Indie glitterati in our own backyard: Pavement's Stephen Malkmus scorches MassMoCA

Since most major musical artists who come through this area are roots, rock and singer-songwriter luminaries gracing the stages of outdoor festivals or restored opera houses, it's easy for us indie/punk/alt disciples to assume that the only way to hear masterfully edgy, artfully erudite and mind-scouringly thunderous favorites is to head to Boston or NYC.

For those of us entrenched in a non-clubbing phase of life — raising children, cultivating careers and grumbling when the satellite signal scrambles a Jon Stewart rant — it's no mean feat to mobilize our multitasking selves into the city, even for venerated alt royalty. So, instead, we blast Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Coldplay or The Clash in our kitchens while making pasta for the kids.

A few years ago, however, I discovered a mini-indie mecca, of sorts, right under our noses just a half hour south of Bennington. It turns out that MassMoCA — North Adams' spacious, innovative haven of heavy-hitting high art — has a fantastic music series and two über-mod concert venues that regularly host some of the best indie music going.

In the nine years since Mass MoCA opened, numerous darlings of the genre have inhabited its stages, including Yo La Tengo, Ollabelle, They Might Be Giants and Freedy Johnston. With the upcoming line-up boasting Son Volt, Clem Snide, Gutbucket and The Teenage Prayers, we rural indie-ites are mighty fortunate that Mass MoCA is a stop on a lot of national tours.

Their Alt Cabaret series takes place in the more intimate Club B-10 while heavy hitters play the museum's 800-capactiy Hunter Center, a cavernous black hall which is also the site of popular dance parties that always have imaginative themes like Retro Soul, Bollywood or tomorrow's Zydeco fest with C.J. Chenier.

Last Friday, the Hunter had a personage on its stage considered by indie brethren everywhere to be one of the masterminds of the entire genre. Coming off three sold-out New York City shows, Stephen Malkmus — co-founder of the seminal 1990s band Pavement — played two of the most adroit, dynamic, incandescent hours of live music I've heard in years (told you we're lucky) and, with his superlative current band, the Jicks, making his songs gleam yet more blindingly, it was indie/punk/alt paradise.

Malkmus, a songwriting demi-god and demon guitarist, was as savvy and roguish as when I saw Pavement during its final tour in 1999, bangs drooping down over a pale, narrow countenance, oversized T-shirt and skinny arms fiercely wielding various axes. Hailing from suburban sidebar, Stockton, Calif., Pavement became — counterintuitive as it sounds — eminent pioneers of independent music, lodging lo-fi principles, smart, wry lyrics and unapologetically fractured compositions into the hallowed lineage of alternative rock.

Malkmus' credibility is in his profoundly dexterous, consistently defiant departure from formal songwriting templates and equally muscular yet breathtakingly nuanced command of his instrument. I was glad to find that — touring on "Real Emotional Trash", his fourth solo album — he's still blazing an authentic, unconventional trail, crafting tunes that cannot be categorized beyond that they are simply his.

Every cut on this disc is strong enough to withstand any treatment (Malkmus' writing has always passed the solo acoustic test in my book), but the powerhouse force of the Jicks catapults each of them into a sonic stratosphere, with Mike Clark on keyboards, Joanna Bolme on bass and indie guru in her own right, Janet Weiss, on drums. The sound of this CD has me convinced that The Velvet Underground, Deep Purple and Neil Young's "Live Rust" have been pulsing through Malkmus' iPod lately, with tectonic bass lines that rumble and pop like an English engine, acidic keyboards lilting and liquefying, and behemoth drumming that rends the sky wide open.

"Dragonfly Pie," one of several prog-drenched tunes, is a fortress of bristling guitar, shaggy bass, synthesized striations and controlled avalanches of percussion that, as a musician pal of mine puts it, "has a lot of pudding." Blistering waves of Malkmus' searing, single coil swagger on guitar propel his vocals from earnest wordsmithery to falsetto choruses to finally screeching the final lines in a refreshing nod to Pavement's more raucous moments.

"Baltimore," another bottom-heavy beauty, roars and rages like a woolly mammoth in heat between storyteller lyricism and dreamy harmonizing, cascading into the kind of complex power-jam for which Malkmus is known. As someone who's basically allergic to anything remotely resembling extended, improvised solos or jams, I've always savored the way Malkmus manages to infuse his songs with tight, instrumental forays in just the right dosages, long before anyone indulges or ODs.

Every ingredient in a Malkmus concoction is meticulously measured, binding melodious, sometimes familiar patterns, palettes and phrasing together the way a chemist carefully weighs his powders and potions, inventing potent elixirs whose effects are exponentially greater than the sum of their parts.

"We Can't Help You" starts out sounding like "The Weight" at half-speed, but moves away from The Band into its own temperate idyll, floating contemplative phrasing over a calm, knowing cadence and wistful key changes. The album's sumptuous 10-minute title song hitches a ride on the brooding mare of Neil Young's "Powderfinger," ducks into Hendrix's psychedelic "Eden" and then charges into an Allman Brothers corral before jumping off and crossing the finishing line by its own untethered volition.

Likewise, the twin-guitar thread that weaves through "Walk Into the Mirror" pays homage to Television's Richard Lloyd, while "Cold Son" is a ripened sequel to Pavement's "In the Mouth a Desert" from its 1992 debut album, "Slanted and Enchanted."

Two of the strongest tunes from the new CD were yet more exquisitely sculpted in concert, the band nimbly displaying its collective genius from opposite ends of the emotive spectrum. "Gardenia," a whimsical, Kinks-fueled skip through pop history veered from airy, carefree '60s intonations into shameless '70s noodling, blowing sugary bubbles while still spitting a few sardonic daggers. And "Out of Reaches," one the most crushingly exquisite songs Malkmus has ever written, had the crowd riveted, with Clark's glowing Three Dog Night organ-playing, Weiss' wrenching, syncopated waves of drum rolls, and Malkmus' obtuse verses putting a decided lump into this ex-punk's throat.

I can see you hiding out
shrinking like the daisy that you were born to be
you did your thing and now you deserve
the voltage was the best thing that I ever knew
out, out of
reaches out

Blunt, wry and smoldering to a close with guitar that splinters into ruefully frayed edges before washing over a hopeful "I know the tide will turn" hymn, this languid, voluptuous opus aches and pierces deeper than anything else in Malkmus' fertile songbook.

As compelling as Malkmus himself was during the show, Weiss was utterly mesmerizing, constructing the armature of every song by peppering buttresses and beams of percussive iron with perfectly molded empty spaces. Displaying the same prowess that made her famous as a member of Sleater-Kinney, Weiss was more brutally eloquent than ever, spewing clouds of propulsive vigor from her kit, then backing away at precisely the right moments, allowing Malkmus' poetry to step forth, Bolme's bass to darken the mood or Clark's keyboard to paint a fresh canvas of air.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jinks isn't just a top-notch indie band, it's a musical think tank, mining resonant, evocative hooks, textures and soundscapes from the past few decades and soldering them together into beautifully eclectic, scrupulously structured songs that are enigmatic, thorny and sublime.

Standing in MassMoCA's sea of hipster newbies, wide-eyed latecomers and balding diehards, whose ages spanned 16 to 60, there was something fortifying about seeing Malkmus — a fellow 40-something parent of two — still bestowing impenitently fearless, expansive music upon audiences that are just as fervent as they used to be. Nice to know some things never change.

Online: www.massmoca.org

Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Haale-lujah: Mesmerizing singer rocks Bellow Falls

Condi Rice has met her musical match in Haale — the Bronx-born, Iranian-American singer who's been gathering a devout following here and across the country for the past few years with her distinctly diplomatic, transnation-building sound. And, like so many immigrants and their descendants, Haale (as in "jala"-peño) is fearless.

At last year's Bonnaroo Music Festival, there she was playing to tens of thousands of concertgoers in the middle of Tennessee alongside musicians such as The Police, The Flaming Lips, The White Stripes and Lily Allen, all the while happily educating her audience on the difference between a sitar and a setar.

