http://www.philly.com/r?19=960&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts Coverage of the performing arts in Philadelphia. en-us Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:03:24 GMT 2012-02-18T06:03:24Z en-us http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139558588&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120218_Composer_to_whom_he_s_akin.html Few current pianists have played and recorded as much Rachmaninoff as Nikolai Lugansky. And no orchestra had such an intensive association with pianist/composer Rachmaninoff as the Philadelphia Orchestra. The combination is such that each side welcomes the other almost as if they're cousins. Maybe they are. Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:03:24 GMT c094f204855cc7987dbda825088ee592 2012-02-18T06:03:24Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139484523&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120217_How_Bruce_Springsteen_influenced_Philadelphia_photographer_Zoe_Strauss.html ZOE STRAUSS is known as Philadelphia's pre-eminent street photographer, complete with a show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that runs through April 22. But she's also a major Bruce Springsteen fan. In fact, on March 4, Strauss will discuss the influence of Springsteen's music on her own work and life at the museum. Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:50:29 GMT 3711706f8c940db959e3188ef404af6d 2012-02-17T15:50:29Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139461378&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120217__quot_Knives_in_Hens_quot___Chickens__at_least__don_t_suffer_in_this_tale_of_primal_awakening.html First, put your mind to rest about this play's awful title: Nobody is stabbing any chickens. But that's about the extent of the reassurance I can offer about Knives in Hens by David Harrower, an unnerving, mysterious play in an intriguing if patience-testing production at Theatre Exile's Studio X under Brenna Geffers' direction. Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:03:46 GMT cde004bf1d5356ff434eda142228ab75 2012-02-17T06:03:46Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139461338&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120217_A_living_contrast_to_Bucks_County_s_painters_of_yore.html Mavis Smith is a Bucks County painter and illustrator with a popular local following. In a way, she's a natural - as a mid-career living artist with a solo show, "Hidden Realities," at Doylestown's James A. Michener Art Museum - to provide balance for the Michener's comprehensive "The Painterly Voice," a milestone event featuring a century-and-a-half of Bucks County painters from the past. Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:03:38 GMT a5211fbd6e3339839dc239170db04571 2012-02-17T06:03:38Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139466453&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120216_Although_he_has_not_exactly_gone_where_no_man_has_gone_NO_HEAD_SPECIFIED.html Although he has not exactly gone where no man has gone before, William Shatner's propensity for saying "yes" takes him places other entertainers may never get to. Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:02:13 GMT 92181125fd77f2778a3f277526d6febb 2012-02-17T06:02:13Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139461373&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120217_Performance_and_classical_music_listings.html Theater Professional/semi-professional A Raw Space A private interior design competition escalates to something more personal for two power couples. Closes 2/19. Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol; 215-785-0100. $27; $45; $25.60-$33.60 military with ID; $10 students 25 and under. Fri, 17 Feb 2012 05:35:24 GMT 8841a0309e09cf0bae3270fb5525a78c 2012-02-17T05:35:24Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139461283&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120217_Museum_and_gallery_events.html Art Museums & Institutions African American Heritage Museum 661 Jackson Rd., Newtonville, NJ; 609-704-5495. www.aahmsnj.org. Tue.-Fri. 10 am-3 pm. Fri, 17 Feb 2012 05:35:21 GMT fc1be01d86631cf47bd1d325d28ebbee 2012-02-17T05:35:21Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139411583&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120216_From_pub_singer_to_student.html Into an office walks a woman, off the street, and asks a professor to make her a cultured lady. If that sounds a lot like Pgymalion, or its musical cousin My Fair Lady, by George, you've got it. Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:04:29 GMT a5660a0f271619b9d0d2bc3243ea7138 2012-02-16T06:04:29Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139411578&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120216_Presenting_young_artists_in_exotic_classical_formats.html Gospel choirs, Balinese gamelan ensembles, and Indonesian dance troupes aren't typical guests at Astral Artists concerts. Nor is Philadelphia Theatre Company lighting designer Terry Smith, or poet Nguyen Quyen. At least the composers to be represented Saturday in Astral's Spiritual Voyages Festival are recognizable, from Heitor Villa-Lobos to Astor Piazzolla. Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:04:03 GMT 8011bb1f63e98bd09f3fa48796166d8a 2012-02-16T06:04:03Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139380293&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120215_Chicago-based_ensemble_eighth_blackbird_will_alight_at_the_NO_HEAD_SPECIFIED.html Chicago-based ensemble eighth blackbird will alight at the Curtis Institute of Music for a residency to last at least three years. Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:40:30 GMT 16a2d69609e15e6686956443b048f627 2012-02-15T19:40:30Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139261398&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120214_Composer_s__Tonic__goes_down_easy.html The best day of his compositional life seemed just out of reach: On Sunday, Princeton-based composer Steve Mackey won a Grammy Award for his disc Lonely Motel, but it was for best small-ensemble performance; the classical-composition trophy, for which Lon Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:08:46 GMT f20115a7ca0a27cd1f673e01f502d329 2012-02-14T15:08:46Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139261408&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120214_A_woman_recovering_from_trauma_of_war.html The coproduction of "Time Stands Still" that has been running at Delaware Theatre Company moves Tuesday to the stage of Act II Playhouse in Ambler. The move means minor changes, mostly because Ambler's theater is about a third the size of Wilmington's. Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:03:52 GMT f0cb1ec3d0feb7b59f15cd36ce6d40c3 2012-02-14T07:03:52Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139261423&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120214_An_utterly_farcical_portrait_of__Marriage___Russian-style.html Nikolai Gogol, the 19th-century Russian writer with a strong sense of the ridiculopathy of life - after all, he wrote a story about a nose - would seem to be a perfect fit for the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, a theater company specializing in Theater of the Absurd, though Gogol's play Marriage (an utterly improbably occurrence in two acts) isn't really absurdist drama - it's a farce, complete with loud voices, many doors, (and a significant window). Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:34:52 GMT d79c1bdaa8dd225949a446df7da8f442 2012-02-14T05:34:52Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139196119&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120213_Whitney_Houston_s_talent_took_her_far_fast.html When pop stars die too young it's always tragic, and often not all that surprising. Whitney Houston, who died at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on Saturday at age 48, had the particular misfortune to have the swift and spectacular success of her early career followed by years spent living a deeply troubled public life under the watchful eye of a tabloid culture. Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:38:58 GMT c4fbdf6460147600e6e92a5db968feb3 2012-02-13T16:38:58Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139196164&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120213_Violist_Kim_Kashkashian_in_peak_form.html The music world is crawling with hot young violists (Maxim Rysanov, Lawrence Power, and David Aaron Carpenter) but they all have a ways to go before they're as interesting as Kim Kashkashian. At age 59, she is playing in peak form, and more than most, exp Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:29:00 GMT e500eeb2fd0f61514e43d840ddfcaf1f 2012-02-13T14:29:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139196114&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120213_A_night_of_winners__and_a_tragic_loss.html British pop singer Adele dominated the Grammy Awards on Sunday in a ceremony that was transformed into an emotion-packed memorial to Whitney Houston, who died a day earlier, at the age of 48. Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:24:00 GMT 4fd3a439eb973feb271d14d8ad516125 2012-02-13T12:24:00Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139167409&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120212_Galleries___Locks_is_transformed_into_a_movie_theater_of_sorts.html Why go to the Ritz Five when you can hang out at Locks? Downstairs, you can perch on a cube, don headphones, and become hypnotized by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib's baffling but beautiful 1967, a multichannel video installation loosely inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film La Chinoise, in which five Frenc Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:14:50 GMT 00813a2eb66f1b308e04869cdddf73de 2012-02-12T05:14:50Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139167444&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120212_Art__Tanner_paintings_humanize_the_holy.html Henry Ossawa Tanner deserves a kinder fate than to have a major retrospective of his work sandwiched between Zoe-mania and Vincent van Gogh. Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:13:04 GMT 264b3aa84837c2428bbcabb7c28b8c26 2012-02-12T05:13:04Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139136874&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120211_Nurturing_a_Prokofiev_foundling.html PRINCETON - Recovering lost, minor works by major composers can seem a bit pathetic: If the music wasn't worth hanging on to in the first place, how great can the rewards be? Sat, 11 Feb 2012 06:03:23 GMT 5620ac32836e12e5a49ea92084fd1e28 2012-02-11T06:03:23Z http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=168046&44=139136889&32=3796&7=195487&40=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fentertainment%2Farts%2F20120211_A_gifted_night_for_conductor.html Charles Dutoit always has been a canny curator, but deep significance seems to lie beneath his repertoire choices between now and the last of his days in Philadelphia. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:34:53 GMT ebbe991d6a3422ca4dda95933b711d6f 2012-02-11T05:34:53Z