Going out
MUSIC David Newton. From Tuesday, 9.30pm, the Jazz Club, $250, members $125. One of the finest young pianists to have emerged during Britain's jazz revival in the late 1980s, David Newton has made his mark as a leader, accompanist and soloist.
Famously one of the few keyboard players in the world able to make Chick Corea sweat, Newton has worked with major international artists including Benny Carter, Herb Ellis, Buddy de Franco and Art Farmer.
He has also played with several luminaries who have appeared at the club including Martin Taylor, Alan Barnes and Annie Ross. Expect a swinging evening featuring selections from his new album 12th of the 12th.
CLASSICAL MUSIC Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. Monday, 8pm, Cultural Centre Concert Hall, $860, $650, $390, $180, Urbtix. One of the world's finest singers in a one-night-only recital, including works by Massenet, Puccini, Rachmaninov, Cantaloube and Leonard Bernstein, which presumably means West Side Story, the definitive recording of which featured her prominently.
Dame Kiri is accompanied by Warren Jones at the piano. Almost impossible to get a ticket now, I should imagine, but beg, steal, borrow or kill for one if you can.
EXHIBITIONS Horizon 2. From Monday, 10.30am to 6.30pm, Gallery 7, 1 Glenealy, Central. Paintings and drawings by Yan Kwai, the given names of artist, art director and musician Wong Yan-kwai, widely known as Yank Wong. However, the artist-formerly-known-as-Yank, taking a leaf from the artist-formerly-known-as-Prince, has recently dropped his English nickname and his Chinese surname, so Yan Kwai it is.
This exhibition reflects some of the changes in his art as well as his life. Bold acrylics and more subtle watercolours with Chinese and French influences - Yan Kwai studied in Paris and still makes a point of going back to France once a year. One of Hong Kong's liveliest talents in his various chosen fields. Well worth seeing.
Edge Of Fire. From Thursday, 11am to 7pm, Saturday to 10pm, LKF the Gallery, 1/F, 5-6 Lan Kwai Fong. This exhibition features oils and lithographs by Irish artist Carmel Mooney. Her preoccupation with the colours of flame recalls Turner's fiery canvases, but she is also influenced by some of the design elements of Asian art, and in particular that of Japan where she has previously exhibited. This is her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong.
Aboriginal Art. From Tuesday, 10am to 6pm, Wagner Art Gallery, 7/F Lusitano Building, 4 Dudell Street, Central. An exhibition of acrylic painting by aboriginal artists using a modern Western technique to approach the same themes as those found in the traditional Dreamtime art of their ancestors.
A complex style composed of repeated motifs using wavy lines, concentric circles, dots, U shapes and so on, leaves plenty of room for the artists to express their own individuality as well as their collective heritage.
Exhibitors include Walangari Jakamarra, grandson of the well-known artist Albert Namajira, and the distinguished Emily Karne Kngwarree, now in her mid-eighties. Well worth visiting.
THEATRE Stories Of Outback Australia. Monday and Tuesday, 7pm, Fringe Club studio, $120, members and students $95. Another opportunity to learn about aboriginal life is offered by this one-man show presented by aboriginal writer and story teller Herb Wharton, formerly an outback drover and horse breaker.
Wharton now has three books to his credit, and a rich collection of tales of life in Australia's desert heartland to tell. This 45-minute performance showcases a few of them and is intended for those aged 10 or over. Presented as part of Celebrate Australia 1996.
CINEMA Krzysztof Kieslowski - Short Films. Wednesday, 7.30pm, Arts Centre, Lim Por Yen Film Theatre, $50, Urbtix. Four short films by the great Polish director who died earlier this year, presented by the Arts Centre as part of a retrospective of his early work. I Was A Soldier is a documentary taking a stark look at the lives of men who lost their sight during the fighting in World War II.
Factory is concerned with the struggle of workers in a Polish factory in the early '70s to meet their obligatory quota in almost impossible circumstances. Refrain takes the insensitivity of bureaucracy to humanity as its theme - a subject about which anybody who grew up in Poland in Kieslowski's time would have known plenty - while The Bricklayer tells of the disillusionment and empty life of a worker hero.
A valuable insight into a great director's development.
Bedevil. Saturday, 2.30pm, Arts Centre Lim Por Yen Theatre, $50, Urbtix. Three Australian shorts rolled into one movie by director Tracey Moffatt, Bedevil explores the strange and mystical side of Australia and looks into areas of superstition or belief in the incompletely understood, whichever way you care to look at it.
The first mini-film follows a child's reaction to the disappearance of a tank into a quicksand swamp, the second is set by an outback railroad track, and the third is concerned with a vigil for the dead. Screened at Cannes in 1993, this sounds interesting.
