Now that the Motion Picture Academy has handed out its Oscars to the performances and films judged the best of the year, it’s my turn to put out my choices. I make no bones about my general disapproval of the Academy Awards ceremony and the choices that often defy logic, and this year’s telecast was […]

The Sacramento Philharmonic continued its season last weekend with another Pops concert.  This one again drew what appeared to be a nearly capacity audience to the Community Center Theater in what was another indication that the orchestra is building a sizeable audience after its dark season last year. (One curious note is the insistence to […]

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” -Marc Anthony in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”               The recent death of long-time Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has elicited numerous tributes suggesting he was a great and exceedingly influential jurist who did much in his work on the Court to legitimize “textualism” and “originalism” as guiding […]

If the quality of the evening’s performances had been indicated by the entry of the musicians and conductor last weekend at the Mondavi Center (on the campus of U.C. Davis), the concert would have been a very dreary affair.  The full contingent of the Russian National Orchestra appeared only half awake as they plodded to […]