Arts & Culture Newsletter: Celebrating 50 years of Queen with 50 weeks’ worth of free clips – The San Diego Union-Tribune

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

Im David L. Coddon, and heres your guide to all things essential in San Diegos arts and culture this week.

Weve all got a list of those bands we wish wed seen in concert but never did. At the top of mine would be Queen with Freddie Mercury.

Its hard to believe itll be 30 years this November since the passing of Mercury, he of arguably the most distinctive voice in rock n roll history. The 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was a diverting reminder of Mercurys talent, but a new clips show on Queens Official YouTube Channel honoring the groups 50-year anniversary is a gift for fans that will keep on giving for 50 weeks.

Queen The Greatest episodes are free to watch every Friday beginning at 5 a.m. Pacific time. Unfortunately, theyre only three or four minutes long, which is unsatisfying, though series producer Simon Lupton packs each one with a lot of content: music, of course, but also archival concert footage, photos and interviews.

The episodes will proceed in chronological order and are framed around a different Queen song each week. The debut on March 19 took us back to the bands early days, to 1973, and the breakthrough single Keep Yourself Alive. Besides hearing portions of the song, we learn that composer Brian May intended it to be slightly ironical, but its very difficult to take it as ironical. Performance shots are interwoven with anecdotes about the song and about where Queen was at the time.

All very interesting, but just as you get into it, its over. Have to wait for Episode No. 2. Oh well.

Thatll be on the Queen YouTube Channel tomorrow. Promised are clips of the bands 1974 concerts at the Rainbow in London and the story behind 1974s Killer Queen, written by the legendary Mercury.

Nathan Harrison is the subject of a new book and exhibit at the San Diego History Center called Nathan Harrison: Born Enslaved, Died a San Diego Legend.

(Courtesy of the San Diego History Center)

The incredible story of a local legend, Nathan Harrison, is told in words, photographs and excavated artifacts in a new exhibition from the San Diego History Center titled Nathan Harrison: Born Enslaved, Died a San Diego Legend.

Harrison, a freed slave whod been brought to California during the Gold Rush era, ultimately settled on Palomar Mountain, becoming not only the first Black homesteader in San Diego County but a celebrity to tourists who made the trip up the mountain to visit him.

For now, the exhibition can be explored virtually. When the Balboa Park-based SDHC opens next month, youll be able to experience up close the recreation of the cabin Harrison lived in and many of the artifacts uncovered by San Diego State professor and archaeologist Seth Mallios and his team of student excavators over the course of eight summertime digs. Harrisons story is not only a personal odyssey but a contextual look at race and ethnicity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

For more on the Nathan Harrison exhibition, see my story in this Sundays Arts+Culture section.

Jovan Adepo in Christa McAuliffes Eyes Were Blue by Kemp Powers captured at the Kirk Douglas Theatre as part of Center Theatre Groups L.A. Writers Workshop Festival: New Plays Forged in L.A.

(Courtesy of Center Theatre Group)

The film adaptation of playwright Kemp Powers One Night in Miami, for which he wrote the screenplay, earned Powers an Oscar nomination. Having really enjoyed it, I looked forward eagerly to streaming a staged reading of Powers new play Christa McAuliffes Eyes Were Blue.

Its not fair to compare one work by a playwright to another, but this Center Theatre Group presentation suggests that some smoothing out is in order. The staged reading was filmed at L..s Kirk Douglas Theatre last November. (It can be streamed for $10 through April 4.) Its premise is an intriguing one: Bernard (Bear) and Steven (Sevvy) Gentry are twins, though the former is Black and the latter White. The contrasting direction of their lives and deteriorating of their sibling relationship are the basis of this plays dramatic tension. Add a former racist schoolmate who becomes a judge presiding over the incarcerated Bernards fate and the stakes rise even higher.

But neither the performance of Jovan Adepo as Bernard nor the taut direction by Jennifer Chang can overcome a script that attempts to tread too much territory in 75 minutes. The narrative connection between Bernard and the fate of space shuttle Challenger astronaut McAuliffe feels forced and we never really get a firm grasp of what the troubled young man wants, or needs, most.

Art of Elans Open Air concert streaming on the evening of March 16 from the San Diego Museum of Arts May S. Marcy Sculpture Garden in Balboa Park.