In sewing together the various elements that make up her signature style, from Persian poetry to arena rock bravado, she is helping to redefine the very notion of world music. Though some of the greatest rock'n'roll ever made has come from the basic guitar-bass-drums triumvirate and "baby-don't-leave" lyrics, this talented trio regularly pushes words and music across emotional, intellectual and geographic borders with diverse instruments, eclectic themes and enthralling, if not edifying, results.

Take the song "Chenan Mastam"— my favorite cut on her new CD, "No Ceiling"— and, in particular, this description in the liner notes: "'Masti' is a state of ecstasy and intoxication. It's a feeling of serenity, connection and love, our natural state of being according to many Persian mystical poets. 'Chenan Mastam' means 'I'm so mast' or 'smashed on the Great Big Everything,' as Kurt Vonnegut once said."

Hold on … Vonnegut? Yup, so then one has to consider the full quote itself, which comes from a reference he made to children at play in the preface to his 1987 novel "Bluebeard": "They get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks, or echoes or funny sounds from the voice box or banging on a drum and so on."

Add to that a few intriguing morsels about Haale's myriad influences — who range from theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, sage Iranian philosopher and musician, Ostad Elahi, and renowned American Imagist poet, Hilda Doolittle, known as H.D. — and you get the idea that Haale isn't your average rock star.

On Saturday night, however, when she and her bandmates shake up the Bellows Falls Opera House, her particular brand of star power will become evident the moment she takes the stage. Commanding the spotlight with the confidence of a seasoned icon, whether wielding an electric guitar, traditional Persian instruments or just a mic stand while in the throes of a powerpop crescendo, Haale is a consummate professional who is wise and worldly as well.

When we spoke earlier in the week, her clarity on everything from politics to purpose was manifest. "I don't believe in war and I think that we know when we look at a family unit or a small community," she asserted. "We know violence isn't a solution to anything and also on a global scale. We should evolve past that."

At the suggestion that music can bridge chasms between two nations, she was ardent. "Exactly. If anything can heal, music and art can. I feel fortunate to be in the world of music and, being from two cultures, I guess I'm inherently a bridge. I want people to come to the shows and enjoy the music and feel the beauty of both cultures and see how wonderfully they integrate."

"No Ceiling," her lush, sonorous debut album, is a vibrant immersion into that amalgam of musical sensibilities, with fresh textures, temperatures and tones not often juxtaposed against traditional guitar riffs and stadium decibels. Haale and her skillful comrades deliver all of it in one invigorating ocean of sound that weaves other genres as well — grunge, folk, alternative, African, even spiritual music — into a cohesive, potent cocktail of flavors.

With Matt Kilmer on percussion, including cajons, djembe, floor toms and cymbals, and cellist Brent Arnold providing deep, cavernous tones throughout the CD, this is an exotic collection of original tunes that manage to strike a compelling balance between ancient and modern, East and West. Binding it all together is Haale herself.

"Off Duty Fortune Teller" showcases the luminous, slightly girlish core of her voice and lucid story-telling skills, all buoyed by an unapologetic splash of phrasing from The Beatles' magical mystery paint box. Shades of raspy blues temper whimsical lines in what is a sweet-and-salty nod to "I Am the Walrus," one of Haale's many dips into '60s psychedelia. Her sound is all her own, charging forth from whispers to wails to meditative chants, but with distinct hints of Grace Slick's soaring delivery, Joan Osborne's melodic grit and a touch of Heart at their fierce "Barracuda" best.

The songs are almost sculptural, shaped and molded by strong lyrics and surreal auralscapes. In "Zero To One," Pink Floydian warnings and bleak, unstructured spaces render a raw dreamscape roiling with anguished moans, atonal murmurs and surreal imagery that reads like über-obtuse haiku:

Everything is surprising from zero to one
Where were you hiding?
The empty house just saw the sun

"Middle of Fire" grows from the rich poetic soil of Patti Smith's songbook, specifically "Dream of Life," and the gorgeous lament "Hastee," based on a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad, one of Iran's most celebrated female poets, is yet more hypnotic.

One recurring intoxicant is Haale's nimble work on setar. With roots going back to the tanbur, a pre-Islamic Persian lute, it has a small, fig-shaped belly and a long, delicate neck spanned by 4 strings — c, c, g and c. The tremolo drone it emits is known as a "shorr," which translates to "the pouring of water," and is lighter and brighter than the sitar.

"I use it for its timbre as a rhythmic instrument," Haale said, "but I'm not classically trained on it." Her overall evolution as a musician, in fact, was not typical either. "I was studying biology at Stanford and during my time there I realized 'Wow, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.'"

Raised by Iranian parents who emigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago, Haale was on a path more academic than artistic. "I didn't pursue music as a child, but then a friend gave me a guitar," she explained. "And I always wanted to be a singer."

It is in the context of her Persian singing that Haale achieves her most primal, intuitive vocalizations, reaching beyond those sung in English with dazzling authority and moving, earthy resonance.

"Ay Dar Shekasteh," set to reflections on the metaphysical by 13th-century Persian mystic Rumi, pulses with ecstatic praise and percussive energy, eloquently illustrating why the setar was originally reserved for devotional or "djamm" gatherings and why Sufi mystics play it in their liturgical ceremonies today.

Motivated by a long list of great minds and talents, Haale has also collaborated with a number of celebrated contemporary musicians, including David Byrne, who invited them to perform in his Carnegie Hall shows last year. All of them, past and present, fuel her work and her philosophies.

"They're all people who were and are authentic creators and thinkers, taking their world seriously enough to make better and better art."

With charismatic stage presence, a versatile, soulful voice and a bold, inventive band, Haale cross-pollinates the musical traditions in her heritage with a decidedly modern moxie, following her own path and focusing on that Great Big Everything.

As Ostad Elahi wrote, "Truth, for every human being, consists in knowing who we are, where we have come from, what we must do, and where we should be going."

Clearly, Haale has found her truth.

Online: www.haale.com
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

Astute performances from future leaders: Volume of Our Voices puts humanity in the spotlight

On the wall behind my computer hangs a bulletin board that's layered with colorful flotsam and jetsam from the past few decades, including postcards from around the globe, a Scottish pound note, my Japanese I.D. card, a Zippy gem, photos of friends and sundry ticket stubs from concerts by The Who, The Stones, the Pretenders and Nada Surf.

In amongst this visual cacophony are buttons I've collected over the years, with slogans ranging from "ERA Yes" and "Iggy Pop Fan Club" to "Question Authority" and a cow thinking "No Nukes," along with a row of badges from SF AIDS Walks.

At the center of it all is a large, faded button that reads "Feminism Is Humanism."

Of everything tacked to my vertical scrapbook, this particular specimen holds the most meaning for me, perhaps because it's the first political anything I ever acquired, launching a lifetime of buttons, bumper stickers, activism and awareness.

I got it in 1978 when my dear friend Daphne and I went to our first N.O.W. rally, held on the Stanford campus across the street from our high school. I remember the intriguing phrase — "Feminism Is Humanism" — standing out from all the other buttons, T-shirts and signs, knowing that it captured my particular philosophy more accurately than anything else.

As readers here learned last year when I wrote about the Brattleboro Women's Film Festival, I'm not your average feminist. I'm the kind who thinks our collective might becomes far more abundant, effective and lasting when attained through more inclusive means, particularly when those means fit under the aegis of art.

Though it's often felt like swimming upstream, I still believe feminism is humanism and that we serve the greater good by welcoming everyone to the discussion, with no labels, monikers or categories that might risk dissuading potential supporters from becoming involved.

During this, the final weekend of Women's History Month, a group of diverse and multitalented students and faculty members at World Learning's SIT Graduate School in Brattleboro are sharing a stage in precisely that type of event.

On Friday and Saturday night, more than two dozen performers will express their views through song, movement and spoken word, in "Volume of Our Voices," an evening of creative expression on the topics of gender, identity and sexuality, benefiting the Women's Crisis Center in Brattleboro.

Original monologues, poems, dances, music and even martial arts will illustrate stories that are personal, if not intimate, yet universal in relevance to the larger human experience and the common societal messages that can misrepresent, misinform, isolate and stereotype different factions of society.

