S1: It's time for Midday Edition on KPBS. Today's arts and culture show features a jazz musician , a new exhibit and exploration of our post-truth era. And your weekend preview. I'm Jade Hindman with conversations that keep you informed , inspired and engaged. Pianist Omar Sosa on what jazz means in his life.
S2: For me , the jazz is a philosophy , the philosophy of freedom.
S1: And Beth Accomando takes us to the new Doctor Who exhibit , and Julia Dixon Evans sits down with author Emily Greenberg in the weekend preview. That's ahead on Midday Edition. If you've ever heard Omar Sosa play , you can tell pretty easily that his music defies genre. The highly acclaimed pianist and bandleader has been nominated for four Grammy Awards over the course of his career , and today , he's recognized as one of the most versatile jazz artists of his generation. Later this month , Omar will bring his virtuosity to San Diego , where he'll perform at the Scripps Research Auditorium with his band Cuarto Americanos. Omar joins me now to talk about his upcoming concert and his own musical journey. Omar , welcome to midday. Hello.
S2: Hello. Hello. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be to be with you and the honor. So thank you. Thank you for for the opportunity.
S1: Well , it's an honor to have you here. And we really appreciate you taking the time. So , I mean , this is going to be your first time performing in San Diego , or at least the first time in a while.
S2: It's actually the first time. Is the first time. You know , I was I was talking with my manager , Scott Price , to , to to check if I was playing before. And he told me , no , Homer is your debut. So what ? I'm I'm so happy I've been here about San Diego for a long , long time. I have a good friend. Good friend and a great musician from from Oakland , California , John Santos. And we always we always talk about San Diego because he loves San Diego. And he told me , oh , man , you need to go to San Diego. You're going to love San Diego. And now finally we have the opportunity to play to play there. I'm I'm really excited. I'm really , really sad. I'm curious too.
S1: What's so interesting to me is that you started off , um , in , in playing symphonic music , but , you know , to hear your music now it's got , it's it really covers the African diaspora. I mean , tell me about that. How did you go from , like , symphonic music to. Oh , gosh , using your your piano as a drum. Almost.
S2: Well , you know , it's it's basically I'm a percussion player who loves to play piano. When I , when I switched to the piano , the first thing I discovered is what the piano percussive instrument. But now instead , to play with two hands , I need to play with ten fingers. So I started to to say , well , how I can play piano if I don't have the classical technique I have as a percussion player. So I started to study by myself hours and hours and hours , and in the same time I started to to develop some knowledge about my Afro-Cuban tradition. I went deep in the tradition , in the rumba , in the , in the in the Bata drums. In the beginning I tried to reproduce with the piano the rhythm. And I was here in the ceremonies , in the traditional Afro-Cuban ceremony. And later , by later , I fall in love with the sound , with the sound I create. But I , I was , I was maniac study hours seven , eight , nine hours. Because , you know , I started late , I thought really late. So later by later I started to to to listen to listen a African music and I and I see and I see how close our tradition was , was with a , with the African tradition. So when I went to Angola because I , I went to the war in Angola and Ethiopia and Congo. I discovered the African drum , the purple African drum and bugaboo , all these big drums. And I say , wow , when I listen the African music , I say , that's the music I want to play with the classical , with the classical harmony.
S1: Yeah , well , let me , let me do this because I want I want our listeners to kind of get a clip and an idea of , of your music and all the techniques and influences that you've kind of put together to create it. This clip is El Toro. Yeah. You can just really hear it all coming together there. Um , Omar , you know , you you eventually left Cuba and have since moved all over.
S2: Beautiful in Ecuador. I discovered how important was my Afro-Cuban tradition for me to have a One direction in the way I compose music ? Why ? Because when I arrived to Ecuador , I remember one of my friends told me , Omar , you need to. You need to go to the coast , because in the coast you're going to have black people. And these black people have won one. Entertain a music in a way. It's kind of it's kind of close to the music you play , because I was playing with them a drums and percussion and , and , and I and I played in the Afro-Cuban rhythm. And I went to a Smeralda is in the coast in the , in the , in the coast of , of Ecuador , the Pacific coast. And I discovered the Afro , Afro Ecuadorian tradition. And I fall in love with this tradition , and I make one of my records of what I , I , I learned in the coast of , of Ecuador , and I mix with the Afro-Cuban tradition. So this connection , this connection with the , with the Ecuadorian music was , in a way , the first big flag , I get for me to arrive to the music I do today. Wow.
