[ThisWeek] Rock School at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Rock School (R)
A documentary film

Friday, September 23
7:00 & 9:15 PM
Saturday & Sunday, September 24 & 25
4:45 & 7:00 PM
Tickets $5/adult
(see Review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre . . .

m-pact in concert
Friday, September 30
7:30 PM
Tickets available at BookPeople of Moscow
$12/adult, $6/student with ID
(more information below)
* * *

Fall 2005 at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Oct 7 - 9
Tickets $5/adult, $2/child under 13

Darol Anger Republic of Strings in concert
October 27 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $16/adult, $12/senior or student

Moscow Community Theatre presents
Noodlehead
November 3 - 5, 10 - 12 at 7:30 PM
November 6 & 12 at 2:00 PM
$11/adult, $9/student or senior

Regular Movie prices:  $5 adult, $2 child under 13
KFS passes accepted year-round for Sunday movies!

Coming in October: Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Enron: The Smartest Guys
in the Room, Mad Hot Ballroom, Darol Anger in concert
Check KPAC¹s web site for dates & times. http://www.kenworthy.org
* * *

m-pact in concert

On Friday, September 30 at 7:30 PM, the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
presents the group "m-pact" in concert on the historic downtown stage.

m-pact's sophisticated sound weaves together the swing and style of The
Manhattan Transfer, the hip jazz licks of Take 6, the percussive power of
Stomp, the funk and drive of Earth, Wind & Fire, the moves and soul of
Motown, and the brass bite of the Harry Connick Jr. Big Band.  All created
by the human voice alone.  The San Francisco Chronicle calls m-pact "one of
the best pop-jazz vocal groups in the world."

m-pact has shared the stage with an impressive array of international
recording artists ranging from Sheryl Crow, Liza Minnelli, Ray Charles,
Natalie Cole, Kenny Loggins, Bobby McFerrin and Kenny G to The Maynard
Ferguson Band.  A self-contained "band without instruments," the group has
won rave reviews across four continents and continues to dazzle audiences
everywhere.

Tickets for the show are $6 for children and students and $12 for adults and
are on sale at Bookpeople, or by calling 208-882-4127.  A $.50 per ticket
charge will be added to MC or Visa orders.

This event is made possible with the generous support of Avista Utilities,
Moscow Food Co-op, and Eastside Marketplace and is funded in part by the
Idaho Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the
Western States Arts Federation.

For more information visit www.kenworthy.org or www.m-pact.com or call
208-882-4127.
* * *
This week¹s review-

Rock School

Directed by Don Argott

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes
"Rock School" is rated R (Under 17, requires accompanying parent or adult
guardian). The language is raw, and some scenes include uncomfortable
adult-child dynamics.
Advisory: Frequent outbursts of profanity, adult conversations and lots of
Frank Zappa songs.


As reviewed by Sean Axmaker writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The credits roll to the strains of an impressive take on Carlos Santana's
guitar solo on "Black Magic Woman." The film waits until we're duly
impressed before the camera reveals the player: a diminutive 12-year-old boy
with a guitar almost as tall as he is.

Guitar phenom C.J. is the star pupil of the Paul Green School of Music, the
Philadelphia music school that surely inspired the comedy "School of Rock."
Dedicated to the "essentials" of '70s guitar rock anthems, it now numbers
about 120 students ages 9 to 17.

The soft-spoken C.J. is only one of a handful of students picked out in
director Don Argott's portrait. He draws from the gifted (Madi, a teenage
folkie from a Quaker background), the merely enthusiastic (9-year-old twins
Asa and Tucker, would-be punks with more exuberance than aptitude), and the
cordially hopeless (Will, the clinically depressed "Charlie Brown" of the
school).

All are upstaged by spotlight-loving founder Green, wannabe rock god and
self-styled instructor/manager who confesses "I'm probably not qualified to
teach." He's idiosyncratic to be sure, not to mention immature, and his
approach spans from flippant frivolity to berating and teasing to screaming
insults and throwing tantrums.

Green's philosophy is that if no one tells kids that something is beyond
them, then they have no reason to believe they can't rise to the occasion.
And they do, culminating in a set of incredibly sophisticated, complex Frank
Zappa songs by the school's best and brightest at the 2003 Zappanale (a
German music festival dedicated to Zappa's music).

It's a big enough film to hold all the contradictions. Green has an ego and
a gift for stealing the spotlight with a wink and a grin. Yet his respect
for the kids is genuine. The film -- like Green himself -- steps back from
the teacher to see the apprentices take center stage and earn their
applause.


As reviewed by Manohla Dargis writing for the New York Times

There's one thing you can say about Paul Green, the extravagantly voluble,
relentlessly belligerent, sometimes wearisome center of the nonfiction film
"Rock School." He doesn't worry about picking on someone not his own size.
If anything, to judge from the evidence in Don Argott's alternately
hilarious and alarming documentary, Mr. Green's pedagogic style appears
predicated on the idea that if you spare the insults, derision and
eardrum-piercing assaults, you spoil the child. Then again, perhaps Mr.
Green is simply trying to prepare his young charges for the inevitable
hearing loss that comes with a life hooked to squealing electric guitars and
fully cranked amplifiers.

