Los Angeles

EVERYTHING IS NEW AGAIN It was quite a blow when it was announced that both Christoph Eschenbach and Christian Tetzlaff’”due to illness’”canceled their engagement with the LA Phil at Disney Hall last weekend. While I wish them both a speedy recovery, their withdrawal resulted in one of the most exciting evenings with the LA Phil…

FEAR THE HYPHENATE If a person is lucky enough, they will discover their passion in life and be able to fine tune and truly excel at that skill. Others flounder about, trying a bit if this and a bit of that, becoming a jack of all trades but master of none. They’re called “hyphenates.” In…

AND HE DOES In the 1980s, Barry McGovern and Gerry Dukes collaborated to cut three novels by Samuel Beckett (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) into a few monologues, divided by lighting cues (James McConnell) and set changes (Robert Ballagh) and an intermission, called I’ll Go On.   Though spoken by different characters in their original form,…

A SWING AND A MISS Theater, like baseball, is a team sport. To reign triumphant and put a tick in the “W” box, all the players must be at the top of their game. When everyone hits a home run its magic, but even if a few players are having an off day, check the…

SIC SEMPER BORE-ANNUS This solo musical effort by musician performer Hersey Felder has all the trappings of a work that is rich with worthy subject matter and culture.   Peppered with songs from what we’d charitably call “the American songbook” (Gershwin, Stephen Foster, Louie Gottschalk),  Abe Lincoln’s Piano is Felder’s tightly crafted autobiography, which is somehow threaded…

UNFINISHED BUSINESS Son of Semele’s 4th annual Company Creation Festival presents new works by nascent Los Angeles troupes.   The festival’s first offering, Bunk, is what you’d expect from such a venue: a lot of youthful energy in service of a promising voice.   That the play doesn’t make much sense at this point may be less…

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID The two most important aspects of the right kind of cabaret act are the singer and the songs. But when you go to see Laura Benanti’s new cabaret In Constant Search of the Right Kind of Attention at Catalina Bar & Grill (if you can get tickets to her last performance…

VIENNA SAUSAGE Salute to Vienna is a light-hearted event which reenacts the ridiculously popular New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic (a.k.a. Neujahrskonzert). The inoffensive, fun, and slightly cheesy potpourri includes costumed dancers, opera singers, and an orchestra that plays the waltzes and polkas of Johann Strauss Jr. and his contemporaries. Figures vary, but the…

MORE LIKE ONE STARRY STARRY STARRY NIGHT If anybody knows how to put together a night of eclectic songs and singers, it’s Bruce Kimmel. While he has created some terrific revues, this prolific producer, playwright and performer has been the driving force behind cast albums, vocal albums, and (a personal favorite of mine) an original…

CONSPIRACY THEORISTS AND THEATER LOVERS, UNITE! Remember E. Howard Hunt? This intelligence officer was one of Nixon’s White House Plumbers, that clandestine band of operatives who were assigned to fix any of those nasty little security “leaks” emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Hunt, along with G. Gordon Liddy, plotted a burglary at the Democratic National…

MY FAVORITE NIGHTS Looking back over a year’s playgoing, it’s every bit as easy to be jaded about little broke theaters as it is about big grant-eaters. Little broke theaters are constant trials of inconvenience for an audience member – you share a bathroom with the cast; you’re confused by the stage-house configuration; you have…

IT’S CHRISTMAS, CATS Since its inception in 1935, the Count Basie Orchestra has not just outlived the era in which it was spawned, but has remained a well-oiled machine of Big Band jazz, even after Basie’s death in 1984. After a bit of a sputter with sound issues and energy, their holiday concert last night…

A STUNNING PREMIERE OF A  GLIÈRE QUARTET I’ve had ravishing experiences before with Le Salon de Musiques, the premium music outlet which presents sterling chamber music concerts, but the two String Quartets on December 8 offered the most transporting, pleasurable, awe-inspiring, invigorating, relaxing, emotional and meditative experience I have had all year. Founding artistic director François…

A CELEBRATION WITHOUT THE SEASONING A few years ago, Metropolitan Master Chorale’s Christmas concert bowled me over. The fairly young chorus under the Artistic Direction of Glenn Carlos looked poised to be the next great competitor in a crowded Los Angeles market. The unique selections and strong singers with a beautifully braided blend had me…

PUPPETS, THE PACIFIC, AND A PROFICIENT PIANO CONCERTO It’s not an uncommon occurrence with a Los Angeles Philharmonic program: I come expecting Yuja Wang’s interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 to truly blow me away. While she certainly had her place in the sun, it was Gustavo Dudamel’s triumphant leadership with Stravinsky’s Petrushka that…

LET ME MAKE THIS PERFECTLY CHANTICLEER I may be enamored by the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Festival of Carols, I may be enthralled by Pasadena Symphony’s Holiday Candlelight, I may be excited by the Gay Men’s Chorus’s Holiday Spectacular, but Chanticleer’s Christmas concert, which plays Disney Hall on Dec. 20, is always the best choral…