REVIEW: Liza Minnelli, Michael Feinstein enchant at Segerstrom 5
I never saw Judy Garland in performance. I was fifteen in 1969 when she last played in Copenhagen. Now I wish I had gone. But Saturday night, I got a frisson of that Garland feeling, when in a first, I attended Liza Minnelli’s show at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The legendary singer delivered a ...
The look of jazz: Warhol-designed album covers
Before he became the king of pop art, Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol moved to New York to make it. Warhol wanted to be part of the elite strata inhabited by Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and other sanctioned artists. He didn’t have what it took to be admitted to those circles but he did ...
Our pick: Daryl Sherman swinging at the Gardenia 1
Though she writes original songs, few contemporary artists have scoured the hidden corners of the Great American Songbook like singer-pianist Daryl Sherman. She’s a regular at New York’s Algonquin Hotel who gracefully straddles jazz and cabaret singing, essaying songs from both renowned and neglected tunesmiths like Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Walter Donaldson, Jimmy McHugh, ...
Faster than a speeding bullet … Liza Minnelli soon at Segerstrom
That’s how she was marketed, in 1966, by The Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel — as the soaring star that she was. Liza Minnelli, born on March 12, 1946 to Judy Garland and movie director Vincente Minnelli, went on to a very public, very distinguished career as a singer/dancer/actress. We’ll catch up with Liza ...
Wild rhythms of Japan & India to tumble from Ford Amphitheatre stage
Ask the average American theater-goer or music listener to describe Japanese taiko drumming and you’ll probably hear a description something like this: solemn men in loin cloths and sweat bands who beat oversized drums in unison — loudly and interminably. Brian Yamami has spent his last 18 years trying to change that perception. He’s a ...
Live, again, on Hollywood Boulevard: Jackie Wilson
Kind of a stunning cultural moment to attend the first-ever Hologram-only theater right on the tourist strip of Hollywood Boulevard. A block from the Egyptian Theatre, it’s a wholesome entertainment addition to the ‘hood. Last week, we attended a debut screening of a hologram-homage to a great r&b/early-rock artist, Jackie Wilson. Now, gosh. This strip ...
Herb & Lani Alpert’s generous mid-career funding of meritorious artists
Robert O’Hara, Courtney Bryan, Michael Rakowitz, Lani Hall Alpert, Herb Alpert, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Arthur Jafa, Photo credit: Francesco Da Vinci The Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts awarded the 24th annual Herb Alpert Award in the Arts to five exceptional mid–career artists at a lunch hosted by the Herb Alpert Foundation ...
Pianist Jose Menor’s radiant ‘Goyescas’ to shimmer at Spain-on-the-Pacific party
May
11
2018
A toast of sparkling cava will cap off a sensual event when Jacaranda hosts a Spanish-themed “Goyescas by the Sea” benefit concert Sunday, May 20. The youthful Barcelona-based superstar-pianist, Jose Menor, will grace the program, delivering the complete Goyescas by Enrique Granados, an hour-long solo piano suite inspired by that most Spanish of painters, Francisco ...
State of the art: Childish Gambino & dancers, choreographer Sherrie Silver 2
“This is America” — twisted, sideways, partying. Ominous and sour-sounding. Soulful but fearful — as choreographed by Rwanda-born, U.K.-reared Sherrie Silver.
Terence Blanchard’s jazz message, in cabaret seating, at The Soraya
Trumpeter Terence Blanchard has been visiting this part of the country for years. Starting in the ’80s, he shared the valedictory frontline of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with alto saxophonist Donald Harrison. Leaving the venerable drummer (“Our father, who art Blakey” quipped trumpeter Valery Ponomarev), Blanchard and Harrison co-led a good mainstream jazz band. They ...