In speaking with a few of the students participating — all of whom are working toward master's degrees in SIT's renowned international education program — I was impressed by the breadth of their experiences and the unique challenges each will voice in their respective performances.

Jon Woods, an organization management candidate, will be exploring issues of race, belonging and disenfranchisement through poetry, song and the martial art known as Capoeira, a muscular type of competitive dance that originated in Angola and found larger cultural roots in Brazil centuries ago within the slave community.

Naming his piece, "If I Had Wings I Could Fly," after a line from the song "Regulate" by rappers Warren G. and Nate Dogg, Woods takes us on his journey from anguish to understanding with remarkable perspicuity and grace.

"The poem itself goes from despair, hopelessness and rage to being lost and then trying to find guidance as a black man," he explained. "It touches on the issue that in black culture there's a disconnection between parenthood and the next generation, a prevalence of no role models existing and having to look at historical references and not necessarily in your household, whether it's a book or music that you respond to."

Though Woods' personal and intellectual path has been paved by the work of legends such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and civil rights activist and scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois, he also absorbed profound life lessons much closer to home.

"I learned a lot from my father and his struggle in the corporate world," reflected Woods. "Being a black manager he had to deal with a lot of conflict, internal mainly, and the struggle to assimilate but also be himself."

"When I wrote my poem, I was having a really bad day," he confided. "I'm the only black man at SIT and that's fine because I'm used to white schools but sometimes I just want to talk to someone I can connect with on that.

"The way that Capoeira is incorporated is a release of energy; if you're angry sometimes the tension just needs to be released. It's a martial art that's powerful but you play it against yourself."

For Cole Kovac, who is working toward a master of art in teaching, an equally formidable frustration with society emerges in his monologue titled, "Pushing Boundaries: One Man's Reality," which challenges the widely accepted pejorative term that often pigeonholes people like him as having a "gender identity disorder."

As a person born female but who identifies male, Kovac investigates his own perspective from several compelling angles.

"The first part of the monologue is about the medical world's view of transgendered people," he explains. "The second half is about my story and feelings and struggles and why I'm on stage."

When I asked him about this latter question, he replied, "At this point I'm the only transgendered person on campus and I felt like my voice needed to be heard, especially since the performance isn't geared only towards women. And SIT is a very supportive community — it's a good place to be."

Conflict transformation major Rachel Unkovic possesses a similar wealth of wisdom, particularly having learned in her studies that peace-building is more productive than conflict management or resolution.

"It's the idea that conflict never goes away and that it can open the door to dialogue and new ideas," she asserted. "It can be changed from violence into something more productive."

In "Magic Mirror," which includes inventive vignettes such as "Sleeping Beau," Unkovic and classmates Scarlett Shaffer and Victoria Der use shadow puppets to retell classic fairy tales. "We explore old stories that we're all told growing up and the impact those messages have on kids. We're looking at the idea of gender roles and roles that you're forced to take."

That the show is a benefit for one of the region's most crucial social service organizations — providing shelter along with emotional, legal and crisis support for survivors of abuse — is all the more reason to come out and support these visionary young people who are working hard to create a future that is informed by expansive, global perspectives and a reverence for the power of the human spirit.

The Women's Crisis Center views these issues through a similarly humanistic lens, as evidenced in their thanks to SIT for donating proceeds from the show to their cause: "It takes a dynamic, unified force to address the war waged on the bodies of women and children every day in this community and all over the world. Women still live with the daily reality of physical and sexual violence, still live with the systems which protect them imperfectly, at best, and sometimes not at all. We both honor and rely on our allies in ending men's violence against women and children."

The unified force behind "Volume of Our Voices" exemplifies this inclusive approach to solving the global scourge of discrimination, disrespect and brutality. As Woods' commanding poem implores, "Let your voice be heard, preach the word, because no matter your gender or race, the struggle always continues."

Or, as Kovac puts it, with equal sagacity, "Our identities are always evolving."

Quirky collections and early eco-wisdom: Edifying exhibits are the perfect tonic

Coming back from the left coast would have been easier if another 8 feet of snow had arrived in our absence but somehow, returning to what must be about the fifth mud-season so far this year, was harder. I'm starting to think it's a meteorological fifth dimension, with a groovy theme to go with it (sing along, everyone): "When the mud, is all around the house, and furniture is lined with soil."

When mud is all around the house, the yard, the sidewalks and the state, my tendency each weekend is to find fun things to do in places that are, by definition, dirt-free, and what better destination than museums? As mentioned herein last week, Vermont is home to a constellation of intriguing creative institutions filled with far more than just fine art.

There's the American Precision Museum, the Birds of Vermont Museum, the Cornish Colony Museum, the New England Transportation Museum, the Shelburne Museum and even the American Museum of Fly Fishing. Rumor has it there even used to be a Vermont Wax Museum renowned for its revolving Elvis but, alas, he's left the turntable as the place is now closed. The mind boggles at what else might have been in there … a marble-eyed Hetty Green savoring her fortune or an ashen Ethan Allen being charged with treason?

The top of my unconventional museums list, however — the mother of all treasure troves — is the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. Vermont's much-celebrated field-trip favorite boasts more than 160,000 natural science, historical and cultural objects that 19th-century industrialist Franklin Fairbanks collected during extensive travels around the globe. Overflowing with everything from Victorian dolls, Egyptian sarcophagi and rare gemstones to paintings, textiles, farm tools and taxidermy — not to mention a planetarium and weather station — the Fairbanks is an ideal place to take friends and family for a remarkably engaging day steeped in vicarious sightseeing and international geographic illumination.

Soaking up this diverse collection is tantamount to taking a slightly surreal jaunt to other continents, distant cultures and past eras, an experience both abundant and intimate, if not occasionally daunting. During my first visit a while back with my daughter's class to what looks from the outside like a Victorian castle, I entered the massive main room, with its barrel-vaulted oak ceiling, and was instantly transfixed by a startling tableau. Just through the main doors, a towering stuffed polar bear the size of a minivan rears up on his hind legs in frozen, bared-ivories rage, dwarfing a massive grizzly and two black bears nearby.

Taxidermy isn't everyone's cup of tea but there is something profoundly stirring, albeit a tad spine-chilling, about being able to examine such gorgeous, colossal creatures up-close and personal. Watching bears on the Discovery Channel or pacing inside far-off cages surrounded by cement moats affords a modicum of enlightenment, of course, yet this was the first time I'd ever been in such close proximity to a species that's universally feared and revered, and it gave me a whole new perspective on their plight.

When I spoke to the Fairbanks Museum's Anna Rubin, she revealed that my reaction was not uncommon and also offered crucial and informative insights into the singular passion and purpose of Mr. Fairbanks who, I gathered, was something of an amateur Darwin of his milieu.

"The practice of collecting natural specimens in the late 1800s was not perceived in the same way we might look at it today," she explained. "It was really in the cause of science and wanting to preserve these animals so they could be studied and protected. All the pieces in the museum are from that era."

Before establishing the museum in 1891, he regularly invited the public into his home to see his "cabinet of curiosity" in which he displayed his eclectic collection, which contains items of international, national and regional interest. One of my favorite displays was on the second-floor balcony, which is brimming with shelves, cabinets and cases of antique dolls, vintage toys and various household and historical artifacts.

Inside a low vitrine is a group of personal possessions dating from the Civil War. I was particularly moved by a small, lovingly handmade sewing kit, given by a local 15-year-old girl to her sweetheart before he left to fight. One can only assume it was found out on a battleground, and the inclusion of that kind of human iconography in the context of a museum containing more than 3,000 natural specimens reflects Fairbanks' holistic view of the world and its inhabitants.

Fairbanks would come back from his trips with assorted pelts, weapons, insects, photographs, costumes, shells and other discoveries that could help to edify his friends and colleagues back in Vermont. Having inherited great wealth from his uncle, who invented the platform scale and founded the Fairbanks Scale Co., Franklin Fairbanks was committed to giving back to his hometown and integrated his own zeal for travel into this impulse.

