Terence Donovan, British photog who chronicled sixties
Photographer David Bailey (born 1938) is said to have given us a visual vocabulary with which we remember Swinging Sixties London. But he didn’t do it alone. Though not as celebrated, Terence Donovan (1936-1996) and Brian Duffy (1933-2010) did groundbreaking work in their own right. All three triangulated fashion photography with movies and pop culture ...
Jazz for angels and others at Angel City Jazz Festival 1
It’s been nine years but the Angel City Jazz Festival, the Los Angeles music conflagration built on bringing cutting-edge sounds to the Southland, has not only survived, it has flourished. Impresario Rocco Somazzi, well regarded for the adventurous booking policy of his Rocco Ristorante in Bel Air, embarked on a week-long series of concerts for ...
The brilliant business of Miles Davis
Oct
6
2016
A hillside Los Angeles home. Awesome acoustics. The stylized sound the trumpet master was famous for. Repertory standards and originals. All on tap at Jazz at the A-Frame‘s upcoming “Unfinished Business” tribute to Miles Davis Sunday November 6 at a private home. In the house: Kenny Dennis (drums), John Campbell (piano), John B. Williams (bass), ...
It’s cool. You’re cool. So go. AfterParty @ The Wallis.
As everyone in Los Angeles knows, it’s not the event. It’s the after party. That’s why a cool new theater package offered by the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Arts stands a good chance of attracting a younger demographic into its cozy theater smack in the center of Beverly Hills. It’s AfterParty @ The Wallis, ...
Eden Ahbez: the wild, the innocent & the Vine Street shuffle
[ed. note: author Kirk Silsbee’s story was originally published, in slightly different form, in the L.A.Weekly] Some people only have one hit record in them. History’s one-hit wonders make up a long, sometimes colorful and often tragic legion. Eden Ahbez was lucky. He had a compelling song, with an unusual melody and a gentle message ...
Michael Vlatkovich’s unpredictable musical universe @ the Hammer
Michael Vlatkovich’s idiosyncratic music balances the meticulous writer with the laissez faire bandleader. The trombonist/composer has the uncommon luxury of convening seven pieces at the Hammer Museum’s free JazzPOP series this coming Thursday night. Drummer Chris Garcia, who has played with Vlatkovich since 1991, recalls a tour. “We had a new bass player,” Garcia says. ...
The sound of America, courtesy of MUSE/IQUE
Enough of politicians yammering about being American! Let’s experience our national spirit in a much more intuitive manner, through art. Chamber-music series MUSE/IQUE is here to help. Established in 2011 by artistic director Rachael Worby (at left), the Pasadena-based MUSE/IQUE presents a three-concert summer lawn-festival across a dizzying array of genres — classical, ballet, jazz. ...
Jeff Parker’s guitar twists & turns @ The Blue Whale
Jeff Parker knows about harmonic color. His current CD, The New Breed (International Anthem Recording Company) is lush with it. It hangs like audible clouds, created by slow-moving electronic keyboard backgrounds, nudged along by discreet electric bass currents, and seeded by Parker’s pungent single-note improvisations. The KORG MS20 adds grainy keyboard impasto to those scrims ...
Jazz singer Jeri Southern, appreciated
There were other female jazz pianists who also sang in the 1950s, but none shared Jeri Southern’s formidable pianistic technique, vocal individuality, and unerring choice of good material. She sang the most bittersweet love songs in the most intimate manner. And few could inspire the nightclub reveries Southern conjured—of melancholy, infatuation, optimism, idolatry, disconsolation, and ...
Princely double-bill at the Aero
PURPLE RAIN 1984, Warner Bros., 111 min, Dir: Albert Magnoli 35mm print with Dolby 4-track Magnetic Audio Prince’s big-screen debut as The Kid, frontman of rock-R&B band The Revolution. Burdened with a troubled home life, The Kid also must contend with a rival bandleader (Morris Day) out to steal both his slot at a Minneapolis ...