Arts & Culture Newsletter: Go behind the scenes with Elton John at the Troubadour

This week, check out an ‘In the Heights’ documentary, visit the reopened San Diego Museum of Art, learn more about Thomas Jefferson at UCTV and more

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Good morning, and welcome to the U-T Arts & Culture Newsletter.

I’m David L. Coddon, and here’s your guide to all things essential in San Diego’s arts and culture this week.

Fifty years ago, Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, took the stage at the Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood. His unforgettable American debut on Aug. 25, 1970, is etched forever in rock ‘n’ roll history. While only sparse actual footage of that night exists, the excitement was dramatized in the 2019 feature film “Rocketman.”

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But if you’d like to go behind the scenes of Elton John’s night at the Troubadour and of the days leading up to it, his official website takes you there with vintage photos, quotes and interviews, and a filmed snippet from the show to boot. There’s more than just a trip down Memory Lane behind this entertaining content. John recently expressed in an interview with BBC Radio 6 his concern over the future of the Troubadour, which like small clubs and music venues everywhere, is closed for now.

I’m concerned for and nostalgic about the Troubadour myself, having seen my very first nightclub show there — it was Cheech and Chong. I don’t recall the year, but I was young and wide-eyed. My last visit to “the Troub” was while writing a day-in-the-life story for the UT about Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. I remember being in the club’s totally unglamorous but historic confines thinking about all the luminaries who’d performed there. Like Sir Elton John.

Theater

Maybe it’s because I tired of all the slobber over the “Hamilton” film this summer, but in any event I can’t hold back any longer: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2008 musical “In the Heights” is even better than his groundbreaking “Hamilton.” I’ve seen both: “Hamilton” when it was on tour here in 2018, and before that stagings of “In the Heights” by the San Diego Rep in 2013 and Moonlight Stage Productions in 2017. “In the Heights,” which immerses us in the lives of Latinos living in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood, is a dynamic, propulsive musical-theater experience that to me outshines “Hamilton,” as much as I love that show too, in pure heart and soul.

So it’s disappointing that the long-awaited film version of “In the Heights” directed by Jon M. Chu and with Miranda as one of its producers, didn’t open this summer as planned. The new release date is June 18, 2021.

To tide me over, I discovered a “Great Performances” documentary titled “In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams.” It streams through tomorrow, so by all means catch it ASAP. Its 54 minutes begin with Miranda, who also starred in the original production, accepting the Tony Award that the show garnered. It then works back in time to the lead-up of its Broadway premiere. Miranda started writing the musical while a sophomore at Wesleyan University. “In the Heights,” he says during the documentary, is about characters “trying to find home and what that means to them.”

Art & Classical Music

Up close and personal but also local is the San Diego Museum of Art’s new performance series in partnership with the San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory. Streaming live Tuesdays at 6 p.m. on SDMA’s YouTube Channel, these mini-concerts introduce us to burgeoning young talent. The series began with violinist Lilian Franqui, who performed Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Opus 26.

While showcases for the musicians themselves, these musical videos may also inspire or encourage the young players in your own home. Next Tuesday’s offering features violinist Dasha Zerboni; Petunia and Ria Rizo on clarinet and flute follow on Sept. 15.

Visual art

After being closed for over five months, the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park is reopening to the public on Saturday, Sept. 5. (Members will be able to enter the museum premises tomorrow.) Two exhibitions are on display at the museum — “Juan Sanchez Cotan and Cauleen Smith: Mystical Time and Deceptive Light” and “Rembrandt and Printmaking in the Netherlands” — with a third opening on Sept. 11, “Mary Ellen Mark: Twins.”

Visual art, Part II

Kayo Beach from Rancho Bernardo applies paint during a demonstration
(File photo)

Adults looking to indulge creativity of their own should visit San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art’s #MuseumFromHome page. There they will find on short videos “Art Projects You Can Do At Home with Just A Few Materials” instructed and demonstrated by Open Studio contemporary artists.

In one, artist Mark Bradford shows how to do a self-portrait from song lyrics using among other things pens, pencils, poster paper and scissors. In another, Nigel Poor reveals how taking a walk with a bag in hand and picking up interesting objects along the way can turn into a connective art experience.

These little videos include “assignments” for viewers, but don’t be scared off by that word. I took on one of the art projects myself, and it never felt like work, or like school.

Dance & Multimedia

Arts District Liberty Station’s Virtual First Friday recurs tomorrow. In-studio dance accompanied by outdoor projections should make for provocative streaming from 8 to 9 p.m. in a collaboration between San Diego Ballet and the Disco Riot organization’s SPACE Alliance artists in residence.

UCTV

Photo of an original engraving from the American Portrait Gallery by AD Jones published in 1855.
(Getty Images)

University of California Television (UCTV) is making a host of videos available on its website during this period of social distancing. Among them, with descriptions courtesy of UCTV (text written by UCTV staff):

“Whatever Happened to Klimt’s ‘Golden Lady’?”: Many high-ranking Nazis considered themselves connoisseurs of art, and at their direction German forces stole thousands of artworks in conquered territories. In many instances returning them to their rightful owners after the war was not a straightforward process. One prominent example is the case of “Republic of Austria v. Altmann” which, following a long and sometimes tortuous path, resulted in the return of six paintings by Gustav Klimt to their owners, including his celebrated “Golden Lady.” This story as related here by E. Randol Schoenberg, grandson of composer Arnold Schoenberg, is part detective thriller, part courtroom drama, and altogether fascinating.

“Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination”: As a result of modern scholarship Thomas Jefferson is recognized as a complex, hypocritical figure, one riddled with contradictions. Jefferson has been alternately described as dauntingly complex or gifted but simple-minded. Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed has created a revealing character study that dispels many clichés about our third president. Gordon-Reed argues that, contrary to the widely-held belief that Jefferson in so opaque he’s unknowable, painstaking research has developed a portrait of Jefferson as “comprised of equal parts sun and shadow” and having a rich “empire of the imagination,” a philosophy constructed over a lifetime.

“The Red Tide of 2020”: Red tides are a frequent feature of coastal California between early spring and late summer. Put simply, a red tide is a “bloom” of phytoplankton that occur naturally in California’s coastal waters. Phytoplankton cells that cause a red tide contain pigments for capturing the sunlight needed for cell nourishment, growth, and reproduction. These pigments can give off a reddish color when millions of cells are concentrated in seawater along the coast. Bioluminescence expert Michael Latz from Scripps Institution of Oceanography discusses the most recent red tide event and explains why scientists still have many questions about this natural phenomenon.

And finally: Arts in the Time of COVID

In this week’s edition of Arts in the Time of COVID, Pacific magazine editor Nina Garin talks about San Diego Museum of Art reopening, Virtual First Fridays at Liberty Station and Art of Elan’s Musical Migrations. Watch it here.