"He was like many Victorian civic-minded family members who felt a real love for the community," said Rubin. "He wasn't a scientist or scholar but out of a deep appreciation for nature, he brought to this isolated part of New England these views of animals and visions of other parts of the world."

Working with local, self-taught taxidermist William Balch, Fairbanks eventually built a museum to house his finds, an eccentric landscape unto itself, filled with recreations of the flora and fauna that he'd come to cherish in places he knew most of his friends, family and neighbors would never see.

Balch proved to be an innovator in exhibit design as well, crafting lush, convincing dioramas in which he placed the exotic creatures he'd carefully preserved, deftly utilizing materials of the day, such as linen (this was long before plastic's time) to create the illusion of natural habitats. With the same scientific authenticity and remarkable eye for detail that was being employed in New York City's Natural History Museum right around the same time, Balch was, as Rubin reverently put it, "at the cutting edge of interpreting the natural world."

Together, the two men filled custom-made wood-and-glass cases with meticulously arranged environments, including a truly exquisite display of what is thought to be the world's largest collection of hummingbirds. With 131 shimmering specimens presented on realistic-looking trees, replete with nests, under glass at eye-level, it is yet another of the museum's many breathtaking exhibits.

Everyone at the museum clearly venerates Mr. Fairbanks' pioneering sensibilities and generosity of spirit, and with good reason. Though through our 21st-century lens we might consider a room full of posed animals in ersatz environs to be tacitly un-P.C., everything Rubin taught me about Fairbanks' motivations and expansive thinking as a true animal lover convinced me that, were he alive today, he'd probably be out there picketing for PETA and holding fund-raisers for Greenpeace.

The entire collection of the Fairbanks Museum is a manifestation of its founder's global sensibilities, which were evident in his respect for cultural diversity, an abiding love of nature and a staunch devotion to the stewardship of all the world's creatures. It is sobering and inspiring to realize that his visionary achievements pre-saged the very issues with which the human race now struggles, on so many fronts.

Eloquently summing up the magnitude of Fairbanks' accomplishments, Rubin said it best: "The museum is a timepiece, about the Victorian understanding of the natural world and the awesome beauty of these creatures."

Online: www.fairbanksmuseum.org

Postcard from California: Absence makes the art more cherished

As I write, I'm sitting in the café of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art amid a sea of mod wood tables surrounded by a bold exhibit of large-format, close-up photos depicting brightly colored plates of plastic bits and pieces, monochromatic meals comprised of saturated, bright blue, orange or green combs, curlers, gears, spoons and other small objects. When I brought my kids here a few days ago, my daughter said it was "weird art" and that she liked it.

I remember her saying the exact same thing while gazing up at Andy Warhol's huge, high-contrast, vividly hued portraits at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center's exhibit four years ago. Likewise, her brother thought Spheris Gallery's show of Donald Saaf and Julia Zanes' fanciful paintings in Bellows Falls a while back was "totally cool" and he's made the same assessment in front of a few über-hip west coast walls throughout this vacation.

This morning, when we stopped in at a high-end gallery up the street — one of San Francisco's top purveyors of contemporary art where years ago I was co-director — they said the paintings, which were all minimalist squares of glossy enamel, were boring and that they liked Vermont art more. I have to admit, I agree, though I'm surprised by my somewhat blasé reaction to the breadth of wild art here because usually when I come out I'm a hopeless culture vulture.

Here in this crowded, costly cultural oasis, where we've seen a number of off-the-grid exhibits during a fun and fulfilling visit to the Bay Area from where we moved to Vermont seven years ago, I've actually found the art scene more irksome than iconic. I thought I'd be a veritable sponge, soaking up every ounce of S.F.'s world-class art exhibits, illustrious literary heritage and renowned music scene but in the three years since our last visit, something in me has changed. To put it simply, it's because of this column.

When I first approached Randal Smathers, the Rutland Herald's fearless editor, with the idea of writing a regular spotlight on Southern Vermont arts and culture, part of me was unsure as to whether there really was enough going on to merit a weekly column. Oh, me of little faith, my worries couldn't have been more unfounded, for there is so very much happening in the lower Green Mountains that I quickly learned it was far more a question of what not to write about than finding something good to cover.

In the nearly two years since the Sover Scene was born, I've become well-versed in the oodles of galleries, museums, literary centers, music venues, playhouses, move theaters, dance events, book stores, CD shops and sundry cultural festivals, forums, summits and sanctuaries that thrive in the region.

I remember that, prior to our big move out east, some of my friends and associates here were worried that I'd be culturally isolated with not enough intellectual stimulation to feed my thirsty, artsy soul. Heck, I wondered too, fretting that perhaps all the fascinating online arts organizations that had inspired me to explore Vermont as a potential home would prove to be little more than empty ethereal promises of a culturally rich existence.

Yet within, oh, all of 20 hours after rolling into Vermont, those fears were duly allayed, for on our first drive around Bellows Falls we ended up in a gallery on Canal Street watching a Nigerian dancer perform to live traditional drumming. I recall looking down at my kids' upturned faces, their mouths and eyes open wide at the beautiful, bead-festooned man shaping the air with elegant arms and pounding the floor with strong, sinewy legs to a pulsing djembe accompaniment. I remember thinking, "They aren't going to miss out on anything."

That was just the beginning of my edification on the diverse creative happenings that take place in Vermont on a regular basis, from international film festivals and pivotal fine art retrospectives to premier performances starring eminent actors and informative lectures by distinguished political experts.

During this trip out west, I've not only been reminded that Vermonters are in no way deprived of top-notch creative and intellectual resources, but have also come to appreciate one crucial element of the cultural experience that makes every exhibit and performance far more powerful and pleasant: access.

Take my trip here, to one of the most popular destinations for Bay Area art lovers, for example. Though I drove only a few miles from where I'm staying at a friend's house near Golden Gate Park, it took me 40 minutes to get here and 20 minutes to find parking, which, like the museum entrance fee itself, cost $12. So with an hour of gasoline and another 20 minutes looking for parking at the other end, just getting to the museum door and back is a two-hour, $30-plus venture. Then there's the $2.50 cups of coffee here in the café, but don't get me started.

Though the exhibits themselves are exquisitely curated and displayed, the epic black marble lobby seems more like a cavernous corporate atrium than a museum and I was not surprised when, upon entering, my son asked, "Where's the art?" Good question. After scaling three flights of a dramatic central staircase that's floodlit by a massive round skylight, we finally found the art, but, having been spoiled by the less ostentatious yet equally high-caliber venues back home, such as the Southern Vermont Arts Center, the Bennington Museum and BMAC, the trek seemed absurd.

The show we finally found was interesting, however, and the kids liked it. "America By Car," an expansive series of Lee Friedlander's black-and-white photographs, documents a trip throughout the United States with multi-faceted images that use car mirrors and windows to reframe various corners of the country in inventive, thought-provoking ways.

Afterward, we headed over to the Exploratorium, a hands-on science and discovery museum replete with inventors' lab and "Tactile Dome," but, again, the congested streets, parking hassle and steep entrance fee sure took the sheen off the experience for me and, once inside, I noticed that the kids seemed far less engaged than when we go Norwich's Montshire Museum. With its enlightening, interactive exhibits on nature, astronomy, science and the environment and a great educational program, not to mention the outdoor water sculpture garden, hiking trails and groovy fog machine (which, admittedly, would be redundant in S.F.), the Montshire is everything a parent could want for their kids and easy access to boot.

We're headed back to Vermont tomorrow and — though it's been a great trip with lots of family visits, fun with old friends, running on beaches and panning for gold in the foothills, not to mention a terrific jaunt southward to Disneyland — we're all looking forward to coming home.

Thanks to their culture-vulture mom, the kids have seen some great art and have been wonderful gallery-goers throughout, but their quota is definitely full. Yesterday, I wanted to show them around the Stanford campus and after parking the car near a grove of trees, I mentioned the wonderful nearby museum. Almost simultaneously, they both wailed, "No more museums, Mom!" before bolting from the car to run, climb and swing from the trees.

