SM Symphony and Crossroads Chamber in Concert Sunday ”The Santa Monica Symphony will be joined by the Crossroads School Chamber Orchestra and baritone Jubilant Sykes in a free concert on Sunday, December 12, at 7:30 p.m., to celebrate the symphony’s 60th Anniversary. The concert is at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main Street. ”Under the baton of Music Director and Conductor Allen Robert Gross, the Santa Monica Symphony will open the program with the exciting new piece ‘Momentum’ by Chen Yi, which depicts the thunderous power of a volcano and captures the sweeping dynamism of Chinese calligraphy with themes from traditional Chinese music. ”The Santa Monica Crossroads School Chamber Orchestra, under director Alexander Treger, will play Tchaikovsky’s melodic ‘Souvenir of Florence.’ ”Sykes will sing a selection of traditional American songs and spirituals. ”The program also includes Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony. ”Continuing a 60-year tradition, admission is free to the concerts of the Santa Monica Symphony. Parking in the city’s Civic Auditorium lot is $8. ”A pre-concert talk by Raymond Knapp will take place in the Meeting Room at 6:45 p.m. o o o Mansfield Chamber Singers to Present December Concerts ”The Mansfield Chamber Singers, directed by Kenneth Wells, will begin their 25th anniversary season with two concerts on the theme ‘Singer, Awake and Arise.’ ”The first performance will take place at 4 p.m., Sunday, December 12 at St. Augustine By-the-Sea Episcopal Church, 1227 Fourth St. The second will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, December 18 at Grace Lutheran Church, 4427 Overland in Culver City. ”The music ranges from 17th to the 21st centuries. From the Baroque era are ‘Sing Ye Muses’ by John Blow (Purcell’s teacher) and the ‘Magnificat’ by Pachelbel. The Romantics are represented by Mendelssohn’s ‘Verleih uns Frieden’ and the finale to Beethoven’s ‘Choral Fantasy.’ ”Works by contemporary composers Daniel E. Gawthrop, David Mooney, Robert Applebaum, Howard Helvey, Kenneth Wells and other complete the program. ”Voluntary donations are requested. Contact: 234-0215. o o o Musical Tribute to Highlight Early Broadway ”Operetta Archives presents a musical and theatrical tribute to early Broadway musicals on Saturday, December 18 and Sunday, December 19 at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. ”This staged tribute features songs and medley drawn from their shows from the first quarter of the century by four theatrical giants’Victor Herbert, Rudolf Frimi, Jerome Kern and Sigmund Romberg. Familiar works include Mlle. Modiste, the Firefly, The Girl from Utah, and Maytime, and rare gems from shows like ‘The Lady of The Slipper, ‘high Jinks, ‘She’s a Good Fellow, ‘ and ‘Robinson Crusoe, Jr.’ that have fallen into theatrical oblivion. ”The music director/pianist for the concerts will be Victoria Kirsch, one of Southern California’s most respected accompanists, and stage direction by Steven A. Daigle, head of Eastman Opera Theater at the Eastman School of Music. ”Operetta Archives is a private research library in Culver City that houses the country’s largest collection of operetta-related material such as recordings, scores, books, sheet music and posters. ”For tickets ($25), contact 825-2101. o o o Mount St. Mary’s to Present Christmas Choral Concert ”Mount St. Mary’s College Department of Music present a Christmas Choral Concert on Friday, December 10 at Mary Chapel, 12001 Chalon Rd. in Brentwood. ”The Mount Chorus, Mount Singers, MSMC Alumnae and St. Monica High School Women’s Chorus will present traditional and holiday favorites featuring the music of Michael Hayden, Randall Thompson, Gustov Holst, John Rutter, Camille Saint Saens and many others. ”A $10 donation ($5 for students) is requested. o o o Westwood Chamber and Choir Presents Messiah Sing-Along ”The Westwood Chamber Orchestra celebrates the holiday season with a special ‘Messiah’ sing-along concert on Friday, December 10 at 8 p.m. at Westwood Presbyterian Church, 10822 Wilshire Blvd. ”Audience members are invited to bring their musical scores and join in as the chorus. Suggested donations at the door are $10 and there are no advance reservations. Vocal scores will also be available for purchase. ”Dr. John-Kevin Hilbert, music director, will conduct the orchestra and Westwood Presbyterian Chancel choir in performing all of Part I of Handel’s seasonal masterpiece plus additional pieces from the work. Guest soloists include Rhonda Dillon, soprano; Gale Oliver Mezzo-soprano; Miguel Vargas, tenor; Conrad Immel and Jason Heck, baritone.

