Alexander Stuart

Sade in concert in San Jose. All concert photos  Copyright  © 2011  Alexander Chow-Stuart. On Thursday evening, we saw our longtime friend Andrew Hale perform with Sade at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, in one of the most beautifully conceived and produced concert performances I have ever seen. Sade is a rare musician, in that she and the band only write, record and tour every eight to ten years, so that in a very real sense you can measure your life by her. The band's music is always fresh and always newly conceived - for their previous album, Lovers Rock , they stripped everything down musically to a minimalist sound and banished the saxophone that had been so much a part of Sade's heavily soul- and jazz-influenced style. The latest album, Soldier of Love , released in 2010, is one of the most tender, moving collections of songs yet, from the astonishingly beautiful Morning Bird , which features exquisite keyboards from Andrew, to the soulful, retro, return-

All photographs: Alexander Chow-Stuart. On Friday night, the whole family went out on the lake while Hudson fished. As we were coming back across the water, the light changed as the sun set and the moon rose - and for about ten to fifteen minutes we were enveloped by the most sublime color show nature can produce. We just watched in awe...and felt very lucky to be here. All photos: Alexander Chow-Stuart.

The lake, early this morning. All photos: Alexander Chow-Stuart. This morning Hudson and I got up early and decided spontaneously to go out on the lake in our friend, Steve Stewart's electric motor boat (the only kind of of powered craft allowed on the lake). Steve is a friend and neighbor and has been incredibly kind and generous about letting us use his boats since we moved here. It was a beautiful summer's August morning, just cool enough to be comfortable before the sun's heat really dug in, and we felt great as we pushed off and navigated some pretty thick weed close to the shore. Out on the water, there was silence and the kind of calm that too few seven year olds can appreciate fully - but Hudson likes quiet and stillness as much as I do, and we both enjoyed the fact that we were the only people out on the lake. We had to stop from time to time to clear weeds from the propeller, but that only added to the sense of peace. The sun over the river. Hu

Apple's headquarters with its wonderful address. Because we've moved so far away from LA and Hudson's friends in Topanga Canyon, we wanted to make sure that Hudson's seventh birthday - which happened this past weekend - was fun and extra-special this year. Given Hudson's love  of the W Hotel - and their kindness and generosity to him - we decided to take the family to the W San Francisco to celebrate (see a separate post coming soon above). Then I had a thought. Hudson also loves Apple and the astonishing technology he has grown up with and loves to explore so intelligently (he recently reformatted a Mac Mini from disk entirely on his own, then installed all the software he wanted). Apple's headquarters are in Cupertino , just south of San Francisco in Silicon Valley, so I thought maybe we could combine the W Hotel treat with a visit to the place where the iPhone and iPad were created. I knew that Apple , one of the world's

Theresa Russell as Marilyn Monroe in Insignificance. Random thoughts following my post about the new Criterion edition of Insignificance: 1.  I particularly remember the thrill, while we were shooting at night outside Carnegie Hall (the location for the original, iconic sequence in which Marilyn Monroe's dress is aroused by the air blowing up from a subway grating in The Seven Year Itch ), when legendary Broadway and film choreographer/director Bob Fosse came by the set. It was my honor to escort Mr Fosse around, and although he was more interested in talking about Insignificance than his own work, we did chat a little about his astonishing movies, Lenny and All That Jazz. I watched All That Jazz again recently, and aside from being blown away - as always - by the vast casting call opening scene, in which dancers are whittled down from a vast crowd to a few, to a background of George Benson's amazing rendition of On Broadway, I love the entire movie's huge ene