S1: Wow. Well , you know , earlier you mentioned that you were in Angola , and it reminds me that you recently debuted a new documentary called Omar Sosa's 88 Well-Tuned Drums. And I know in that documentary it highlighted your time in Angola.
S2: You was. It's a lot of memories , you know ? I'm. I'm alive. I'm not dead most of the time. You know , when when you see a documentary about about some musicians , of some artists , sometimes they are dead. But when ? When I started a comment , I say , wow , I did this , I was there , I was , yeah , I was in the world , I almost died , I almost die in the world because I was really close , I really close , and actually we were so naive. We don't even so we don't even put in our mind , in our body who was in the middle of the world ? Um , and we listen , you , we listen to the bullets , the bombs , all this stuff , all this crazy sound. I was young , I was in my 20s. And I need to say , peace is love , and love is peace known to the world. Settle nothing. War don't bring , don't bring has been positive , at least for a human being like me. Um.
S1: Um. You know , that is beautiful. I want to play another piece from one of your earlier records. This is actually part of the documentary soundtrack. The song is Cha Cha du Nord.
S2: Mhm. Because when I go away , I try to figure out why or what , what , what I was here before and it don't come again. You know sometime , sometime I'm in a train. is something happened over only the plane. And now we have we have we have phones. And you can you can record the idea. You can say baa baa baa baa baa baa baa baa baa or whatever comes to your mind. But back in the day was no fun. So , you know , I always have a pen and a piece of paper and every time I hear some ideas or some melodies , if I have the piano in front of me , is is better. But a lot of time I don't have the piano. And sometimes what happened is I'm in a dream and I hear a melody and I hear something , and if I be able to wake up is one of the most beautiful process because you wake up and you get the idea really clear , and you write and after when you play , you see what this , what this melody come from. this simple. Yeah. When the spirit , when the spirit talk is better. Listen. And that's one of the most beautiful moment. But no , but doesn't happen all the time.
S1: But every now and again. But you know , your method of just sort of writing things down as they come to you. It's so true that , like you , you could get an idea from a dream or you're just sitting there in this idea comes to you and it's like , if you don't capture it , if you don't write it down , it just disappears. It dissipates , you know ? Yeah. So I can totally relate to that. You know , you don't necessarily consider yourself a jazz musician.
S2: You know , for me , the jazz is a philosophy. The philosophy is freedom. And this is why I consider there myself. Jazz musician ? No. Just player. Mhm. I don't play bebop. I don't play straight ahead. I don't play a , you know , avant garde jazz. I use the philosophy. For me the philosophy was dry my life , not only the music , you know , because I love freedom. I love to play what came to me , what came to me. And this is just all the just players. When they improvise what they do , they analyze it. They they analyze a message and they and they recreate one idea based in , in what the spirit tell them based on their knowledge , of course. And this is why I say jazz for me , is a philosophy. And I don't say this , I just follow what the master you used to say to learn this monk Mark used to say , jazz is freedom. And the first time I hear this , I say , okay , so in that , in that scenario , I'm a jazz musician and I love , I , I love to be free. It's something really difficult , really difficult. But he said it's a challenge. Every day when I sit on the piano , it's a challenge to be free because it's a lot of , you know , a lot of information we carry in our mind , and sometimes it's not what the spirit we want to say is , is basically what you carry in your mind and your skills. And it's important to be free enough inside of you to don't use all the skills you you study is basically to say what the spirit try to tell you or do what the spirit would tell you.
S1: And I know also that that your spirituality plays a big role in your music. Tell me a little bit about that too.
