Saturday with Santa, Solstice and Star Wars

My family -- we get around the Fort. We didn't get to Brave Combo on Friday as we originally planned -- thanks to an incredibly late night with the Chesapeake Ad Decoder, who I am pleased to report is safe, happy and living in a base camp safely ensconced underneath millions of gallons of Rahr Stormcloud IPA.

However, we did make up for it with a long, quite festive Saturday night, starting in Arlington Heights with a holiday party invitation to join our friends Jurgen and Barbara for their annual holiday open house, where the only rule is you must show up or we will talk about you. With that in mind, how can you not show up?

But that wasn't the only reason. It was a great opportunity to get to meet the parents of my daughter's friends outside of a PTA or Auction committee meeting for a change. And for the kids to have flashlight wars. And to eat tamales.

One nice bit of serendipity was running into my old friend June Naylor again. You probably know her from her excellent food reportage for the Star-Telegram. I hadn't seen her in a few years, so it was nice to get a chance to chat again.

Of course, the evening was just getting started. We left about 9 to meet Kevin from FortWorthology at Don Young's Winter Solstice celebration in East Fort Worth.

The Solstice celebration is kind of an annual thing for Don, but this is first one I have attended. This year, Fort Worth sculptor Deran Wright crafted a dragon from vegetables and straw to preside over the heart of the campfire. That's my daughter -- who I adopted from the planet Vulcan -- with her new, soon-to-be-immolated friend.


It's traditional that everyone bring something to burn in the fire. This can be firewood, an old chair, a discarded cello or a scrap of paper engraved with a secret wish for the new year. I scribbled a wish from a page in my notebook and tucked it safely in the straw before the blaze.

There is something primal and transfixing about a bonfire. The warmth against the chill of the evening is part of it, but there is also something kind of peaceful and unifying about it. For more photos, a full photo essay is available at West and Clear.


I also had a chance to meet Herb Levy and have a long talk with him about music and the future of Fort Worth. He is a very interesting guy and I plan to offer an interview with him in the near future.

Of course, the evening was not over yet. Kevin offered to screen the legendary Star Wars Holiday Special and we just could not say no. I don't know what the opposite of a holiday classic is, but the Star Wars Holiday Special is definitely that. It is an indescribable horror that I am still traumatized by. To call it bad would be an insult to bad things everywhere. It is two hours of indescribable awfulness.

Carrie Fisher is coked out of her mind, Mark Hamill is wearing enough makeup to make him look like Jessica Simpson, Bea Arthur sings and Art Carney walks around with his shirt unbuttoned to his navel.

The only thing that made it watchable was the Rifftrax commentary by former MST3K hosts Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. Without this, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Even with it, watching it is a dicey proposition.

Thanks to everyone who made it such a joyful Saturday night. Merry Christmas and Happy Solsticing!

Feldman's Why Patterns? at The Modern

If you missed the Morton Feldman deal at the Van Cliburn recital space on Sunday, you can still get your Feldman on. You can catch Why Patterns? featuring Elizabeth McNutt, flute; Steven Harlos, piano; Christopher Deane, percussion, Saturday afternoon at 2 at The Modern, 3200 Darnell Street. Admission is free. The concert is presented in conjunction with the exhibition "Declaring Space: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein."

Sez Herb Levy: "Music that matches the art of Rothko, Newman, Fontana and Klein:/ Why Patterns?/ declares a space that reflects these vast canvases. Feldman, a personal friend of Rothko and Newman, creates an ethereal music inspired particularly by Rothko: in Feldman's own words, "the degrees of stasis found in Rothko were perhaps the most significant elements that I brought to my music from painting." Its ever-shifting textures draw the listener from the surface beauty of a few simple melodies into the inner life of sound. In this meditation, time and space become one.

Herb Levy's Fine Tuning

Getting people to listen to classical music isn't an easy sell. Getting people to listen to contemporary classic music like is an even tougher job.

But Herb Levy didn't get the memo. The avant garde music promoter brings us a new series of contemporary music concerts at Van Cliburn Recital Hall. Called Other Arts, the series begins with a concert by pianist Louis Goldstein, who will perform Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories (1983) on Sunday, and Cage's Sonatas & Interludes for prepared piano on Monday. For an overview of Levy's work on this series, check out the FWWeekly story.

Both concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. at Van Cliburn Recital Hall in the Maddox-Muse Center, 330 4th Street just east of Bass Hall in downtown Fort Worth. Tickets are
available through Bass Ticketing (817) 212-4280 or at the door on the evening of the performances. Tickets $23, $18 for students and seniors. If you buy tickets to both concerts, there's a discount of $5/per ticket ($36 for both concerts; $26 for students and seniors).