"Steamboat Bill, Jr." inspired Walt Disney's first Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound, "Steamboat Willie"; "Mickey Mouse music" swiftly became the term for scores that mechanically echoed every bit of action on the screen. Luckily, there's nothing Mickey Mouse about Watts and Boister's music. Their segues from ambling pastoral themes to percolating urban riffs underline the Oedipal conflicts of a Boston-bred son and a barnacled Big River-riding dad.
Boister accompanies "Steamboat Bill, Jr." on Saturday, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., at Chesapeake Arts Center, 194 Hammonds Lane; call 410-636-6597 or go to chesapeakearts.org.
EXPERIMENTS AT MICA:
Baltimore natives Julia Oldham and Stephanie Barber are among the 27 artists participating in Washington Project for the Arts' Experimental Media Series, "a multi-evening screening of innovative international video and sound art" showcased for two nights this week at Maryland Institute College of Art. Kelly Gordon, associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, who selected the work, has promised a "robustly diverse" slate, "linked only by my definition of quality."
WPA's Experimental Media Series unspools at Falvey Hall, Brown Center, MICA, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave., on Tuesday and Wednesday night, 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Free. Go to www.mica.edu for more information.
