November

Visual Art

"Crossover"

While many artists throw out the term “print” when referring to reproductions of their work, local artist Mary Farrell is making the real deal. In her upcoming show, “Crossover,” at the Art Spirit Gallery, Farrell shows her true mastery of the printmaking craft. In this show, the Gonzaga art professor presents her newest monotypes: prints created by drawing or painting on a non-absorbent surface and then transferred to paper (usually with a printing press).

According to the Art Spirit’s owner, Steve Gibbs, Farrell is delving further into her past themes of human and garden forms. Occasionally, they play solos in multi-layered pieces of drying leaves, bundled grasses and late-season blossoms. But humanity and nature often co-mingle here. In “Counterpoint,” bodies rest over silhouettes of leaves, branches, stems and lush bouquets. “Event” shows what looks like a worm’s-eye view of centuries-old tree roots, snarling and twisting in rheumatic crooks and coils. In many, Farrell disguises female figures in quiet repose among tall shrubs and succulent leaves. Her use of color — often oranges, blacks, browns and earthy reds — add depth and mystery; oranges seem to double as fire and light, earthy browns and blacks are both pastoral and foreboding. In “X,” a male farmer-figure stands before a contorted pile of branches. It could be a tree, but there’s a good chance it’s a funeral pyre. Oct. 9 - Nov. 7; The Art Spirit Gallery, artist reception: Oct. 9 from 5-8 pm. — LEAH SOTTILE

Music

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers

Steve Martin’s 1981 album, The Steve Martin Brothers, was the lowest-grossing record of his career. And it’s easy to see why. On one side of the record sleeve was Martin as one of the “wild and crazy guys” from Saturday Night Live. On the other, he was portrayed as a smoldering country-rock idol, with tight jeans, a turquoise necklace and long, flowing hair. The record itself was split cleanly down the middle, between stand-up antics and inventive banjo music.

The Steve Martin Brothers insightfully captures two distinct sides of a man who would, in subsequent decades, go on to show other brilliant facets, too — shining as a serious actor, author and playwright, among other things.

But the record scratched at an annoying cultural and media tendency to define people — especially artists — within naively narrow constraints. (Why can’t he just be funny? Who is this singer to think she can also act?) This dance-monkey-dance routine, which ignores the unpredictable, capricious nature of creativity, has been anathema to Martin. Over 40 years, he has shifted with relative success (although admittedly less so in the last decade) among formats, subjects and tones — from his absurdist stand-up routine to the esoterica of his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and from serious turns in movies like The Spanish Prisoner and Shopgirl (based on his own novella) to The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo, the record he released in May.  

The album, his first full-length musical endeavor, gets a lift from North Carolina’s Steep Canyon Rangers, along with Vince Gill, Dolly Parton and bluegrass legends Earl Scruggs, Tim O’Brien and Tony Trischka. It’s this work — this particular side of himself — that he’ll be presenting at the Fox (along with the Rangers) in November.

And though any encounter with Martin includes a certain wit and sparkle, doubtless some will come away wishing he’d done “King Tut,” or regretting that he didn’t appear onstage with an arrow through his head.

Well, excuuuuuuse me, but Martin is one of the few artists in a generation who has been able to strike gold in so many veins. Let the man do his work. Monday, Nov. 2; Fox Theater, $37-$68, 7:30 pm – JOEL SMITH

Classical

Sounds of Cities: Venice

Supposedly, this concert will make you feel as if you’re on a gondola floating beneath the Bridge of Sighs. (We remain skeptical.) But when you’re listening to a program by composers whose names all end in vowels, what you will get is an opportunity to bask in the beauty of Renaissance and Baroque sacred choral (and instrumental) music.

For example, Giovanni Gabrieli, who was chief composer at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice for 30 years beginning in the 1580s, contributes an instrumental Canzon. Next we’ll hear the Spokane Symphony Chorale, under its new director, Dr. Julian Gomez, singing both the eight- and 10-part versions of Antonio Lotti’s Crucifixus.

Igor Stravinsky pops in to deliver Dumbarton Oaks (think of one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, updated in 20th-century style) and paired settings of two sacred choral works, Pater noster and Ave Maria.

