Tucson Weekly: City Week (February 4

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Thursday 4

BEADED BLISS. Take a gander at the serious bead scene when The Whole Bead Show returns for its sixth year.
City Week More than 75 bead makers will be on hand, along with assorted merchants, traders, and workshops in bead making and design. Local favorite Piney Hollow, a bead shop, will also operate a personal design table.
The event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today through Tuesday, February 9, in The Windmill Inn, 4250 N. Campbell Ave. Admission is $5 for the entire show. For details, call 1-800-292-2577.
FADED IMAGE. The long-gone comes into sharp focus today when Arizona Photographic Collectors host a lecture by ASU's old-photo expert, Jeremy Rowe.
For more than 20 years, Rowe has researched and collected photos focusing on the historical Southwest. He's culled his research into the book Photographers in Arizona 1850-1920. He's also worked with the Library of Congress in providing electronic access to collections in the American Memory Project.
Rowe gives a free lecture on his findings at 7:30 p.m. in the Sabbar Shrine Temple, 450 S. Tucson Blvd. Call 529-5072 for information.

Friday 5

SADDLE SOUNDS. Kick off the dust and kick up your heels when the seventh annual Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering, gets underway this weekend in Sierra Vista.
More than 60 cowboy poets and players from across the West will dish up three days of workshops and jam sessions, with a different headliner for each stage show. This year's top-shelf roster includes Tom Collins, The Desert Sons, Bud Strom, and Jill Jones and The Lone Star Chorale, among many others.
In addition, today Dolan Ellis of the Arizona Folklore Preserve will offer his Western Heritage Workshops, featuring plenty of artists and "favorite songs from the '40s through the '80s (1840s through 1880s, that is)."
The gathering runs daily through Sunday, February 7, at the Thunder Mountain Inn in Sierra Vista, and at the Arizona Folklore Preserve in nearby Ramsey Canyon. Admission price and event hours vary. For directions and details, call 1-800-288-3861.
INDIGENOUS RHYTHMS. Legendary Native American singer and activist John Trudell joins actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman (Dances With Wolves, Northern Exposure) in a benefit performance for the Yoemem Tekia Foundation. Joining them will be the Semalulukut Drum from the Pascua Yaqui Reservation.
Founded in 1989 by Yaqui traditional elders and other community members, the Yoemem Tekia Foundation helps preserve and perpetuate the Yaqui Indian language, history and culture among the tribe's youth.
Performance begins at 7 p.m. in the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway. Advance tickets are $10, available at Antigone Books, Bahti Indian Arts, Rainbow Moods, Ana's Music, and the UA American Indian Graduate Center. Tickets are $12 at the door. Call 883-7565 for information.

Saturday 6

FOOD FOR THOUGHT. February is Black History Month, and in celebration Plaza Palomino will host a performance by the Barbea Williams Performing Company in conjunction with its weekly Food Faire.
Williams' troupe is known for its adventurous, often cutting-edge dance explorations, and will blend dances with games, songs and folklore from the African cultures of Brazil, Cuba, Senegal, Guinea and Ghana.
Sule Greg Wilson, a drummer, dancer and storyteller of African lore, makes an appearance at the plaza on Saturday, February 20.
Today's free performances will run hourly from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Plaza Palomino, 2970 N. Swan Road. Call 795-1177 for details.
LUMINARY LARK. Local song-and-dance hands take center stage today for The Cavalcade of Stars revue.
Hosted by Tucson's own Larry Schnebly, the extravaganza will include performances by Rich Stanley's popular barbershop quartet, Vocal Command; the nationally recognized Hot Flashes tap dancers; South Pacific stylings by the Ernie Menehune Dancers; Linda Ackerman on ragtime piano; and the DansWest Young Adult Dancers.
Show time is 7 p.m. in the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway. Tickets are $15, available at Eegee's or by calling 751-8343.
TRADITIONAL TURF. The Dry Branch Fire Squad brings a fiery bluegrass sound to Tucson for a single performance tonight. Dubbed the "Most Entertaining Bluegrass Band" around, they combine old-time gospel harmonies, Carter Family songs and straight-ahead mountain music with the "hillbilly bull" of yuk-meister Ron Thomason.
Besides his dry wit, Thomason performs on vocals, mandolin, and guitar. He's joined by Suzanne Thomas on vocals, flat-picked guitar and claw-hammer banjo; Mary Jo Leet on harmony, lead vocals and rhythm guitar; and Bobby Maynard on banjo and fiddle.
This line-up continues drawing rave reviews. "Perhaps the key is the music's relaxed naturalism in combination with its passion, that straight-from-the-heart sincerity so rare anywhere in today's world," says the Dayton Daily News. "This is music of the tradition, but never limited by tradition."
Show time is
8 p.m. in the Berger Performing Arts Center, 1200 W. Speedway. Tickets are $15, $13 for seniors and In Concert! members, and are available at The Folk Shop, Antigone Books, The Book Mark, or by calling 327-4809.