S2: Well , you know , I'm , I'm , I'm a part of of the Afro-Cuban. A tradition is called alchemy , which other people call Santeria and is basically is is the connection with the spirit and the ancestors , the spirit in light and the ancestors. I'm basically , you know , I'm a messenger because , you know , I'm part of one tradition who all the time invoke the spirit , you know ? And , you know , I talk about a lot of spirit , a lot about spirit , because it's what drives my life. You know , when I , when I , when I write music is because I'm free to shine a light , a message. And this , this tradition is giving me the opportunity to be more close to my African tradition. And this is one of the reasons I star in the tradition. Because in my dreams , in the ceremony , I can go. I can go close. Close to the tradition , to the Afro-Cuban tradition. When I'm dancing , you know , the way I dance. I'm , you know , I'm I'm not a professional dancer is sometimes I dance some type of dance , I say. What I learned is , you know , I love to dance , because for me , dance is one of the most important thing. And I advise every single human being to dance , because when you move your body and in more relaxed and yourself , they're more relaxed because you move , they move with you and and you are more relaxed. And when you're more relaxed , you can receive whatever message come to you are more clear because you are open , because you are not tense. Your muscles are not tense. Your brain and more relaxed. And your endorphins , um , they they are more. They are more alive. They're more open to receive. And you're happy when you're happy , all what you see always come to you. Come in that kind of line between this kind of amount. And for me , they have a given tradition. It gave me the opportunity to respect my tradition and to every single minute think on that. I come from this. I'm part of this. My my role is try to listen voices and try to reproduce that voice through music , through notation. Mhm. And that this is what I do.
S1: I love that , I love that. Omar , this is just. This has been such a great conversation. Um. Oh.
S3: Oh. Thank you.
S1: I mean , you've been dropping jewels and nuggets of of wisdom here. I've been speaking with musician Omar Sosa. You can see him perform with his group , Corto Americanos , at the Scripps Research Auditorium on Thursday , March 27th , as part of the Athenaeum Jazz Spring Concert Series. Tickets can be purchased on the Athenaeum Library's website. Coming up , Beth Accomando walks us through the new Doctor Who exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum. Hear more about that when KPBS Midday Edition returns. You're listening to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. With more than 800 episodes , Doctor Who holds the title as the longest running sci fi TV show in history. Well , the show has inspired a new exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum called Doctor Who and the Worlds of Wonder Where Science Meets Fiction. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando checked out the exhibit with National University professor Raymie Tedeschi , a Doctor Who aficionado who cosplays as multiple doctors and has even taught about the series. Raimi.
S4: Raimi. We are here to talk about something I know you love , and this is Doctor Who. And just to kind of preface this conversation , I just want you to recount a little story for me when you had to kind of prove your love and knowledge of Doctor Who once when you were in London.
S5: Yeah , this was at the Forbidden Planet in London. And they had , you know , they've got a bunch of memorabilia there. And one of the things they have is a full size Dalek , which was , you know , just fantastic. And , you know , it was roped off so no one could touch it. But I , you know , being this fan from America who had never had , you know , any experience like this , I was just so intrigued by it. And they asked me , you know , so you're a big Doctor Who fan ? I said , yeah , yeah , yeah. I in fact told them. I said , oh , that's the planet of the Daleks Dalek , isn't it ? And so that kind of piqued their interest that I knew which story it was from. But then we got to talking and to sort of prove my credentials to them. I actually , you know , they asked me. So which Doctor Who stories have you seen ? And I said , all of them. You want me to list everyone that I've seen. Yeah. And so I just started I went through the list , I said , okay , well , you know , starting with spearhead from space and the silence , Ambassadors of death , Inferno , terror of the Mind of Evil clause of axis , Colony and space , the demons. And I just went through and I impressed them enough that they actually let me open up the top and get inside the doll. Well , not inside. I got to reach inside and kind of poke around. But yeah , that was my first real experience with a Doctor Who prop.
S4: For people who may not be familiar with Doctor Who , give us a little background on how this series started and kind of what was the inspiration for it.
S5: Well , Doctor Who started back in 1963 , and it was sort of the product of a lot of different circumstances. At the time. There was Sidney Newman , who had come over from Canada. He was a producer , and it was sort of his he was really instrumental in getting the show off the ground. And I think Verity Lambert , who was the actual producer on the ground , literally during the , you know , the day to day work. She was a huge part of it. They had new blood , new ideas that helped to kind of reinvigorate what was kind of the rut that kind of set in there at the BBC. And so they helped to get this new , exciting series off the ground. Donald Wilson is another name I want to mention who really championed the show in the beginning. And then just , you know , all these wonderfully talented writers and creative people. And so yeah , it started in 1963 , actually aired on them. The first episode went out , actually , the night that Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963. And so the first episode actually got really low ratings because of the news of the Kennedy assassination that broke.
