Music

David Burgess

Redeemer Lutheran Church

Saturday, February 16, 7 p.m.

From the New York Times: "Technically in control and interpretively most persuasive."

From the Washington Post: "Impressive technique and a fine sense of style."

From Greenwich Time magazine: "Hauntingly beautiful, tastefully phrased with exquisite nuance, and yet with an aristocratic understatement that held his audience spellbound."

And no, I'm not starting yet another one of these What's Happenin' articles by talking about my own work. But I'm touched by your confusion.

Describing the creator of the new exhibition STILL ..., on display from February 9 through April 14 at the Figge Art Museum, the venue's executive director Tim Schiffer says that installation artist and sculptor Alison Saar "is kind of pushing the boundaries of what sculpture is." Clearly, Schiffer has a gift for understatement.

In Saar's exhibit piece titled 50 Proof, a vintage washstand sits below a glass bust of a human head, from whose eye sockets flows a continuous stream of black tears. In Black Lightning, a red fluid signifying blood is pumped, through copper tubing, from a bucket on the floor into a pair of boxing gloves on the wall. And in Rouse, a nude figure stands amidst a healthy assemblage of deer antlers, and cradles over her head another nude figure resting in deer antlers.

Well, make that antler sheds, as Saar is quick to say, "No animals were harmed in the making of this piece of art." She laughs. "I don't want PETA in there setting it all on fire."

Comedy

Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company

Augustana College

Saturday, January 26, 8 p.m.

On January 26, Augustana College's Centennial Hall will host an evening with members of the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company, and you can learn a lot about the acclaimed comedy troupe by visiting its Web site at UCBTourCo.com. For instance, you'll learn that, as the ensemble's home page states, "mainstream comedy is for jerks," and that its touring show with Brigade performer Horatio Sanz "will make you wet yourself with laughter," and its Blackout Drunk production boasts a "lack of self-control" and "an appalling lack of shame" ... .

Hey ... wait a minute ... . You don't think that calling themselves "Upright Citizens" is meant jokingly, do you ... ?

ZERO DARK THIRTY

As an orchestrator of cinematic suspense, Kathryn Bigelow might currently be without peer in American movies. The sequences of Jeremy Renner dismantling explosives in the director's Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker were miniature masterpieces of sustained excitement; despite our knowing, through much of the film, that it was too early for Renner's Sergeant William James to be killed off, each masterfully shot and edited act of bomb disposal vibrated with legitimate threat. In Zero Dark Thirty - Bigelow's and screenwriter Mark Boal's fictionalized docu-drama about the decade-long search for Osama bin Laden - nearly every scene feels like a ticking time bomb. There is, of course, never any doubt about the narrative's outcome, yet Bigelow's gifts for composition and pacing ensure that you still watch the picture with rapt attention and dread. And blessedly, she's also a spectacular entertainer. The movie is tough-minded and sometimes tough to watch, but even when Bigelow is fraying your nerves, she's tickling your senses.