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Los Angeles
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Los Angeles Music Review: YARN/WIRE (Monday Evening Concerts at The Colburn School)
THEY’LL LEAVE YOU WIRED For those who don’t know, Monday Evening Concerts is L.A.’s longest running new music show, dating to back to 1939. To put its legacy in to perspective, the series hosted Pierre Boulez’s American debut and a few Stravinsky premieres. Now it exists much in the same way, premiering works by emerging or established…
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Music Preview: WELL-STRUNG (National Tour)
LOOKING GOOD FROM FRONT AND BACH The Los Angeles LGBT Center has announced a special one-night-only return of the internationally acclaimed singing string quartet Well-Strung. The four performers specialize in pairing universally recognized classical pieces while singing pop music hits by the likes of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, and others. As part of their…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: LOUISIANA PURCHASE (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
RARELY PRODUCED BERLIN SCORE COMES TO LIFE No doubt when folks hear “Louisiana Purchase,” they think of Thomas Jefferson’s gargantuan land acquisition from France in 1803, a purchase which resulted soon thereafter in Lewis and Clark’s expedition. So, is this the subject of the musical Louisiana Purchase? Nope. Wait… What..? You mean you’ve never even…
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Theater and Music Preview: IL RITORNO (Circa Contemporary Circus)
AN OPERATIC CIRCUS ODYSSEY The uber-innovative Australian performance troupe, Circa, returns to the States with its newest production, Il Ritorno, a unique production that melds circus arts with Baroque opera to explore themes of loss and displacement. This special engagement takes place one night only, Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at the gorgeous Musco Center for the…
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Los Angeles Music and Dance Preview: Mí„LKKI, STRAUSS & DANCE (Zimmermann’s Cello Concerto & Alpine Symphony, Susanna Målkki and the LA Phil)
DANCE! U.S. PREMIERE! ALPINE SYMPHONY! One of the reasons that the LA Phil is doing better than ever is the programming variety. With plenty of classics, we are also getting a slew of new music, much of it seeing its premiere at The Walt Disney Concert Hall (there will be over 50 such works next…
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Theater Review: SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS (National Tour at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
YOU LEAVE SEEKING PEACE AND A PLOT When a play comes along that is entirely different from any play that has preceded it, especially in our era of over-informative white noise and copycatting creativity, it deserves attention. Even Small Mouth Sounds — Bess Wohl’s 2016 work, now stopping at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica as…
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Theater Review: ALADDIN (National Tour)
A BROADWAY AMUSEMENT PARK THAT FLIES LIKE A CARPET “Open sesame” indeed. It’s “Abracadabra” times ten as the arrival of Aladdin in Hollywood feels as triumphant as Prince Ali’s magnificent entrance into Agrabah at the top of the second act. A theme park of a musical, Disney Theatrical Productions’ eye-popping transformation of the 1992 film…
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Los Angeles Art Preview: L.A. ART SHOW (Los Angeles Convention Center)
ART YOU TAKE PART IN I never in my wildest imaginings would have thought Los Angeles to become a mecca for art. But the combination of a rich cultural stew, the burgeoning arts life of downtown L.A., an explosion of galleries (of which Culver City was at the forefront), the opening of the Getty, better…
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Los Angeles Music Review: DEBUSSY, RAVEL, & BEYOND (Matthias Pintscher, Renaud Capuçon and the Los Angeles Philharmonic)
“MAR’EH” GETS A “M’EH” While musicians and devotees of “new” music may find Matthias Pintscher’s mar’eh cool, the patrons at Disney Hall were not having it at the opening night last Friday. Truly typical of way too many modern works, mar’eh (with an also-typical all-lowercase title spelling) is a violin concerto that’s an atmospheric stew-of-notes perfect for a melody-free…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: BUGABOO & THE SILENT ONE (Lounge Theatre in Hollywood)
THANKFULLY, NOT SO SILENT Based on her three previous theater outings alone, it’s fitting that writer/director Marja-Lewis Ryan has recently been tapped to be showrunner and executive producer of he upcoming The L Word sequel series. L.A. is lucky to have Ryan, who loves to keep working in theater even as her career in film…