S4:
S5: There hadn't been anything that was like that. You know , the aesthetic of it , I think was a big part. It was it was a very low budget show , which in a way made it even more appealing to a kid because you saw this stuff and you think that's something I could kind of do myself. I could make my own , you know , sets and monster costumes. And so it set you off on this very creative , very imaginative path , I think , and just its approach to storytelling. You know , Doctor Who back then was serialized , and so you had to watch it in these 30 minute chunks. That aspect was really exciting. The cliffhanger aspect.
S4: Describe a little bit about what the foundation of the show was in terms of the story and idea.
S5: Well , when the show first started back in 1963 , it was a very , very simple premise. It was just this mysterious old scientist , pioneer , adventurer , wanderer who just had this time machine , and he was traveling with his granddaughter. His very first traveling companion was just his granddaughter. And you really knew nothing about the doctor. He was a complete mystery. Didn't know why he had left his home planet. We didn't even know what the home planet's name was in the beginning. And so he had this time machine that could go back and forth , you know , past and future. And he just had adventures wherever he went. And so it's this very simple premise that eventually evolved into this whole mythology , this vast universe of all these creatures and so many. What we now think of the show was , you know , a lot of complicated subplots and , you know , story arcs and things. But it all sprung from this very simple premise of just a wanderer through time and space having adventures.
S4: There are different doctors or Time Lords , and there's an explanation for why they are different people , not like James Bond , where we just have to make that leap of faith that all these actors are essentially the same character. Describe a little bit about that kind of device they use and how that actually has helped kind of give the show not just longevity , but I think also like a wider appeal. Yeah.
S5: Yeah. That idea of changing the lead performer came about three years into the series when the first actor , William Hartnell , his time , came to leave , and so they came up with the idea. It was , yeah , really ingenious. Instead of ending the show , they just recast the lead actor. And because it was a science fiction show , they came up with this idea that his body was was just turning old. And so he gets himself a new one. That's what they came up with. And they remembered that the next time that they had to change the actor , the second actor , Patrick Troughton. But after that , it just became a standard thing that they did whenever it became the lead performers. Time to , you know , step down from the show. They had this concept of regeneration. The doctor is a timelord from planet Gallifrey. They established that by the time of the Third Doctor in the 70s. And so he has this power that , you know , as a timelord , he has the power to regenerate his body , and so that each time that happens , it's , you know , kind of sad because you're saying goodbye to a character that you love , but at the same time simultaneously. It's exciting because you're about to embark on the show sort of reborn with the new , you know , new blood and new sense of possibility of what it could do. So it turns into a wonderful thing. It's really amazing. Something that you'd think might have been the end of the show , might have been a real obstacle. They turned it into this real advantage and something that has helped. Yeah , absolutely. Help the show to continue on since 1963. All these years.
S4: Now , while the doctors change and their personalities are different and each has kind of something different driving them are they're thematic threads that run through all these shows , or some basic sort of sensibility that you think links all these different doctors and seasons.
S5: Yeah , I think some of the concepts that are always at the core of the doctor are just always a sense of , uh , curiosity and wonderment and positivity. Ultimately , some of the modern doctors go through some dark patches , but ultimately they come through it again with that sense of positivity and just the curiosity about the universe and thinking that it's wonderful and you want to explore it. And , you know , my favorite of The Modern doctors is Jodie Whittaker. And to me , it's because she was , I think , the best embodiment of that sense of wonder and curiosity and positivity. Humans.
S2: Humans.
S6: I think you forget how powerful you are. Lives change worlds. People can save planets or wreck them. That's the choice. Be the best of humanity.
S5: In that sense , she I think was the most like Tom Baker , who was my favorite of The Doctors from the old classic Doctor Who series. So I think that's like the main thread that runs through All the doctors ultimately.
S4: So we're lucky in San Diego to have the Comic-Con Museum , which has just opened an exhibit called Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder Where Science meets Fiction.
