Through Saturday, Dec. 20 at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston's Theater Offensive is reviving its production of Theater Arts Assistant Professor Brenda Cotto-Escalera's Motherlands, first staged in May 1996. Based on a story by Professor Cotto-Escalera (who also directs) and Noelia Ortiz Cortes (who also acts), Motherlands explores the relationships between a young Puerto Rican woman, her mother and her girlhood soulmate, using stylized poetry and traditional Puerto Rican music. The cast includes architecture senior Lin-Ann Ching. For more information, call 426-0320.
MIT Lecturer Mark Harvey and his Aardvark Jazz Orchestra will celebrate their 25th annual Christmas concert and the release of a Christmas CD -- all to benefit Rosie's Place, a sanctuary for homeless women -- on Sunday, Dec. 21 at 7:30pm in Old South Church (645 Boylston St., Boston). The ensem-ble's CD, "An Aardvark Christmas," includes vocal settings of Appalachian and African-American carols, an up-tempo treatment of "O Come, O Come Emanual," and a calypso-flavored "Virgin Mary Carol." The concert will feature guest vocalist Sheila Jordan and the premier of a new composition by Mr. Harvey. Tickets are $15 and $25. For more information, call 442-9322.
Associate Professor Evan Ziporyn earned high praise for the Boston Musica Viva's premiere of his Dreams of a Dominant Culture. "'Dreams' mystified as surely as it delighted (what a precise ethnological ear, what transformations) and mystified again (how many things are going on here anyway?). It joins the 'must hear again' list," wrote the Boston Globe's Richard Buell.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 10, 1997.