They're homesick for Vermont and, as of a few minutes ago, after discovering two photos I'd initially overlooked up in the Friedlander exhibit, I am too. One depicts a corner in Bellows Falls, the other a porch in Putney and the sigh I let out upon seeing both confirms what I've suspected through this entire trip. I left my heart in Southern Vermont.

Move over Martha, Angelica's in town: Savvy 18th C. painter pre-saged feminism

Most of us assume that super stardom is a phenomenon of the last century, a product of the mass media catapulting actors, musicians, writers and other creative types into the public arena via branding through television, film, the Internet and tabloid-gorged pop culture. Though we're regularly bombarded with the ventures and visages of contemporary idols, both ersatz and authentic, and it all seems singularly moderne and cutting edge, it's not.

If we consider such ubiquitous marketing tactics to be the hallmark of post-industrial revolution communications, how then do we explain 18th-century neo-classical painting sensation and cultural über-icon, Angelica Kauffman, who had a similarly diverse and widespread impact on European society that women like Madonna, Oprah and Di have had on ours?

Though her fame wasn't manifest in the form of music videos, magazines, haute couture or talk shows, in the context of the late 1700s, Kauffman was, for all intents and purposes, Fortune 500, rock-star royalty. Her intellect and charisma was renowned and her imagery infiltrated elite echelons and everyday life in the form of lampshades, fans, calendars, architectural design, interior décor and teacups, which is all to say, she was an omni-mediated Martha Stewart in her own time.

Quoting an engraver of the day who was overwhelmed with orders for Kauffman prints, Dartmouth art history professor and Kauffman scholar, Angela Rosenthal, attests that, "The whole world was Angelica-mad." And Rosenthal — who will be delivering what is sure to be an absorbing presentation on Kauffman Wednesday at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro — is the person to ask.

With a new, handsome 350-page book out — "Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility," which just won this year's Historians of British Art prize in the pre-1800 category — Rosenthal is a fountain of details, personal and professional, about her subject, as well as captivating contextual insights that illuminate the academic and social climate in which Kauffman's star rose so dramatically.

When we spoke earlier this week, I was curious as to how it was possible that a woman born in 1741 could have possibly enjoyed such a successful career — which included painting portraits of kings and queens and establishing the Royal College of Art in London — when 150 years later women still were not being admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Apparently, it pertained more to a serendipitous and somewhat esoteric shift in socio-cultural ideals than a sudden wave of progressive thinking. "This age of sensibility was associated with private, feminine virtues, emotionality and the language of the heart," explained Rosenthal. "Women were considered the experts of these virtues in that time and Kauffman was a skilled artist, a great businesswoman and very sociable. When people sat for her, they also wanted to talk to her."

Born in Switzerland, Kauffman lost her mother at age 16, and thereafter followed her Austrian father, a traveling painter, back to Italy, where she'd already spent much of her childhood studying ancient Greek statuary and masters of the Renaissance. She eventually fell in with the English "grand tour" crowd and, soon after being welcomed into Rome's Academy of St. Luke at age 22, she moved to London, where her reputation as an extraordinarily skilled painter and sublime conversationalist preceded her.

"She had already painted leading Shakespeare interpreter, mega-celebrity of the day, David Garrick," said Rosenthal. "She was known as 'the painter of Garrick.'" In those days, such accolades that linked artists to beloved figures of the stage or throne heralded immediate almost rabid adoration by the teeming masses

As one critic phrased it, Kauffman "burst upon the hemisphere of painting as a luminous wonder," with her widely celebrated romantic aesthetic, whose glowing palette and romantic subject matter seemed to intoxicate the viewing public, including royalty.

Her faithful reinterpretations of classical figures, grouped together using ancient devices of composition, poses and gesture, were set against verdant backgrounds and incorporated symbolic elements such as lyres, lambs and scrolls (the arts, innocence and education, respectively).

Kauffman's soft, peaceful portraits were not simply poetic odes to beauty and nature, they reflected the aesthetics and values of the period in pivotal ways that served to challenge the perception of gender roles and relations.

"Later in the 18th century, we had 'men of feeling,'" expounds Rosenthal. "It was a sentimental culture when the female voice appeared in literature with Samuel Richardson's novel "Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded" and it transformed rough masculinity. Toughness and violence did not reign but, instead, emotional depth."

Even in light of this cultural swell toward the feminine perspective, Kauffman's monumental academic and professional accomplishments remain remarkable today when one considers that it was an age when few women achieved great success or distinction.

Rosenthal finds the evolution and impact of Kauffman's achievements entirely pertinent to societal obstacles and inner messages with which women continue to wrestle today. "If it is held to be somehow something that women don't do, then women themselves hold this mores. It is a mentality of the time that we enforce — not just men who prohibit women from doing what they want to do, but the whole patriarchal culture. Certainly, Kauffman tried to negotiate this, she was trying to please and the ideal of femininity was regarded of the arbiter of this taste."

"German poet Johann Gottfried von Herder called Kauffman 'the most cultivated person in Europe,'" continued Rosenthal. "So if she had intelligent people sitting for portraits, she had to be polished, speak different languages, be charming and flattering without being too submissive. In portraiture you're on equal footing because the sitter is vulnerable in the hands of the artist and that equation was loaded in the 18th century."

Considering the stature of Kauffman's subjects, this dynamic must have been particularly thrilling for her and propelled her career forward at an unprecedented clip, into uncharted territory. "When Queen Charlotte sat for Kauffman," affirmed Rosenthal, "her patronage instantly went up."

Kauffman was at the center of a vibrant intellectual milieu populated not only by wealthy patrons and monarchs, but by fellow female achievers of the day. "She cultivated relationships with a fantastic series of creative women and she made monumental portraits, almost female Temples of the Muses, or Parnassus. Women would sit for Kauffman because she was this cultured woman with a heightened sensibility."

Eighteenth-century English painter James Northcote encapsulated Kauffman's influence more than 200 years ago in a letter he wrote to her dearest friend and colleague, Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which he said Kauffman had become synonymous with successful women in the arts.

Rosenthal considers the lessons in Kauffman's remarkable professional trajectory to be entirely germane to the continuing need for contemporary girls and women to be inspired and challenged. "It's important for 21st-century women to know about women of the past," she said. "It's great to see powerful, creative women who succeeded and contributed fundamentally to the culture."

At last year's bicentennial commemoration of her death, Kauffman's achievements were once again lauded when Austria went all out to honor its favorite female artisan and Rosenthal was clearly moved by the enthusiasm accorded her longtime academic subject.

"At the opening celebration, there were 800 invited guests, plus a documentary film about her and they put her portrait on the Austrian shilling and a new stamp," marveled Rosenthal, who delivered a talk at the event. "She's a national hero there."

In describing the festivities, Rosenthal reflected candidly on her own joy at seeing Kauffman so deservingly lionized. "Sometimes scholarship is a lonely endeavor between you and the work of art, so this was astonishing for me."

Angelica Kauffman's achievements are astonishing to anyone who explores them, as is Rosenthal's wisdom and zeal on the topic. Take advantage of her remarkable expertise by heading to Brooks Library on Wednesday — and bring your daughters.

Online: www.brooks.lib.vt.us

The gritty wonder fo Chris Bergson: Inventive yet seasoned blues comes to Bennington

Imagine it's a weekend afternoon, you're hanging out in your Brooklyn flat, maybe munching on an H & H bagel, and the phone rings and it's Levon Helm, cordially inquiring as to whether you might be able to hop in the car and drive up to his Woodstock, New York studio to sit in on a few sessions.

This is precisely what happened to guitarist and songwriter Chris Bergson, who at only 31 is the remarkably accomplished leader of the Chris Bergson Band, a quintet of consummate blues, country, rock and jazz musicians that in only a few years has earned high praise from colleagues, critics and fans alike.

One glance at the weighty list of luminaries and venues that populate Bergson's bio — Etta James, Norah Jones, The Blue Note and the JFK Center For Performing Arts, to name just a few — and it makes perfect sense that a music industry icon like Levon Helm would ring him up. That and the fact that when Bergson and his bandmates were laying down tracks for their latest album, "Fall Changes," just a few days before in Helm's recording studio barn, the man himself had wandered over and obviously liked what he heard.

