A lifetime of music and all that jazz
Stan McDonald's music career began in secret. The place was Needham, about 1952, and the routine went like this:
Still a teen, he would tell his parents he was going to the movies. Then, he would lower his saxophone out of his bedroom window with a rope, stroll innocently out the front door, retrieve his instrument, and head straight for the old Log Cabin jazz club in Dedham. There, he listened, learned, and, jammed into the night.
''It was just one big party," he said. ''That's where I met some really terrific musicians, the most famous of which was Tommy Benford, who had played with Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet, two of the giants."
These days, McDonald, 70, couldn't sneak to a gig even if he wanted to because, well, he made a name for himself (mainly during his 10-year tenure touring worldwide with the New Black Eagle Jazz Band in the '70s). Now local fans of traditional jazz know exactly where to find him, and that's every third Tuesday at the Sherborn Inn with his Blue Horizon Jazz Band.
Known for his Bechet-like stylings on soprano sax, McDonald gets equal praise for his soul and precision on clarinet.
''When the band gets fueled and cooking, caution goes to the wind, and when it clicks, it really clicks. We can really be flying and not come down for a couple of days. It's the audience that fuels it," said McDonald, who lives in Sherborn and despite his years spent as director of library services at Framingham State College (until retiring in 1996), still talks like a club cat.
The scene at the inn is not quite as crazy as in
But despite the Colonial setting, Jelly Roll, Louis Armstrong, and the spirit of Dixieland live on at the inn. Ellen McDonald, Stan's wife and manager, runs the weekly Tuesday night jazz series, which she founded in 1994. Though not a musician, she shares her husband's love of Golden Era jazz, or as Stan calls it, ''jazz that swings." So that's what she books.
Local favorites such as Lost in the Sauce and the Wolverine Jazz Band perform regularly, and Sunday concerts bring in top talents such as British pianist Neville Dickie and tenor sax player Scott Hamilton.
''I was very careful when I started recruiting to get high-quality musicians, and that's why we're able to draw some of the best," said Ellen McDonald. ''Nobody doubts that they're going to be in good company here."
Blue Horizon Jazz Band performs 7 p.m. Tuesday, and every third Tuesday of the month (except December), at the Sherborn Inn, 33 North Main St. $10. Call 508-655-9521, visit www.sherborninn.com, listen at www.bluehorizonjazzband. com.
SNYDER RETROSPECTIVE -- When Joan Snyder's paintings first caught the attention of critics in 1971, many were surprised such bold works were by a woman. Four decades later, her art has evolved in form but the force of her painting still infuses every canvas.
Tomorrow, the retrospective ''Joan Snyder: A Painting Survey" opens at the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham. It marks the museum's new mission to not only show rising and accomplished regional artists but to also present the work of the world-renowned. The exhibition, curated by the Danforth's new director, Katherine French, opened earlier this year at The Jewish Museum in New York.
The New York-based artist's works, which are held by many major collections, are not easily corralled under one label. ''People call her an abstract expressionist, or a neo-expressionist, or a feminist artist, but her work you can't really fit into any of those nutshells. These are simply very beautifully realized examples of mixed medium that use a lot of feminist imagery. Her brushstroke is very strong; it's very dynamic," said French. ''She is a painter's painter."
The approximately 30 paintings on exhibit follow Snyder's evolution from her early studies in loosely brushed stripes and squares to her more recent, color-rich abstracts filled with organic forms that sometimes seem to bubble up onto the canvas. Other works move through the more literal, with image and word collages creating what Snyder calls a female sensibility, described in her artist's statement as ''layers, words, membranes, cotton, cloth, rope, repetition, bodies, wet, opening, closing, repetition. . ."
''This is not cynical work. It's emotive and very deeply felt and grows out of expression," said French.
''Joan Snyder: A Painting Survey" runs tomorrow through Feb. 5 at the Danforth Museum of Art, 123 Union Ave., Framingham. Artist's talk 2 p.m. Sunday. Opening reception tonight 6-8. Museum admission $5, $4 for seniors/students, free for kids under 12. Hours are Wednesday-Thursday, noon-8 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Call 508-620-0050 or visit www. danforthmuseum.org.
