The jazz strata of Ave Pildas 1
If you receive photographer Ave Pildas’s weekly e-blasts, you know the prolific nature of his work. His street snaps can be quirky, straightforward, unpredictable, ironic, reverent, whimsical, iconic, or just plain fun. He has an eye for the beautiful and the surreal but the transmissions often time to current events or seasonal observances. They show ...
Marian the Librarian to tell all at CINECON 1
Aug
26
2013
We just learned that the lovely Academy-Award winning actress Shirley Jones will be honored at the 49th annual Labor Day-weekend event, Cinecon Classic Film Festival. The five-day foray into classic film-mania — with an accent on rarely seen movies and silent film — that hook or by crook rolls out annually at summer’s end for ...
Kyle Abraham sings Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” with body
Mar
24
2013
A wonderful solo performed by one of the great dancers of our day. Like this? Read more: Kyle works his stuff on BodyTraffic Kyle Abraham, BESSIE awardee Kyle makes it or breaks it at Jacob’s Pillow Kyle Abraham’s The Radio Show at REDCAT (Los Angeles Times)
BODYTRAFFIC to share wares at Jacob’s Pillow
Dec
5
2012
Some hugely happy news, we’ve learned that L.A.’s hard-dancing, home-grown repertory dance troupe, BODYTRAFFIC, now in its fifth year, will perform next summer at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The Pillow, whose tony hilltop campus in the Berkshires houses two theaters, a summer dance program, picnicking grounds and a wonderful archives, has hosted a huge swathe ...
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 ...
Only Marvin Hamlisch was missing. Pasadena Pops honors conductor.
A concert that culminates with the great lyricist Alan Bergman crooning in aching nostalgia The Way We Were, a song that he, his writing partner and wife Marilyn, and composer Marvin Hamlisch co-wrote for Barbra Streisand, is an event I’m interested in attending. Bergman is so special, a poet, really. The Pasadena Symphony’s high-quality tribute ...
Happy 100th Gene Kelly! Love, Oscar 2
A parade of Technicolor-tinged dance sequences enchanted a full house at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater Thursday night. “A Centennial Tribute to Gene Kelly,” the first of a two-part event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored the beloved dancer-choreographer-director in this most effective manner — by screening his sensational dance clips. ...
Bob Marley remembered 2
What I learned about reggae artist Bob Marley from “Marley,” an inspiring new documentary produced by his son: he was biracial (I did not know that) he was the soul of jamaica he was gorgeous and nicely built he was all music, from childhood he was all artist, beatific in the final years of his ...
Ahmad Jamal, child pianist, photographed by “Teenie” Harris
He’s propped up on a trumpet case! It’s the young Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell ‘Fritz’ Jones), a Pittsburgh native whose photo by renegade photog, Charles “Teenie” Harris, is featured in an exhibit at the city’s Carnegie Museum of Art. Jamal’s is only one of 80,000 photographs Harris snapped of daily African-American life in the ...
Young lions of modern dance – Hofesh Shechter, Kyle Abraham – set to roar 2
Oct
14
2011
A very rich week in dance is upon us. Two strong young choreographic voices are contending across town, both are must viewing, indeed game changers, for the art form. Wednesday and Thursday nights, the Israeli-born, London-based, pants-on-fire Hofesh Shechter brings “Political Mother” to Royce Hall (huge thumbs up on that title, Hofesh). And the equally ...