WEEKEND FORECAST

TODAY

MUSIC

That noted festival in Ojai

The 61st Ojai Music Festival kicks off tonight with duo-pianists Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams performing works by Igor Stravinsky, Gyorgy Ligeti, Salvatore Sciarrino and Peter Eotvos, this year’s featured festival composer. Music director Pierre-Laurent Aimard also has programmed concerts by Nexus and the Los Angeles Master Chorale (Friday), and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (Saturday and Sunday), among other events, including recitals and chamber music programs. The festival closes Sunday night.

Ojai Music Festival, Libbey Park, Signal Street and East Ojai Avenue, Ojai. 8 tonight. $35. (805) 646-2094. www.ojaifestival.org

Also 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $20 to $75. 5:30 p.m. Sunday. $20 to $60.

THEATER

Department of justice

In “Los Illegals,” a new play by Michael John Garces, day laborers are on the front lines of the battle over immigration. Directed by Shishir Kurup, the play, based on the true stories of local workers, is the first part of Cornerstone’s “Justice Cycle,” a series of five world-premiere plays examining how laws shape and disrupt communities.

“Los Illegals,” Cornerstone Theater Company at Armory Northwest, 965 N. Fair Oaks Ave. Pasadena. Opens 8 p.m. today. Pay-what-you-can, but reservations advised. (213) 613-1700, Ext. 33. www.cornerstonetheater.org

* Runs 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Ends June 24.

FRIDAY

WORLD MUSIC

Bittersweet is the taste

She’s known as the Barefoot Diva, but a better description for Cesaria Evora might be the Queen of Morna, the singer who introduced much of the world to the bittersweet music of Cape Verde. Evora has been a key world music figure since the release of her breakout CD, “Miss Perfumado,” in 1993, when she was 52. Despite her life-long affection for cognac and tobacco, she’s still going strong at 66. Tcheka, a rapidly emerging young batuque star from Cape Verde, opens the evening.

Cesaria Evora, the Orpheum Theatre, 842 S. Broadway, L.A.

8 p.m. Friday. $42 to $67. (877) 677-4386.

MOVIES

The fight in ‘Flanders’

The north of France is the setting for Bruno

Dumont’s latest film,

“Flanders,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Typically sober, the film

depicts young men from a rural farming region as they are summoned to join the army and fight in a far-off land with devastating

results.

“Flanders,” unrated, opens Friday exclusively at the Landmark’s Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A. (310) 281-8223.

WORDS

Newsman files update

Bob Woodward, scheduled as part of the Music Center Speaker Series, has garnered much acclaim over the course of his tenure at the Washington Post, where he is currently an assistant managing editor. The Post has received Pulitzer Prizes citing Woodward’s role in uncovering the Watergate scandal with colleague Carl Bernstein in 1973, and more recently in 2002, as lead reporter in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. As author of 12 nonfiction books, Woodward has maintained his signature fly-on-the-wall style in, first, “Bush at War,” followed by “Plan of Attack” and most recently, “State of Denial,” his third book about the internal debates driving White House policy in recent years.

Bob Woodward, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. 8 p.m. Friday. $50 to $120. (213) 972-0700.

SATURDAY

ART

Handled with care

Washington, D.C., artist Graham Caldwell works with glass: glossy, hand-blown, organic globs -- potentially gorgeous enough to upstage the sense of artistic urgency mobilizing beneath. Luckily for Caldwell there’s plenty more going on. In “Dark Field View” he tackles the nature of optics with works like “Proprioceptor,” a mass of 40 round mirrors of various sizes sprouting from the wall on hinged brackets -- an overwhelming display conveying themes of looking and surveillance among its agglomeration of mirrored views.

“Graham Caldwell: Dark Field View,” Bank Gallery, 125 W. 4th St., L.A. Opens Saturday. (213) 458-9921.

* Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Ends July 17.

THEATER

Love and politics

As a social and political battle develops over the meaning of disability at a school for the deaf, a hearing teacher becomes romantically involved with a strong-minded deaf former student in Mark Medoff’s landmark play, “Children of a Lesser God.” This production is directed by Rod Lathim, founder and artistic director of Access Theatre.

“Children of a Lesser God,” Rubicon Theatre Company at the Laurel, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. Opens 7 p.m. Saturday. $26 to $49; opening night gala, $85. (805) 667-2900. www.rubicontheatre.org

* Runs 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Sundays, 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays. Ends July 1.

SUNDAY

POP MUSIC

Celebrate? It’s Grand

The Grand Performances series is celebrating its 20th season of what it bills as “world-class global music, dance and spoken-word,” and it launches the proceedings with a seriously celebratory bill: Latin-funk-rock-hip-hop alchemists Ozomatli,

fellow L.A. band Dengue Fever, which fuses

Cambodian pop with garage-ish rock, and the

Yohimbe Brothers, with DJ Logic and guitarist Vernon Reid.

Grand Performances, 350 S. Grand Ave., L.A. 3 p.m. Sunday. Free. (213) 687-2190.

JAZZ

Free as the breeze

The annual Playboy Jazz Festival is always much more than the two-day weekend that takes place at the Hollywood Bowl in mid-June. And the fringe events, presented free, are often as compelling. This year, with the cancellation of Pasadena’s Summerfest, the main Playboy Free Jazz focus has shifted to the delightfully green environs of Woodland Hills’ Warner Center Park. But the music is as good as ever, with scheduled appearances by the Poncho Sanchez Latin Jazz Band, the tropical sounds of keyboardist Freddie Ravel, the energized rhythms of drummer Tootie Heath and Friends, the entertaining versatility of singer Judy Chamberlain, the eclectic music of the Miles Mosley group and the youthful jazz of the Hamilton Academy of Music Jazz Combo.

Playboy Free Jazz, Warner Center Park, 21820 Califa St., Woodland Hills. 1:30 to 8 p.m. Sunday. Free. (310) 450-1173.

TUESDAY

MUSEUMS

JFK and Oswald

Beverly Hills’ Museum of Television and Radio presents director Robert Stone’s “PBS American Experience: Oswald’s Ghost,” a film that explores the details, background and aftermath of a murder that has fascinated a generation for more than 40 years, the

assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In his work, Stone (“Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst”) makes use of a wealth of archival material as well as of a series of

interviews with Gary Hart, Tom Hayden and Mark Lane, while drawing parallels between the assassination and the events of 9/11.

“PBS American Experience: Oswald’s Ghost,” Museum of Television and Radio, 465 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills. 7 p.m. Tuesday. $10-$15. (310) 786-1000.