Claudio Monteverdi, who personifies the shift toward the more expressive, less rules-conscious Baroque era, will be represented by instrumental interludes from his 1607 opera Orfeo (about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice).

Finally, after Grigorio Allegri’s nine-part choral setting of Psalm 51 beseeches God to extend to us His “lovingkindness” and “tender mercies,” a quartet of the SSO’s leading fiddlers will play Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins. And if you get a fleeting sense, toward the end, that everyone around you is wearing silk knee breeches and powdered wigs, so much the better. Friday, Nov. 6; The Fox, $21-$32, 8 pm — MICHAEL BOWEN

Reading

Vachel Lindsay

One of America’s most popular poets of the World War I era came to spend much of the 1920s (after his popularity had waned) right here in Spokane. An eccentric whose flamboyant style in public readings had come to be ridiculed, Vachel Lindsay needed a place to revive his art, and Louis Davenport was persuaded that Room 1129 in Spokane’s most elegant hotel would be just the place.

To celebrate the 130th anniversary of Lindsay’s birth, one of Spokane’s present-day eccentric poets, Dennis Held, will impersonate Lindsay. The Davenport’s communications director, Tom McArthur, will portray Louis Davenport himself and “interview” Lindsay. There will be readings of passages from Lindsay’s work and some of his poems will be performed with musical settings.

There will even likely be, in attendance, people who knew Lindsay personally, back when he was leading dance classes at Lewis and Clark High, or living on Pacific Avenue in Browne’s Addition, or doodling on menus at the Davenport Hotel restaurant and insisting that waiters address the life-size mannequins that Lindsay brought with him into the dining room.

Lindsay married and fathered children in Spokane, then left when the Depression hit and his own personal depression deepened. Once he had been “the Prairie Troubadour” who tramped from Illinois to New Mexico, sharing his poems, packing auditoriums, getting himself invited to read before Woodrow Wilson himself. Spokane played a part in his quirky, tumultuous life — and on Nov. 8, the Davenport will host Vachel Lindsay once again. Sunday, Nov. 8; Davenport Hotel’s Marie Antoinette Room, free, 7 pm — MICHAEL BOWEN

Reading

Natasha Trethewey

The Visiting Writers series is back at Gonzaga, and Tod Marshall, a noted poet himself and teacher at GU, has put together an impressive line-up, kicking it all off with one of America’s great contemporary novelists, Denis Johnson, later this week. (See story, page 19.) And to keep up the theme, in November we’re getting one of America’s great contemporary poets, Natasha Trethewey. A professor at Emory University in Atlanta, the Mississippi-born Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection Native Guard.

Marshall says he has tried to bring the kinds of perspectives to Spokane that we don’t usually get, and past visiting writers Joy Harjo, Bharati Mukherjee and Li-Young Lee have all done that.

“Trethewey,” Marshall says, “explores similar terrain — she offers us insight into the experience of the marginalized, those who often aren’t given a voice.” Monday, Nov. 9; Cataldo Globe Room, Gonzaga, free, 7:30 pm — TED S. MCGREGOR, JR.

Theater

The Lion King

Disney’s theatrical juggernaut, returning to Spokane after four years, conveys a lot of themes. Shakespearean: Our hero must seek revenge for the murder of his beloved father at the hands of an evil uncle. Christian: The son of a godlike father must redeem a nation fallen into wickedness. Environmental: Not just “The Circle of Life,” but way that director Julie Taymor’s life-size creations convey the animal in the human/human in the animal. Numerological: Nearly two dozen traveling semi-trailers, 20 stagehands just to manage the transition from the elephant graveyard to the wildebeest stampede, 250 puppets, nearly 12 years (and still running) on Broadway.

But all that isn’t what fills the seats. What fills the seats is the entire-family appeal (the cartoon violence in “Chow Down” for the kiddies, the sensuality of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” for Mom and Dad). What fills the seats is a spectacle (colorful and impressive) that also appeals to small children’s imaginations (flexible and all their own). Nov. 11 - Dec. 6; INB Center, $23-$72. — MICHAEL BOWEN

Reading

Empyrean Poetry Slams

Mark Anderson, Kurt Olson, Danielle Estelle, Zack Graham — they can make a room go wild. Onstage there’s no guitar or a drum kit to be found — just nervous hands and shadowed brows. These are poets with something to say out loud.

