The Berkshire Eagle from Pittsfield, Massachusetts • 35

Weekend Reviews: Movies Page D3, D5 Music Page D7 Movies D3 Berkshire Stages D6 Media D8 Comics D9 Outdoors D10 The Berkshire Eagle Friday, August 11, 2006 illiams and Ma Am Partners, friends at the Pops 1W2 By Andrew L. Pincus Special to The Eagle LENOX John Williams loved the book "Memoirs of a Geisha" so much when it came out that he sent a copy to Yo-Yo Ma, thinking he would enjoy it. Then Rob Marshall a "brilliant choice" as director, Williams says asked Williams to write the music for the film version. He couldn't resist. He found the book "a beautiful love story" with universal emotional appeal.

"Around this time," Williams recalls, "without having seen any film, I thought, 'Well, a cello would be beautiful evocation, or a beautiful medium, to express a theme for the little girl Chiyo and also for the grownup girl in the person of Sayuri when she becomes the mature woman and devas-tatingly beautiful "And so I rang up Yo-Yo, who was in China at the time this was about a year before the filming and just said, 'You know, that geisha book is going to be a film, and a beautiful one, and would you like to come and join us and play in the He said, 'Just tell me what time and I will be The film, with Ma and violinist Itzhak Perlman as soloists in Williams' Golden Globe-winning soundtrack, was released late last year. A compact disc of the soundtrack was issued by Sony Classical. For Williams' annual Film Night at Tanglewood tomorrow, the 74-year-old composer-conductor will lead the Boston Pops in a suite specially tai- POPS, continued on D2 Courtesy Photo Peter Boal brings his widely respected Pacific Northwest Ballet to Jacob's Pillow Wednesday. Master's spinoff is coming to the Pillow 22 years, teaching at the school, marrying a fellow dancer, and then practicing the role of artistic director with his own pick-up troupe of four company cohorts. Though he came as a dancer to PNB, he had trained or performed with several of its principals; fully 15 company members had been his students as teenagers at School of American Ballet.

In short, Boal is "family," a solid heir to the continuity and tradition PNB co-founders Francia Russell and Kent Stowell had cultivated for 22 years prior to his arrival. Trained initially at the San Francisco Ballet, both Russell and Stowell also enjoyed long professional connection with NYCB under Balanchine. In 1964, Russell was appointed ballet mistress, teaching company class, rehearsing and staging Mr. B's mas-terworks both there and in Europe. As a soloist with the company, Stowell partnered virtually all of the BOAL, continued on DS By Allison TVacy Special to The Eagle BECKET Peter Boal was only 39 years old and freshly "retired" from a distinguished career with the New York City Ballet when he boxed up the Big Apple, put his fledgling Peter Boal and Company in indefinite storage and trekked west to assume the artistic direction of Pacific Northwest Ballet.

The company comes to Jacob's Pillow Wednesday. He seems and looks young for such a role directing the seasonal programming and school of one of the most prominent of the 10 Balanchine spinoffs in the U.S. (PNB's school is considered among the top three with NYCB's School of American Ballet and that of American Ballet Theater.) However young by the world's standards, Boal is old in the ways of ballet. He virtually grew up at NYCB, beginning in its school at age 13, performing with the company for Courtesy Photo Yo Yo Ma, left, appears with John Williams in a Boston Pops concert at Symphony Hall in 2004. Going back to his revue roots 'It's a satire of one-man with a cast of five.

Gehry's genius is sketched on film By John Rogers Associated Press LOS ANGELES Frank Gehry is smart enough to know he may well be the greatest architect of his time and insecure enough not to admit it even to himself. Whenever he accepts a commission to create what will undoubtedly become one of the most talked about buildings in the world, the first thing Gehry does is occupy himself with busy work: making phone calls, arranging meetings, doing seemingly anything he can to postpone the inevitable actually designing the building. "I'm always scared that I'm not edy. Such inspired show-biz creations as the fawning yet often clueless celeb interviewer Jiminy Glick come to mind. Glick and a few others can be found in "Fame Becomes Me," a new musical revue, conceived by Short, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, that opens Thursday on Broadway after an extended tryout tour.

"I think this is a definite hybrid," says Short. "It's a satire of one-man shows," done with a cast of five. The actor, dressed in a black T-shirt (fashionably covered by a SHORT, continued on 04 By Michael Kuchwara Associated Press NEW YORK Martin Short sits in the cool comfort of his newly repainted star dressing room in the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (last occupant: Julia Roberts in "Three Days of and discourses on the differences between the Chicago and Toronto companies of the legendary comedy troupe Second City. Chicago, the original, "always was very, very well written, very politically astute and very smart," the comedian says.

And Toronto, its first offspring and a company that showcased Short in the late 1970s, was "a little sillier and, to me, a little funnier because it was absurd. People did characters. They wore wigs. In Chicago, there wasn't much of that." For Short, some 25 years later, the wigs are still around. So is his fondness for character-driven com AP Actor Martin Short is starring in 'Fame Becomes a musical revue opening on Broadway.

More than another blonde star going to know what to do," he confides to close personal friend Sydney Pollack in Pollack's documentary, "Sketches of Frank Gehry." The film, which opened in New York and Los Angeles in mid-May, moved to theaters nationwide last week. It opens today at Images Cinema in Williams-town and Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington. Sooner or later, though, Gehry must get down to real work, which in his case involves taking pen to paper and sketching out the beginning of what likely will morph into one of the Frank Gehry got her own reality show, "Cheyenne," which chronicled her experiences navigating the music industry and recording her own album. She recently released that album, "The Day Has Come," featuring songs that she either wrote or co-wrote with others. The teen talked with the Associated Press about fame, being miscategorized and why she doesn't miss going to school.

AP: It took three years for your record to coming out. Was it difficult to be patient? Kimball: I really did want my music to be heard sooner than later. When I was 13 they were saying your album won't come out KIMBALL, continued on DS By Alicia Quarles Associated Press NEW YORK Cheyenne Kimball may have her own MTV reality show and sing pop tunes, but she insists she's not just another blonde pop star. Instead of comparisons to Ashlee Simpson, she'd rather be put in the same category of a Sheryl Crow. Like Crow, Kimball is a guitarist and a songwriter in fact, she boasts that she had written countless songs before turning 13.

It was at 13 that Kimball, a petite Texan who now lives in Los Angeles, got her first big break, winning the television competition "America's Most Talented Kid," which landed her a record deal. MTV later came calling, and she most visually stunning structures of its time, as in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall; or Seattle's Experience Music Project. Thus the title of veteran director Pollack's first documentary, which actually is much more than a look at Gehry's sketches. The film is also a detailed sketch of the architect himself, with commentary from everyone from Gehry to actor Dennis Hopper (who lives in a Gehry house), to critic Hal Foster (who heads Princeton University's architecture department), to Gehry's 97-year-old psychoanalyst. It's also a first for both of its principals, the first such GEHRY, continued on D2 Associated Press Singer Cheyenne Kimball poses at Chelsea Piers in New York.

The 16-year-old hopes to make it big with the release of her debut album, 'The Day Has sum.