The late David Dillon, longtime architecture critic for The Dallas Morning News — and a friend/former colleague of several of us here at Art&Seek — has been honored with the establishment of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture at UT-Arlington (pay wall). Now, along with the Dallas Architecture Forum, the Center is presenting the inaugural David Dillon Symposium on “Criticism Today,” April 26-27 at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

The keynote speaker will be the Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker.  Other panelists includes Christopher Hawthorne of the Los Angeles Times and Alexandra Lange, author of Writing about Architecture.

The full press release follows.

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DSO ANNOUNCES SEASON: The Dallas Symphony Orchestra revealed its 2012-13 season over the weekend. The North American premiere of a Philip Glass work is one of the performances that jumps off the page. The DSO will also be hitting the road for a European tour in March (note to self: begin formulating argument on why Art&Seek needs to cover this). This year there will be five fewer performances in the classical season and three fewer in the pops.

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC: With Electricidad, Artes De La Rosa is putting a Latin spin on Sophocles’ Greek classic Electra. In the show, a tale of revenge is transported to gangland L.A. “This is the most cohesive production managed on this stage to date, and the improvements that have been made since Adam Adolfo took over are evident in the design and the ensemble performances, even in the satellite roles,” Mark Lowry writes on theaterjones.com. But Punch Shaw was less excited. “The show waves its grimness like a flag to the point that the utter despair of the whole thing is crushing,” he writes on dfw.com. “This drawback is exacerbated by an awkward structure that makes the first act far too long.” Judge for yourself through the weekend.

MONEY FOR NOTHING: Are you an artist who’s considered going the crowd-funding route via companies like Kickstarter? Good news – it looks like the new philanthropy works.

Good evening, hope you are recovering nicely from the weekends festivities. This is where you can leave your polite comments and music suggestions for next weeks show. Remember please, nothing too long, loud or soft and no bad words. I don’t wanna get in trouble.

New to me this week:
The King Khan and BBQ Show
Duane Eddy
Half Moon Run
Julia Holter
Red Elvises
Chris Watson
Hoosier Hot Shots
Boubacar Traore

Tonight’s playlist

Rosemary Clooney, “Mambo Italiano,” Hey There
Beastie Boys, “Electric Worm,” The Mix-Up
Rufus Wainwright, “I Don’t Know What It Is,” Want One
Lightnin’ Hopkins, “Mojo Hand,” The Roots Of Van Morrison
The Shins, “New Slang (Album),” Oh – Inverted World
Boxcar Bandits, “Track 06,” Live At Dans
School of Seven Bells, “White Wind,” Ghostory
The King Khan & Bbq Show, “I’ll Be Loving You,” Invisible Girl
The Magnetic Fields, “I’ve Run Away To Join The Fairies,” Love At The Bottom Of The Sea
The Cinematic Orchestra, “To Build A Home (Radio Version),” You Don’t Know: Ninja Cuts
PJ Harvey, “Down By The Water,” iTunes Session
Duane Eddy, “Movin’ N’ Groovin’,” Greatest Hits
Shearwater, “Animal Life,” Animal Joy
Incredible Bongo Band, “Apache (Original Radio Edit),” Apache (Original Radio Edit)
Ralph Stanley, “Man Of Constant Sorrow,” Man Of Constant Sorrow
Half Moon Run, “Full Circle,” Dark Eyes

The Beach Boys, “In My Room (Mono),” Endless Summer
Julia Holter, “Marienbad,” Ekstasis
Little Walter, “My Babe,” His Best
Flight Of The Conchords, “The Prince of Parties,” Flight Of The Conchords
Nervous Curtains, “The Crooked Telepathic,” Fake Infinity
Patti Smith, “Pastime Paradise,” Twelve
Red Elvises, “A Kegga Beer And Potato Chips,” Welcome To The Freakshow
Willie Nelson, “Crazy,” The Early Years
Chris Watson, “T-Bone Swing,” Just for Show…
Hoosier Hot Shots, “He’s A Hillbilly Gaucho,” The Very Best Of
Boubacar Traoré, “Soundiata,” Sa golo (Kar Kar)
Bjork, “The Anchor Song (LP Version),” Debut
Four Tet, “She Just Likes To Fight,” There Is Love In You
Emerson String Quartet, “String Quartet No.11 in F minor,” Op.122 – 5. Humoresque: Allegro,” Shostakovich: The String Quartets
The Band, “Ophelia (2001 Digital Remaster),” Greatest Hits

“Track By Track” appears every other week on Art&Seek. During the podcast, Texas musicians play their new albums and discuss what went into making them with Paul Slavens, host of The Paul Slavens Show Sunday nights at 8 on KXT, 91.7 FM.

You can download and subscribe to the podcast right here.

Paul’s previous podcast featured Amanda Newton and Ryan Thomas Becker of The Treelines talking about the band’s self-titled debut EP. This time, Paul speaks with Sean Kirkpatrick of Nervous Curtains about the band’s new effort, Fake Infinity.

Click the player below to listen to the podcast:

Also, be sure to check the Art&Seek blog during The Paul Slavens Show on Sunday.

Robert Orth (bottom), Andrew Bidlack (on stairs) and Daniel Sumegi (top) in the Dallas Opera’s The Lighthouse

In 1900 a group of three men who were the keepers of an isolated lighthouse on a remote Scottish island vanished without a trace.

An official hearing speculated that one had either fallen or been swept into the sea in a storm, and the other two had died trying to save him. But there was no definitive finding, and more sinister speculations were advanced by many in the celebrated case.

