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Music Preview: THANKFUL: A BENEFIT ALBUM FOR JERAD BORTZ (The Music and Lyrics of Steven Skeels)
THE THANKFUL PROJECT Two years ago, Wicked’s Jerad Bortz and husband Steven Skeels were in a tragic car accident that left Bortz paralyzed from the chest down. Now, the best of Broadway have participated in an album, THANKFUL: A Benefit Album for Jerad Bortz, which will be available for pre-order beginning Friday, October 23. The album…
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Film Review: FRITZ LANG’S INDIAN EPIC (The Tiger of Eschnapur & The Indian Tomb)
EPIC LANG This 1959 diptych by the master director Fritz Lang is now released in splendid 4K restoration on two Blu-ray discs in a handsome package that includes documentaries and a twenty-four-page booklet with essays about the movies. The two parts, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, each running at one hour, forty-one minutes, comprise what…
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Review: FATE OF THE LHAPA (soundtrack by William Susman)
IT’S FATE THAT THIS SOUNDTRACK IS AVAILABLE It amazes me how many films today have a soundtrack that isn’t informed by the movie itself. This interchangeable claptrap has made it almost impossible to review. But composer William Susman flavors the setting of Sarah Sifer’s Fate of the Lhapa beautifully. Interestingly enough, I saw this documentary…
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Album Review: TRIOS FOR ONE (Josh Lee, Bear Machine Records)
TRIOS FOR ONE AND FOR ALL “What started as an experiment ended up as a necessity,” said Josh Lee of his latest release, which consists of Viola Da Gamba trios. Josh Lee joins Josh Lee and Josh Lee for this positively engaging concoction of English madrigals from the 16th and 17th centuries. “Recording these pieces…
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Film Review: NAIL IN THE COFFIN: THE FALL AND RISE OF VAMPIRO (directed by Michael Paszt)
YOU GOTTA HAVE A GIMMICK I know little in the way of pro-wrestling, but I most certainly understand about the audience. Since well before Rome’s Coliseum was built, people’s, especially men’s, fascination with the battle for dominion has been at the forefront of history — you know, things like gladiators, box office champs and war….
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Music Review: SERGEI BABAYAN (Rachmaninoff: Préludes — Études-Tableaux — Moments Musicaux on Deutsche Grammophon)
SOLID LIKE THE RACH Armenian-American Sergei Babayan, 59, was Daniil Trifonov’s piano teacher for a time, but in recent years the student has surpassed the teacher, at least in reputation. I saw the two in a duo-piano recital concert at Disney Hall in 2018 (which seems like decades ago given COVID-19), and I was mesmerized…
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DVD Review: MISS FRIMAN’S WAR | FRÖKEN FRIMANS KRIG (MHz Series, 2013-2017, on DVD and Streaming)
MISS FRIMAN’S FRAUGHT FREEDOMS ARE FINE AND FANCIFUL Set in the first decade of the 20th century, this enjoyable and amusing Swedish drama concerns the challenges facing stalwart women’s rights activists in the capital, Stockholm. Although this well-written and beautifully series (twelve episodes in four seasons, all in one collection) is about Swedish women and…
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CD Review: NIV ASHKENAZI: VIOLINS OF HOPE (Niv Ashkenazi on Albany Records)
AN ALBUM WHICH DOES INDEED OFFER HOPE 81 years ago, Moshe Weinstein and his wife, Golda, moved to Tel Aviv and opened a violin shop. They had both graduated from the Vilna conservatory, Moshe as a violinist and Golda as a pianist, and followed the large Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine. In postwar Europe,…
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DVD/TV Review: CAPTAIN MARLEAU (MHz Choice)
BENEATH HER GOOFY GUISE, MARLEAU IS UNMATCHED There are a slew of quality police series, especially coming from Europe. But rare is the show with a goofy lead character, and this fine series has the kookiest lead you’ve ever come across. Capitan Marleau (Corinne Masiero), somewhere in her advancing middle-age, solves crimes in her own…
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Album Review: PROVING UP (Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek)
PROVING UP PROVES ITSELF The debut recording of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s acclaimed 2018 chamber opera, Proving Up, is available starting today on Pentatone. The 80-minute album features the original Opera Omaha cast recording of director James Darrah’s production, as premiered in the company’s first annual ONE Festival in April 2018, with the amazing Christopher Rountree…
