Los Angeles

I FOUND MY LOVE WITH AVALON Based in Chicago where they have been the quartet-in-residence at the Northern Illinois University of Music in DeKalb since 2007, The Avalon String Quartet offered patrons of The Music Guild such a seamless performance that any catch-all adjectives’”“brilliant,” “kudos”’”fail to elucidate my experience. For once, my notebook was set…

GOAT ON A BOAT Edward Albee’s diligently disturbing tragicomedy, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, is running at California Repertory Company in the belly of the Queen Mary’s Royal Theatre. One of Albee’s most well-known works, Goat follows the dissolution of a perfect family after central character, Martin, reveals that he is having a zoophilic…

A SHORT TAKE ON A LONG TRIP Sometimes critics get caught up in their own words and feel the need to expand upon their self-important ramblings beyond all reason.   They spew forth with so much falderal that their point is completely lost, and they simply end up beating a dead horse.   The same can be…

MICRO MACRO FELDMAN Last Wednesday at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena, LA-based freelance pianist Richard Valitutto played four solo piano works, “two short and two long,” by American composer Morton Feldman. For those uninitiated to Feldman, his work is hard to describe. A convenient description would be “soundscape music,” as in plodding, thoughtful music. It…

A HEART-POUNDING, COSMOS-QUESTIONING PIECE OF THEATER Today may be your last chance to see Blue Cube’s hauntingly philosophical drama, Coldwater, but now that it has been tried out as part of Son of Semele’s Company Creation Festival, the hope is that this exciting work will soon get its own run. The plot follows three characters…

FLESH MADE TEDIOUS In my day job as a public librarian, I can tell you with certainty there is nothing more dreaded than finding E. L. James’ turgid lust romancer Â Fifty Shades of Grey in the book drop Â after some woman’s book group has read it.  Â The condition those books are returned in! Â  Â The limp, slightly damp pages. Â  Â The…

GAY BOYS AND INDIANS A Nice Indian Boy, currently enjoying its world premiere production at East West Players, is a charming little comedy about love, marriage, culture clash and the shifting tides of public acceptance of gays. It would be a much stronger piece if the stakes for the protagonists were ratcheted up and if…

AN INCOMPARABLE DISPLAY OF THE MASTER PLAYED BY THE MASTERS Pianist Emanuel Ax’s Brahms Project continued last Tuesday night at a recital with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Perhaps the most relaxing engagement I have ever experienced at Disney Hall, three cello/piano sonatas and a new solo piano work by Brett Dean resulted in a calming experience,…

WEILERSTEIN TO WOW AT TCHAIKOVSKYFEST I had been following cellist Alisa Weilerstein for years, but until last March it was only on recordings and YouTube. Just before seeing her perform Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, I wrote,  “The phenomenal American cellist Alisa Weilerstein has attracted attention worldwide for playing that…

A GLORIOUS EVENT NEITHER MESSY NOR CAGEY Jacaranda’s understated but superb concert series continued last Saturday with a marathon  solo piano event featuring John Cage’s  Sonatas and Interludes  for prepared piano (1946-48) and Olivier Messiaen’s  Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus  (1944), played by Adam Tendler  and Christopher Taylor  respectively. The Messiaen is objectively longer and arguably more difficult than the Cage, but…