(Courtesy photo by Gary Payne)

As I watched Art of Elans Open Air concert streaming on the evening of March 16 from the San Diego Museum of Arts May S. Marcy Sculpture Garden in Balboa Park, I couldnt help wishing Id been there in person: the music (performed by the Hausmann Quartet and members of the San Diego Symphony); the surrounding sculptures; the California Tower in the distance; the sliver of moon overhead. Someday, right?

In the meantime, this 74-minute performance can be enjoyed in your home for $10 (or for free if youre an SDMA member). In a program that includes works by Terry Riley, Hannah Lash and Jonathan Bailey Holland, the best is saved for last: the lovely five-movement piece Make Prayers to the Raven composed by environmental activist John Luther Adams. The suite written for violin, harp, cello, flute and percussion is a fitting complement to the serenity of Balboa Park, especially in the moonlight.

Fleetwood Mac is shown on June 17, 1968, when their instrumental single Albatross was topping the British charts. The bands line up then was, from left, Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and John McVie. Fleetwood spent several years planning the early 2020 London tribute concert honoring Green, who died six months later at the age of 73.

(Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Few music legends have burned as brightly or faded as quickly and tragically as the late Peter Green, the brilliant guitarist, singer and songwriter who in 1967 founded the English blues band Fleetwood Mac and steered it to rock stardom before quitting in 1970. He is saluted by an all-star lineup in the new concert film, DVD and double-album, Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac, which was held in 2020. It debuts April 24 on-demand on nugs.net and is released April 30 in Blu-Ray, CD and vinyl formats. Guests range from ZZ Tops Billy F. Gibbons, Metallicas Kirk Hammett and Oasis co-founder Noel Gallagher to The Whos Pete Townshend, Aerosmiths Steven Tyler, original Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer and three current members of the band Green once led Fleetwood, Christine McVie and Neil Finn. Read more in this story by the Union-Tribunes George Varga.

(Clockwise from left) Ahmed K. Dents, Monique Gaffney, William BJ Robinson, Kimberly King, Joy Yvonne Jones

(Photos by K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

On Sunday, the Union-Tribune published its Theaters Day of Reckoning special project, which offered San Diego theater leaders and local Black theater artists the opportunity to talk and write about their views on the topic of social justice in the industry. Heres what local theaters as well as five San Diegans had to say about equity, diversity and inclusion, with reporting by the Union-Tribunes Pam Kragen.

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):

Tales of Human History Told by Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA: Its well known that as anatomically modern humans dispersed out of Africa, they encountered and mated with other hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. The ability to identify and excavate extinct hominin DNA from the genomes of contemporary individuals reveals considerable information about human history and how those encounters with Neanderthals and Denisovans shaped the trajectory of human evolution. Princeton Universitys Joshua Akey explains how catalogs of surviving hominin lineages reveal insights into hybridization, that gene flow was widespread in both time and geography, and presents new evidence of an early out-of-Africa dispersal of modern humans.

The Talmud as Icon: The Babylonian Talmud is a post-biblical Jewish rabbinic text, written in a hybrid of Hebrew and Aramaic, that is part scripture and part commentary. It is often ambiguous to the point of incomprehension, and its subject matter reflects a narrow scholasticism that should not have broad appeal; yet the Talmud has remained in print for centuries and is more popular today than ever. Northwestern University scholar and author Barry Scott Wimpfheimer describes the books origins and structure, its centrality to Jewish law, its mixed reception history, and its golden renaissance in modernity as an iconic symbol of Jewishness.

Sleep, Inflammation and Metabolism: Proper sleep is crucial for promoting good health, and research has documented the powerful influence of sleep disturbance on the risk of infectious disease, the occurrence and progression of several major medical illnesses, and the incidence and severity of depression. Aric Prather is an expert in the study of stress resilience, inflammation, depression, sleep and longevity. He examines the biological mechanisms of sleep disturbance with an emphasis on the implications of antiviral and proinflammatory immune responses for chronic infectious, inflammatory, and neuropsychiatric diseases. Prather also discusses therapeutic interventions as effective strategies to improve sleep.

The Shell, the San Diego Symphonys new, year-round outdoor concert and events venue.

(Courtesy San Diego Symphony)

In this weeks edition of Arts in the Time of COVID, Pacific editor Nina Garin talks about the latest round of Conrad Prebys Foundation grants, La Jolla Music Societys outdoor concerts and the return of movie theaters. Watch it here.

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Arts & Culture Newsletter: Celebrating 50 years of Queen with 50 weeks' worth of free clips - The San Diego Union-Tribune