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Nick McCall
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Concert Review: VOCAL DIMENSIONS (LA Phil’s Green Umbrella New Music Series)
I admire the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella series. I really, really do. It’s adventurous and exciting in ways that regular programs rarely achieve. However, there are nights where it’s punishing and it hates me. The April 29 program, Vocal Dimensions, was one of those. At the end, in spite of the two brief bright spots,…
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Theater Review: HELLAS (The School of Night at the Broadwater)
A HELLUVA HELLAS Ancient drama gets short shrift here in Los Angeles. Sure, we get the stories, but the shows are usually adaptations, hardly ever a straight translation, and when we do, they’re performed in today’s style. In 2018, The School of Night did something radical: they performed Seneca’s Hercules Insane as written and with…
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Theater Review: ARISTOTLE/ALEXANDER (Company of Angels)
Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers. — Aristotle When you have endless arts options to choose from every day, you eventually develop simple, blunt, sometimes arbitrary, rules to help decide what to see. One…
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Theater Review: THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE (Wisteria Theater in North Hollywood)
BEE MINUS Now playing at Wisteria Theater in North Hollywood is one of the few wonderful musicals from this century so far, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, by William Finn (music and lyrics) and Rachel Sheinkin (book). Now 20 years old, this delightful musical follows a group of middle schoolers as they struggle…
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Opera Review: THE CAMP (JACCC Aratani Theatre in L.A.)
A PROMISING AND AMBITIOUS THE CAMP Los Angeles has had a flurry of new operas within the past few years. Among the most promising and ambitious I’ve seen is The Camp, by Lionelle Hamanaka (libretto) and Daniel Kessner (music), which just had a two-weekend run at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center Aratani Theatre….
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Theater Review: 44: THE OBAMA MUSICAL (Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City)
A SKETCHY, SPREAD OUT SEND-UP SAGS WITH SLUGGISH SATIRE I like to go into shows completely blind. Sometimes that backfires, but usually not before the show even starts. On Thursday, I walked into the opening-night performance of 44: The Obama Musical—a show framed as Joe Biden’s hazy recollection of Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency….
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Opera Review: ADORATION (LA Opera at REDCAT)
IT’S TOUGH TO ADORE ADORATION; BUT WAS IT MEANT TO BE? I always look forward to new operas presented by Los Angeles Opera and Beth Morrison Projects. They are back with another one: Adoration, with music by Mary Kouyoumdjian and libretto by Royce Vavrek, based on the eponymous 2008 Canadian film by Atom Egoyan. It…
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Concert Review: SHOENBERG’S “PIERROT LUNAIRE” (Camerata Pacifica)
Camerata Pacifica began its February program at the Huntington Library with Lara Morciano’s Embedding Tangles, with flutist Sébastian Jacot, who premiered the piece in 2014. I don’t often get to hear works for solo flute, so this sounded promising. Alas, my initial excitement was instantly killed when we got attacked by a torrent of notes…
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Opera Review: EL RELICARIO DE LOS ANIMALES (1979) (Long Beach Opera at Heritage Square Museum)
THE WHINE OF THE ANIMALS Long Beach Opera continued its season-long devotion to the work of Pauline Oliveros with El Relicario De Los Animales (The Shrine of the Animals), from 1979, with two performances last weekend at Heritage Square Museum, an open-air gem with eight Victorian-era buildings. Sara Andon and Sidney Hopson But before the…
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Music Review: ELEMENTS AND ENERGY (John Adams and the LA Phil New Music Group at Disney Hall)
Last season, the LA Phil premiered the first five of 16 etudes commissioned by Creative Chair John Adams, with the goal to have a piece for each instrument of the orchestra to show off as a soloist. On January 28, we got to hear three more premieres from the series. First was Quantum Ptarmigan, by…
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Concert Review: NOON TO MIDNIGHT (LA Phil at Disney Hall)
DOUG AITKIN’S LIGHTSCAPE, THE CENTERPIECE OF LA PHIL’S DAY-LONG NEW MUSIC PROGRAM, OPENS AS AN INSTALLATION AT THE MARCIANO ARTS FOUNDATION THIS WEEK Noon to Midnight, a daylong festival of new music, is my favorite LA Phil program of the year. What’s playing? No clue. Is the music good? Unlikely. Is the centerpiece performance going…
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Review: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE (American Contemporary Ballet at the Bank of America Plaza in Downtown L.A.)