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Album Review: CHARLES IVES — COMPLETE SYMPHONIES (Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic)
THE IVES’ HAVE IT! A little over week before the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting down the arts world as we know it, the Los Angeles Philharmonic presented an apotheosis to its already glorious season: Under Gustavo Dudamel’s leadership, a series of concerts offered the final three, and some say best, symphonies of Dvořák. Played alongside…
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Album Review: THE MOONLESS NIGHTS EP (Jesse Epstein and Adam Arcuragi)
OVER THE MOON Wow, do I love this sound. They describe it as The Everly Brothers growing up in Twin Peaks, but I kinda hear Iron and Wine from the other side of the moon, possibly directed by David Lynch. Whatever the apt description, this EP is a winner. Jesse Epstein (aka Imaginary Future) and…
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Album Review: LOVE LETTER (Jimmy Heath on Verve)
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE LETTER The beloved tenor saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath died on January 19, 2020 at 93. Only a few weeks before, he wound up production on his final album, capping an astounding 76 years as a pro jazz musician. Love Letter is his posthumous wonderment. This collection of ballads is…
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Film Review: HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD (directed by Bora Kim)
WONDERFUL COMING-OF-AGE STORY STAYS WITH YOU So, when you hear that House of Hummingbird is about a teenage girl awkwardly coming to terms with fitting in at school, at a dysfunctional home, and flirting with her own blossoming sexuality, you may think you’ve seen it all before. But this is different. South Korean writer/director Bora…
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DVD Review: L’INNOCENTE (directed by Luchino Visconti; digital restoration from Film Movement)
L’INNOCENTE: LUSHER THAN LIFE IN A NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION L’innocente, Luchino Visconti’s final film released just two months after his death in 1976, is a worthwhile conclusion to his great career, a telling adaptation of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s 1892 novel about the decadence of the aristocracy in late 19th-century Italy. Commanding the screen, Giancarlo Giannini as…
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Album Review: CAPRICE: THE CHAMBER MUSIC OF KIM PORTNOY
THE ISLE OF CAPRICE A capriccio (Italian: “following one’s fancy”) or caprice, is defined as a piece of music, usually fairly free in form and of a lively character. The typical capriccio is one that is fast, intense, and often virtuosic in nature, but Wiki tells us that there are several etymologies that have been…
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DVD Review: COUNTRY MUSIC (Ken Burns, PBS)
GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY Documentarian Ken Burns is one of the giants in his field. His many subjects (Jazz, Baseball, The Civil War, The Vietnam War) mark his maturity as an artist. His latest foray, Country Music, is planted right up there among his best work. At sixteen hours (on eight discs), this exhaustive wrap-around…
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Theater Preview: MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN (L.A. Theatre Works, starring Stacy Keach)
A FRESH FRANKENSTEIN STARRING STACY KEACH L.A. Theatre Works, the world’s leading producer of audio theater, has announced the release of its state-of-the-art audio recording of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This new stage adaptation, written by the BBC’s Kate McAll, stars veteran stage actor Stacy Keach as “the creature,” with Adhir Kalyan (Arrested Development, Rules of Engagement) in the role of Dr. Victor Frankenstein. In…
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Album Preview: BLACKBIRDS (Bettye LaVette and “Strange Fruit”)
A MOMENT TO MOURN AND RENEW In 1999, Time magazine named “Strange Fruit” — a haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism — the “song of the century.” Some may know that the man who wrote the song was inspired by a photograph of two lynched black men*, but did you know he was a white…
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Album Review: THE GIRL WITH THE ALKALINE EYES (Original Off-Broadway Score by Eric Dietz)
THE SCORE THAT’S A BIG SURPRISE The Girl with the Alkaline Eyes is a futuristic A.I. thriller set in a high-tech lab where a young, hot-shot coder has been hard at work on a secret project: an extraordinarily lifelike creation who will change not only the life of his creator, but the lives of everyone…
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