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SCMP Reporter

HARMONICAS in all their classical glory are definitely the rage this month. Hong Kong's prize-winning Harmonica Quintet have only just laid down their instruments and now American virtuoso Robert Bonfiglio has arrived to play with the Hong Kong Philharmonic tomorrow and Saturday.

  He follows in the footsteps of legends such as Larry Adler and John Sebastien.

  They first transformed the repertoire by getting composers to write pieces for the instrument.

  Despite these illustrious predecessors, Bonfiglio has to tour regularly, reminding people that the harmonica is a proper musical instrument, and not just a hobby.

   Familiarity breeds contempt, he says.

  So many people play the harmonica, they find it hard to take the instrument seriously.

  Before one recital in the US he asked the audience who had never played the harmonica.

  'Not one hand went up,' he remembers.

  'So I guess the question is not how I got started playing, but why, out of the 20 million or so who play harmonica, I was one to get serious.'   Zuni Icosahedron present their newest production this week Book of Mountains and Sea . . . Life and Times of Lao She.

  It takes inspiration from two writers and their fascination with water.

  The first half is a kind of installation.

  It is based on the last moments of writer Lao She as he contemplated suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

  In the second an actor sits centre stage and contemplates the audience in silence, surrounded by six transparent ancestral tablet-tanks all filled with ice.

  No doubt there is some plot development.

  But then this is Zuni, whose delight is ignoring theatrical convention, so it isn't guaranteed.

   For those who are prepared to take a gamble and find out, the show runs until Saturday at City Hall Theatre.

  As a one-time performer in a very staid a cappella group at the Viceroy's occasional cabaret and dinner set, Mick's Bag of Allsorts, I was mortified to read that the next presentation, on March 6, is billed as having 'some of the best live performers since the Pussycat Club closed its doors'.

  Admittedly we were an odd choice to get top billing in a line-up that contained a skit featuring three overgrown schoolgirls, a male stripper, a radio journalist turned comedienne and Mick himself, a good-natured host who relies on innuendo, bonhomie and an endearing off-stage frankness.



A popular instrument that's been on everyone's lips lately