S5: One is just the overall immersive ness of the whole thing. I mean , the whole thing in its totality , just to experience just how much there is , just the sheer size of it. The sheer scale and scope of the thing is so overwhelming and massive. It really hits home that whole , you know , it's talking about the , you know , how long the show has been going on these 60 years and its longevity. And it really just that aspect of it is so amazing to see all of these things spanning all 60 years and just sort of physically manifesting this longevity of the show in that way takes you a long time to walk through the whole thing and just see everything and to take it all in. So just that overwhelming impressiveness of it is really amazing to me. And the other thing I thought is just seeing some of the old items from the old series , you know , obviously you think , well , you know , the things that have been produced more recently , okay , they're going to have those props and costumes and things , but there's things spanning back from , you know , I think maybe one of the most amazing things to me was the giant robot that came from the early 70s. It's this huge aluminum robot , and when you see it , you'll be amazed at how huge this thing is. And you'll just think , my gosh , how tall was the man who was inside that thing ? And so just to see that in person , the scale of that thing is really impressive. But also equally impressive is its age. And there's a bunch of things that are like that in the exhibition. And so that's just really wonderful to see some of these really old things , you know , from the going back from all areas of the show that are still around , still preserved , and that we can still enjoy in person.
S4: Well , at the beginning of the interview , you mentioned Adeleke , and some people may not know what that is , but you can see one at the exhibit.
S7: I've waited long for this ultimate Destiny doll. The doll X or the Masters of Earth X Masters of Rock.
S4: So tell us a little bit about doll X and what they had there.
S5: So the Daleks are actually the first enemy that the doctor ever fought. That was in the Second Doctor , whose story after the first one , which is about time traveling back into the past. The second adventure was traveling into the future and meeting the mutated inhabitants of this race that had gone through nuclear war the way they survived. These mutated beings who are like small little blobs , is they created these like miniature personal mobile tanks for themselves. And so that's what a doll is. So it's not a robot , it's the housing for these little mutant creatures. And at the museum , you can see just wonderful examples of dogs. You can see kind of the history of Daleks from their beginning. The first Dalek from 1963 to a really modern Dalek.
S4: And you cosplay as a number of the doctors. One thing the exhibit also has is , I believe this is the first time that there is a costume from every single one of the doctors represented.
S5: The thing that I was most taken by was getting to see the Seventh Doctor's pants , his trousers , because those are made from an upholstery fabric that , you know , is kind of lost to time. I mean , it was something that was available in the mid to late 80s , I guess , but to be able to see it up close and replicate it , you know , maybe run color tests on it , you know , shine different kinds of light on it , or hold up Pantone swatches to it or things like that to get the colors matched. I mean , opportunities like that are just amazing.
S4: And if you had to kind of pinpoint something about Doctor Who that has contributed to its legacy and its longevity , what do you think it is that does make it popular across multiple countries and decades , generations ? It really seems to have this broad appeal.
S5: I hope , or I like to think , that the appeal of Doctor Who goes back to something that I mentioned previously , and that is the optimism and the goodwill and just the the sheer , you know , love of the universe and the curiosity that the character has and exhibits and just models. And I hope that's part of it. And another aspect of that is just the uniqueness of that character , you know , as opposed to being someone who's kind of outwardly stereotypically Typically heroic. The doctor is someone who's kind of quirky , you know , in all across , all the wonderful performers who have played the doctor , there's always just this uniqueness , the sense of individuality , of nonconformity , standing up for what you believe in and helping others and doing it in a positive way. And I hope that is what part of the appeal. A big part of the appeal is.
S1: That was National University Professor Ramey. Today she's speaking with KPBS Beth Accomando. Comic-Con museums doctor Who Worlds of Wonder exhibit opened last Saturday and is scheduled to run for a full year. Still ahead , Julia Dixon Evans joins us with your weekend preview and a conversation about our post-truth era with author Emily Greenberg.
S8: These are post-truth characters. They've lied to us , they've spread misinformation. So they've told us fictions. In a way , a lie is a kind of fiction. And so this is sort of my attempt to turn the tables a bit.
S1: Hear more about her short story when KPBS Midday Edition returns. Welcome back. You're listening to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. Local fiction writer Emily Greenberg will celebrate her debut short story collection , Alternative Facts. It'll be at Warwick's on Sunday afternoon during their weekends with local series. Greenberg's stories are inspired by the unraveling of truth in American politics , often using real public characters in absurd ways. KPBS Arts reporter Julia Dixon Evans spoke with Greenberg about the book. Here's that conversation.
