For a while in the 1960s, Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla abandoned his usual concert halls and nightclubs to create something instead for the opera house. Maria de Buenos Aires is a surreal vision in song and dance of the underside of Argentina's cosmopolitan capitol. Opera Southwest presents Piazzolla's only opera, or operita as he called it, February 17-24 at Albuquerque's National Hispanic Cultural Center. OSW's Artistic Director, conductor Anthony Barrese, joined us to talk about it.

Jon Anderson has been based in Albuquerque ever since he graduated from The University of New Mexico's School of Architecture and Planning in 1973. His buildings, which are deeply influenced by the climate, light, and what Jon calls, "the spaces of this amazing state," have been recognized with scores of local and regional awards. Last year, when the New Mexico Chapter of the American Institute of Architects handed out its annual honors , Jon Anderson received three of the ten awards.

Of all the great Broadway choreographers, the late Bob Fosse was perhaps the most distinctive. His style was immediately recognizable in shows like Chicago and Pippin and films like Cabaret and All That Jazz . One of the best interpreters of the Fosse style is dancer and choreographer Ann Reinking, and she's in Albuquerque now setting the distinctive Fosse choreography on students at the National Dance Institute of New Mexico . Public performances are February 22 and 23 at the Hiland Theatre .

James Baldwin once wrote, "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." The comfort of knowing you're not alone. Words like these are especially helpful for those struggling with Alzheimer's, or for those caring for someone with the disease. They are the audience for a new anthology of poetry and prose, Missing Persons: reflections on dementia , published this month by Albuquerque's Beatlick Press .

In 1961, Judith Espinar came across a handmade casserole pot at a marketplace in Mexico. That revelatory pot, which cost her less than $2, inspired a lifetime devotion to folk art -- collecting it, yes, but also championing its traditional artists. In 2004, Espinar co-founded Santa Fe's annual International Folk Art Market. Now the International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe is displaying over 200 works from her collection. A Gathering of Voices runs through August.

When Jean-Baptiste Lamy arrived in New Mexico in the mid-19th Century, one of his great ambitions as the new head of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe was to build a grand Romanesque Revival cathedral, influenced by the stone churches of his native France. So Lamy brought to Santa Fe in 1879 a group of Italian stonemasons. Among them, from Abruzzo, was Carlo Digneo and his family.

Residents of a small Northern New Mexico town have gathered on a snowy December night for the traditional Christmas play, Los Pastores . Both performers and audience members represent multiple generations of several large, interrelated families, and as the nativity play progress we hear the stories of their lives. Some Are Born Under A Star is the last work, and only novel, of the late New Mexico writer Jim Sagel.

In the early and middle years of the 20th Century, America's path westward was Route 66 -- Chicago to L.A., a 2400-mile adventure to better times. Later on, in the first years of the 21st Century, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Edward Keating traveled every mile of Route 66 five times over, and he documented that times had changed. "The landscape that seemed ravaged; people on the margins, enduring life not living life," as he describes it. Eigthy-four of those photographs make up his new

Passengers can board a transit bus this month to take an unofficial and eccentric ride through Albuquerque. They become participants in a theatrical experience titled Promenade . The concept was created by Stereo Akt of Budapest, then spread through Europe, and was brought to Albuquerque by the adventurous local theatre company, q-Staff . Trips continue through December 2.

UNM Opera Theatre presents a new chamber opera this month inspired by the life of a central figure in New Mexico's cultural history. Wealthy Mabel Dodge Luhan moved from the bohemian society of Greenwich Village to Taos in 1917 and established the town forevermore as a gathering spot for artists and writers. Mabel's Call , November 2-4 at UNM's Keller Hall in Albuquerque, is the work of New York City-based composer, Nell Shaw Cohen .