Saxophonist Fred Hess is one of Denver’s most accomplished jazz musicians. But he’s not interested in resting on his laurels — or resting at all, for that matter. “I don’t want to just keep doing what I’ve been doing,” Hess says. “It’s nice to feel like there’s more to do.”…
Nearly every American has an immigrant experience in his or her near or distant past. As such, we’re all bound up in a loose, new-world commonality: We all have roots in other places. How American culture ultimately grew out of myriad incoming traditions is a subject of never-ending conjecture. Mark…
In the anything-goes art world of the last couple of decades, contemporary art has fractured into innumerable stylistic tendencies. Contemporary artists are creating everything from conceptual installations, videos and performances to neo-traditional paintings and sculptures. Considering this stylistic anarchy, it’s interesting when a trend can be perceived. Apparently, one of…
Every year, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder Street, 303-455-8999) confers awards and presents an exhibit devoted to the winners. The latest version, 2001 Member Awards, is on view right now. The jury who chose the award recipients was made up of the City of Denver’s art administrator and…
The Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of Hamlet takes a while to jell — until after the intermission, in fact. There are good moments before that, but not enough of them; there are also moments bad enough to provoke giggles. Take the earliest scenes, in which the watchmen and Hamlet’s…
You have to like In Search of Eckstine: A Love Story: The cast is extraordinarily affable, personable and energetic, and the music is so seductive. That’s not to say, however, that this Shadow Theatre Company production is perfect. The script, by Jeffrey Nickelson and Hugo Jon Sayles, has its charm,…
When Joe Quesada, writer and illustrator of comic books, went to work as a freelance contractor for Marvel Comics three years ago, he found the so-called House of Ideas in ruin. The comic-book industry was, as Quesada recalls, “going down the toilet”: Every month, 10 to 15 percent of readers…
If they teach the work of Todd Solondz someday, assuming he’s not already in the curriculum somewhere, the lectures are bound to be rather short. To grasp the material without actually attending, just bone up on a little bargain-basement Freud, a whiff of primal therapy and a sprinkle of Jerry…
In case the season has you feeling shamefully joyous, here’s a stark little oasis of misery to remind you that America sometimes sucks and its denizens aren’t all heroes. Featuring painstaking attention to the copious warts of this big, proud country, Monster¹s Ball moseys down South to issue the staggering…
Actor Jamie Horton has been a critical and audience favorite at the Denver Center Theatre Company for almost two decades. He began as a charmingly eccentric young leading man; his current incarnation is as a chuckling, self-satisfied, middle-aged professor in Spinning Into Butter. Horton, however, has long had a second…
Author Carl Hiaasen is stuck in the swamp. It’s not that the south Florida native can’t imagine setting his satires about greed and crime in other locales. It’s just that the 48-year-old Miami Herald columnist and former investigative reporter realizes that his soggy state is a moldy gold mine for…
Although Ron Judish Fine Arts is a commercial gallery, it seems more like a full-fledged museum because it presents permanent displays and unbilled offerings alongside its featured attractions. On more or less permanent display are a robust Emmett Culligan sculpture, a ceiling-hung, photo-based installation by Bob Coller, and a group…
It’s been kicking around since the early twentieth century, but there’s no denying that nature-based abstraction has experienced a big-time revival in the 21st — as evidenced by the oh-so-many art shows that include this kind of work right now. The trend is so widespread that it’s even shown up…
There are weaknesses to the musical version of Mark Harelik’s play The Immigrant. The dialogue is sometimes flat-footed. The plot holds few surprises, and there’s no real arc to the action. The songs are uninspired, and one of the four castmembers has a voice more powerful than pleasant. As a…
Nobody really expects a musical to have incisive dialogue, profound meaning or an interesting plot — though some of them do. But what a musical really can’t do without is music (clever lyrics help, too), and the stuff Carol Hall composed for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is, for…
Those who spend Sunday morning in church — or every morning watching The 700 Club — will likely embrace the new Welsh film Taliesin Jones as an affirmation of Christian faith. Agnostics, drunkards and horse players will probably see it as evangelical propaganda. Never the twain shall meet. By any…
It’s astonishing just how open Screen Gems has been about showing Slackers to the reviewing press well in advance of deadlines. Dim, youth-oriented sex comedies like this often slip into theaters under cover of darkness. Not that critical appraisal really matters to such films; if it did, Freddie Prinze Jr…
When visiting the National Western Stock Show, make sure your first stop is the booth selling replicas of Old West lawmen’s badges. Wearing one commands respect…and apparently demands free items. At this year’s Stock Show — the 96th incarnation of the annual event that fills Denver’s air with reminders that…
“I’m not a struggling writer,” says Stephen J. Cannell, “–‘struggling’ in the sense that it’s hard for me to do it.” Nor is he having a tough go of things financially. Cannell, who’s promoting his seventh novel, The Viking Funeral, is among the most successful writer-producers in the history of…
It caused me to spend a restless night thinking about the apparently intractable problems of race relations in America, so I have to assume Spinning Into Butter succeeds as a play on some level. On the other hand, I found large chunks of playwright Rebecca Gilman’s dialogue intensely irritating –…
Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in part to provide a venue for shows like the spectacular 5 Abstract that opened this past weekend. That’s because this exhibit gives major artists from Colorado the kind of serious attention that only a museum show can deliver, something that 500-pound gorilla…
Since coming on as director of the Art Students League of Denver (200 Grant Street, 303-778-6990), Leona Lazar has been on a campaign to expand and diversify the art school’s programs beyond its mainstay of painting classes. One of the new programs is ceramics. “Last summer, we became very serious…
