Strom’s socialist singspiel soothes Sunday’s squally storms 1
Mar
26
2012
No better way to pass a rainy Sunday afternoon than a concert at the Workman’s Circle/Arbeter Ring of Los Angeles. There, the cultural anthropologist and klezmer guy, Yale Strom, his string bass player Mark Dresser, and the sultry songstress Elizabeth Schwartz presented a program of socialist-themed Yiddish music. Strom, a torrid fiddler, is deeply steeped ...
A horse is a good clean animal, says Betty Grable 2
Check out Betty Grable in “Meet Me After the Show” (1951): Dancing in silhouette, on the platform: Jack Cole, who staged the number. Paired with Cole for a dance-y horse race is the choreographer’s muse and assistant Gwen Verdon. This we learn from the horse’s mouth … er… from Academy of Dance on Film founder ...
Stephen Colbert placidoes Domingo
Mar
6
2012
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Placido Domingo www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive
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 ...
Meeting Art Laboe, L.A.’s pioneering rock ‘n roll deejay
We enjoyed meeting the amazing Los Angeles radio legend, Art Laboe, Wednesday night at the Grammy Museum downtown. Laboe’s a pioneer in many ways — issuing the first-ever record compilations and coining the expression “Oldies But Goodies.” The deejay is very much alive and kicking; though in his eighties, he was in great shape cruising ...
Classical Underground rocks
Clamor filled the central-Los Angeles industrial loft last Thursday evening, when the Russian expatriate painter, Alexey Steele, and his wife Olga opened their funky-junky, atelier-style home to the music lovers of Los Angeles. Amidst a clutter of books, art supplies, burning candles, and oversized classical paintings, propped onto surfaces or hanging from walls, habitués of ...
New live-performance hall for music in downtown L.A. 1
Wonderful news, there’s a new — that is, refurbished — 500-seat auditorium for music performances downtown. It’s called AT&T Center Theatre, and it’s located in the mid-century-modern classic skyscraper designed and built in 1965 by William Pereira, the USC architecture professor and founding partner of Pereira & Luckman (designers of the LAX Theme Building, and ...
You up there in the rafters, stop chewing gum! Gustavo Dudamel conducts Mahler’s Eighth @ the Shrine
Feb
2
2012
We don’t have airs, we don’t have pretenses. We’re not Europe, we’re not New York. It’s the Wild West, and we like it like that. What we do have, in spades, is space. Yes, space. Room to move, grow, think, and innovate. And in our big barn of a Shrine Auditorium, with its hefty square ...
Talent! Joy! Pure pleasure! Thank you Don Cornelius.
What a mover~! Put Michael Jackson right up in the dance superstratum. How I wish I could have saved him.
Spend a sexy evening at an Eagle Rock motel …
Jan
12
2012
… if your idea of a sexy evening is hopping, like a cockroach, between motel rooms, while listening to cool experimental music. Sounds good to me. The Welcome Inn Time Machine — series of free micro concerts in motel rooms that explore the history of local experimental music is part of the Pacific Standard Time ...