The No. 1 thing that Brian Haas — pianist and founder of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey — wants to get across is gratitude. Of course, a lot of musicians say this. But Brian Haas perhaps has more to be thankful for than your typical grateful artist. Think about it. Haas started a jazz band in […]
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LIFE
The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art’s wine-tasting fundraiser, Toast to the Arts, raises money for student activities and special programming. Tasters receive a souvenir engraved wine glass, a cocktail of Cupcake Prosecco with St. Germain and a flight of white wines including Ferrari Carano Fume Blanc, Sofia Riesling, Eberle Muscato, Franciscan […]
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Brian Haas / Matt Chamberlain — Frames
That an artist would become enamored with divination after moving to the sprawling, mountain-laden countryside on the outskirts of Santa Fe, N.M., makes perfect sense. So, too, does Frames. While not improvised, per se, the album does toe the line between boundlessness and structure. A methodically composed exercise through the tempered scale, Frames clocks in […]
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Frame of mind
Brian Haas wasn’t always a jazz musician. The Tulsa native and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey ringleader was instead trained from a young age to play classical piano. Even within the more structured confines of classical music, though, Haas has always been an improviser at heart. “I would always get super nervous before competitions or recitals,” […]
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Seattle’s best
The Seattle-based band Pickwick has played some of the biggest venues in its hometown of Seattle — including opening day for the local professional baseball team, the Mariners — but they’ve never played a museum. It was an unexpected shock to frontman Galen Disston when the band was booked to play the Fred Jones Jr. […]
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Valley of the dolls
Delbridge Honanie’s Palhik Mana A Norman curator awakened six Native American spirits through representative paintings, textiles, jewelry, ceramics and carved figures for a Hopi art exhibition opening Friday at Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. As assistant curator of Native American and non-Western art, Heather Ahtone focused on half a dozen katsina spirits of the […]
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Fred Won’t Move Out
That might sound like emotionally exhausting stuff, but this small indie has a surprisingly light touch. Writer-director Richard Ledes is more interested in capturing the stirring moments of family life than he is in heavy-handed exploration. The elderly couple at the center, Fred and Susan (Ruby Sparks’ Elliott Gould and Choke’s Judith Roberts), reside in […]
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Best in Show
Although set amid the fictional Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show in Philadelphia, the comedy is really concerned with five sets of the contestants’ owners, including — but not limited to — a longtime married couple (Catherine O’Hara and co-writer Eugene Levy), two gay men (Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins) and a lonely woodsman (Guest). […]
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Banned in the USA
O. Louis Guglielmi’s Subway Exit (1946) When the topic of artistic censorship is raised, odds are that works cited include Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or just about anything by Robert Mapplethorpe. The United States government, however, in that golden era of anti-Commie paranoia, arguably did the best job of it by the disbanding and dismantling […]
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Citizen Fred — Citizen Fred
After several listens, I’m still trying to process the idea behind it: Is the Oklahoma City act a joke band? Is it ironic art? Is it music to pump iron to? Or am I just overthinking it? Several songs are wonderfully hard-charged aggro-rockers that make you want to drive your beat-up ’Vette 110 miles per […]