Bass-ic instinct
May
24
2015
How low can you go? Woodwind players Yoon-Hee Jung and Eric Jacobs gave that question a resonant response on bass flute and bass clarinet, respectively, with their sonorous underpinnings at “Fits & Starts.” The concert of stimulating contemporary classical music, much of it avant-garde, was presented by Jacaranda at the Villa Aurora on May 16. ...
“Big Shot” skewers THE GODFATHER @ Bootleg Theater
“That’s my family; that’s not me.” So Michael Corleone assures his blue-blooded girlfriend, Kay, in one of his character’s persistent moments of self-denial. First expressed in Mario Puza’s pulpy popular novel, a mega best seller published in 1969, the line was famously recycled in (then) newbie director Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic movie in three installments, ...
arts•meme at seven: confident, independent
May
19
2015
Well wishes go to arts•meme, the fine arts blog, on her seventh birthday, May 24, 2015. The little mademoiselle is pictured on her tricycle-ramble ’round town, collecting memes to dispatch in the daily gazette. A special thank-you to our advertisers. Thank you for working with us! Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Segerstrom ...
Roman Polanski, film curator
Cineaste Roman Polanski has conceived a new documentary for the Prada Foundation, whose spawling new arts facility in Milan includes a Cinema building — so fitting for Italy the bastion of great 20th century filmmaking. The doc, directed by Laurent Bouzerau, considers Polanski’s auteur-inspirations by analyzing some of the films that have most influenced him. ...
Bill Graham, Ziegfeld of Aquarius 1
We pay over a hundred dollars for a decent seat at a Staples Center rock show without thinking twice, but it wasn’t always so. There had been rock events here and there as early as the late 1950s—Elvis at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium and the Beatles at Dodger Stadium—but they were occasional. Bill Graham (1931-1991) made ...
Chris Burden’s elegaic floating sculpture @ LACMA
May
13
2015
Beginning May 18, for four weeks, Chris Burden’s Ode to Santos Dumont a kinetic airship sculpture inspired by Brazilian-born pioneer aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, will be on view at LACMA. Burden, the noted conceptual/performance artist, completed his plans for the LACMA exhibit before he passed away May 10. Santos-Dumont, considered the father of aviation in France, flew ...
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker to enjoy Los Angeles showcase
May
12
2015
News from our Italian friends at the Dance section of the Biennale di Venezia forges an excellent fit with a major dance event just announced for the 2015-16 season at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA in Los Angeles. The Biennale announced that choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker will be awarded the ...
Ravishing dance-film journey to Havana
“Dancing for My Havana,” an Italian/Cuban co-production written and directed by Claudio Del Punta, has garnered the Special Jury Prize of the Dance Camera West festival 2015. The film, a colorful wonderland set in Havana’s romantic urban ruins, tells a love story interpersed with sensational dance numbers that give a rare glimpse into unadulterated Cuban ...
Jazz cooking at the Bakery, all ’round town
While the Jazz Bakery’s next, new home is being prepared in Culver City, Ruth Price books her floating concert series in some of the best listening venues around town. One of them is the Moss Theatre on the campus of the Herb Alpert Educational Village in Santa Monica. A horseshoe-shaped stage with wrap-around seating, fine ...
Herb Alpert’s twenty-one years of generous giving to artists
Herb Alpert, center, with the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts winners, from left, Maria Hassabi, Taylor Mac, Herb Alpert, Sharon Lockhart and Julia Wolfe. Absent because detained in Cuba: Tania Brugeura. On May 1, The Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts awarded the 21st annual Herb Alpert Award in the ...