At Empyrean’s poetry slams, anyone who wants to participate has a mic, a spotlight and the undivided attention of a crowd. It’s open — but first-time readers might want to try Empyrean’s regular poetry open mics before slamming. You won’t see many slammers fumbling through pages of journals or diaries; poetry slam is largely a performance-oriented event. Before the event kicks off, poets sign up to read their original work on stage. That list of names is randomized and five unbiased (meaning they aren’t there to watch their friends) judges are appointed from the audience. Poets are called up to read (most recite their work from memory) and are judged on content, originality and performance.

“Winning a poetry slam doesn’t make you the best poet, it just means that night you competed the best in the eyes of the judges,” says Anderson, who organizes the events with Empyrean owner Chrisy Riddle.

Slammers like Olson and Anderson are well-practiced performers, spitting out lines of verse like they’re speaking in tongues or rapping from the depths of their souls. And the audience goes wild for it — cheering, yelping, snapping and wheedling. Their cheers practically beg each performer for more. Oct. 8; Empyrean, $5, 7 pm, all-ages — LEAH SOTTILE

Visual Arts

Art and People

Sixty years ago, Spokane brought art to the people with unbridled support that has yet to be matched in today’s society. Art was vital, a key to the nation’s recovery, a cornerstone of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, which initiated and subsidized the gainful, meaningful employment of America’s out-of-work masses in everything from bridge-building to mural-painting.

Many of the projects — such as the Grand Coulee Dam — endure. Other works still adorn the walls of post offices and other public spaces throughout the country, an important remnant of American history right under our very noses. Some of the Northwest region’s WPA artwork has only been uncovered since MAC began the voluminous scholarly research necessary to present “Art and People: Spokane Art Center and the Great Depression.”

Included in “Art and People,” for example, are the watercolors of Z. Vanessa Helder, the only artist known to have been allowed on-site during the building of the Grand Coulee. Other ’30s-’40s works and contextual ephemera (correspondence, signage, etc.) will be featured, including some from Spokane Art Center’s first director, Carl Morris, who went on to become the part of the abstractionists movement alongside Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.

Under Morris and the center’s tutelage, students gained valuable, affordable instruction, while the community enjoyed a community art gallery showcasing such international artists as Van Gogh. Although cut short by World War II, Spokane Art Center’s legacy from 1938-42 may have been the planting of an idea that art and community need each other. Saturday, Nov. 14; The MAC, $7, hours vary — CARRIE SCOZARRO

Pop Music

Built to Spill

I’ll never forget the moment I gave Built to Spill a chance. I was on the light rail in Portland, totally depressed about my life, the rain, my wet feet. Uncomfortably close to every other wet, depressed commuter, I wondered how the hell a BtS song made its way onto my iPod’s shuffling play list. It was “Bad Light,” and it got me. It was an escalating, complex, riff-heavy song full of unexpected change-ups and moody lyrics. I’m pretty sure I listened to it four times in a row.

It’s taste and careful moderation that sets Built to Spill apart from the indie rock masses. They’re a band with heavy guitar geekery and nasally vocals — but, somehow, it’s never annoying. The Boise-based band’s path is one dotted with beautiful songs — ones that are occasionally simple, often heartbreaking but always, always catchy. Doug Martsch blends blues and classic rock standards with oppressive hard rock — think Mississippi Blues meets Neil Young and J. Mascis — to make Built to Spill’s sound: ballads for summer, of windows-down car rides and blue-skied river floats. Spokane is their last tour date, which means hopefully we’ll get a few encores from older records like Keep It Like a Secret and Ancient Melodies of the Future. And — bonus! — for ladies like myself, it doesn’t get much better than watching bearded men rock onstage, by God! Saturday, Nov. 21; Knitting Factory, $22, 7:30 pm, all ages (with Disco Doom and Finn Riggins) — LEAH SOTILLE