9/25 Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com

Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com - All articles from the Boston Phoenix Interview: Ken Burns September 24, 2009 at 2:31 pm On his latest PBS documentary, The National Parks After watching The National Parks: America's Best Idea , it would be easy to conclude that it all could have been said a lot faster. Ken Burns disagrees — but he's not just being defensive. Listen: Clif Garboden's complete interview with Ken Burns (mp3). Holy landscape! Ken Burns worships America's spiritual resource. By Clif Garboden. Slideshow: Images from The National Parks: America's Best Idea. After watching The National Parks: America's Best Idea, it would be easy to conclude that it all could have been said a lot faster. Ken Burns disagrees — but he's not just being defensive. The crux of the argument lies in our divergent relationships to the film — creator's versus the critic's. Where the filmmaker sees the successful execution of an unconventional approach to telling a complex story, a critic projects himself into the response (and attention span) of a casual viewer, and thereby judges anything on TV by the standards of convention. I quizzed Burns about his pacing, storytelling, techniques, and goals during a pre-broadcast promotional visit to WGBH, and got a lesson in non-traditional documentary filmmaking. It's a long film. What message do you want people to take away from it? For us, intention is to tell a good story. At the same time, we know very well that art has the possibility to galvanize action, and we would hope that it would just very simply drive people to the parks. About three years after the Civil War series, I was walking across the lawn of the visitors center at Gettysburg with the superintendent, and he stooped over and picked up a popsicle wrapper and waved it in my face. He said, "It's all your fault!" His attendance had gone up 200 to 300 percent and stayed there. We want every superintendent "angry" at us. When you did The War, you had people on your case saying you have to cover Native-Americans . . . you have to include whatever. Was that a factor here, in terms of including certain parks or states? In no way do we feel obligated in any film. What we were trying to do was tell the story of an idea which begins with spectacular natural scenery, evolves into saving archaeological sites, and then goes in to land carved out of private land — Acadia — into complicated habitats like the Everglades, transforming into saving historical sites like the battlefields of the Civil War, and then finally not only ecological and environmental places but also places of shame — Manzanar, where Japanese American were interned, as is Shanksville Pennsylvania where United flight 93 went down. Read more Coming home September 24, 2009 at 1:38 pm Terri Lyne Carrington gives the BeanTown Jazz Fest the blues Terri Lyne Carrington gives the BeanTown Jazz Fest the blues HOMEGIRL: Carrington is a Boston-area native who teaches at Berklee and is . . . connected. It makes sense that when the Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival — which concludes with two big concerts this weekend — looked close to home for an artistic director, it would turn to Terri Lyne Carrington. Not only does the 44-year-old Medford native have home-town cred, but her career has been broad and far-reaching, both in jazz and in pop, as a player, a composer, and a producer. In short, she's connected. A child prodigy who studied with Boston drum legend Alan Dawson, she received a scholarship to Berklee at age 11. She did stints as a TV band drummer (Arsenio Hall in the '80s, Quincy Jones's Vibe in the '90s), and she's been a regular in Herbie Hancock's bands since 1997. Her own More To Say . . .(Real Life Story: Next Gen) (E1 Entertainment) came out earlier this year. Four years ago, she started teaching at Berklee, and in 2006 she moved back to town from LA — after 22 years away. Berklee had jobbed out production since taking over the nine-year-old festival — which was started by South End impresario and restaurant owner Darryl Settles ? in 2007. When I get her on the phone at her Stoneham home (she's in the midst of moving to Woburn "as we speak"), she says Berklee vice-president of academic affairs Larry Simpson talked with her about getting a Berklee faculty member with local roots to take over. "And it might be cheaper for them too!" she speculates with a laugh. This year's festival officially began last week with the Regattabar appearances of Ahmad Jamal, but the signature events take place this Friday with the "Kickin' the Blues" concert at the Berklee Performance Center and then on Saturday with the event that started it all: an afternoon-long free South End block party at Columbus Ave between Mass Ave and Burke Street, with music on three stages. "Basically I wanted to have a blues-themed festival," says Carrington. "I guess I felt that so many of us have the blues these days," she laughs, "with the economy and things going on in the world. But I like the blues, and I feel it's actually uplifting. I wanted a feel-good kind of festival musically, and not get too heavy." Read more Photos: Thunderdome 3-D September 24, 2009 at 1:14 pm Thunderdome at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, September 18, 2009 Put the glasses on! Thunderdome 3-D at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, September 18, 2009. Photos by Dominic Casserly. VIDEO: Thunderdome XIV in 3D at Villa Victoria Arts Center. Read more Review: Bebel Gilberto | All In One September 24, 2009 at 10:25 am Verve (2009) There couldn't be a more apropos title than the one Bebel Gilberto has given her fourth album.   This email was sent to phoenixnews09@gmail.com.  Manage Your Account Don't want to receive this feed any longer? Unsubscribe here.