As Mr. Green eagerly explains in the film, Mr. Green is the founder and
director of the Paul Green School of Rock Music. Mr. Green's establishment
is essentially a music school with a Ray Davies kink: instead of sawing on
violins, massacring classics out of the Suzuki method books, his students
(ages 8 to 18) throttle electric guitars, bash drum kits and generally make
like pint-size rockers. Forget Vivaldi; here, Ozzy rules, as do Zappa and
Zeppelin. Mr. Green, who in the documentary admits that he always wanted to
be a rock star, though a rock star circa 1972, does not seem to hold truck
with much (maybe any) contemporary music. Hip-hop? Nah. The White Stripes?
Nope. Brian May? Totally!

Mr. Argott served as his own cinematographer on the film and perhaps as a
consequence creates a comfortable intimacy with his primary subjects, who
include a handful of Mr. Green's students. Among the chosen are 9-year-old
twins, Asa and Tucker Collins, a singing Quaker named Madi Diaz-Svalgard
(whom Mr. Green unkindly belittles for having the bad taste to like Sheryl
Crow) and a mind-blowing 12-year-old guitar prodigy, C. J. Tywoniak, who
summons up "Black Magic Woman" with Santana seriousness. The kids, seen in
talking-head interviews and hanging out, practicing, practicing, practicing,
are generally plucky and sometimes a bit heartbreaking, partly because there
is something bleak, in a JonBenet Ramsey sort of way, about kids angling for
stardom. 

Stardom may not be the main focus of Mr. Green's fast-growing enterprise.
Still, watching this camera-hungry dynamo and overgrown adolescent - who is
in his early 30's - hector his students for almost 93 minutes straight, then
take one bow after another at the end of one of their concerts, it's hard
not to think that you're either watching the ultimate stage mother and
father rolled into one or a seriously, perhaps unhealthily, frustrated
artist. Mr. Argott does not appear to have intentionally laid any traps for
Mr. Green, but the dude blunders into them anyway.


As reviewed by Peter Hartlaub writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

In a world filled with feel-good youth sports coaches who let everyone play
and don't keep score, "Rock School" front man Paul Green's classes are about
as kid-friendly as the mosh pit of a Metallica concert.

Conducting children's music classes with absolutely no filter, Green tries
to create the next generation of Van Halens and Zappas, with motivational
speeches that range from funny and mean ("Don't look at your fingers. Girls
look at their fingers. ... Do you want to be in the Bangles?") to just mean
("Just get the f -- out of here!").

That Green gets some positive results -- along with the inevitable
destruction in his path -- makes for an occasionally thoughtful and very
entertaining movie, with just enough over-the-top "The Great Santini"-style
rants to distract audiences from all the unanswered questions about the
school and the teacher's life.

If it weren't a piece of nonfiction, "Rock School" would make a serviceable
sequel to "The School of Rock." And although the real-life documentary
doesn't acknowledge the 2003 comedy, it's pretty clear that Green was an
influence on the Dewey Finn character -- even if Green looks more like Paul
Giamatti than Jack Black.

The flagship Paul Green School of Rock Music in Philadelphia -- Green
recently set up a satellite school in San Francisco -- teaches classic rock
to elementary and high school-age children, and his technique is
coddling-free. Green talks to students as if they were adults, including
profanity, put-downs and some jarringly blunt assessments of their
abilities. 

"Rock School" follows Green's instruction of some beginners -- their recital
is full of Black Sabbath covers, of course -- with most of the documentary
focusing on his prized students, who work on more difficult Frank Zappa
material in hopes of playing at a tribute festival in Germany. There's not
much of a story arc, but the third act is still rewarding, filled with
touching scenes of emotional bonding between the kids and some aging
rockers. 

Green is a shameless self-promoter, and his awareness of the cameras will
leave audiences wondering how many of his antics are an act. But even as the
teacher's diatribes seem more and more inappropriate around the kids --
"She's better than you!" he shouts at one student -- it's hard not to notice
how much his pupils respond to him, whether it's a preteen guitar prodigy or
a depressive kid who will never have the musical talent to be a star.

"Rock School" will have audiences thinking: With so many sheltering parents
organizing soccer leagues where no one is allowed to lose, are kids better
off with an authority figure who tells it like it is?

Film reviews researched and edited by Peter A. Haggart

* * *

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
For more information, call 208-882-4127 or visit http://www.kenworthy.org
* * *

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAMELA PALMER, Volunteer
Mailto:ppalmer at moscow.com
Film and Events Committee
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

http://www.kenworthy.org
To speak with a KPAC staff member,
call (208) 882-4127
Mailto:kpac at moscow.com
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