Sunday 7

PERFECT BLEND. Artists Susan and Mike Delaney concoct a "unique collection of materials, experiences and expressions into a perfect blend" with Stirred Not Shaken, a new exhibit at the DeGrazia Gallery In the Sun.
Their influences range from cave art to pop art, with roots in clay evolving into large-scale wall sculpture, free-hanging relief work, clay masks, metal sculpture and jewelry. It's an eclectic, imaginative mix, leading up to more current work incorporating swamp cooler pans into acrylic paintings of colorful icons and whimsical characters.
The exhibit runs through February 19, with an opening reception from noon to 4 p.m. today, in the Sun Little Gallery, 6300 N. Swan Road. Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. For details, call 299-9191.
BUDDING CHORDS. Those acclaimed warblers of the Tucson Boys Chorus warm up their young voices for Classic Concert. Under the direction of Dr. Julian Ackerly, the chorus will perform a wide-ranging repertoire from Vivaldi, Tallis, Byrd, Bach, Schubert and Franck, and other works.
"The Tucson Boys Chorus is based on a centuries-old tradition of unchanged male voices known as the cambiata choir," Ackerley says. "This program will showcase the chorus...through the performance of this passionate and expressive choral music."
Show time is 3 p.m. in Our Mother of Sorrows Church, 1800 S. Kolb Road. Tickets are $8, available at the Boys Chorus office, the church, or by calling 296-6277.

Monday 8

KOSHER CROOKS. They had names like Bugsy Siegel, Lepke Buchalter, Dutch Schultz, Boo Boo Hoff and Meyer "Little Man" Lansky. And they had two things in common: They were all gangsters, and they were all Jews. Now Tel Aviv professor Robert Rockaway sheds an unconventional light on these colorful characters who played a major role in America's crime annals, and helped make them bigger and bloodier than ever before.
Rockaway is the author of several books, including The Jews of Detroit: From the Beginning, 1762-1914; Immigrants, Workers and Gangsters: Chapters in American Jewish History; and But--He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters.
He'll present a free lecture at 7:30 p.m. in the Jewish Community Center, southeast of the intersection of Dodge Boulevard and River Road. For information, call 299-3000.
BOILING OVER. Priscilla Barton turns the mundane into images of highly subjective and energized still life in Watched Pots, her new exhibit in the Hacienda del Sol Gallery.
"I use common objects--teapots, cups, clocks, lights, faucets--and attempt to get to their essence," Barton says. "Working from my imagination rather than from models, I explore through the still life genre not just what everyday objects look like, but how they feel, smell, resonate."
Those goals are likewise achieved through lush, saturated colors of oil pastels, to "explore what is beautiful, emotional, unconscious."
Watched Pots runs through March 2 in the Hacienda del Sol Gallery, 5601 N. Hacienda Del Sol Road. Hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Call 299-1501 for details.

Tuesday 9

RAW STYLE. By all accounts, Meryl Tankard has enjoyed an unprecedented career. A raw, visionary style of dance theater has firmly placed her at the forefront of dance in Australia, and across the planet.
Now Tankard and her Australian Dance Theatre come to Tucson for a performance of her 1996 masterpiece, Furioso. This passionate courtship dance pairs six duos of athletic male and female dancers, who soar through the air to the timeless strains of music by Arvo Pärt, Elliot Sharp and Henryk Gorecki. The work was called "sensual, violent and emotionally haunting" by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
"The images are hauntingly beautiful: lovers interlaced by Rodin statues swimming in weightless limbo; men elevating their partners on pedestals of air and contemplating them like awestruck Pygmalions," echoes the Village Voice. "The dancers perform with immense engagement and a kind of rough-edged virtuosity."
Show time is 7:30 p.m. in UA Centennial Hall, inside the main gate east of Park Avenue. Tickets are $20, half-price for students and children under age 18. Discounts are available for UA faculty and staff, and for UApresents subscribers. Tickets are available at the Centennial Hall box office, 621-3341.

Wednesday 10

BONEYARD VISTA. Get a bird's-eye view of our aviation past when the Pima Air and Space Museum unveils its new tours of Davis Monthan's "boneyard."
You'll get a peek at more than 5,000 aircraft, with docents providing information on the most significant ones, all from a comfy tour bus. It's a rich opportunity: These high-flying juggernauts have a combined value of roughly $27 billion. And not all them are dead. The mission of this place, officially called the Davis Monthan Air Force Base Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC) is to return as many as possible to the big blue yonder.
Five tours run daily, beginning at 9:30 a.m., from the Pima Air and Space Museum, 6000 E. Valencia Road. Admission is $5, $3 for children between ages 10 and 18, free for children ages 9 and under. For information, call 574-0462.
THREE STRINGS. They've been described in terms of "gusto" and "heart-stopping mastery." Now the stunning Eroica Trio brings its powerful virtuosity to town in a concert sponsored by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music.
One of the very few all-female chamber ensembles in music's top echelons, it's breaking age-old gender barriers in a large way. "Continuous dynamic flexibility is a hallmark of the group, but they live for the big moments," says the Los Angeles Times. "These people have it all: technique, temperament, interpretive savvy, good looks and a winning stage presence."
The Eroica Trio performs at 8 tonight in TCC Leo Rich Theater, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $14, $4 for students, available at the TCC box office, or by calling 577-3769.

City Week includes events selected by Calendar Editor Tim Vanderpool. Event information is accurate as of press time. The Weekly recommends calling event organizers to check for last-minute changes in location, time, price, etc. To have material considered, please send complete information at least 11 days prior to the Thursday issue date to: Tucson Weekly, P.O. Box 2429, Tucson, Arizona 85702, or fax information to 792-2096, or email us at listings@tucsonweekly.com.

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