Carolyn Lamberson

The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture will host a centennial celebration of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” at 3 p.m. Saturday. The multimedia celebration will he presented by Donivan Johnson, a music teacher, pianist, composer and Spokesman-Review correspondent.

I freely admit it. Before Thursday night, I’d never seen “West Side Story.” Not the 1961 film. Never a stage production of the 1957 American musical classic.

Robert Plant is among the headliners at a new festival hitting the Gorge Amphitheatre this summer. Jambase Live, July 5-6, also will feature Michael Franti & Spearhead, Slightly Stoopid, Galactic, Rodrigo & Gabriela, G. Love & Special Sauce, Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers among others.

   At its core, “War Horse” is a simple story about a boy and his horse.

Montana writer David Abrams, whose debut novel “Fobbit” was named a notable book of 2012 by the New York Times, is coming to Spokane. Abrams is a 20-year U.S. Army veteran who was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a public affairs specialist. His experiences served as the inspiration for his novel, about a combat-wary public affairs specialist hiding out at Forward Operating Base Triumph. “Fobbit” is military slang for those soliders who rarely leave the safety of a forward operating base.

OK, kiddos. Buckle in. We’re in for a fun week. The award-winning saxophone ensemble Prism Quartet will land in Moscow, Idaho, for a performance Tuesday that concludes the University of Idaho’s Auditorium Chamber Music Series.

Hot new country duo Florida Georgia Line has already sold out an April 16 show at Washington State University’s CUB Ballroom in Pullman. Area fans have a second chance to see this up-and-coming band. The Gonzaga University Student Body Association is bringing the duo to the McCarthey Athletic Center on April 17.

“The Drowsy Chaperone,” which opened Friday at Spokane’s Civic Theatre, is a trifle, an entertainment, one that lets its audience in on the joke, is free with the winks and nods, and benefits greatly from high-spirited performances all around. The musical comedy, which opened on Broadway in 2006, is a play within a play. It centers on a lonely man, called only Man in Chair (Thomas Heppler), who is sitting in his shabby apartment feeling blue. So he pulls out a record – a real record – and begins to play the original cast recording of a 1928 musical called “The Drowsy Chaperone.” We hear static as the record needle hits the vinyl – “I love static,” the man tells us, “it’s the sound of a time machine starting up” – and quickly the characters of “The Drowsy Chaperone” come alive in his mind and on the stage.

The Spokane String Quartet is planning something unusual for today’s concert. The group will be tackling George Crumb’s avant garde 1971 piece “Black Angels,” which incorporates sounds created by crystal glasses, maracas, gongs, glass rods and thimbles. According to a news release from the quartet, the work also will incorporate amplified string instruments as it depicts vignettes from hell.

With nearly 300 hearts decorated by area children, The Spokesman-Review’s annual Valentine’s Day Coloring Contest offered a little something for everyone. There were cute puppies, creative use of Cheerios – and what appeared to be Corn Flakes – and plenty of glitter. Plenty. Of. Glitter.

Three Spokane writers will featured during the annual Beacon Hill Reading Series on Tuesday: Diane Sherman, author of the poetry collection “Walkabout” (2011), Sharma Shields, author of the short story collection “Favorite Monsters” (2012), and Paul Lindholdt, author of the “ecological memoir” “In Earshot of Water: Notes from the Columbia River.”

We all know Jess Walter as a novelist. The award-winning “The Zero” and “Citizen Vince.” The lauded “The Financial Lives of the Poets.” And last year’s amazing “Beautiful Ruins.” With his newest book, “We Live in Water,” Walter has collected 13 works of short fiction in a paperback volume. All but one of the stories has been previously published, and most are set in the Northwest. Many of them are sad – sad tales about sad people living sad lives. But they are also funny, and sarcastic and a bit cynical. Still, and Walter himself will tell you this, they are imbued with a ray of hope.