New Orleans -- its misfortune and music -- is the subject of a forum, film and concert set for next week at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

First comes Forum@MC, a panel discussion free and open to the public, starting at 4 p.m. March 6 in the Studio Theatre, on the subject "Flood, Culture, Loss and Geology: The Impact of Hurricane Katrina."

The Mondavi Center announced that participants will include Jeffrey Mount, UC Davis professor of geology, and moderator Patricia A. Turner, vice provost Undergraduate Studies, and professor of African American and African Studies, and American Studies; as well as New Orleans music legend Allen Toussaint.

The next night, March 7, Toussaint is one half of a concert bill with blues singer-pianist Marcia Ball, in the center's American Heritage Series. The concert is set for 8 p.m. in Jackson Hall.

Toussaint, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has been an integral part of the New Orleans music scene since the 1950s. He has penned such hits as Lee Dorsey's "Working in the Coal Mine," Herb Alpert's "Whipped Cream" and Glen Campbell's "Southern Nights"; written arrangements for the Band's Rock of Ages and Paul Simon's Kodachrome; and produced such hits as Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time" and Labelle's "Lady Marmalade."

Toussaint also is known as an outstanding pianist and a soulful vocalist whose albums under his own name include Life, Love and Faith; Southern Nights; Connections; and The River in Reverse, a Grammy-nominated 2006 collaboration with Elvis Costello.

For the Mondavi Center concert, Toussaint is due to play the piano and sing without accompaniment, while Ball plans to perform with her four-piece band.

The Texas native is noted for her hard-driving piano style steeped in zydeco, blues and boogie-woogie. Her most recent CD, Live Down the Road, received a Grammy nomination, the third of Ball's career.

A second Hurricane Katrina-themed Forum@MC is set for March 8, with a free presentation of the Spike Lee film When the Levees Broke, described as a "tour de force" by the Forum@MC Web site, which further states that the film has been termed "a requiem in four acts, each dealing with a different aspect of the events that preceded and followed Katrina's catastrophic passage through New Orleans."

The film is set to begin at 10 a.m. in the Studio Theatre, and will be shown in two two-hour segments, with a one-hour break.

For lunch during the intermission, people are invited to buy sandwich meals through the Mondavi Center box office, with a Davis shop to deliver the meals to the theater. The menu: steak, portobello or chicken sandwich, with a choice of fruit or pasta salad, plus a dessert bar; with coffee or water included. The lunch price is $12, and orders are due by 6 p.m. March 5, by calling the Mondavi center box office.

Box office, for March 7 concert tickets: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org. For March 8 lunch orders: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787.