Doctor Noize Beats Truman

I've finally forgiven Doctor Noize, that big meanie, for making me believe a fake press release. News does break on April 1st, y'know. Anyone could have fallen for it.

Fortunately, we stopped the presses before reporting that kids' musician Doctor Noize (a.k.a. Cory Cullinan, who lives in Colorado but hails from Los Altos) was going to have one of his songs in "High School Musical 4." Man. I could've written a heck of a headline.

Cory swears his latest Noizeletter is true. Lots of good news. I've always found it interesting that he's a classically trained Stanford musician who has woven his expertise into groovy shows and CDs for kids. This fall he's heading back to the concert hall to solo with the North State Symphony at youth performances in Chico and Redding. Nice.

"Herr Maestro and I promise these events will be very solemn and absolutely no fun at all, especially the rockin' tuba solo," Cory says in the Noizeletter.

Another big announcement is that Doctor Noize will be guest-hosting this summer on XM Kids Radio. I am addicted to the ahmaaazing Seth Rudetsky, but perhaps I can be persuaded to change the station every now and then. Hey, how about doing a duet with Seth? Don't all you big important DJs know each other?

Satellite radio isn't exactly raking in the forints lately, but maybe Doctor Noize can help. Or not. As Cory writes in the Noizeletter: "I once wrote a song for the long-running network soap 'Another World,' which had been on air for 35 years. My song was played on the show, and just months later...the show was cancelled. That's power, baby."

Pictured: Doctor Noize and friend; photo from www.doctornoize.com.

Where's our downtown theater festival?

You can't complain about an evening of Balkan-Yiddish-gospel-postmodern music, really. World Music Day sounds pretty cool (except that you can't call it WMD without thinking of our last president).

But where's the free outdoor theater festival in Palo Alto? The one-acts on the corner? Pinter in the park? That would be my little dream. Music gets center stage in the summer, due to some long-held tradition involving amps over asphalt. But there are days when you want art that's more narrative, telling stories by sunset, highlighting the up-close emotion between two people, talking out that which cannot be sung.

If I ran the circus, there'd be more following in the alfresco footsteps of PACT's Hot Dog Suppertime Shows, or PYT's Theater in the Park, but for big kids. Yes, the Shakespeare is lovely, too. More of that, please. Can we have this also, in an inflatable auditorium, or is that pushing it?

Theater on the corners and in the plazas of downtown Palo Alto would be vibrant, surprising and immediate. As tantalizing as overhearing a conversation in a crowd. You don't need much room to tell a story, just a compelling narrative and people who know they're inside it. Maybe a few set pieces and props, or just a pair of actors, or a whole set constructed in a piazza. Whatever way you make it, I'd go.

Some of the stages in my theater vision:

• King Plaza in front of Palo Alto City Hall. A political setting for pieces that tackle thorny issues and times, or scripts sassy with satire. Kushner. "Tomfoolery."
• The circle lawn at Gamble Garden, intimate and rustic. I can imagine a collection of one-acts with two or three actors each, the audience sitting all around.
• Heritage Park on Homer Avenue. Big enough for some splashy musical theater. Despite the judicious tree-planting that has occurred, the big grassy expanse could still easily accommodate even the gym scene in "West Side Story," assuming you don't mind dancing on the lawn.
• Lytton Plaza on University Ave. A busy spot, good for anything fast-paced and urban. The college kids might like that sprightly talker Mamet.

I still haven't figured out a good place for the inflatable auditorium.

Pictured: The circular lawn at Gamble Garden. Photo by Rebecca Wallace.

Being outside inside at CSMA

Yesterday a.m.: a morning for growing ant strength and carrying my desk into an open field. In June it can be physically painful to be stuck inside.

Since desk wouldn't balance on head, I went to an art gallery. You can pretend to be outside in drawings by Robert C. Schick, but you're an arts editor doing work. Schick is a Midpeninsula lifer with pen-and-ink visions of both landscapes that remain and those that have been plowed under.

Farms and orchards recall life before strip malls, while houses with luxurious porches hark back to times with a lot less street traffic, when people actually talked to their neighbors just outside the front door.

Some watercolor, too, which has a wispy nostalgia but lacks the precision of the drawings. The black-and-white gives the ink landscapes a confidence -- and patience -- that you need if you're going to fight in City Hall. (Schick is a veteran of anti-development wars.)

Eventually I had to go back to the office, but for a while it was good to feel like a kid with the entire day and yard ahead of me, when a hillock of soft grass under a spreading oak was the whole world.

BTW, Schick will be at an opening reception at the gallery, Mohr Gallery at CSMA, this Friday evening from 6 to 8.

BBTW, after I wrote this I found a terrific Judith H. Dobrzynski post on ArtsJournal about cell phones in art galleries. Yep, a Fall Out Boy ringtone would've dropped a giant ant on my dreamy gallery mood. Tell me again why cell-phone dampeners are illegal here?

Pictured: "Proposed Mountain View Heritage Park for the Cuesta Annex," a 2006 watercolor by Robert Schick.

Fridays at the Cantor: 'Metaphysics'

Every Friday, a different musician climbs the stairs to the Cantor Center balcony to play Mark Applebaum's experimental work "The Metaphysics of Notation." I had previously written about flutist Jane Rigler playing a rippling, percussive version of the piece; last Friday I went to see Sam Adams on electronic keyboard and laptop. (Scroll down for my video.)

How do you play a musical score that replaces standard notes with flowers, wavy lines, human figures and rising lines of dots? Any way your muse takes you. If you're lucky, the composer will come by.

Applebaum was there last Friday, watching while Adams focused on one piece of the score, creating music that used silence and long moments of thought, then intensified. Adams wove in recorded words: "make real sense," "notation," "symbolic structures." A drone created urgency and interest. By the end, the music echoed through the balcony like a plane taking off in a storm. I felt in the center.

Adams' father, the composer John Adams, also dropped by. In my photo above, he's listening so hard to his son playing (at left) that he's barely moving. Applebaum is standing in the pale-green T-shirt. After the performance, he praised Sam Adams for his "studied, ascetic approach" to the music that also allowed in such warmth.

Applebaum's score is on display in panels hung around the balcony; you can view it all week, but it's only on Fridays at noon that it takes on audible life. (My video shows glimpses of a few different panels, not just the one Adams played from.) The free weekly concerts are set to continue through February 2010.

'What would Matt do?'

A new San Francisco exhibit calls him "Artist and Educator," but Matt Kahn is just as often thought of as "Mentor." You can't read about him without seeing that word.

It's perhaps the best legacy one could have after teaching at Stanford for 55-plus years. Over and over, people say that Matt Kahn taught them how to appreciate the role of design throughout the world. A few years ago, IDEO design firm founder David Kelley told the Weekly that every day when he works on projects he thinks: "What would Matt do?"

Textile artist Jean Ray Laury also called her former teacher "encouraging, demanding, insightful and fun." She added, "I learned more about quilting from him than I ever learned from anyone else, though I'm sure he never held a needle in his life."

As for me, I never studied design. When I interviewed Kahn for another story, I just liked his crinkly-eyed smile.

The current show, held at the San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design, also showcases the ways in which Matt Kahn helped shape the Bay Area's art and design in the 1950s and '60s. Besides teaching at Stanford, he also worked for Eichler Homes, the developer whose houses are ubiquitous in Palo Alto.

The exhibit includes his designs for Eichler homes as well as works in furniture, textiles and metal, with weavings by his wife, Lyda Kahn. Fittingly, special events include "Matt Kahn: Teacher and Friend," in which designers talk about how the professor influenced and inspired them.


Pictured: Two works by Matt Kahn from the exhibit. Top: "Pair of Tripod Chairs," ca. 1965, oak. Above: "Lidded Box," ca. 1965, wood with enamel on copper lid.