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Almost 100 Frito pies are sold every day at the Five & Dime General Store, which celebrates its 10th anniversary Thursday.

Plenty of locals stop by the East San Francisco Street business to get their daily fix, says snack bar employee Lorraine Chavez, who has been preparing and serving the cheesy and spicy Frito Pies for a decade.

Chavez and the entire snack bar staff cook a huge pot of fresh, homemade chili made with ground beef and red Chimayo chile every morning on an electric stove in the store's small kitchen. Beans are added to the chile before three, 4-ounce ladles of the mixture...

Tuesday, May 6, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

Brad Hammond rubbed elbows with the rich and famous during the 20 years he worked as manager for the infamous radio personality Wolfman Jack.

"It was a flashy life, but I'm having more fun running Kowboyz," he said at his Santa Fe Western wear store. "I really enjoy knowing that people appreciate the things I sell."

Less than three months old, Kowboyz has an inventory that is the envy of collectors of vintage Western clothing and boots. A few of the items are new, but most of the shirts and 5,000 pairs of dressy cowboy boots were made in the 1940s through the 1970s. An increasing number of...

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

Alex Shapiro was excited and ready to move to town when Santa Fe Pro Musica offered him the job of executive director.

“I’ve wanted to live in Santa Fe for a long time,” he said at the group’s Luisa Street office. “When I was searching for a new job, Santa Fe Pro Musica rose to the top of my list.”

Pro Musica’s co-founder Thomas O’Connor was functioning as general director and artistic director before Shapiro came on board on April 7. Now, O’Connor is able to concentrate his efforts and energy on the music.

“I’m just starting to absorb what all of this means to me,” O’Connor said. “The...

Friday, April 25, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

If Trent Edwards has his way, buying a piece of art specifically to match your couch will no longer be considered a sin against high culture.

Four years ago, Edwards, a Santa Fe artist, began a series of large oil paintings that featured a swing hanging in space.

In most of the pieces, the swing was painted red or yellow. The last painting in the series had a white swing because Edwards felt that white was the appropriate color choice for this particular work.

"The gallery director told me she could have sold the painting to five or six different people who wanted to match their décor if...

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 2:52 PM
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

In the secret lives of professional musicians, there are certain pieces they play on the concert stage that they like more than others. The program that Canadian-born pianist Marc-André Hamelin will perform Sunday in Los Alamos with the Los Alamos Concert Association is one of his favorites.

“I love this program,” he said by phone from his home in Boston. “I played it a couple of weeks ago in Moscow. There are two sonatas in the first half that are in the same key, but they couldn’t be more contrasting.”

Hamelin performs one of the sonatas featured on the Grammy-nominated two-disc set of...

Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:00 PM
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

For the fifth annual springtime collaboration between Santa Fe New Music and the Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe New Music will present chamber works and solo pieces by the opera’s featured living composer this season, Kaija Saariaho. Before hearing the American premiere of Saariaho’s second opera, “Adriana Mater,” in July, new music aficionados can enjoy sonic experiences by the Finnish composer employing a small group of acoustic instruments and electronics. “The Music of Kaija Saariaho,” featuring five pieces composed between 1992 and 2003, will be presented at the opera’s Stieren Hall...

Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:00 PM
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

In 1972, Fred Coen was studying oceanography in San Diego and living in a house next to a leather factory. The 25-year-old had some free time on his hands and became interested in turning scraps of leather that were tossed in a nearby trash container into sandals. The budding oceanographer transformed himself into a shoemaker in less than a year.

"I moved back to New York with $1,000 worth of leather tools and started making sandals in Brooklyn," recalled Coen. "I credit my mentor, Seymour Askanazi, for helping me become an orthopedic shoemaker."

Coen is a board certified pedorthist, a...

Tuesday, April 8, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

After years of suffering from rheumatic fever, Neil Ieremia began studying dance in his native country of New Zealand. It wasn’t the physical activity of choice for most boys of Samoan descent, but it ended up being the right one for him. Upon graduating from the Auckland Performing Arts School, Ieremia joined the New Zealand-based Douglas Wright Dance Company. He worked with a number of choreographers before founding his own company, Black Grace, in 1995.

“It’s very interesting that it’s an all-male company,” said Jean-Philippe Malaty, executive director of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, which...

Friday, March 28, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

Five of the six dancers who performed with Nrityagram Dance Ensemble at the Lensic in 2006 are returning to town Saturday night to present new work by the troupe’s artistic director, Surupa Sen.

“With age comes experience,” Sen said about her dancers, who are no longer in their teens. “Age informs the work. We begin with technique, but it’s all about the experience and emotion inside and the stories we tell.”

Nrityagram Dance Ensemble’s members specialize in a particular style of Indian dance called Odissi, which originated more than 2,000 years ago in India’s eastern state of Orissa....

Friday, March 28, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

A wooden crate, a tithing box and a donkey jaw may not be typical musical instruments, but they were among the only musicmaking objects available to Peruvian slaves from Africa. The crate, which evolved from farm crates used to collect fruit, is a wooden box straddled by a player who bends down to beat the box by hand. The tithing box, a cajita, is a small, lidded box used for collections in Catholic churches. It’s played by clapping the lid open and closed and beating the side of the box with a stick. The sound of the quijada de burro, the side of a dried-out donkey jawbone, is created...

Friday, March 7, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe