BEST BETS

Theater

Internationally acclaimed solo artist Danny Hoch, above, performs his edgy work “Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop,” bringing to life a gallery of characters, from an angry, heroin-addicted prisoner with AIDS to a white teenager from Montana with a rap star alter ego. The show opens Wednesday at Actors’ Gang.

Architecture

Pasadena Heritage hosts “Rediscovering the Art That Is Life,” the seventh annual celebration of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. This year’s event, beginning Friday, will include a Craftsman-era home tour, antique displays, restoration workshops, lectures and art exhibitions.

Pop Music

KROQ has its annual Weenie Roast concert, KKBT puts on its Summer Jam, and now KZLA enters the field with its Country Cookout. Today’s Universal Amphitheatre event includes appearances by LeAnn Rimes, Deana Carter, Kenny Chesney, Gary Allan, Tracy Lawrence, Rick Trevin~o and more.

Dance

Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” above right, returns to the Wiltern Theatre from Thursday to next Sunday, giving an African American spin to the Christmas classic. Clara here is a black grandmother and the score is the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn jazz arrangement of Tchaikovksy.

Music

On a U.S. tour, the legendary Kirov Orchestra from St. Petersburg, Russia, with conductor Valery Gergiev plays two different programs here. On Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, its soloist is violinist Sergei Levitin; next Sunday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, pianist Alexander Toradze is soloist in Scriabin’s Symphony No. 8, “Prometheus.”

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Romanesca, the trio of star Baroque violinist Andrew Manze--in his local debut--lutenist and theorbo player Nigel North and harpsichordist John Toll, take over the crystal-chandeliered opulence of the Viennese Room at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel on Tuesday night for a program of music from Biber to Vivaldi.

Video

Get out your hankies for Robert Redford’s romantic drama “The Horse Whisperer.” He is electric as a horseman who helps a young girl, her troubled horse and her staid mother. Based on Nicholas Evans’ bestseller, the film--which also features Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill and Dianne Wiest--gallops into video stores Tuesday.

Jazz

In the early 1980s, the all-star quartet Sphere was organized to play Thelonious Monk’s compositions. Both Monk and the band’s tenor Charlie Rouse (replaced by altoist Gary Bartz) have since passed on, but Sphere is back, stretching beyond Monk’s music today at the Jazz Bakery.