Joe Lovano

Greater Boston Arts explores the art of jazz improvisation with one of its most accomplished practitioners, two-time Down Beat musician of the year and Berklee College of Music professor Joe Lovano. In the classroom, Joe leads his students in the fundamentals of group improvisation. Fellow Berklee faculty member Matt Glaser likens improvisation to an engrossing conversation, one speaker picking up on the threads of the last. Joe's improvisational explorations, be it with students or professionals, alone or with an orchestra, result in his signature sound, a complex layering of volume dynamics along with an extraordinary rhythmic freedom.

Joe Lovano plays with the Berklee String Orchestra
Berklee Performance Center
136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston
April 29, 2002
For event information call (617) 747-2261 or visit www.berkleebpc.com.

Joe Lovano plays with the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble
MIT's Kresge Auditorium, Cambridge
48 Massachusetts Avenue (across from 77 Massachusetts Avenue on the MIT campus)
May 10, 2002
For event information call (617) 253-2826.

Photographing Boston

Greater Boston Arts takes to the streets of Boston with long-time photographer Peter Vanderwarker as he reveals the connections between the city's most beloved buildings and the historical architecture of Europe. Taking large format photographs of Boston's 19th Century Custom House, for example, Peter demonstrates the direct influence between its massive unadorned columns and the Republican architecture of ancient Rome. A new exhibit of Vanderwarker's original photos of local and European architecture entitled "Where in the World Does Boston Come From?" illuminates a variety of such historical borrowings. In critic Robert Campbell's view, Bostonians assimilated Europe's architectural tradition to express their own uniquely American cultural values. For more on some of the cultural messages implicit in Boston's architecture visit the highlight.

The Bostonian Society presents
Where in the World Does Boston Come From?
Old State House Museum
206 Washington Street, Boston
Through March 2004
For more exhibit information call (617) 720-1713 or visit www.bostonhistory.org.
For more information on Peter Vanderwarker visit www.vanderwarker.com.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, writer/performance artist BJ Goodwin experienced the normal reactions - fear, denial, anger - as well as the response she has had to every significant event in her life, the impulse to create art. Through extended sequences from BJ's one-woman performance piece "Keeping A Breast," Greater Boston Arts explores how one artist transforms personal tragedy into an affecting theatrical experience. On stage, BJ enacts the course of her struggle with cancer: her worries about her own culpability in bringing on the cancer, the comic absurdity of some "alternative" therapies, and the emotional devastation of the eventual diagnosis of last stage cancer. Theatre Director Michael Rohd adds his reflections on the mechanisms artists use to turn autobiography into art. As BJ puts it, the work is less about one woman's struggle than about the universal condition of human suffering, "and we all suffer in our own ways."

BJ Goodwin has no upcoming scheduled performances in the Boston area but will be conducting "Telling Your Stories," a free reservation-only workshop for women with breast cancer.

"Telling Your Story" workshop
The Wellness Community
1320 Centre Street, Newton Centre
May 4, 2002
For reservations call (617) 332-1919
For more information visit www.wellnesscommunity.org.