Joseph Arthur
Monday 4.23
The Big Eat
Monona Terrace, 5:30 pm
Isthmus' benefit for Family Centers features tasty morsels from 20 local food purveyors. Rarely has stuffing your face been such a boon to the community.
Kevin Trenberth
1100 Grainger Hall, 7 pm
A scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Trenberth throws down the gauntlet with a lecture called "Global Warming Is Unequivocal."
Practicing Jews
UW Pyle Center, through April 27
This conference brings together artists and scholars to discuss Jewish identity in the arts of the 20th and 21st centuries. You can check out lectures, panel discussions and free public events, including "Moving Bodies: Performing Jewish Identity" by Liz Lerman, David Dorfman and Nina Haft (Monday, Overture Center, 7:30 pm).
Tuesday 4.24
On Retirement
Borders West, 7 pm
For National Poetry Month, nine local bards (Robin Chapman, Ron Wallace, Jesse Lee Kercheval et al.) read from the gray-around-the-edges collection On Retirement.
Wednesday 4.25
Danielle Trussoni
Wisconsin Veterans Museum, 7 pm
The Wisconsin author discusses her celebrated memoir Falling Through the Earth. In this venue, she's likely to focus on her father's traumatic experiences in the Vietnam War.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
Overture Center's Overture Hall, 7:30 pm
The contemporary dance troupe draws from an eclectic bag of styles -- jazz dance, modern dance and ballet -- to form a high-energy hybrid all its own.
Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
High Noon Saloon, 8 pm
Brooklyn's politically aware band is expert at cinching up the tension on funk-flavored Afrobeat grooves.
Thursday 4.26
David Copperfield
Overture Center's Overture Hall, 5:30 & 8:30 pm
In his last appearance here, Copperfield stunned the audience by reading minds, making a car materialize onstage and teleporting a group of audience members from the stage to the balcony. He's not a magician; he's God.
A Bitter Harvest
105 UW Psychology Bldg., 7:30 pm
The lecture series focuses on "Palestine, Israel and Lebanon Forty Years After 1967." This week, Harvard's Sara Roy offers "Reflections on Palestine by a Child of Holocaust Survivors."
Omar Sosa
UW Music Hall, 8 pm
The jazz keyboard great returns to town with his distinctive fusion of Afro-Cuban, world and electronic music.
Joseph Arthur & the Lonely Astronauts
High Noon Saloon, 9 pm
Arthur sheds his progressive singer-songwriter persona and trips through Stones-inspired slop-rock, a touch of glam and lengthy sonic freakouts that'll have you wondering what he's been smoking.
Chubby Carrier & the Bayou Swamp Band
Club Tavern, 9:30 pm
Carrier squeezes out dance-friendly, rocked-up zydeco that's all about getting ladies and gents out on the floor.
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
UW Union South's Club 770, 9:30 pm
Leo's peppy, rather earnest political punk borrows a lot of its fire from older rockers like Paul Weller, Joe Strummer and Andy Partridge.