Theater Review

What a difference 20 years makes in the world of comedy. Look at Steve Martin and Ellen DeGeneres, who abandoned the stand-up stage for the written page and talk shows. Neil Simon, whose more recent obsession with his own mortality is a disappointment to his earlier fans, once upon a time in 1981 wrote a clever farce called ‘Fools,’ which has been reprised at Palisades High School’s Mercer Hall for two weekends. Directed by the new drama department head Monica Iannessa, ‘Fools’ spins a traditional Russian folk tale about a village of idiots, who, imbued with Simon’s elastic wordplay and stage tomfoolery, provide an outrageous evening of fun. The comic fable takes place in the remote Ukrainian village of Kulyenshikov, which is charmingly recreated by set designer India Lawrence, complete with ‘Sound of Music’ sheep painted in the idyllic landscape. For 200 years, the village has been cursed with chronic stupidity, which the unfortunate innocents try to break by hiring the ecstatic school teacher Leon Tolchinsky in hopes he’ll pull them out of ignorance. The plot quickens when Leon discovers that if he fails in his efforts, he, too, will become stupid. And he has just 24 hours to put an end to the curse. With the silliness in place, the actors, mostly from Pali’s play production class, fall into their roles with an unbridled joy and energy consistent with being teens. Director Iannessa has sprung open the proscenium, allowing the actors (and musicians) to spill out into the audience and even invite us to take part in the action. This play rests on the shoulders of Leon (Adam McCrory), who is as lovable and winning as the Music Man. Skipping out onto the thrust ramp, he wins over the audience, who are batting for him all the way. Simon’s brilliant dialogue is a perfect nonsense rhyme, sprinkled with the absurd illogic of the townspeople who have no brains, but a lot of heart. When first we meet the local shepherd ‘something, something Snetsky’ (Whitney Curtis), she cannot fully introduce herself due to having forgotten her own name. And Leon’s love interest, Sophia Zubritsky (Taylor Fisher), more than proves her charming empty-headedness when she chooses yellow as her favorite color ‘because it doesn’t stick to your fingers.’ Her parents, Dr. Zubritsky (Jeremy Ungar) and Lenya (Annie Tippe), are a delight. When they can’t remember who Leon Tolchinsky is ‘He’s the best young, young, young ‘.in all of Russia,’ the gag goes on to a faretheewell. I can’t help myself for falling for a running gag, and Yenchna (Gilli Messer), the fishmonger who convinces us that her basketful of flowers is really fish, is killing. Simon, being Simon, leaves us with a valuable lesson, too. You can’t be cursed unless you permit yourself to be. ‘Fools’ is Pali’s first foray into presenting the annual fall play over two weekends. It’s a good idea, for all the excellent effort that has gone into the production. The actors have the advantage and opportunity to build upon their roles, and the musicians’a ragtag group of horn players, who parade around during the intervals with wonderful abandon’complete the theatrical experience. Performances continue December 9, 10 and 11 at 7:30 p.m. The preshow’full of music and fun’starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $8 at the door.

