I don't even know what to say about this weekend, well actually I do - a great deal

 USC dancers just briefly resting up for intense weekend

Before you dig into the listings today I’m going to provide you a little guidance.
Tonight go the Wadsworth and Friends concert or the USC dance performance (above.) The go by and see "Blues Chapel" and "Last Words" (until midnight) at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios and stop in down the hall and hear jazz at the Blue Martini.  
Friday go either to Vibrations or USC Dance or Columbia College dance or “Crowns” at Trustus. "Blues Chapel" and "Last Words" with a Haitian relief concert at Blue Martini. Saturday go to opening day of “Grass Roots” an exhibition on Lowcountry and African baskets with lectures and tours and/or go see the films about mill village and mills at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art. After dinner attend one of the three dance performances or go the S.C. Philharmonic and after that go to the “What’s Love” art event at 701 Whaley.
Sunday see “Chemistry of Color” at the Columbia Museum of Art where at 1 you can see a movie about the Harlem Renaissance and all afternoon there’s a Chinese New Year’s celebration. Stick around for the 3 p.m. concert of Baroque music or attend the USC chamber music concert a few blocks away.
This give you some idea of how full your weekend can be with arts?

Thursday, Feb. 11

Wadsworth coming to Wadsworth concert
He’s no longer running the chamber music series that bears his name, but Charles Wadsworth will be at the next concert in body as well as spirit. The pianist and founder of the Spoleto USA Chamber Music series joins series director and cellist Edward Arron, soprano Courtney Budd, pianist Jeewon Park,  violinist Chee-Yun and flutist Angela Jones-Reus in a concert of music by Bach, Saint-Saëns, Amy Beach, Weber, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Piazzolla and the man himself.
The 7 p.m. concert is at the Columbia Museum of Art. Tickets are $35 or $30 for museum  members. Call 799-2810.

Art for the heart
Just in time for the heart holiday Cindy Saad, Penny Baskin, Mana Hewitt, Betty Holland and Becky Blair will show and sell their hand-crafted jewelry at City Art. Bring your money for your honey 5 to 8 p.m. today. (803) 252-3613.

Two shows and two artists
A native of South Carolina and a long-time resident take over the Sumter Gallery of Art..
“Candice Ivy: Black Tide” and “Linda Fantuzzo: The Space Between” look at the land around us and how it shapes us.

Ivy, a native of Hartsville who lives in Boston, has created a multi-media work that explores the sometimes troubled relationship among family, community, history and landscape. It consists of wall projections of furrowed fields that speed past the viewer leading them toward a looped video clip of young men and a pit bull in a yard. The piece was shown at the Laconia Gallery in Boston and Ivey has also exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Rhode Island International Film Festival and the Sguardi Sonoir Festival in Venice.

Linda Fantuzzo is a long-time and well-known Charleston artist who creates atmospheric paintings that meld the landscape, interiors and sometimes paintings of those things. She has shown extensively throughout the country. “The Space Between” consists almost entirely of never-before-seen paintings.
An opening reception takes place tonight from 5:30 to 7:30. Admission is $5, but other times the gallery is free. The Sumter Gallery, 200 Hasel St., Sumter, SC 29150 (adjacent to Patriot Hall on Haynesworth St.) The exhibitions remain on display through April 16. (803) 775-0543.

New dance at the U
USC dancers will be moving in new ways for “Innovative Works,” a performance of mostly just-created pieces.

Guest choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall’s  “Cinderella at the Bar” examines how beauty and identity are intertwined. She has done music videos, is a filmmaker  and presented pieces at Lincoln Center Clark Theater, Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, Galapagos Arts Space, Theater for the New City, Manhattan Theater Source and La MaMa Festival

Other new works are “Between You, Me and the Lamppost” by faculty member Thaddeus Davis and USC dance artist director Susan Anderson’s “Piano Concerto #2.”
Performances are tonight through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Drayton Hall Theatre, Sumter and College streets. $16. 777-5112 or 251-2222.

Friday Feb. 12
More dance

If you like young dance, this really is the weekend for you. USC dance is joined by two more dance performances starting tonight.

”Musicality” by Vibrations Dance Company is a brand new evening long series of pieces by company artistic director Terrance Henderson. The title of the night refers to the fact that all were directly inspired by and connected to soul, rock, and rhythm and blues, hip-hop and pop music.

