It’s not every day you meet a new food, one you’ve never seen or tasted, one you can’t identify. You can never know everything about food. It’s humbling, just when you thought you were getting a handle on things. There’s always a new ingredient from somewhere on the planet. One year Szechuan pepper, another year smoked salt.

A Profile of a Beautiful Vegetable. A Food Musing.

By Sally Levitt Steinberg

I know cardoons and cardamom and carpaccio. I’ve eaten adobo and stracchino. I’ve never had an ortolan, but I did eat eye of trout in Japan. The eye was staring out of a hole in the middle of a table in a kaiseki dinner in a ryokan. I had fried beetles in Bali—yes, they were meant to be eaten. I was served but declined a monkey brain in Asia. But the other night I saw a green thing I’d never seen, in the mushrooms, a strange apparition. A green flash. More…

Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) by Alexander Zemlinsky. Libretto by George Klaren, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Birthday of the Infanta.” Staged by OperaHub at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, through March 13. Free

Reviewed by Helen Epstein

For a truly worthwhile evening of music drama—free admission no less—get yourselves to the Boston Center for the Arts to what seems to be the Boston premiere of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg.

This opera (1919–1921) draws on several rich sources: the composer’s long and unrequited love for his young and beautiful composition student Alma Schindler Mahler; “The Birthday of the Infanta,” a short story by Oscar Wilde; and a celebrated painting by Velasquez titled Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor) which features the Infanta/princess and her entourage, including two dwarfs.
More…

American author Robert Stone is attuned to the havoc latent in masculine pride and to the hostility likely to break out for no particular reason between males of our species.

Fun With Problems: Stories by Robert Stone, Hougton Mifflin Harcourt, 195 pages, $24

Reviewed by Harvey Blume

Though one of our prose masters, Robert Stone is less acknowledged than he ought to be. That may be because his characters repeatedly court or are caught up in dangerous situations, often pertaining to war, sexual obsession, or drugs, which may lead him to be downgraded as a genre writer.

The more likely reason for his relative obscurity is that in the United States today any but the most obviously Nobel Prize worthy writer—perhaps only Phillip Roth, since John Updike is dead—has a hard time getting full credit. Our taste tends to veer away from real writing toward colostomy bags in literary form penned by the likes of Dan Brown. More…

by Bill Marx

Chinese writer Liao Yiwu

On his way to the Cologne literature festival earlier this week, dissident Chinese writer Liao Yiwu was escorted off the plane by the Chinese authorities and handed over to the police for interrogation. He has sent an open letter to the world, available in English, asking for help.

More…

Reviewed By Caldwell Titcomb

Opera Boston's 'Madame White Snake': Peter Tantsits as Xu Xian and Ying Huang as Madame White Snake Photo: Clive Grainger

It has been many years since a major new opera was mounted here. But Opera Boston has done just that with its recent world premiere of “Madame White Snake” at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. This was the most demanding and expensive undertaking in the company’s history. More…

Children of Invention: Tze Chun

By Justin Marble

March 2–4, “Children of Invention” at the Brattle: Young filmmaker Tze Chun’s first feature was shot on location in Boston and focuses on a single mother with two small children struggling to make ends meet. When she doesn’t return home one night from her con-artist-esque job, it falls to the older brother Raymond (who fancies himself an inventor) to care for his little sister. The film has received positive buzz for both the realistic depiction of the harsh economic climate and its beautiful depiction of Boston.

More…

Abdo Khal—winner of the Arab Booker

By Bill Marx

Saudi Arabian author Abdo Khal won the $60,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arab Booker) for his novel Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles, which is also known as She Throws Sparks.

Taleb Alrefai, who served as chair for this year’s panel of judges, said, “The winning novel is a brilliant exploration of the relationship between the individual and the state. Through the eyes of its two dimensional protagonist, the book gives the reader a taste of the horrifying reality of the excessive world of the palace.”

In 2008, I spoke with journalist and novelist Jonathan Levi, who co-founded the literary magazine Granta, serving as its U.S. editor until 1987. The writer has just visited Saudi Arabia, and he spoke to dissident novelist and journalist Adbo Khal and other authors about the state of Saudi writing. Levi talks to me about Khal’s challenges and what else he learned about literary life in the country. Along with a podcast of the conversation, there’s an excerpt from a Levi essay on the trip that deals with his encounter with Abdo Khal.

More…

By J. R. Carroll

March is the month for Elder Statesmen—and drummers.

Bassist Buster Williams has played and recorded with, well, damn near everyone, and currently leads his own Something More Quartet; they’ll be coming to Scullers on March 2 at 8 p.m.

Drummer Cindy Blackman pays tribute to Tony Williams

Photo by Mandy Hall, available under a
Creative Commons Attribution license.

Drummer Cindy Blackman, who’s made several recordings over the years with Buster Williams, studied with Boston jazz legend Alan Dawson; fittingly, her latest project pays tribute to another of Dawson’s students, the late Tony Williams. Blackman brings her Another Lifetime quartet (guitarist Aurelien Budynek, keyboardist Marc Cary, and Felix Pastorius—yes, he’s Jaco’s son—on bass) to Scullers on March 4 at 8 p.m.

Over at the Lily Pad on the same night at 7:30 p.m., Peruvian drummer/percussionist Jorge Perez-Albela leads his Dream Band (with special guests including vocalist Sofia Rei Koutsovitis and guitarist Julian Lage) in a program of new compositions and arrangements.

More…

By Caldwell Titcomb

Jean Sibelius: His Finlandia is not an outstanding achievement; but its main tune has become the virtual Finnish national anthem and is his most famous music.

The Student Symphony Orchestra of Trondheim, Norway, concluded its U.S. tour at Massachusetts Institute of Technololgy’s (MIT’s) Kresge Auditorium on February 26. Celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, the 70-member orchestra was under the leadership of Gavin David Lee, who has been in his post since 1992. The group’s repertory on this occasion came from six Norwegian, Finnish, and Russian composers—three well-known and three little-known.

More…

By Caldwell Titcomb

The world’s greatest living cellist makes his home here, though he tours the world most of the time. Yo-Yo Ma makes a local appearance thanks to the Celebrity Series.

March 2: The Contemporary Music Ensemble in residence at Boston University, Alea III, under the direction of Theodore Antoniou, offers a free concert in celebration of the late eminent composer/teacher/conductor Lukas Foss (1922–2009). Works by Foss to be performed are “Echoi,” “For Toru,” “Elegy for Anne Frank,” “For Aaron,” “The Prairie,” and “Behold! I Build an House.” The concert also will include “Nineteen Epigrams,” new music written by 19 of Foss’s students. At the B.U. Concert Hall, 855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 7:30 p.m.

More…