During a recent conversation, I asked Bergson — who brings his band to North Bennington's Sage Street Mill on Saturday night — what it was like to hear those widely revered husky tones at the other end of the phone.

"When he first called I was totally thrown into it," he exulted. "It was 4 p.m. on a Saturday and I'd just gotten home from recording our album up at Helm's studio and he said, 'It would be great if you could come up tonight,' so I didn't really have time to get nervous."

Bergson's accelerated career seems to be saturated with similarly pivotal moments, the sort that can only come from professional connections borne of steadfast diligence, well-honed aspirations and profound talent. When I asked how he came to record the album in the hallowed halls where Helm's famous Midnight Rambles concerts take place, I wasn't surprised to find it was yet another link in that connective tissue.

"Helm's daughter Amy is the wife of my sax player and as I got to know her she said we should come up and check out her dad's studio," Bergson explained. "I'd been up to a couple of Rambles and Levon is among my biggest influences so to actually record there was an honor."

Bergson's music is inspired by numerous genres and icons, from The Band — Helm's legendary rock collaboration with Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, et al. — to Delta bluesman Muddy Waters, jazz icon Miles Davis and even those demi-gods of folk-rock, the Grateful Dead.

I figured this appreciation of the past and such multifaceted sensibilities must have had beginnings that started long before Bergson was old enough to get into most music clubs.

"I'm very grateful that my parents exposed me to a lot of jazz and blues when I was very young. They were big music lovers and took me to hear a lot of greats like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie," he recalled. "When I was in fifth grade, for my birthday they gave me records by Albert King, Muddy Waters, Thelonious Monk, Davis and they had a lot of jazz LPs."

Having started playing guitar at age 7, Bergson studied jazz in earnest, all the way through high school. "I moved to New York City when I was 18 and it was an exciting time, when there were a lot more jazz clubs than there are now."

With a band that brings vivid perspectives from varied musical traditions, Bergson is able to integrate his formal training with other types of music that have greatly influenced him over the years. Indeed, the Chris Bergson Band is anchored by some mighty impressive resumes. Saxophonist Jay Collins tours with country rock great Gregg Allman, keyboardist Bruce Katz regularly works with Helm and bluesman John Hammond, Tony Leone brings his percussion expertise from bluegrass gospel band, Ollabelle, and bassist Chris Berger has performed with folks like Maynard Ferguson and Richie Coles.

Bergson exudes a respectful wonder when speaking about his bandmates and the breadth of experience they bring to his songs. "I'd always been really into different kinds of blues, like Muddy Waters and The Allman Brothers, so it's come full circle because this band has such a diverse background. Jay Collins tours with Allman, but he can turn around and play incredible jazz like Eddy Harris, so we draw on a lot of different styles."

"Fall Changes" is a dense and delicious case in point. Nearly every song is a rich slab of musical strata, with ragged street-smart rock, raw Delta anguish and fluid jazz coloring, all sewn together by Bergson's forceful, sandy voice. With what seems like a few extra decades from the school of life packed into wise, forthright phrasing, his delivery is an inviting balance of boyish energy and slightly world-weary reflection.

Often collaborating with lyricist Kate Ross, Bergson writes solid, piquant tunes that can be intimate and sultry or cynical or brash, and that are always embedded with just the right ratio of hooks, spaces and untethered solos.

His improvisations have an unpredictable and compelling edge, like heated discussion between maestro and instrument. After an expressive, masterful, melodic debate, he'll lean into the mike as if returning to the lyrics then suddenly gets tugged back to playing as if the conversation wasn't quite over.

"The music has a lot of room for improvisation," Bergson attests, "but we don't want to have anything gratuitous, not solos just for the sake of solos — the goal is to serve the song. With this band, the songs are rarely exactly the same from night to night and the improvised element keeps it fresh."

Everything on the new album has room for both composition and exploration, with gritty social observations peppered by moments of poignancy. Often infused with themes of despondency and hardship, some tunes are thoughtful inner contemplations while others read like urban poetry.

In "Gowanus Heights" — which British music arbiter Mojo Magazine put at No. 5 on its 2007 playlist — the pathos is torn right out of a Bukowski notebook:

The junkie blonde and her tough brunette
Counted up their money to see what they'd get
Out in pajamas on a Saturday night
Just cruisin' 'round waitin' to feel all right

The Chris Bergson Band also has the musical mettle to tackle landmark tunes such as "Are You Experienced" from an entirely innovative angle, in this case with a glittering, sax-woven interpretation that impels us to lend a more earnest ear to Jimi Hendrix' lyrics.

In taking on someone else's tune, Bergson manages to honor the core vision of the songwriter while still pushing into unexpected, innovative territory. On their previous album, "Another Day," his song "Three Sisters / Death Letter" is an eloquent homage to Son House, yet more sparse than the original and exquisitely crafted.

With roots that wrap gently around the heritage of his Delta elders, Bergson branches intrepidly into eclectic directions, with nods to Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and Creedence Clearwater Revival along the way, and a strong current of Stevie Ray Vaughan running through every limb.

When he asks if we've "ever been experienced" and then warns "Well, I have" — we believe him.

Online: chrisbergson.com

Zoots suits and saxophones: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy shakes it up on Mt. Snow

They say it is the journey rather than the destination that really matters, but that credo sure didn't apply to my strange and circuitous route in discovering the pleasures of top-notch big band music.

It was the mid-'80s and I was a punky college student working towards a nebulous degree in multi-media and interdisciplinary arts — hair white, pink, black and spiked, crucifixes dangling from multi-pierced ears and no doubt the regulation snarky attitude. Having been a tap dancer for many years before adopting my rebel uniform, I'd decided to create a fabulously irreverent final project for my performance art class by integrating tap — a classic, revered medium — into a raw and raucous theatrical extravaganza comprised of loud music, bad poetry, annoyingly bright strobes and the sound of breaking glass provided by a goggled classmate stationed at a shard-filled trash can backstage, sledgehammer in hand.

I'd practiced for weeks, hoping to perfect my perfect storm against traditional theater, memorizing every measure of the music and every disgruntled triple time-step. On the big night, the curtains rose and I began tapping across a blacklit stage — which proved absolutely no point since I was attired in de rigueur gothic black — as Frank Sinatra's dulcet tones sang "I've Got You Under My Skin" through cheap speakers that rattled when the Nelson Riddle Orchestra built up to its mid-song, horn-heavy crescendo (cue sledgehammer).

What I couldn't admit to myself was that during all that rehearsing, I'd fallen in love with Sinatra and the entire big band sound. I hadn't tapped in front of an audience since leaving the troupe I'd been with a few years before and even then it was usually to the fairly sparse accompaniment of our ragtimey pianist. This business of shuffling to Cole Porter's heady lyrics, Sinatra's debonair voice and the blustery sound of a jazzy orchestra was a new sensation.

Not too long thereafter, my housemates began sticking their heads into my room with quizzical looks wondering what the heck this symphonic, unabashedly brassy racket was emanating from my room on the fourth floor of our otherwise renegade Haight Street digs. No more was Jane's Addiction, Iggy Pop or The Clash thundering through the halls, it was Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and, of course, the great and powerful Mr. Riddle.

"Swing," I remember saying to John, our rarely seen roadie roommate who was usually out on tour with bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden, but who'd come home long enough to snarl "What the —— is that?" down the hall. An incredulous grunt and a slammed door, followed by his attempt at battle of the turntables, was his only reply. No matter — swing sounds even better on headphones.

Something about Glenn's sultry sax harmonies, Benny's buttery clarinet, Tommy's jaunty trombone and Nelson's barely tethered volcanic arrangements had duly displaced the crunchy walls of sound that usually held up my musical sky and it freaked me out as much as anyone else. I found myself browsing the dusty "Standards" sections of funky old record stores and coming home with heavy platters by everyone from swing icons like Artie Shaw and Teddy Wilson to lesser known, more contemporary groups like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Royal Crown Revue.