The British composer Peter Maxwell Davies came up with his own speculation in his chamber opera The Lighthouse, and the Dallas Opera has taken a striking new course with its presentation in the Wyly Theatre of the Dallas Arts District.

The choice of a venue usually associated with spoken drama was appropriate, because The Lighthouse is very much a powerful theater piece, with music serving an attendant though striking role. One could just imagine it working as a spoken drama sans music, though it would be a very different piece.

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In the Art & Seek Spotlight Saturday, we’re headed to Deep Ellum for the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market. The market features hand made, hand crafted and vintage products from local vendors.  As an added bonus, every hour on the hour, poets from the Dallas Poetry Slam will give a live performance.  The event is presented by Wordspace.

The world goes nuts this time of year, it seems.

You know what we’re talking about. College basketball. And if you don’t have a dog in that fight, it’s a lot of excitement — happening over there. Everyone else is having fun. But what if what you were interested in had some of that same competitive zeal, that same ramped-up energy over making-lists-and-arguing-about-possibilities.

Welcome to March Music Madness. Yep, sixty-four classical composers and their works in elimination rounds. It was started last  year on the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Guild’s Facebook page. It’s a contest that’s meant to entertain and educate music lovers (and let’s be honest, probably infuriate a few — hey, I wouldn’t countenance Mahler’s Second beating Beethoven’s Ninth. Never).

So it’s back this year. And here’s the press release explaining how it works.

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Martha Harms, Shannon Kearns-Simmons and Anne Beyer in the Undermain’s Time in Kafka

Dallas Morning News review

Front Row review

TheaterJones review

American Theatre magazine

I Live in Dallas review

Just what is lacking in the Undermain Theatre’s world premiere of Time in Kafka? Len Jenkins’ new play has been given a pretty fabulous production — from many of the same folks who made Jenkins’ Port Twilight such a stellar event, director Katherine Owens and her design team.

And Jenkins’ play itself is not without its pleasures — thanks to Jenkins’ genre-mixing, word-spinning, leg-pulling playfulness. Time in Kafka, after all, tracks a literature professor’s quest to find a lost Kafka manuscript, while dealing with oddball characters, film noir-ish intrigue and a dance number featuring ? and the Mysterians’ 96 Tears.  Obviously, there’s a lot in Time in Kafka that one wouldn’t normally expect in anything associated with Kafka. Just how much like Franz Kafka’s work is it?

The Dallas Morning News: “It’s more like Thomas Mann on psychedelics.” The resemblance to Mann seems to be mostly that, like Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain, much of the play’s action takes place in a European sanitarium. TheaterJones: It’s more “Kafkaesque” than truly Kafka. On the other hand, Front Row: “Len Jenkin leans on the author [Kafka] for both for subject and writing style” — presumably, this leaning does not include the un-Kafka film jokes or musical numbers. No dancing cockroaches, here.

Actually, what Time in Kafka lacks — as an evocation of/homage to/riff on Kafka, as just a fully satisfying dramatic experience — is simple enough.

It lacks dread.

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Art&Seek presents This Week in Texas Music History. Every week, we’ll spotlight a different moment and the musician who made it. This week, Texas music scholar Gary Hartman recalls a special evening when the “Boss” showed up early for work.

You can also hear This Week in Texas Music History on Sunday at precisely 6:04 p.m. on KERA radio. But subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss an episode. And our thanks to KUT public radio in Austin for helping us bring this segment to you. And if you’re a music lover, be sure to check out Track by Track, the bi-weekly podcast from Paul Slavens, host of KXT’s The Paul Slavens Show, heard Sunday night’s at 8.

• Click the player to listen to the podcast:

• Expanded online version:

On March 14, 1974, Austin music fans got a pleasant surprise. A young New Jersey rocker named Bruce Springsteen arrived a day early for his two-night stint at the Armadillo World Headquarters. Local fiddle player Alvin Crow was performing that evening, and he invited the somewhat anxious Springsteen out on stage to perform. Springsteen quickly overcame his nervousness and gave a blistering performance that helped fill the large music hall for the next two nights.

Tickets to the 1974 Alvin Crow concert at which Bruce Springsteen performed were only $1. However, according to some of those lucky enough to attend, the experience was priceless.

Next time on This Week in Texas History, we’ll meet a musician whose legacy quite literally helped leave a trail for others to follow.

AUSTIN – “You’re now officially ruined for Springsteen. You can’t see him again.”

That was KXT programming director Mark Abuzzahab’s assessment to me as we talked about the show that had just emptied out of the Moody Theater at midnight. He’s probably right. When else do you have the opportunity to see a legend in a venue that holds just 2,700 people?

I wrote yesterday about how I never really got Bruce Springsteen – that I always respected him but didn’t quite understand the dedication of his fan base. After last night’s show, I can’t say I’m ready to buy the entire back catalog on iTunes. But I do have a much better sense of what all the hubbub’s about.

Things started somberly with “Ain’t Got No Home,” a tribute to Woody Guthrie on the occasion of his 100th birthday. But from there Springsteen and his 15-piece E Street Band were guns a blazin’ for much of the nearly three hours that followed. “Badlands” drew out a sing as loud as you can response from the crowd. “The Ghost of Tom Joad” featured a blistering back-and-forth between Springsteen and special guest Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame. And “The Rising” would have been just as at home in a charismatic church as a concert hall. For most bands, any of these songs would serve as the bring-the-house-down finale. But a Springsteen set list seems to alternate between tearing the walls down and building them back up again.

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