Main Library

Classical Music in a Hollywood Biography/Drama (117 min.)

A Los Angeles journalist befriends a homeless Juilliard-trained musician, while looking for a new article for the paper. He discovers Nathaniel Ayers, a mentally ill, homeless street musician who possesses extraordinary talent, even through his half-broken instruments. Inspired by his story, Lopez writes an acclaimed series of articles about Ayers and attempts to do more to help both him and the rest of the underclass of LA have a better life. However, Lopez’s good intentions run headlong in the hard realities of the strength of Ayers’ personal demons and the larger social injustices facing the homeless. Regardless, Lopez and Ayers must find a way to conquer their deepest anxieties and frustrations to hope for a brighter future for both of them.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFoMhKgTlh0

Join Sun Valley Opera in a screening of the 2006 New Year’s Concert at the famous La Fenice, Venice. This spectacular, prestigious international event proves the power of music has in bringing people together.

Kurt Masur conducts an Italian-dominated programme with works by Verdi, Donizetti, Puccini as well as Mozart.
Soloists include Italian dramatic soprano Fiorenza Cedolins, rising star from Malta and young tenor Joseph Calleja and longstanding Italian bass Roberto Scandiuzzi.

Please join us at the Community Library as Elliot Ackerman reads from and discusses his new, bestselling novel, Green on Blue.

Elliot Ackerman is a writer based out of Istanbul. His new novel is Green on Blue, his fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Ecotone among others. He is also a contributor to The Daily Beast, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been interviewed in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Colbert Report, NPR Talk of the Nation, Meet the Press, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and PBS News Hour among others.

Most recently, he served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration. Prior to this, he spent eight years in the military as both an infantry and special operations officer. He has served multiple tours of duty in the Middle East and South West Asia. As a Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader, he operated as the primary combat advisor to a 700-man Afghan commando battalion responsible for capture operations against senior Taliban leadership. He also led a 75-man platoon that aided in relief operations in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Ackerman is a decorated veteran, having earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart for his role leading a Rifle Platoon in the November 2004 Battle of Fallujah and a Bronze Star for Valor while leading a Marine Corps Special Operations Team in Afghanistan in 2008.

Ackerman holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and studied literature and history at Tufts University where he graduated, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2003. He has completed many of the U.S. Military’s most challenging special operations training courses and completed his officer training as the number one ranked lieutenant out of over 200 other Marine Corps Officers. He is the recipient of the Major General Edwin B. Wheeler Award for Infantry Excellence.

April is National Poetry Month, but we’re starting early. Join us for a night of poetry with Mark Svenvold. Mark is a poet, writer and Assistant Professor of English at Seton Hall University. He has written recently about bicycle nomads for Orion Magazine; wildcat oil geology for Fortune/Small Business; and solar power and offshore wind power for The New York Times Magazine. His books of poetry are Empire Burlesque, winner of the OSU Press/The Journal Prize in Poetry, published by The Ohio State University Press, December, 2007 and Soul Data, winner of the Vassar Miller book prize, selected by Heather McHugh, the University of North Texas Press, spring, 1998. His nonfiction books include Big Weather (Henry Holt Co, 2005) about tornado chasers and the culture of catastrophilia and Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw, (Basic Books, 2002), which unravels the bizarre career of a Long Beach, California, fun house mummy. A 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Nonfiction, he covers renewable energy for AOL’s DailyFinance. Mark holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a BA from the University of Washington.