As luck would have it, soon after I discovered the latter, they happened to be playing King King, a renowned L.A. nightclub, when I was there visiting a friend. I'd never been to a live swing show before, but one pounding bar of "Hey Pachuco" and a quick look at the band's gangster pinstripes and wide-brimmed fedoras, not to mention the sea of nimble dancers doing the jitterbug on the floor beneath the stage, and I became an instant devotee.

As luck would again have it, the same band was appearing at Slim's in San Francisco the day after I got back, so there I was again, gazing up at them like any self-respecting groupie would be, only this time I was also trying out the Lindy hop in a skirt as tight as the horn section. Ah, those were the days of shifting musical allegiances, morphing fashions and seriously confused hair. Gone was the black and pink, for I'd become more of a Marilyn-esque jumpin' jivette, pretty much over night.

This, however, was no passing phase — well, musically anyway. In my opinion swing remains one of the most energizing, high-caliber and ageless genres in American music, one that galvanizes generations and inspires future musicians. With a grade school son practicing clarinet every day, I've been spinning my vintage vinyl more than usual lately, so those elder hep cats like Goodman and Shaw can show him exactly what that "licorice stick," as they call it, can do.

Better still, this Sunday night we all have a rare opportunity to don our finest duds (think "Some Like It Hot" meets "Double Indemnity") and indulge in a night of gutsy and gusty swing-era bravado in the illustrious form of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. An eight-piece musical mob that hails from the left coast, these guys promise to rattle the rafters at the Grand Summit Hotel's Ballroom at Mount Snow, with original tunes, smokin' musicianship and dazzling collective charisma.

Expect full-on swank, with broad-shouldered suits, silk ties, muted trumpets and an upright bass that's just gotta have a machine gun stashed inside it. With spirited and suave leader Scotty Morris at the helm wielding a dangerous Gibson and velvety bootleg voice, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy offers an energizing, melodious dip into the days of mobsters and speakeasies.

Having started out as a jazz trio in 1989, the band's name was bestowed upon them when blues guru Albert Collins signed a poster for Morris, "To Scotty, the big bad voodoo daddy …" Within a few years, its ranks had more than doubled and they'd become a central force in the swing revival of the 1990s, honing an authentic sound with piano, drums, trombone and a stick of licorice added to the mix.

Having cut six acclaimed CDs that are crowded with fun, fierce tunes like "Zig Zagitty Woop Woop", "You, Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight" and "Go Daddy-O," BBVD is one talented posse of professionals who command a bandstand with sharp, dastardly aplomb.

So whether or not you're doing it up proper tonight for Valentine's Day, on Sunday grab your baby — and if you don't have one, come anyway as there are sure to be willing Lindy's hoping to Hop — because this kind of zoot-suited, wing-tipped, badass big band doesn't roll into town too often.

Al Capone once said, "I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand." Though their product is slightly less nefarious, it's every bit as addictive, for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy supplies what is a staunchly loyal, universal demand for music that is entirely elegant and a little old-fashioned but with a delightfully sinful edge; to wit, the perfect romantic evening.

Bristling with humanity: The primal grace of painter Sean Scully

Brutal. Emphatic. Melancholy. Argumentative.

These are a few of the terms with which Irish painter Sean Scully recently described his massive, layered abstractions during a talk at Dartmouth a few days after an expansive exhibition of his work opened at the Hood Museum.

Unlike many artists who prefer to let the work speak for itself or for whom the very notion of attempting to articulate its meaning with language is antithetical to the process, Scully sinks his intellectual teeth into discussion of his art with the same might and hunger that he puts into the making of it.

Addressing a house so packed with disciples that the college had to set up a live feed in an off-site hall across the green, Scully candidly and fervently elucidated a comprehensive overview of his work, starting with the sharp-edged, geometrically patterned early canvasses from the 1970s and bringing us to his more brooding panels of the present.

The show, which runs through March 9, fills the entire top floor of the Hood with 23 paintings ranging from book-size to mammoth, as well as a room containing a few of Scully's photographs and a documentary video of the artist in his element.

"The Art of the Stripe" was organized by the Hood Museum with no subsequent venues slated and is a rare convergence of some of Scully's strongest works, sagely curated and presented in a flow that fluently conveys the evolution of his personal, poetic and plastic sensibilities.

Fittingly, the first piece our eyes find at the top of the stairs is a pivotal work from 1987 called "Precious," one of the last paintings Scully made containing stripes extending from one edge of the canvas to the other before he began working primarily with the finite bands of color that have come to be emblematic of his distinct aesthetic.

Contained in a 72-inch square are six wide horizontal stripes, alternating red and white, with the center of the canvas inset by a smaller painting of thin horizontal and vertical strips of black and white. At first glance a straightforward exploration of pigmentation, depth of field and line — with the inner image optically receding and hues dimmed as if by age — the inexorable force of the painting emerges slowly, its outer border becoming a swath of a mammoth flag while patterns within suggest prison garb and a jail-cell window.

Here Scully's stripes sound an initial alarm, as if warning us to stay back, yet as we approach and see that the white is not an institutional clean, but a shifting patchwork of pale grays and creams, there is a fragility that inevitably pulls us in. That it was inspired by fearful childhood memories of sailing across the Irish Sea during his family's move from Dublin to England is evidence that Scully's layering has profoundly emotional dimensions as well.

The captain pacing back and forth across the deck, the post-WWII mines which randomly obliterated boats on a regular basis and the unnervingly opaque fog that Scully described are all contained in this ostensibly reductive piece. "Precious" is about familiarity, family and survival and exemplifies the depth in all of his work.

While discussing the period when he made this painting's predecessor — a far more restrained yet equally potent version, rendered in a vivid, sour palette six years prior — he was characteristically veracious.

"In the early '80s, I started to make paintings compositional and sculptural because I felt that painting had argued itself out," he insisted. "It was a question of what to do after the perfection, the elegance and the austerity of minimalism reached its zenith."

The earliest pieces in the show reveal the beginnings of this inner dialogue that had Scully fully immersed in the possibilities of the stripe as a versatile visual device before he shed the limiting vestiges of the period and pushed forward to a more vociferous means of limning and coloration.

Just as Rothko's field paintings take on greater depth of meaning when we explore his early surrealist interpretations of mythology and Hans Hofmann's later abstractions become yet more vibrant in light of his interior still lifes, Scully's more recent works are duly illuminated by the empirical soil from which they grew.  It was during a 1969 trip to Morocco when bold strips of color used for rugs and tents harnessed Scully's verdant curiosity, infusing his entire direction with a methodology he deems "if not radical, somewhat ornery."

The stripe, it turns out, is one historically loaded term — rooted in the German "die Strieme" or "mark on the body" — going back as far as biblical references to the lash and enduring numerous periods of patently nefarious connotations since.

In his 2001 book, "The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric," Michel Pastoureau asserts that the stripe came to signify membership in "certain categories of reprobates or outcasts," including jesters, whores, derelicts, dissenters and those already ostracized by society for perceived satanic associations based on appearance, nationality or legal status.

Thirteenth-century Paris looked so suspiciously upon Palestinian Carmelites who came into town wearing brown-and-white striped habits that the uproar resulted in Pope Boniface VIII banning stripes theretofore in all religious attire. Even animals were not exempt from pejorative connotations, with tigers as suspect as traitors.

While it is a compelling notion to think that Scully's stripes are roiling with the same dastardly implications that labeled miscreants and villains, his own explication of motivations and meaning shed a far less sensational — yet extraordinarily brilliant — light upon what has been more than four decades of building luminous and lugubrious patterns with oblong segments of color.

More psychology than stigma, Scully's gravitation toward the stripe reflects an inner struggle, a relentless battle between forces with which we are all familiar, but that he continually excavates, examines, weighs and questions in the context of heavily worked, pigment-laden paintings.

"I paint in a way that is somewhat insecure," he attested at Dartmouth. "Color can include a sense of doubt and my earlier paintings can be saturated with it, overloaded, where there's a reference to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound."