ONE WORD: MOZART -- For a while, the ''Mozart effect" theory (that listening to Mozart makes you smarter), had everyone from schools to chicken farmers hoping the masterworks would super-size the minds (or egg production) of their charges.
''While that theory has been questioned since, there's no question that Mozart's music reaches deeply into us. He struck a universal chord," said Mark Churchill, conductor of the Hudson-based Symphony Pro Musica.
So, to celebrate Mozart's 250th birthday next year, the approximately 70-member mixed professional and amateur orchestra is featuring Mozart this season. First up is ''The Mozart Legacy" concert this weekend, which opens with his Symphony No. 31, continues with a solo by 17-year-old cellist Nan-Cheng Chen's on Barber's Cello Concerto, and concludes with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3 in D Major.
''We called this concert 'Mozart's Legacy' largely because Tchaikovsky's favorite composer was Mozart," said Churchill, who lives in Newton and is a dean at New England Conservatory.
But the Cello Concerto traces a different legacy. Barber wrote the piece for Churchill's own ''last and greatest" cello teacher, Raya Garbousova, who premiered the work in the late '40s. Churchill learned the piece from her, and now his own student, Chen, will perform it.
''I think everybody will be blown away by this young man's talent and musicality and depth of feeling," Churchill said of Chen, who attends both the Walnut Hill School in Natick and the conservatory. ''It's a contemporary piece, but it's very tuneful and very listenable with a lot of exuberance and energy and gorgeous romantic melodies."
The symphony regularly features student soloists. ''You get a freshness in the performance, of first love and discovery, where young people are finding some of the great works for the first time," he said.
Symphony Pro Musica performs 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Hudson High School, 69 Brigham St., Hudson, and 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Mill Pond School, 6 Olde Hickory Path, Westborough. Tickets are $17, $14 for seniors, free for students, $2 discount for advance purchase. Call 978-562-0939 or visit www.symphonypromusica.org.
SISTER ACTS -- ''Crimes of the Heart" is a play with a resume. It took Broadway by storm in 1981, then won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best new American play, and went on to take the Pulitzer. In short, it's the work that put Mississippi writer Beth Henley on the map. Not bad for a comedy about three small-town sisters who haven't exactly gone far in their lives.
''It's very funny, but it's also uplifting," said theater department director Nora Hussey of Wellesley, who directs the play at Wellesley College this weekend. ''There's so much wrong in these women's lives, but there's one line when one just says, 'We've gotta find a way to deal with these bad days.' Their spirits are unquenchable, and I hung my whole approach to the show on that one line."
As with most Wellesley College Theatre productions, the cast of students is augmented by a few professional guest actors. They'll all be performing in the round, an unusual staging Hussey chose because ''it captures that their lives are going 'round and 'round, almost moving in circles."
Acme Theater in Maynard takes the three-sisters' comedy route with ''Anton in Show Business," starting this weekend. This quirky send-up of American theater follows the adventures of a soap star, a jaded New Yorker, and a naive schoolteacher set to star in a doomed production of Chekhov's ''Three Sisters."
The all-female cast of seven has made for a sisterly atmosphere behind the scenes. ''We laugh a lot," said director Michelle Aguillon of Medford. ''There are a lot of insider theater jokes, but this will play well to anyone who's seen a show."
Other than how it all ends, the other mystery with this play is just who wrote it. Jane Martin is the pseudonym credited. Rumor has it, however, that Martin is not one but rather a whole group of phantom writers.
''Crimes of the Heart" runs tonight through Sunday at Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre, 106 Central St., Wellesley College. Tickets are $12, $10 for seniors/students. Call 781-283-2000. ''Anton in Show Business" runs tomorrow through Dec. 3 at Acme Theater in ArtSpace Maynard, 61 Summer St., Maynard. Tickets are $15, $14 for seniors/students. Call 978-823-0003 or visit www.acmetheater. com. Send news of your arts-related events to westarts@globe.com.
