A big tip of the old hat to DC9 for scouting this gem of a clip: Sarah Jaffe performing “Vulnerable” on New Day Northwest on August 26, with a bonus interview segment during which Jaffe loves on Texas music. Enjoy.

The Italian baritone Paolo Gavanelli has joined this spring’s Dallas Opera performance of Verdi’s Rigeletto. Having performed the role more than 200 times, the star doesn’t just have critical acclaim – these days, he owns the role.

As Dominic McHugh of MusicalCriticism.com wrote in 2007, “Probably the most tremendous performance of a Verdi opera I’ve ever heard was at the Royal Opera House on 10 June 2005 when Sir Edward Downes led a stellar cast including Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala ..read more

I arrived at the preview of the Kimbell’s new exhibition, Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea, a few minutes early and wandered through the show’s four galleries without looking at the accompanying wall essays, cue cards, or catalogue scholarship. Moving through the neatly arranged collection of artifacts, I was struck by their strange incomprehensibility. I saw small animal figurines with human heads sticking out; exquisitely painted pottery with ornate scenes depicting moments in very unknown stories; plates decorated ..read more

CEO and Artistic Director, Dallas Film Society/DALLAS International Film Festival

Books I’m reading: Stealing Castro’s Daughter by first time author Lee Brooks, is an enthralling book. It is a true story of an American man’s quest to liberate the woman he loves from the clutches of Cuba. Full of unbelievable adventure and romance; even in the most desperate of times, humor prevails. You want to cry, but find yourself laughing out loud. It reminds me of how fortunate we are to be free. My wife Melina finished the book last month so she teases me with more information each night, sort of competitive reading. It will be a fun movie! The book is self distributed on http://www.facebook.com/l/dc244;Amazon.com. The New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by author Eckhart Tolle is sort of my mental yoga. When we returned from Greece this summer I committed that my next real project would be “me.” This book allows me to focus my thoughts and remember the power and calmness of fully living in the moment and making friends with now. I’m half way through the book and I look forward to picking it up and escaping the static that can block out the good that surrounds us, if we are only open to it.

Websites: facebook.com; TED.com; dallasfilm.org; nytimes.com; variety.com; pandora.com; asmallworld.net; kcrw.org; indiewire.com; attpac.org; snopes.com(it’s just fun); archive.org, (I’m hooked); twitter.com/dallasfilm; theonion.com

Magazines, newspapers, journals: Zoetrope -All Story, Vanity Fair, D Magazine, NY Times, Robb Report

Look at Bart Weiss’ Texture of Dallas video. It just took a few seconds, and he captured something immediate and unique about his city. That’s all it takes, which is why even though we’re going to stop accepting Texture of Dallas entries at the end of the business day today, there’s still time to get your video in. Here’s a late entry:

The reason for sending Dallas Morning News theater critic Lawson Taitte to last Thursday’s Green Day concert was that the punk-pop band has turned their album American Idiot into a Broadway musical. But who needs an excuse for the cross-genre critiquing? Taitte needs to go to more shows:

You can’t get any more theatrical than [Bille Joe] Armstrong himself. During the three-hour set he played many parts: foul-mouthed fallen cherub, Bart Simpson after getting into Marge’s eye makeup, a college cheerleader who majors in drama and can’t decide if his ideal role is Puck or Cabaret’s M.C. Most of all he’s playing a rock star.

2. Last week we pointed you to a few pieces that showed how 20 years after the death of legendary guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, local fans are still looking to claim the legendary guitarist as Dallas and Oak Cliff’s own. On Gather, Bryce Westervelt reports on the failed efforts of some Cliff Dwellers to erect a memorial in SRV’s honor. Jeff Castro petitioned the city for a statue of Vaughan in an Oak Cliff park, but was turned down.

“I just don’t think (city leaders) realize how big he was.” says Castro. That’s a difficult statement to argue.

3. Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries is the third largest auction house in the world, and they are expanding. Earlier this year the company opened a Beverly Hills office, and now they have made the leap into the Big Apple. The first New York auction Heritage will hold will feature works by Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell, Gil Elvgren, J.C. Levendecker, and Garth Williams’ drawing that became the cover of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.

Spector 45 singer-guitarist Frankie Campagna brings up the word “homage” a lot in conversation. His left forearm bears the tattooed images of John “The Duke” Wayne and a scowling Clint Eastwood. When I last saw Spector 45, it was at the 2010 DOMA showcase, ripping their way through a crowd-pleasing rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Fulsom Prison Blues.” Frankie’s talk is abounding with ghosts of similar icons – Richie Valens, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins – many of whom he ..read more

The Dallas Theater Center has announced their full cast for the upcoming production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. The performance will star two seasoned Dallas actors, Randy Moore and Kurt Rhoads in the roles of Falstaff and King Henry respectively. With Falstaff, Moore will become the only actor to have worked under every DTC artistic director. Rhoads was a company member in the 1980s and 90s and is returning to Dallas for the first time in more than a decade to ..read more

One of last year’s most celebrated events had to have been Southern Methodist University’s first collaboration with TED, a conference non-profit founded in 1984 to bring together people from three fields: technology, entertainment, and design. The fall symposium was only the beginning of a new brain trust that has been kicking around town: TEDxSMU. That organization has been forging contacts between local creative classers, holding events, and basically allowing their tech-inspired approach all things thinking to begin to infiltrate the ..read more

Tomorrow is the deadline to enter our Texture of Dallas video competition, so get your video done for a chance to have it included in this year’s Dallas Video Festival. Remember, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s an interesting entry that came in over the weekend.