Going Out

MUSIC 14th Annual Hong Kong Folk Festival. Today noon, Island School, $120, Folk Society members $100, students and children $40 The closing party of the Folk Festival is traditionally the most popular day of the event and the quantities of beer put away in the course of the afternoon probably account for a certain sluggishness around a few offices on Monday morning. All of the international acts will be featured, including festival band Alias Ron Kavana, the Sensitive New Age Cowpersons and Derek Brimstone, who mixes music with humour. Singer Marie Little and fiddler/guitarist/songwriter Brian McNeill also feature, as well as the cream of the local roots-music performers. There are also plenty of food stalls and sideshow attractions for the benefit of the children, and Major Mustard - now an annual fixture at the event - who manipulates puppets, a button accordion and the attention of the younger members of the audience. It's a good party to attend. Gary Primich And Steve James. From Tuesday, 9.30pm, The Jazz Club, $280 The emphasis on blues continues at The Jazz Club, but this time in an acoustic form, from Gary Primich on harmonica and Steve James on guitar, banjo and mandolin. Both are from Austin, Texas, and come with some impressive critical references, not least from John Hammond - no slouch as an acoustic artist himself - who describes James as an 'unbelievable guitarist'. Primich's harmonica work has been likened by jazz periodical Downbeat to the saxophone playing of Gene Ammons and Lester Young, which is also fairly excited praise. Essential for all blues fans and likely to be fun for anybody partial to a little acoustic boogie and an all-round good time. CINEMA Violent Cop. Today 5.30pm, Tuesday 6.30pm, Saturday 4.45pm, $50, students $30, all seats on Tuesday $30, Urbtix There is a new policy at the Arts Centre of providing multiple screenings each month of at least two movies never commercially distributed here, presumably because insufficient demand was anticipated. Since the film distributors in Hong Kong are agreed that there is too low a level of public interest in 'politically sensitive' films to screen Seven Years In Tibet, Red Corner or Kundun and in view of the fact that over the past two years the Arts Centre has done an excellent job screening films of a controversial nature, I look forward to an announcement that it intends to show them at an early date. In the meantime we have two Japanese movies to sample. Violent Cop is a 1990 film directed by Takashi Kitano and its themes include police violence, as the title suggests, the drug trade and homosexual sadism. A no-holds-barred cop thriller which apparently provides a few laughs as well. March Comes In Like A Lion. Tonight 7.30pm, Tuesday 8.30pm, Friday 6.30pm, Saturday 2.30pm, Hong Kong Arts Centre Lim Por Yen Film Theatre, $50, students $30, all seats on Tuesday $30, Urbtix Also part of the new series, entitled The Boundless Wonderland of Cinema - an oddly Disney-esque handle for this sort of stuff - is an audacious 1991 movie from Afternoon Breezes director Hitoshi Yazaki, who specialises in taking on risky subject matter. Afternoon Breezes was a controversial study of lesbian infatuation; March Comes In Like A Lion takes on incest. A boy suffering from amnesia is picked up from hospital by a girl who tells him they are lovers. In fact she is his sister and gradually the boy begins to reconstruct his missing past. Mindful of Hitchcock's dictum that you should never use a line of dialogue to make a statement that can be made with a picture, Yazaki lets his images do the talking, so the film should be fairly accessible to non-Japanese speakers, although regrettably the screen will still be cluttered with Chinese and English subtitles. DANCE Suchness. Saturday 7.30pm, Hong Kong Cultural Centre Grand Theatre, $130, $110, $90, $70, Urbtix A 'New Asian Art' dance spectacular from the Hong Kong Dance Company, which was well received at its world premiere at the Singapore Arts Festival in 1990 and has been on tour since. This rerun consists of two performances in Chengdu as part of the Fifth China Arts Festival Programme and a grand finale back home in Hong Kong. The programme is presented in five parts: The Rainbow Dharma, A Fog Cocoons, The Sea Inaugurated, A Holy Firefly, and Thunder Knows. Worth seeing if you missed it the first time around. CLASSICAL MUSIC Mahler Symphony No 9 In D. Friday and Saturday 8pm, Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, $270, $180, $110, $80, students $50 These performances of Mahler's Ninth, also known as the Ode To Life, feature the Hong Kong Philharmonic conducted by Richard Buckley. The orchestra will also play Schumann's Concert Opus 86 with the American Horn Quartet. Buckley is renowned as one of America's most expressive conductors and should be able to get something special out of the Philharmonic. The American Horn Quartet is regarded as one of the world's finest chamber brass ensembles and has a special affinity for the Schumann piece, which it has played with over 60 of the world's major orchestras. This should be a thoroughly satisfying evening. Mischa Maisky. Thursday 8pm, Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall, $300, $220, $160, $100, Urbtix A recital by Russian cellist Mischa Maisky accompanied by Daria Hovora at the piano and featuring works by Mendelssohn, Schubert and Brahms. The only cellist to have studied with both Rostropovich and Piatigorsky, Maisky has since worked with a stellar cast of the leading lights in the interpretation of classical music, including Zubin Mehta, Leonard Bernstein and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Rostropovich has said of him that 'his playing combines poetry and exquisite delicacy with great temperament and brilliant technique', which considering the stature of his teacher is praise indeed. Hovora won the prize for best accompanist at the Gaspar Cassado Cello Competition in Florence in 1972 and her recent recording projects include two discs with Maisky. It all sounds very promising. EXHIBITIONS Recent Works By Wong Shun-kit. From Thursday, noon to midnight, Friday and Saturday noon to 2am, Fringe Club Gallery One of Hong Kong's better-known artists, although he came originally from Shanghai, Wong Shun-kit arrived here at around the same time as the Fringe Club started and his fortunes and those of its galleries have been closely linked. He now exhibits internationally as a painter and installation artist, but Hong Kong remains his home and this is his ninth solo exhibition here. This particular exhibition includes a triptych expressing Wong's personal feelings about transitional developments in Hong Kong in recent years and also includes lithographs, monoprints and mixed-media works.