It’s at  7:30 tonight and Saturday at the Columbia Music Festival Association, 914 Pulaski St.
Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 ($10 cheaper for students.) Saturday includes

Columbia College dancers will take the stage in some cases doing works choreographed by other students. T0night and Saturday at 7:30 in the Cottingham Theatre at Columbia College. 803.786. 786-3850. $10.

You can leave your hat on
Trustus Theatre is for the third time bringing out the big hats and songs for “Crowns.” The musical uses the fancy hats women wear to church to tell stories in song. It also sets up a bit of a culture clash when a young women returns from a northern city to stay with her South Carolina aunt.

Jocelyn Sanders is directing once again but the show has a new musical director. Three returning cast members are joined by four new faces.
The show opens tonight at 8 and runs through March 6. For tickets call (803) 254-9732 or www.trustus.org

Saturday, Feb. 13

South Carolina's greatest artists

One of the biggest and most important exhibitions Columbia has had in a while opens today at the McKissick Museum at USC. “Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art” is an in-depth look at the baskets created along the South Carolina coast for hundreds of years and counterparts in Africa. Many of the baskets are from the USC collection and the show will travel to the Smithsonian and the new Museum for African Art in New York. In the show is a rare, recently-discovered basket from the mid-19th century (pictured)

The show opens today at 11. Between then and 4 you can take tours with curator Dale Rosengarten and basketmaker Nakia Wigfall and listen to a lecture on rice plantations.
Call 777-7251. (I’ll have more about the show Sunday. You can also check out a piece I did for Free Times last week at freetimes)

Young talent and old composers
The South Carolina Philharmonic has is calling tonight’s concert “From Russia, With Love,” but it might have dubbed the whole weekend “Young Love.” The soloist tonight is 17 and Sunday three ensembles of the Philharmonic Youth Orchestras play.

Sean Yeh is performing as winner of the Southeastern Piano Festival held in Columbia each summer. He has plenty of other awards too and made his orchestral debut with the Chicago Symphony in 2008. He’ll play Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.
The concert opens with the “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” by Tchaikovsky – one of the most popular orchestra works– and the Rachmaninoff Third Symphony.

A silent fund raising auction starts in the Koger Center lobby at 6, music director Morihiko Nakahara  (to right in his 007 pose) gives a talk at 6:30 and the music starts at 7:30.
Tickets are $18 to $50. (803) 251-2222 or capitoltickets.com 
The Youth Orchestras concert is at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Koger Center where tickets can be purchased for $10 (half that for kids.)

Movie about the mills
The exhibition “Olympia” has gotten the 701 Center for Contemporary Art deeply into the mill aesthetic. Today is set aside for movies about mills and mill workers.
"The Cry of the Children" is a 1912 film about child labor in the mills and "The Uprising of 1934," a 1995 documentary about a textile strike during which 500,000 workers walked off the job. Tom Terrill, a retired history professor who worked on “The Uprising,” will lead a discussion after it is show at 1:30. “Children” runs at 11:30 and 4.
This event is free and open to the public.
The center is at 701 Whaley St., second floor. 779-4571.

You sexy thing
The “What’s Love Fest” is back for the third year. The popular party has food, drinks, music, dancing and art all tied together by love and lust. Some of what’s served up is temping, some tame, some tempestuous.
The party is at 701 Whaley from 7 to midnight and admission is $15 in advance and $20 at the door. The exhibition will also be open from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday.
You can buy tickets online at palmettoluna.org.

Sunday, Feb, 14
Innovative Innovista unveils new music by dean
Two new works by Tayloe Harding, dean of the USC Music School, have public world premieres today as part of the Chamber Innovista series. “Love Songs” consists of two parts, “Paul to the Corinthians – Agape” and “Inmost Heart – Romantic’ and will be performed by be Tina Stallard, soprano; Jessica Leeth, flute; and Christopher Berg, guitar.

The two short works are part of a four-song cycle Harding is writing. Both use text exploring varieties of love and came about in unusual ways. “Agape” was written for Harding’s daughter’s wedding which takes place the day before concert (so the composer will not be at the concert.)  The second was a commission auctioned at a fund raiser for the music school. The first piece is based on a text from the New Testament, the second from the I Ching, the classic Chinese text.

