Arts & Entertainment writers offer capsule comments on this, that and the other thing ...

Rachel Z

	John Abbott Jazz pianist Rachel Z covers Alice in Chains, among other rock-oriented fare. Click photo for larger image.

Pianist Rachel Z has emerged from the shadows of Peter Gabriel to form one of the most innovative trios to come along in some time. Performing at Gullifty's Restaurant Saturday night, Z demonstrated how any song can be used as a launching pad for jazz dynamics.

Z has long been adept at bridging genres, and her group, Dept. of Good and Evil, continued that path Saturday night.

She paid homage to Sting on "King of Pain" and invited trumpeter Sean Jones to the stage to assist with Wayne Shorter's "ESP." Jones is a dynamo and worth the price of admission whenever he's playing.

The group then launched into Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and performed an unidentified tune from Depeche Mode. But the trio made its greatest impact on "Angry Chair," a song by Alice in Chains. How many jazz trios have that kind of repertory?

-- Nate Guidry,
Post-Gazette jazz critic

'The Music Lesson'

It's a rare Pittsburgh playwright who has a play debuted here, established with professional productions elsewhere and then revived here in a new production almost a decade later.

Such is the well-deserved case with Tammy Ryan's "The Music Lesson," which was commissioned by Prime Stage, had its premiere here in 1998 and has been published by Dramatic Publishing. By reviving it now, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre is doing a service for those, me included, who missed the debut of a play rich in cultural parallels, with an infectious, warm heart.

It is based on the real story of Dolores and Augustin Martinovic, a pianist and violinist who suffered through the brutal siege of Sarajevo before escaping to Pittsburgh in 1995. In the play their ethnicity is unimportant, since until the war, ethnic Bosnians, Serbs, Croats and others lived peaceably -- especially in the musical world of Irena and Ivan Batonovic, the names Ryan gives her lead characters.

Arrived in Pittsburgh, struggling to learn the language, they take on two pupils, 10-year-old violinist Eddie Johnson and his sister, 14-year-old reluctant pianist Cat, whose recently divorced mother doesn't know how to handle her rebellion.

The Johnsons' ethnicity is indefinite in Ryan's script, and at Pittsburgh Playwrights, they are played by African Americans -- in fact, a real family, Lalicia Roman and her 13-year-old twins, Aman and Imani Milliones-Roman.

If that makes some difference to the play, it can only be to the good in deepening the cultural disjunction to be bridged. But the true contrast is between the immigrants and the Americans. And the central conflict is between Irena's memories of Sarajevo, embodied in her vividly remembered protege, Maja, who was killed by a grenade, and the perplexity of this new world with its combative pupil.

Judy Kaplan gives a dark and feeling frustration to the troubled Irena, and Mark Tierno has an awkward integrity as her more adaptable husband. Nadia Cook-Loshilov plays the doomed Maja in memory and flashback with bright fragility, neatly contrasted with the surly spunkiness of Cat, to whom Imani gives great appeal.

In Ryan's ambitious structure, past and present intertwine, putting demands on the actors, who, with the help of director John Gresh, generally keep everything clear and let the play tell its affecting tale.

When the two Johnson children play their duet, I defy anyone not to feel a satisfying surge of emotion.

"The Music Lesson" plays at 542 Penn Ave., 8 p.m. Friday and 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday; $10-$17.50; 412-394-3353.

-- Christopher Rawson,
Post-Gazette theater critic