Lang Lang, the rock star pianist, is now the pre-eminent virtuoso soloist on the classical concert scene, and he provided ample proof of that fact in his bravura performance at the Mondavi Center (on the campus of U.C. Davis) last month.  Performing a program of Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin, he electrified his instrument and his […]

“Baseball breaks your heart; it is designed to break your heart.               The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins;               It blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and the evenings;               And then, as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone.” […]

Carly Mensch must have wanted to accomplish something meaningful in writing “Oblivion.”  At least that’s the feeling we had after sitting through the unenlightening production of her play at the B Street Theatre this week.  But whatever intention she had was lost on us in the Buck Busfield directed two-act production. The four-member cast tries […]

In “My Beloved World,” Sonia Sotomayor provides a template for the kind of revelation that every Supreme Court Justice should provide.  The book, which is as decent and inspirational a self-portrait as I have ever read, presents as close to a complete picture of the current Justice as I think she could have written.  In […]