Also being played at the 3 p.m. concert  is “Dover Beach for Baritone and String Quartet, Op. 3” by Samuel Barber;  “The Summer Knows” by Michel Legrand; “Cabaña Cubano” by Bert Ligon; and “Terzetto for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano, Op. 22” by Theodore Lalliet
The concert will take place not at the music school by at 300 Senate St. Admission is $15. Call 777-4288.

Go for Baroque (you’ve heard that before)
At the same time, the Columbia Museum of Art’s Baroque gallery will be filled with the sound of Baroque music played on Baroque instruments (viola d’amore and lute). Thomas Georgi, who has recorded more viola d’amore music than anyone in the world, will lead the group in the 3 p.m. concert that is part of the “Art of Music” series.

The viola d’amore looks like a viola, but has six-stringed and beneath those a set of “sympathetic” strings that vibrate when the main strings are bowed. The instrument, widely used during the 1700s, often has a carved blindfolded face atop the nick representing the blindness of love. Ah don’t we know it. Now we can hear it.

Admission is $7 or free for members. (Members must make reservations) $5 student tickets at the door. 799-2810.

Monday, Feb. 15
Out and online
Chicago artist Doug Smithenry discovered that young people were  “coming out” and announcing their sexual orientation on Youtube. It inspired him to create “Coming Out Online” consisting of 48 small paintings. The show stops at Columbia College for for a two and a half day showing .

 “I have transformed these online testimonials into an installation of paintings that literally waves the colors of gay pride as it reflects and celebrates how the Internet has provided a sense of community for isolated queer youth,” Smithenry said.

The show opens today and the artist gives a talk at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. It closes Wednesday at 2.  The college is at Main Street and Columbia College drive about two miles north of downtown. Call 786-3088.

Tuesday, Feb. 16
A familiar and a new face

Columbia native Angelia Cho is back home to play Dvorak’s Violin Concerto in a minor with the USC Symphony. The new face is guest conductor Nicola Giuliani, who will also lead the orchestra in Dvorak's Slavonic Dance in G major and Brahms' Symphony No. 1.   Cho, who holds degrees from the Curtis Institute and the New England Conservatory, has performed throughout the world both as a soloist and chamber musician.

A native of Italy, Giuliani conducts throughout the world, mostly in Europe. He has conducted international tours with the Enescu Philharmonic of Bucarest, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Ukrainian National Symphony Orchestra of Kiev. He has taught during the annual conductor’s training institute at USC.
Neil Casey, assistant Conductor of the orchestra, will give a talk at 6:45 and the concert starts at 7:30 in the Koger Center. Tickes are $25; $8 for students. (803) 251-2222 or http://www.capitoltickets.com.

Wednesday, Feb. 17

Life is a cabaret at Trustus
Trustus Theatre gets all New York on us with the first of three cabaret performances that also serve as fund raisers for the theater. The performers are well connected and known in the cabaret world, which seems to exist mainly in New York and Europe. First up is Marjorie Barnes, who has been in performed in a number musicals including “Hair,” “Bubbling Brown Sugar” and “Dreamgirls.” The Columbia-based Wideman/Davis Dance company opens the show. The series continues once-a month through May. The lineup: Cait Doyle, March 3; Columbia native Jonathan Whitton returns home April 13; and Molly Poe, May 12. Tickets are $30 in advance and $35 at the door or you can buy a pass to all for $110. 254-9732.

Make your voice heard
Head to the Contemporary Art Center a bit before 7:30, sign up and you get up to five minutes to say what you’d like for the arts in Columbia. Some local officials and candidates (including most running for mayor of Columbia) will be there. 701 Whaley St. 779-4571.

Jazz from Korea
This is quite saving the best for last, but it's pretty close.
Jazz pianist Jangeun Bae brings her blend of classical and jazz, east and west to Columbia for several concerts. The pianist has played around the world and has two CDs out, one called "Mozart and Jazz."
Bae will be joined by bassist Craig Butterfield, trombonist Kevin Jones, guitarist Bert Ligon and others in a concert tonight at 7:30 at the USC School of Music. It's free. Call 777-4324.
Then next Friday and Saturday, Feb. 19 and 20, she'll be at the Blue Martini. 808  Lady St., in a trio setting. Those gigs start at 9 and are free as well. 256-2442.