THE NUTCRACKER SUITE IS SWEETER THAN THE NUTCRACKER American Contemporary Ballet’s advertising for their annual production of The Nutcracker Suite, now playing Downtown in Bank of America Plaza, is misleading. Their scant imagery suggests that it would be an austere and intellectual outing for adults ̶ theatrical vegetables, if you will. However, it turned out…
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Theater Review: PACIFIC OVERTURES (East West Players / Los Angeles)
EAST WEST PLAYERS PULLS OUT ALL THE SHOGUNS FOR A RARELY SEEN SONDHEIM MUSICAL On Sunday, East West Players opened their new production of Pacific Overtures by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and John Weidman (book). From 1976, this is one of Sondheim’s more overlooked shows. If you’ve never seen this unusual musical, this will…
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Opera Review: SANCTA SUSANNA: A HORROR OPERA (Source/Filter Music Collective at Heritage Square Museum)
OH, SUSANNA!! For two performances only, October 24 & 25, 2024, two-year old Source/Filter Music Collective took a big step, producing its first fully-staged opera: Paul Hindemith (music) and August Stramm’s (libretto) scandalous 1921 Sancta Susanna. Timed for Halloween and staged inside the Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church at Heritage Square Museum, this production also marked…
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Dance & Music Review: INFERNO & BURLESQUE (American Contemporary Ballet at Television City)
ACB’S FANTASTIC JOURNEY INTO HELL-OWEEN In the same Television City soundstage that The Price is Right and The Carol Burnett Show was recorded, American Contemporary Ballet began its current season on Oct. 11 with a revival of its original works, Inferno and Burlesque. A third work, The Rite [of Spring], alternates with Inferno. Entering the…
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Theater Review: THE VERY BEST PEOPLE (IAMA Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre)
BLOOD AND RANCH DRESSING In December of 2020, the world was still in the grip of COVID-19’s unpredictable terror. Moderna and Pfizer had just released their vaccines, but supply was scarce and available only to a few high-risk groups. Physical distancing, masking, and sanitizing were all top of mind, as were, shall we say, “competing”…
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Theater Concert Review: DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING? (The Music of Les Misérables, Miss Saigon and More by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg at the Hollywood Bowl)
YOU COULD HEAR THESE PEOPLE SING, ALL RIGHT First performed in Shanghai in 2013, the Hollywood Bowl hosted a new installment of The Music of Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, and More: Boublil and Schönberg’s Do You Hear the People Sing? on Sunday, July 28, 2024. This tribute to the team of lyricist Alain Boublil and…
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Music Review: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION: THE PAINTINGS OF BOB PEAK (Walt Disney Concert Hall)
PICTURE THIS: ASTOUNDING NEW MUSIC On Friday, June 14, music producer Robert Townson fulfilled a 25-year dream, premiering in partnership with Abu Dhabi Festival a new symphony, Pictures at an Exhibition: The Paintings of Bob Peak, at Walt Disney Concert Hall with the Los Angeles Film Orchestra and conductor Leonard Slatkin. It was a sprawling evening…
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Opera Review: THE COMET/POPPEA (MOCA and The Industry at the Geffen Contemporary Museum at MOCA)
BOTH YOUR HEAD AND THE STAGE WILL BE SPINNING When The Industry’s new opera, The Comet / Poppea, a smash-up between Claudio Monteverdi and Giovanni Busenello’s 1643 L’incoronazione di Poppea and George Lewis and Douglas Kearney’s The Comet began, I developed a sinking feeling. Both operas are performed simultaneously, but I was seated on the side…
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Opera Review: IPSA DIXIT (Long Beach Opera and Martha Graham Dance Company)
WHISTLING DIXIT Last week, Long Beach Opera concluded the west coast premiere of its new production of Kate Soper’s 2016 lecture with musical notes, Ipsa Dixit, self-described in the program as “an artistic revelation,” “profound,” “bold,” and “mesmerizing.” Smart critics lavished praise on previous productions of it. It got nominated for a Pulitzer. Therefore, it…
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in Los Angeles, Theater
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