Oh yeah, Sammy!
The great dancer Sammy Davis Jr. … and oh yes, also the superb singer, actor and consummate cool guy … had a daughter! That lucky lady, Tracey Davis, has written a book, “Sammy Davis Jr.– A Personal Journey with My Father.” Swing on by (‘cuz everything about SD, Jr. is swingin’) Larry Edmund’s Bookshop on Hollywood ...
Debonair song-and-dance man Maurice Hines tappin’ @ the Wallis
Marvel of marvels, a beautiful event coming your way, in the still-new and pretty gorgeous Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Broadway legend Maurice Hines teams up with the Manzari Brothers and 11-year old tapping phenomenom Luke Spring, to tap through 40 years in show business. In “Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Through Life,” Hines, ...
Philip Glass on Cocteau’s “La Belle et La Bete”
Our friends at the Center for the Art of Performance (CAP-UCLA) have shared with us an essay by Philip Glass concerning his musical reconfiguring of Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et La Bete” (“Beauty and the Beast”) to be screened this Friday night, May 2, one night only, at Royce Hall. The film will have live ...
Weaving magic to the Bard: The Royal Ballet in “The Winter’s Tale”
I don’t get to Covent Garden all that often lately. Downstairs to the Linbury Studio experiments, yes, but upstairs? Elegant always, but stately for my current tastes — my dance fix is generally fed by Sadlers Wells these days. Last season’s Royal Ballet encounter with Mayerling — my favorite narrative by far — had been ...
Hallyday, in Hollywood not on holiday but at COL·COA
French rock star Johnny Hallyday, who resides in Los Angeles, manly, subtle and sensitive in director Claude LeLouch‘s latest, “Salaud, On t’Aime” (“We Love You, You Bastard” its less charming English title) seen last night, with Lelouch and Hallyday in the house, at opening night of the 18th annual COL*COA, French film festival. In the ...
A keeper: Quincy Jones photo-portrait for TCM Fest
At arts·meme, we like it when art begets art. That’s why we respond so positively to photographer Stefanie Keenan’s outstanding photo-portrait of an artist — Quincy Jones — that came across the transom from Turner Classic Movies this morning. The prodigious Jones gave a fascinating, free-wheeling interview to movie (and jazz) maven Leonard Maltin at ...
Cameron Carpenter, accompanying “Caligari,” pulls out stops 1
London’s Southbank Centre dearly loves a party. Give it any excuse and the architecture that some have characterized as brutalist is festooned with banners, murals and all manner of colorful whirligigs, giving this hitherto cultural bunker the air of Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island-on-Thames. The return of the Southbank’s 7,866-pipe Harrison organ after six years of restoration ...
A doctor in the house: Doc Severinsen @ Valley Performing Arts Center 2
That Doc Severinsen is a natty dresser is well known. But when he hit the stage of the Valley Performing Arts Center Friday night clad in orange shirt, red pants and a blue, sequined paisley jacket, it took several moments for the rich visual effect to sink in. With unabated high energy, the 86-year-old trumpeter, ...
Lyris-ists land on LaBrea, for ‘Music & Conversations’ 1
A high-performance moment slated, this weekend, for Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, the stellar LaBrea Avenue art gallery. Chamber music presenter Music & Conversations will host the Lyris Quartet whose punctilious playing we have so enjoyed around town — and who have a wonderful upcoming engagement on April 5 with Jacaranda, Music from the Edge. Saturday ...
Flirting with Fascism, Sinatra: ENO’s Rodelinda
I’d been away from London, in New York, for Rodelinda’s Coliseum premiere but heard such good things about it that I arranged for one of its last performances and am so glad I did. Beyond the grace of Handel’s music conducted by baroque specialist Christopher Curnyn and played with usual panache by a reduced English ...