TITAS is presenting a double bill Nov. 13 at the Winspear: Latin Grammy winner Lila Downs and the unusual African-Latin-jazz artist Buika — who, in fact, is making her first tour of North America. If you want to know more about her, her remarkable flamenco-jazz-soul music and her unusual background (born in Africa, raised on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca), check out today’s NYTimes profile.
But you’ll just have to click through to learn what.
This morning’s arts news highlights: A new SMU literary mag online — aimed at Dallas stories from high schoolers — the Undermain entering its 27th season in fine fettle, the decline in giving to nonprofits doesn’t include a local university and tonight’s acclaimed Frontline program about Texas’ possible execution of an innocent man.
And it WILL include some cultural coverage. Starting next month, those Texans who subscribe to the Times will be getting a ‘sweetener’ of two Lone-Star-focused pages each Friday and Saturday.
A handful of healthy sprouts to start the week: Theater Jones upgrades, the NYTimes catches up to some spindly sculptures, four celebrated UT-Austin grads get their undergrad work dug up and the News gives us a bumper crop of tasty items.
A double appointment, a sudden stage illness and everyone’s getting sized up this morning: the Wyly, the Winspear, the Strauss, plus Dallas’ real estate economy. What’s that got to do with North Texas arts? Find out inside.
The New York Post’s drama critic reviews the Dallas Theater Center’s ‘It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman’ — just before the show’s closing weekend. So let’s tally all the official reviews, shall we?
North Texas author Ben Fountain (Brief Encounters with Che Guevara) reported on the local, trendy, upscale retail economy for The New York Times’ opinion page: “”With more shopping centers per capita than any other place in the country, is Dallas the most American city? Shopping is the primeval activity here in the Queen City of the Southwest.”
The musical, ‘It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman’ originally flopped on Broadway in 1966, but attracted by the musical score and its comic-book source, the Dallas Theater Center has poured money and talent into trying to make it fly. In his review, Jerome Weeks considers how it may take some mad scientist-genius to fuse the comic book and the Broadway musical.
The New York Times catches up with the president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as his Arts in Crisis tour to all 50 states is winding down. Last November, the “Comeback King” came back to North Texas to speak to some 100 area arts leaders. His message: Simply cutting back is actually counterproductive.