Cinematographer Don Burgess received an early Christmas gift this week. Two of his movies, both with Christmas themes and both starring fellow Palisadians, were number two and three in box office grosses last weekend. ”This past spring, Burgess, ASC, was director of photography for ‘Christmas with the Kranks,’ currently the number two film, where his challenge was to make Downey look like snowy, wintry Chicago. A lifelong Palisadian who has worked steadily on films for 28 years, he shot ‘The Polar Express,’ the number three film, with longtime collaborator Robert Zemeckis in March 2003. The movie took an unusually long time to come to the theaters because of the complex computer animation process involved. ”’The Polar Express’ is the first feature-length film to be made entirely with motion capture technology in which the actors’ performances are digitally captured by computerized cameras and become human blueprints for creating virtual characters. The film, based on the children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg, tells of a doubting boy’s dreamlike train ride to the North Pole to find out if there really is a Santa Claus. ”In ‘The Polar Express,’ the actors were filmed going through the motions on a soundstage. Set up around the room were 65 infrared cameras focused on the actors, who had reflective markers all over their bodies. There were 151 separate tracking markers on the faces of each actor, so that the computer could use that information to render detailed and realistic facial expressions. ”In addition, 12 video cameras recorded the actors’ performances, which took the technology a step further. ‘The animators could watch this live version right next to the animated version they were working on. It took more of the performance out of the animators’ hands, and gave it to the actors,’ says Burgess. ”Unlike with most of his films where lighting is a huge part of his job, Burgess wasn’t involved in the lighting, which was done completely by digital artists. His challenge was to come up with problem-solving techniques for filming in this way while learning a new technology. For example, if an actor sat down on a bed, the bed would have to be made of wire mesh, so cameras could see through it and capture all of the actor’s movements three-dimensionally. ”In addition, because adult actors played child characters (including Hanks, who played multiple characters including the young ‘hero boy’), there were issues of scale to deal with. ”Burgess previously worked with his fellow Palisadian Hanks on several films including ‘Forrest Gump’ (for which Burgess was nominated for an Academy Award) and ‘Cast Away.’ ”’Tom’s a great person, number one,’ Burgess says. ‘He’s very professional, he really cares about the project, he has a wonderful work ethic and he’s a unique individual in the field.’ ”Burgess calls Zemeckis, whom he’s worked with since ‘Back to the Future, Part II,’ ‘one of the great directors working today. It’s very challenging as a cinematographer to work with him. On each film, he is always finding new ways to do a shot.’ ”One aspect of the film Burgess was not involved with was the Imax 3D version of ‘The Polar Express’ [at the Bridge]. ‘I highly recommend it,’ says Burgess, who adds that the effect of snow falling all around the viewer and the amusement park-like movement of the train ride is fun. ”For ‘Christmas with the Kranks,’ Burgess teamed with Palisadian Jamie Lee Curtis in the film directed by Joe Roth and based on a John Grisham story about a couple’s attempt to skip their normal Christmas traditions once their daughter leaves home. ‘Curtis is great, a lot of fun,’ Burgess says. ‘She’s great with the crew, wonderful to watch and a positive person.’ ”The crew built 19 houses and created their own neighborhood streets in Downey. Although this was done by the production designers, Burgess also had a part in laying out the streets so that the light would hit the houses in the right way. ‘The trick was making it look like winter. I brought in a huge crane to hold up a 100×100-ft. silk tarp over the set to make [the light] feel more wintry.’ ”In this film, lighting is a key element and Burgess is always keenly aware of where the sun is and how it will affect shooting. Weather issues, such as fogginess along the coast, are also something he has to constantly assess in order to get the light he needs. ”Burgess has a film crew of 25 to 50 people, but also enjoys the collaboration with all the other departments. ‘I work a lot with wardrobe to test fabrics, we test hair color, test paint colors, we work with all the departments to come up with the look of the film. ”’What I enjoy about the job is the variety,’ says Burgess, who has filmed all over the world. This week, he flew to Canada to scout locations for ‘Antarctica,’ an adventure film for director Frank Marshall (‘Arachnophobia’). When his three kids were younger, he and his wife Bonnie, also a lifelong Palisadian, would take the kids and live in different locations, including Chicago, South Carolina and Israel, while he was filming. ”Now that his children are older, he tries to find a balance between shooting closer to home and on