Joshua Roman, cellist. Photo courtesy Federal Way Symphony.

Been to hear the Federal Way Symphony lately? This weekend is a great time to do so: the semi-professional orchestra has a top-class gig to open their season– Joshua Roman.

This cello virtuoso from deepest Oklahoma was, at 22, the youngest ever musician to win a principal position in the Seattle Symphony. One year later he’s left the SSO for a solo career, juggling it with managing the Town Hall Series in Seattle (which he injects with regular shots

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I attended Tip Toland’s opening Friday night at the Bellevue Art Museum. The Vaughn artist is having her first museum solo show there: “Melt, The Figure in Clay.”

I decided to shoot a video because one of Toland’s sculptures is kinetic – a new direction for her.

Check out the video here.

At the end you’ll see a short conversation between Toland (on left) and one of the models she used for a sculpture in the show (the still photo above). It was a surreal moment to

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Time to be daring, folks–we’re smack in the middle of Banned Books Week. Yep, this is the week of the year where you can be seen in public reading the scandalous, the obscene and the politcally incorrect, and be completely justified in doing so.

Ever since 1982 the American Library Association has encouraged local libraries, bookstores and readers to delve into the list of books that, for whatever reason, have been banned in history. Some are outright racist or nasty. Others just offend certain political or social sensibilities–like Tacoma writer Brent Hartinger’s gay teen novel “Geography Club.”

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Judging from Maestro Harvey Felder’s remarks during the Tacoma Symphony‘s "Behind the Stands" concert Friday night, Tacoma must be full of people very frightened of chamber music.

It’s an odd assumption, considering Tacoma has a chamber orchestra, chamber music series, and numerous individual chamber groups playing the town. But Felder was talking to his symphony audience, who were filling the seats at the Tacoma Art Museum for an unusual start to the TSO season: a season preview concert of (shock, horror) chamber music.

As it turned out, his remarks weren’t necessary.

Eleven of the orchestra’s

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Vaudeville goes 21st century at the Pantages Saturday night.

Symphony at the museum

Catch the cream of the Tacoma Symphony tonight at Tacoma Art Museum, as they reduce their numbers to play an intimate chamber concert of Mozart, Taffanel, Tchaikovsky, Schubert and Britten. Hang out with the musicians over dessert, wine and coffee afterward, or just look at TAM’s art. 7:30 p.m. tonight. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma. $50. 253-272-7264, www.tacomasymphony.org

"Birth" tells the truth about labor, onstage

Karen Brody’s play "Birth" was fuelled

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Erica Bergman (as a nurse) leans over birthing woman Carla Valderrama (as Vanessa) in “Birth.”

Are you expecting a baby? Know someone who is? Ever had a baby? Ever been born?

Well, that covers everyone. And everyone needs, in fact, to know the information that’s presented in Karen Brody’s play “Birth,” showing at Tacoma Community College this Friday. Dubbed “The Vagina Monologues” of childbirth, it’s a staged version of hundreds of birth stories from women all over America. I saw the Seattle/Tacoma production last year, and even though I knew much

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The City of Tacoma Arts Commission has announced this year’s winners of their AMOCAT awards for “vision, dedication and action in creating a live arts community” in the city. The awards (which spell TACOMA backwards, in case you didn’t figure that out) have been going on for several years now, though unfortunately they don’t represent any moolah, just honor and glory.

Here are the winners, in three categories:

King’s Books.

King’s Books, for Community Outreach by an Organization. King’s does a wonderful job of hosting everything from Shakespeare in the

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If you’re like me, you would have already checked out the latest at Tacoma Art Museum. TAM had its opening party splash for two new shows on the weekend, offering yummy Indian food and groovy Bollywood beats along with the Donald Fels Indian signboard art and 19th-century Orientalism from the Dahesh museum.

But guess what? You can see it all over again (and it’s totally worth seeing, along with the new exhibit of Surrealist works from TAM’s collection) this Friday night, when the Tacoma Symphony previews its season with a chamber music concert in the

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