Review: No chopped liver, but still great: GATZ @ REDCAT 2
When I was a kid, my yiddishe grandmother would pack us sandwiches for Saturday movie matinee (she called it “the show”). My cousins and I would line up at the box office of Pittsburgh’s Manor Theater, clutching in our little hands a few bucks and our greasy brown-paper bag lunches. The theater concession’s stellar offerings ...
Benjamin & Natalie go to the ballet
Sep
24
2012
That would be the dancer-choreographer Benjamin Millepied and his wife the blonde actress, er … the actress Natalie Portman. And here’s is what they went to see: the debut of L.A. Dance Project, a new repertory dance company headed up by Millepied. The boutique troupe of six dancers presented a stimulating and credible evening of ...
Review: Keith Jarrett travels over the rainbow @ Disney Hall 2
Keith Jarrett, the 66-year-old jazz legend, opened his solo concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall Tuesday night by plucking on his Steinway’s strings, avant-garde style. He closed the evening with a love letter to Los Angeles: Somewhere Over the Rainbow, composer Harold Arlen. A range of music, not quite jazz, rather, unidentified art songs, came ...
Goldsborough to mine gold for Miami City Ballet
Pictured, on the right, above, is Nick Goldsborough, a treasured member of the Los Angeles dance community. The photo was taken on the opening night of “Windows,” a wonderful one-act play about the world of Bill Gates, which Nick produced. Nick is a gentleman whose mother instilled in him the love of ballet, and whose ...
Boulez’s masterful “sur Incises” at Disney Hall 2
It was a privilege, last night, to watch Pierre Boulez conduct his own work from the late 1990s, “sur Incises,” written for a triplet of threesomes: three harps, three pianos, and three percussion clusters (xylophone, marimba, bells, tympani). A guided journey through a landscape of crystalline sound, the work clung miraculously to the air of ...
Merce’s marvelous Irish jig 3
Co-published on Huffington Post arts page “It was unutterably moving to watch,” said long time company archivist David Vaughan of the historic reconstruction of “Roaratorio” (1983) that graced Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s fare-thee-well performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall this weekend. “We all feel Merce in the dance.” Indeed, watching company elder Robert Swinston, 60, ...
Los Angeles Philharmonic: Adieu, Esa-Pekka Salonen! 6
May
24
2008
Friday night I watched Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the LA Phil for perhaps my last time. Esa has had a huge impact on my life, as I entered the symphony world under his tutelage. He is retiring as the Phil’s conductor after this season. Renowned for his special touch with 20th century music, he conducted Stravinsky and ...