix adaptation was written by Ruben Santiago-hudson, who directed the Old Globe’s fine production of Wilson’s “Jitney” just about a year ago. With its searing monologues and insular tensions, the adaptation has the feel and pace of a filmed play, but its claustrophobia is part of its life force.