location. His oldest daughter, Lindsy, a nurse, is married to Michael Junger, and the Palisades couple are expecting their first child in January. Son Michael, 21, is a student at Santa Barbara City College who will enter USC Film School in the fall, and daughter Brittany, 17, is a junior at Marymount. ”Don and Bonnie met at the age of 10 when her father was his Pop Warner football coach, and began dating in their 20s. They both attended local schools, including Paul Revere and Palisades High School. ”Burgess, who studied photography throughout high school, attended Art Center College of Design to study film. He mixed his visual and athletic skills to find his niche in the industry’skiing backwards or scuba diving with a camera for TV sports, Olympic coverage and documentaries. ‘I enjoyed going on adventures, carrying a camera, shooting film and getting paid for it,’ he says of his early days in the industry. ‘I had no idea I’d end up being a feature film director of photography.’ ”His current athletic passion is cycling, and for the past 10 years, he’s been a member of the Palisades Literary Society cycling club. The 20 men and women meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:15 a.m. at the library and cycle for an hour and a half on one of several routes. They also have traveled together, such as last summer’s trip to the Tour de France. Ten club members rode on the Tour de France route in the morning, then watched the race in the afternoon. ”Burgess will return to his adventuring days while working on ‘Antarctica’ in which Smithers, British Columbia (750 miles north of Vancouver) will be standing in for the South Pole. He’s also developing a film based on John Grisham’s book, ‘Bleachers,’ which will be his first foray into directing. ”But no matter where he ventures, Burgess always enjoys coming back to his hometown, where his parents moved in the ’50s and together ran Don Burgess Pools. He will return from Canada to spend Christmas in the Palisades with his family. It’s also fun for him to work with so many Palisadians, and have so many of his fellow PaliHi graduates as colleagues in the film industry. ”’When I was nominated for ‘Forrest Gump’ in 1995, so was Rick Carter, the production designer on ‘Forrest Gump,’ composer Thomas Newman, who was nominated for ‘Little Women’ and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and writer Roger Avary for the film ‘Pulp Fiction.’ All of us went to PaliHi.’

When Victoria Francis retired as the Palisades High School drama teacher last spring, she made sure the well-regarded program she had developed for 27 years was in good hands. She hand-picked as her successor Monica Iannessa to continue the beloved program. Iannessa has been leading the school’s drama program this school year to both a first-place victory in the fall drama festival and to the debut tonight of ‘Fools,’ a Neil Simon comedy that will be the drama students’ first performance under her direction. ”Iannessa most recently started and developed the drama program at Chaparral High School in Temecula, where she was honored with the Temecula Valley High School District’s Teacher of the Year in 2003. Prior to that, she taught at Escondido High School and Saint John Bosco High School in her 16-year career. ”Francis and Iannessa worked together through the Drama Teachers Association of Southern California, where they both were involved in the Fall Festival and Spring Shakespeare Festival. Iannessa also brought her Chaparral students on Francis’ Broadway Melody Tours of New York. ”’I was honored for her to consider me,’ Iannessa says of Francis. ‘She’d been here for 27 years; it was like handing over a child.’ ”But when Francis first asked her two years ago, Iannessa was hesitant, having just bought a house in Temecula and running a program she had started with a state-of-the-art 300-seat theater. ”Last year, Francis approached her again. At that time, Iannessa decided to make the move to Pali, sold her house and bought a condo in West Hollywood, and is thrilled to be in L.A. at a high-performing high school. ”Drama has been a lifelong passion for Iannessa, ever since she played a wind-up doll in her kindergarten pageant, and continuing all through her school years in Cerritos. She was a theater major at Cal State Long Beach. ”Iannessa was a member of the improv troupe the Cadre, and has done radio voiceovers, but her primary career since college has been teaching. ”Although she’d like to get back to community theater someday, she is devoted full-time to the Palisades High School theater department, where her day stretches from 6:45 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. ‘It never drags on, it’s never the same day,’ says Iannessa, who is passionate about teaching drama. ‘You get to know the students really well over all four years. You’re a combination of educator, camp counselor and mentor.’ ”Sixty students in her A.M. theater program meet at 7 a.m. daily for a class in improvisation and comedy sports. Later in the day, she teaches three ninth grade drama classes, part of a cross-curricular program with English and social studies. She also teaches a junior drama class and the play production class, where students work on sets, publicity, costumes and acting. There are 130 students in the Thespian Club. ”After school, it’s time to rehearse ‘Fools,’ which opens tonight. ‘It’s about a schoolteacher in a remote village in Russia, who is hired to tutor the doctor’s daughter in a town that is cursed with stupidity,’ she says. ‘He vows to break the curse by educating the daughter. ”’There’s a little bit of social commentary in it that I enjoy,’ Iannessa says. Her favorite play to stage is the 1930’s comedy ‘You Can’t Take It with You’ by George Kaufman and Moss Hart. ”The comedies are a change of pace, since Francis focused on dramas over the last several years. Iannessa hopes to give equal importance to all three productions’the fall play, winter one-acts and spring musical. Her goal is to have more people in the community attend the fall show. She has created a new look in the staging by extending the stage out into the audience, and having the cast members at times use the aisles. She also rearranged the audience seating to make it a more intimate setting with 200 seats and increased the run to two weeks. ‘It’s more fun to do it several nights.’ ”As for long-term goals, Iannessa would like to make some changes in the performance venue or, ideally, a brand-new theater. ‘I would like it to reflect the community, which supports theater and has a lot of people in the business.’ ”Her philosophy of teaching is to create an ensemble. ‘Everybody is working together, acting together. Nobody’s treated as a star’every part is important, everyone has something to contribute, and they rely on one another to perform.’ ”She likes to take time for the students to reflect on each performance: ‘What we’ve done, what we can do to get better next time.’ ”Iannessa also believes that theater teaches life skills. ‘You learn how to handle disappointment, accept responsibility, overcome conflict, solve problems, organize your time’these all come into play in real life.’ ”’I am thankful to Victoria Francis,’ says Iannessa. ‘I feel grateful to her that she felt confident to hand her excellent program over to me. I respect her and I want her to know she left it in good hands.’ ”’Fools’ premieres tonight at Mercer Hall at 7:30 and continues Friday and Saturday, and next Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $8.

For Emmy award-winning music composer Dean Grinsfelder, the sound of success comes by combining his background in business with his lifelong passion for music. ”Grinsfelder holds an M.B.A. from UCLA and has worked as a musician from the studio in his Palisades Highlands home since 2000. His client list includes Disney, Fox/Marvel Films, Miramax Films, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures. ”Perhaps Grinsfelder’s most recognizable work is the movie lead-in music he wrote for AMC Theaters. His music supplements a film reel-shaped cartoon character named Flick who jumps around on-screen and introduces the movie. ”In 2002, Grinsfelder scored the music for actor (and his Highlands’ neighbor) Steve Guttenberg, who made his directorial debut with ‘P.S. Your Cat is Dead.’ ‘That was a great experience, working with Steve,’ Grinsfelder says. In September, Grinsfelder, along with eight other team members, was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Sound Editing For Nonfiction Programming (Single or Multi-Camera) for the Discovery Channel’s ‘Dinosaur Planet.’ The program, produced by Palisades-based Evergreen Films, was a four-part computer-animated docudrama that followed the lives of several groups of dinosaurs in their struggle to survive a harsh environment. ”As a result of a ‘very tight timetable’ to write the music, Grinsfelder enlisted the assistance of various other composers. ‘It took a lot of coordinating on my part and a lot of shepherding to make sure that the score served the picture,’ he says. ”Born and raised in Ross, just north of San Francisco, Grinsfelder began improvising on the piano at the age of 5. ‘I resisted taking piano lessons because I always wanted to play what I heard rather than what someone else wanted to hear,’ he says. ”Growing up, Grinsfelder admired the music of Chicago, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Peter Gabriel. Following junior high’where he discovered his passion for jazz after hearing Henry Mancini’s ‘Pink Panther’ theme’he played piano in the high school band.” ”He then attended UC Berkeley, where he participated in various jazz, rock, and R&B ensembles. ”In 1982, after earning a degree in music composition with a business minor, Grinsfelder played music professionally while simultaneously working for his father in real estate. When his passion for music temporarily subsided, he decided to attend business school. ‘I realized I did not enjoy music the industry, even though I loved music the art,’ he says. ”After earning an M.B.A. from UCLA, Grinsfelder went on to work in real estate investment banking in New York and Los Angeles for eight years until he turned 34 and had a change of heart. ”’I was looking ahead at my career and asking myself if I wanted to be a managing director of real estate investment banking when I grew up or if I would be happier doing something else,’ he recalls. ”Soon after, he enrolled in various seminars, workshops and film scoring programs at UCLA Extension and subsequently realized that film and TV music was the combination he’d been searching for. ‘It combined my music skills with my business skills. It allowed me to have clients, responsibilities and deadlines, but at the same time, it gave me an area that I could compete in and express myself creatively.’ ”In 1995, Grinsfelder set his professional sights on the film and television industry and created Highland Music Productions (HMC). As president, Grinsfelder has two assistants and several partners with whom he collaborates on what he refers to as ‘short-form’ projects (commercials, film trailers, interactive media and promos). On ‘long-form’ projects (films, TV shows and documentaries), he works alone. ”Most of Grinsfelder’s work occurs right in his studio, a spacious space with smashing views of the Santa Monica mountains. ”Grinsfelder says he especially appreciates having an ability to help a story unfold. ‘The most enjoyment I get out of the music I write is partly related to the quality of the music when it’s finished, but mostly related to the overall impact that the music with the picture has on the viewer,’ he says. ‘If the story can be told musically, then I’ve done my job.’ ”His current projects include the orchestration and music production of the ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ series for UPN; ‘Lost Fleets of the Pacific’ for the Discovery Channel; ‘The Machinist’ film trailer for Paramount Classics, and a USC Alumni Tribute promo to be televised during USC’s athletic coverage. Soon he’ll be at work on ‘Alien Planet’ and ‘The Science of Star Wars,’ both multi-part specials for the Discovery Channel. ”When Grinsfelder isn’t scoring music, he enjoys playing tennis (he’s a USTA Level 5.0 player) and trail running in the Highlands, where he’s lived since 1989 with his wife Victoria and their two sons, David, 7, and Matthew, 4-1/2. Both boys attend Calvary Christian School.

Nahid Massoud’s warm embrace greets guests walking up her Palisades driveway on an early October afternoon. Dressed elegantly in a black two-piece pants suit of traditional Afghan burka design and embroidery, Massoud points people down the stone path to her newly completed backyard gallery. ”This is the first art opening reception at Sharq, an art space created for the work of bicultural artists with roots in the East (Sharq means ‘the East’ in Farsi). About 200 people turn out to see the paintings of Kurdish artist Tahir Fatah. ”’There is no place devoted to Sharqi artists in Los Angeles,’ says Massoud, a Muslim woman born in Kabul, Afghanistan. The pants suit she is wearing for only the second time was a gift given to her in 1977, when she left her native country to come to the United States on a student visa. While she was in the States, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and she has never returned to her homeland. ”Having seen occasional exhibits of contemporary artists from Sharq at places such as Bergamot Station’s Schomburg Gallery, Massoud wanted to create a space dedicated to bicultural Sharqi artists ‘with the aim of showing the diversity and creativity in that little-known and often misunderstood region.’ ”The idea for Sharq was born soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when Massoud realized the crucial need for intercultural exchange and felt encouraged to share the memories of her experiences in her native country with the public. Having grown up in a privileged diplomatic household, Massoud has childhood memories that include living and studying in Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Turkey and Iran. ”’I wanted to share the beauty of other parts of the Sharqi world,’ she says. ‘The more exchanges you have, the more understanding [you have].’ ”Massoud, who became a United States citizen on May 13, 1991, adds that the Sharq project is also personally satisfying for her as Afghan-American woman because ‘it’s satisfying my personal sense of belonging.’ ”Prior to the development of Sharq, Massoud co-taught a class on the history and culture of Afghanistan with her husband, Robert Rosenstone, a history professor at Caltech, and has lectured at Palisades venues such as St. Matthew’s and Villa Aurora. She is currently on staff at the Neuropyschiatric Institute at UCLA, where she is a nurse specializing in eating disorders. ”One may wonder how Massoud has made time to cultivate such an important undertaking, and the answer lies in her passion for sharing her culture and learning about other cultures. ”When she initially told artists and people working in the art world about her idea for Sharq, they were ‘excited about a bicultural niche,’ she says. ‘Whether it will be accepted by [other] people, I don’t know.’ ”Yet judging from the first reception, which drew a multicultural crowd with Egyptian, Algerian, Moroccan, Palestinian, Iranian, Lebanese and American backgrounds, she and Rosenstone are hopeful. ”The 900-square-foot art space has bamboo flooring, which Massoud chose because she wanted ‘something soothing’ that could also be used for dance or yoga. She also thought the bamboo would complement the ‘natural, even light’ of the gallery, which has high ceilings and five skylights. ”Soon after beginning renovations on the guest house space a year ago, Massoud met artist Tahir, who was born in Sulymanih, Kurdistan (the part of Kurdistan which is currently Northern Iraq). She had heard about him from a friend, and felt an immediate connection to Tahir in terms of ‘the Sharq part of us,’ she says. ‘We share this world, its symbols and metaphors, as well as in our upbringing with the Koran and the history of our civilizations.’ ”Massoud had ‘an intuitive feeling’ that he was the right artist to exhibit at Sharq but says, ‘I didn’t know if Tahir, as an accomplished artist, would allow his art to be here, in a small space behind our house in the Palisades.’ ”Fortunately, Tahir, who attended the Baghdad Institute of Art before winning a four-year scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966, also felt a sentimental connection to Massoud based on their cultural similarities. ”’We hold a certain romantic notion of where we come from, but it does not represent who we are there,’ Tahir says, explaining that ‘we would still be there [in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively] if we had the openness to evolve there.’ ”He believed that showing his paintings at Sharq in October was important in terms of ‘uniting ourselves as bicultural people in a universal setting, and establishing a connection to American culture.’ Like Massoud, Tahir appreciates America because it’s connected to freedom of choice. ‘America has the natural ingredients and richness of potential to be engaged,’ he says. ‘It’s a fertile land in terms of human potentiality. I came here without a language and I was able to achieve a scholarship.’ ”Tahir was only 21 years old in 1964 when he came to the United States with $400 in his pocket. He worked as a dishwasher in Washington, D.C., before going first to California and then to Chicago to study art. Since earning his MFA, he has had exhibitions in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. ”From a gallery point of view, Tahir says that there are not many places to show his art because it doesn’t fit into a category in terms of art history, such as Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism or Cubism. Galleries find his art ‘harder to accept because they can’t place me,’ he says, though he finds strange joy in this since ‘I don’t feel like I can place myself.’ ”At the same time, Tahir does feel a sense of collectiveness because ‘I have studied classical painting and live in the modern world.’ During the day, he works as a scenic artist for NBC’s TV series ‘Passions,’ and often produces copy paintings of classical works to hang on sets. ”’Scenic painting has been liberating,’ he says, explaining that it’s made him comfortable working on a large scale. ”Tahir sees his work as related to the struggle of the Kurdish people in their search for liberty and freedom, but he says that ‘it is not frozen in the boundaries of nationalism.’ The lights and darks of his large acrylic paintings represent the Kurdish struggle, or what he considers his ‘romantic belief and trust that you can end free. [Hope] is around the corner, but never there.’ ”The dark colors, particularly the blacks, are in one sense a reflection of his childhood in Kurdistan because, as Tahir explains, in the Islamic world adults would often ‘scare and discipline kids through underground spirits of the night.’ For example, as a boy he was told ‘If you go out at night, you will step on the ghost spirits of children.’ ”But Tahir is no longer afraid of the spirits. ‘I’ve learned to live with this through painting.’ ”On the other hand, the holes of black space in his painting also reflect a possible collapse of gravity, an idea he relates to an American image he has of when Apollo went to the moon and there was the image of Earth rising from the moon, full of light and surrounded by black. ”Tahir often uses nature as a metaphor for his own feelings and thought processes, painting just a glance of sky to reveal tension and vulnerability, or an image of water to represent ‘where you can go’ off land. ”’The absence of things has more psychological impact,’ he says, adding that the psychological aspects of his paintings link all of his work. ”’Kurdistan, to me, is very present here,’ Massoud says, standing in the middle of the sky-lit, bamboo-floored gallery and pointing out the dominant red-oxide soil color and fragmented bits of blue sky in Tahir’s dramatic natural landscapes. One guest who came to see the art called the parts where the sky peeks out ‘windows of hope.’ ”’People have been very affected by his art,’ she says. ”In the future, Massoud and Rosenstone say they would like to have events that involve the visual arts, crafts, music and the spoken word. They have not yet set a date for the next event, though they are planning to have a particular Iranian artist show his work sometime early next year. ”’You have to work from what you know, and Nahid knows Sharq,’ Rosenstone says.