This raw candor infuses his work with a poignant nakedness that often hides beneath the bravado of monumental scale, insistent borders and vociferous, earthy hues. From afar, the heroism of Scully's largest pieces fills the room with a visual swagger constructed of bulky, deep-toned blocks crammed tightly into epic expanses that assume the omnipresence of urban congestion, towering stone walls or brawny river embankments.

"Dakar," from 1989, is one of many such canvases that Scully assembled by screwing thick, linen-wrapped stretchers together into Herculean puzzles, each section an oversized, aggressively painted tablet in and of itself. The last of its kind before his return to traditional single-stretcher paintings, it is a prime example of the complex fusion of pictorial vigor, experiential reference and emotive weight that inhabits Scully's entire oeuvre.

"It refers to John Coltrane's album called 'Dakar'," he explained. "There is a lot of sensuality in my work that I attach to elemental drawing. They're glum and there can be a sense of menace. I believe in the idea of a universal language and I'm quite sure I'll never give that up."

The balance Scully strikes between this salty ferocity of spirit, tacit vulnerability and multi-layered denotation is a product of the spatial tension he creates through crucial choices of palette, gesture and composition. Throughout the exhibit, we are drawn toward each painting by a cool, ubiquitous magnetism, but at close proximity, an abiding tenderness and reverence becomes palpable, if not intoxicating.

In "Holly," a 2004 series of 15 paintings hung in chapel-formation, one large altar-piece stationed at the end of the room reveals, upon close inspection, overtly gentle variations in brushwork, with thin veils of bright hues shifting and glowing like embers beneath muted, ragged-edged slabs.

With symphonic, dynamic rhythm, "The Art of the Stripe" is a potent, eloquent presentation of Scully's remarkable ability to make paintings that are at once ominous and tranquil, blunt and meditative, initially harsh and ultimately seductive. Even his most hulking fortifications evoke an enigmatic inscrutability no less fraught with uncertainty and hope than we simple viewers.

Scully, of course, twigs it. "There is nothing to solve, just arenas of experience. Energetic, life-affirming, red-hearted paintings covered in melancholia, like their author."

Online: www.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu

Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com

The highs and lows of love: Circus beguiles with the greatest of ease

We've all heard of kids running away from home to join the circus, but whoever heard of anyone running away from a full college scholarship to swing from a trapeze?

I sure hadn't, until earlier this week, that is, when I spoke with twin sisters Elsie Smith and Serenity Smith Forchion, but trade academia for the aerial arts they did.

A couple of decades later and they've turned this courageous craft into a fulfilling career with a full-fledged circus school and production company in Brattleboro and plans for a multimedia downtown arts complex under way as well.

Nimble Arts is comprised of Elsie, Serenity and six other top-notch circus performers with resumes that include Cirque de Soleil, Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus and Pilobilus, and for the next three nights — just in time for Valentine's Day — they'll be performing "The Love Show: A Circus & Vaudeville Exploration of Silly & Serious Relationships."

With a title that sounds like a swath of my own romantic blunders, the show is comprised of tantalizing vignettes such as "Harlem Nocturne," "Dos Chicas," "Shake Your Booty" and "Chair Dance," investigating love from all sides through trapeze, juggling and acrobatics, skills that, some would say, are symbolically applicable to relationships as well.

The analogies in "The Love Show" really are wonderfully germane to the rewards and risks of romance, and when I spoke with the sisters, who founded Nimble Arts in 2003, they elaborated.

"We have a through-line with different characters," Elsie explained. "Three gods come down to figure out what this whole love thing is about and their cupid misplaces his arrow. So one of the girls falls in love with one of the gods, she gets stuck on a trapeze, a friend goes to help her and another cupid arrow flies."

"It's not just about new love," she continued, "it's also about people who have weathered long-time relationships and not everyone gets hooked up in the end. We wanted to make it true to love in all of its forms. At one point, a woman stands on her mate's head and that particular scene is poignant because it's about people who have been in love a long time."

When one considers the interdependence in trapeze work — particularly the tacit trust, balance and strength it demands of each participant — its references to human connection are arrestingly eloquent.

One number spotlights the conviction of sisterly allegiances, with Elsie and Serenity on a slowly-revolving trapeze, all the while intersecting, leaning, grasping, supporting, dropping down, swooping up and striking complex, symmetrical poses that emphasize the unique bond between twins.

"Dos Chicas" is like a moving Rorschach, their blended silhouettes stark against a black background as they fluidly shift from one shape to another. Dividing, mirroring, entwining and unraveling again, in feats of impossible daring and flexibility, they induce the prismatic trance of a kaleidoscope. It is mesmerizing, beautiful and terrifying, again, with palpable parallels to love itself.

Amidst sibling loyalty and the abiding commitment of tried and true relationships, "The Love Show" also takes a peek at the flirtatious side of romantic love with decidedly seductive intent.

In "Harlem Nocturne," the sisters are joined by Bronwyn Sims in a charming nod to "Cabaret" and the Kit Kat Club, circa 1930, in which the women's attire is as come-hither as their movements. Dressed in silk chemises, black stockings and garters, they sashay out of darkness into the spotlights, approach an assembly of three trapezes, strike a few sultry poses and then begin an elegant and boldly evocative airborne ballet.

Against a backdrop of saucy saxophone and a primal beat, "Harlem Nocturne" takes the concept of pole dancing to a whole new and far more aesthetically creative level. With upside down splits, kittenish poses and minxy melodrama, it's more steamy than salacious, but lusty, nevertheless. Though billed as family-friendly, this piece skirts the edges of burlesque theater, so parents take note: It'll likely render the average hormone-cocktail shaken and stirred.

Risqué or not, theater it is, for I half expected Joel Grey to shimmy by sprinkling shiny pfennigs on the ground and grinning maniacally at the crowd through his monocle. Each member of Nimble Arts brings a great deal of theatrical prowess into the work, in fact, and it comes through in every number.

Circus performers must display a hefty roster of traditional expertise, including dancing and acting, and while this company boasts one impressive collective resume, many of them learned on the job, as it were. The founders, in fact, discovered circus arts in the most unlikely of settings: a family resort vacation.

Serenity and Elsie grew up on a farm in Massachusetts, with no formal dance, athletic or theatrical training whatsoever, and it was during a seaside holiday that they stumbled upon what became a lifetime occupation.

"When we were 16, our mother had a medical conference at a Club Med and they had a trapeze over a safety net in an outdoor gym camp," Serenity recalled. "We thought it was fun, but didn't think much of it as a career — we were both were high academic achievers with scholarships to go to Amherst College. During the summer, we needed jobs and my sister heard of a teacher-apprentice program at a circus arts school, so we signed up."

"Afterwards," she continued, "I went back to college, but my sister stayed and when I was offered a full-time job with Ringling Brothers, I didn't know what to do. Amherst said they'd hold my scholarship for a year, but eventually the director of Cirque de Soleil was looking for twin trapezists and offered us a four-year contract so, needless to say, I did not go back to school."

Work and life eventually took the sisters out to San Francisco, where they joined the Pickle Family Circus, a wonderfully authentic, high-caliber organization that, like Nimble Arts, has no animals, but only spectacular feats of human daring, flexibility and grace.

Eventually helping establish the San Francisco Circus Center — which includes Clown Conservatory, Mongolian Contortion and Flying Trapeze classes — Serenity also met her husband, Bill Forchion, there.

Forchion came to the circus arts after studying to be a song-and-dance man at the American Musical Dramatic Academy in New York City. Now Nimble Arts is spreading the circus gospel around the globe through everything from performances for the Sheik of Dubai to competing in the China Wuqiao International Circus Festival to conducting safety trainings for Cirque de Soleil.

One of my favorite moments in "The Love Show" is at the end of "Harlem Nocturnes," when, after a stream of spellbinding configurations, the trio alights back down to the floor, gazing at the crowd and triumphantly clasping hands. Slowly, they turn their backs to us, flexing their brawny biceps and sinewy musculature, revealing that, under all that lace and satin, these women truly are pure might.

Online: www.nimblearts.org
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com