S9: I want to talk about the title story of your book , Alternative Facts. This is a story that's told from the point of view of Kellyanne And Conway during the inauguration ball for Trump's first term , and I didn't quite realize it at first , but it is one long sentence , like basically an 11 page sentence inside Kellyanne Conway , his head. Can you talk about what made you choose that particular point of view ? Yeah.
S8: So most of the the stories in the book are about characters who are related to post-truth in some way. Um , and Kellyanne obviously relates to that pretty directly because she coined this term alternative facts. She was defending a lie that the press secretary , Sean Spicer , had made about the size of the crowd at Trump's inauguration. Um , and so for each of the stories in the book , I wanted to craft a distinct point of view. And so for Kellyanne , when I was researching her , I watched a bunch of a bunch of footage of her speaking , and she , of course , speaks so , so , so fast. There's almost no pause for you as a listener to catch up. And she also pivots very quickly. And so she'll say things that are not really logical. And if you were to actually break them down , she's not answering the questions. She's sort of dodging away from them. But because she's speaking so quickly , it's really hard to pick it out while it's happening. So I wanted to write in this really long run on sentence , stream of consciousness , uh , to , to sort of capture the way that she speaks. And I also one of the things I was trying to do with it was to capture that pivoting nature. So in the in this story , basically , she contradicts herself a number of times and sort of pivots back and forth. And that's that's sort of reflected in the , in the syntax of the story as well.
S9: So this is no doubt fiction , but you're toeing the line with using really vivid historical detail. Um. You know , like you said about watching all that footage of Kellyanne Conway , but also there's a story that is rooted in George W Bush's appearance on Leno. He's talking about being a painter , which all happened. And in a flashback , we learn about the death of his baby sister when she was three. Like , this is all true. What draws you to to find that line between truth and story and play there ? Yeah.
S8: So I think there are a lot of tools available to the fiction writer that are not available to a journalist. Um , as a fiction writer , I'm allowed to use to take certain poetic liberties instead of having to describe things exactly as they are. I can use more inventive , uh , sentence structures. I can use metaphor , I can use figurative language and literary devices. And I can also go inside of a character's head and , you know , talk about what they're thinking , what they're feeling. And that's pretty different from how a journalist would approach similar subject matter. You're not really supposed to go inside somebody's head like that. And so for me , you know , I see all of these current events and all of these historical events , and there are just gaps. And there are things I'm curious about. And so I want to use fiction to kind of open them up and sort of go into the event. These are anchored to something real , and the reader is sort of bringing their own understanding of those events and their own understanding of these people as they're reading the story and the fiction. It just is a way to to open it up. And I think particularly given the subject matter for my book , you know , in the title Alternative Facts , I was also interested in , you know , these are these are post-truth characters. They've lied to us , they've spread misinformation. And so they've told us fictions. In a way , a lie is a kind of fiction. And so this is sort of my attempt to turn the tables a bit. I want to use fiction against them , but instead of , uh , you know , using fiction as a lie , using fiction to manipulate and divide us , um , I'm hoping to use fiction to build understanding and to , you know , help us understand each other more deeply as people.
S9: I love that , and not all of the stories are like a caricature , almost of a powerful figure. Sometimes it's a scenario , like in the story lost in the desert of the real.
S8: It's about the Hawaiian false missile alert. And basically , this alert went out as if there were a missile headed to Hawaii. And it turned out not to be true. Um , but everyone reacted as if it were true , because that's they had no other information that at the time that it wasn't real. And they then proceeded to have these very real horrifying experiences , you know , thinking that , you know , these might be their last moments on Earth. And those experiences were real. And so in a story like this , I've written it in a very experimental way. It sort of goes , um , from some of the more public figures , um , Trump the Hawaiian governor into more ordinary people and what they were experiencing on the day. Um , I've also combined it , uh , with certain images and graphical elements , and it's all kind of circling around this idea of representation and mediation and how everything is created. Everything is a performance. At the beginning , I think my goal was to try to I wanted to recreate the feeling of this event , not literally what had happened , but what it felt like. There were , of course , a lot of eyewitness accounts and a lot of journalistic articles at the time. But as a fiction writer , being able to kind of freely move between all of these , it just creates a very different experience of the event. So yeah , definitely driven to experimental forms of if I think it'll serve the story.
