Karla Slocum is an anthropology professor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying the black history of Oklahoma as a local resident scholar at the School for Advanced Research. Think of her as a cross-country vagabond, but with a PhD.

Last Saturday, Collected Works Bookstore hosted the second fall reading series of Muse Times Two, curated by Dana Levin and Carol Moldaw.

With the success of his indie film Sleepwalk with Me, which he co-wrote, directed and stars in, it’s been a whirlwind year for comedian Mike Birbiglia; though he’ll be the first to brush off the “movie star” title. “My agent always tries to knock me down and say I’m not a movie star, but rather a movie starrer—which means I was the star in a movie, but I’m not an actual star,” Birbiglia tells SFR.

A wise fool, says Devon Ludlow, managing director of Wise Fool New Mexico, is “one of those fabulous names…Jesters being able to speak the truth…idiocy and wisdom melding.” The medieval court jesters often interspersed truths, honest observations and wise words in their otherwise absurd performances.

The acequia running nearby shows a few yellow leaves; too cool for breakfast outside today; the overgrown garden needs a firm hand. Summer is slowing and the summer music scene is finito. An imaginary curtain rang down at the Santa Fe Opera last Saturday night, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival closed up for the year. So now—a little accountability?

Take note, please, of a preliminary event at last Sunday’s Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival concert: the sight of a large, black-clad man being tugged through the crowded lobby at the Lensic by a small girl. The child? A determined young daughter. The gentleman? This season’s distinguished artist-in-residence, Alan Gilbert. Her urgent excuse? I didn’t ask.

Every time I hear a fine, well-produced contralto voice, I get the chills. Maybe it goes back to my grandmother’s old Schumann-Heink 78s. Kathleen Ferrier’s “Embarme dich,” and anything else s

Anyone who’s been hanging around the Santa Fe Opera for any length of time has heard, until quite recently, a really terrific amount of Richard Strauss.

Forty years old already? It can’t be that long since I heard several concerts at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s inaugural season—six Sunday afternoons back in 1973.

Ever since its 1926 premiere in Warsaw, Karol Szymanowski’s King Roger has been one of those conundrums of 20th-century music. Generically speaking, is it an opera? A dramatic oratorio? A morality play? Is it a work of penetrating insight into psycho-sexual complexities or a murky slog through mystico-symbological pretense?