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Theater Review: LUZIA (Cirque du Soleil on tour)
MEMORIES OF MEXICO, LUZIA UNLEASHES A RAIN OF JOY The Cirque du Soleil just made a run for the border ’” and not the Canadian one — as the Montreal-based human circus lavishes its unstoppable imagination on our neighbor to the south. Luzia, the latest (ad)venture under the redesigned white-and-gold Grand Chapiteau (its tent planted in the…
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Los Angeles Theater Preview: HOW THE PRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! (Troubadors at El Portal Theatre)
A PRINCH ASSAULT For 22 years, the Troubadour Theater Company (aka The Troubies) has amalgamated freely altered classics with music of a particular artist, creating riotous sketch/improv/entertainments that are liberally seasoned with an air of Commedia dell’Arte; this gives the immensely talented players the opportunity to act, sing, dance, improvise, and perform feats of acrobatic…
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Los Angeles Music Review: BRUCKNER’S SEVENTH; MOZART’S PIANO 23 (Michael Tilson Thomas, Khatia Buniatishvili and the Los Angeles Philharmonic)
SEVENTH HEAVEN While he existed in the Romantic Era, “Romantic” isn’t necessarily the word that springs to mind when I hear an Anton Bruckner Symphony (except perhaps his Fourth, actually titled Romantic). His giant mesmerizing symphonies, nine in total, are closer to religious experiences (a devout Catholic who never married, Bruckner dedicated his unfinished Ninth…
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Dance Review: SOFT GOODS (Karen Sherman)
SOFT GOODS’ SMOOTH SELL Karen Sherman’s Soft Goods presents the audience with a new perspective on dance by focusing on what happens behind the curtain. The show is set up like a play that explores the stagehands’ job, the dancers’ rehearsals and the less-than-pleasant interactions between the two groups as they come together to create a…
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Los Angeles Music Review: TCHAIKOVSKY’S FIRST PIANO CONCERTO (Sergio Tiempo, Xian Zhang and the Los Angeles Philharmonic)
TIEMPO’S TANTALIZINGLY TEMPESTUOUS TEMPO Sergio Tiempo is the real deal. When a pianist can take a work as familiar as Tchaikovsky’s 1874 First Piano Concerto and turn it into an exciting Olympic event, I’m more than sold. Appearing at a packed Disney Hall this morning (in a program that runs through Sunday), the very cool…
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Los Angeles Dance Preview: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE (American Contemporary Ballet)
BUSTING A NUTCRACKER Before you grumble and run screaming, “Not another Nutcracker Suite!” — trust me when I tell you that American Contemporary Ballet has something up its red-fur, white-trimmed sleeve with an all-new imagining that presents new choreography while putting you directly inside the Land of the Sweets. When I was told patrons will…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE HEART OF ROBIN HOOD (The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
WE GET EVERYTHING BUT THE HEART Certainly one of the most gorgeous lavish sets ever seen at the Wallis, with gorgeous sumptuous costumes, and gorgeous talented athletic actors. With all of the boisterous shenanigans, you won’t be bored; there’s undeniable entertainment value. But what happens when you throw everything into a show to make sure…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: PACIFIC OVERTURES (Chromolume Theatre)
PLEASE HELLO! Remarkably, one of the most difficult things about Pacific Overtures is that Harold Prince directed the original production utilizing the ancient Japanese theater-form, Kabuki, which isn’t necessary to elucidate John Weidman’s book (can you imagine if every production of Merrily We Roll Along used a teenage cast, as Prince’s original production did?). The…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: CAUGHT (Think Tank Art Gallery in the Fashion District, DTLA)
CAUGHT IN ITS SPELL An onion-skin experience, Christopher Chen’s magnificent Caught is indeed scripted, but you won’t know that when you’re watching it. Part immersive theater, part performance art, part installation, part thrust theater, part food and drinks, and pure play, this exhilarating look into politics, propaganda, and perception is pocked with paradox. It begins…
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Los Angeles Music Preview: DECK THE HALL HOLIDAY CONCERTS (Disney Hall)
The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Deck the Hall Holiday Concerts at Disney Hall are just around the corner, and the variety this year is unmatched. I may be enchanted by the ever-popular Holiday Sing-Along (Dec. 16); I may be enraptured by jazz great Dianne Reeves’ Christmas Time Is Here (Dec. 20); I may be excited about the beat-boxing a…
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