S9: Because these stories often involve actual people in a fictional way.
S8:
S9: So it is a worry. Like you're not like , oh , I hope they find this. Yeah.
S8: Yeah. Definitely not. It's it's definitely a worry. Some people have cautioned me away from doing this , but I think it's important to be able to critique public figures. Um , and I think it's also very different to be writing fiction about public figures versus private individuals. Um , to me , the latter feels much less ethical. I think we have a duty to critique , uh , public figures. And , you know , in the case of my book I've written about Donald Trump , I've written about Kellyanne Conway , um , George W Bush , people like that. Um , and so I think it's important to do , um , when it comes to , to private figures , I would be much more cautious about that for lost in the desert of the real. I did work from some eyewitness accounts. Um , and so those were private individuals. But what I did is I kind of blended them together. And so I use sort of a memoir technique of blending them together , also blending them , you know , with more fantastical elements. So they're not identifiable. And it's also clear that it's that it's fiction because it's blended with these more fantastical elements.
S1: That was Emily Greenburg , author of the new short story collection Alternative Facts , speaking with KPBS arts reporter Julia Dixon Evans , who joins me now. Welcome , Julia.
S9: Hey , Jade. Thanks for having. Me.
S1: Me. Always a pleasure. Well , let's take a look at what else is going on in the arts. This weekend , San Diego Opera returns to the Civic Theater.
S9: It's an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play. It's about the Princess Salome who orders the beheading of John the Baptist. The opera's of a thriller. It's pretty gruesome and and provocative for opera. They really fun. There's lots of blood , apparently fake blood. And they have three performances this weekend , only at the Civic Theater. It's Friday and Saturday nights , and then a Sunday matinee.
S1: All right , little cringey there. If you're into that , there you go. In visual art , the Museum of Contemporary Art , San Diego is free and open late today to celebrate a new exhibition.
S9: Yeah , so they're open until seven tonight and it's free all day. And the new exhibit is a set of works from a private collector , the Strauss family. They have long been supporters of the museum , and the exhibit includes 22 pieces of contemporary art , especially chosen to show the kind of evolution of painting from the 1970s until today. So that should be interesting. And today also marks the return of dinner service to their museum cafe , The Kitchen. So starting tonight , they'll be open 5 to 8 for sunset dinner and drinks. It's overlooking the ocean. You can't beat. It.
S3: It.
S1: Sounds lovely. Very lovely. Okay , so we also have a Ballet Folklorico performance in town this weekend with a legendary troupe.
S9: And her goal was to train dancers and continue and celebrate the Ballet Folklorico style. So this company is permanently in residence at the Palacio de Boer's Artes in Mexico City , which is where I saw their production a handful of years ago. It's really powerful theatrical performance , and it traces like the folklore and history traditions of the regions of Mexico and the indigenous cultures. And yeah , they'll be at Balboa Theater here on Sunday evening at seven. And if you get there early , you can listen in on a pre-show conversation with Molly Perrier year of the. She is executive director of dance.
S1: All right. And finally , before we go , let's hear your live music pick for the weekend. We wait for this.
S9: I love to hear that from you. So on Sunday , there is a trio of great acts that are playing at Soda Bar. There's Duff Thompson , who is currently on tour with Steph Green , a frequent collaborator. We're listening to Steph Green's track Teardrop Skies. It's from her 2023 album law , and Duff Thompson is actually playing music on this song.
S10: And in bands of the Time Club.
S9: These two are based out of New Orleans and they will be supported by locals. The Sleepy Pearls. Their album That's The Spirit was one of my favorites of the year last year , and this is the first track. If I thought about it.
S11: If I thought about it , I Could Love As you. Know I could.
S9: So that should be a really nice chill show Sunday night at Soda Bar.
S1: All right , well , as always , you can find details for these and more arts events on our website , pbs.org. I've been speaking with Julia Dickson Evans , KPBS arts reporter and host of our upcoming arts and culture podcast , The Finest , which launches April 3rd. Julia , thank you. Thank you , and congratulations on the podcast.
S9: Thank you I can't wait.
S11: And basis.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
