Freedom Jazz Movement @ Henan Province’s SIAS University
A slight nip in an otherwise balmy late-spring Chinese evening gave an edge to the polished set the Los Angeles-based jazz quartet, Freedom Jazz Movement, laid down at SIAS University in Henan Province tonight. The show took place at the privately owned university’s Roman-style outdoor amphitheater. Four exceptional musicians, delivering a suite of band leader ...
‘Footwork’ explodes out of Chicago — on the radio
Hey Wills Glasspiegel of National Public Radio, thank you for hipping us to Chicago ‘footwork’ on the airwaves, All Things Considered, today. Great story: Listen here. Read it here. The best dancing is in the last four minutes of the video. Thank you Luke Hartley for your very kool foto.
NYT’s Larry Rohter writes on guitarist Gary Lucas
May
10
2011
So very very cool to see a New York Times piece on guitarist Gary Lucas written by film guy Larry Rohter: “The music business has never quite known what to make of Gary Lucas. Go to a site for streaming or downloading songs, and you may find his music consigned to a vague category called ...
The lucidity of Lucinda Childs
Kudos to choreographer Lucinda Childs, whose pristine and rigorous “Dance” — a glorious work of minimalist art from the late 70s — we so enjoyed Friday night at Royce Hall. Set to the music of Philip Glass, the reconstructed hour-long piece powers forth in real time, while, concurrently, a huge video projection displays giants performing ...
David Dorfman’s late-hour conversation with Sly Stone saves “Prophets of Funk” performance
It was a harrowing few days for Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, CA, a sound man named Sam Crawford, eight members of David Dorfman Dance, and the choreographer himself, as the key underpinning of David Dorfman’s touring show “Prophets of Funk ” — the right to use a multi-song sound score by Sylvester ...
Monk lives … at UCLA
Apr
20
2011
The Herb Alpert juggernaut of extraordinary arts philanthropy surges on the news that The Herb Alpert Foundation has again spurred jazz education at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. The school will join forces with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a nonprofit organization devoted to jazz education now based in New Orleans. For ...
Accomplished arts professional Kristy Edmunds to head UCLA Live
Performing arts curator Kristy Edmunds has been named executive and artistic director of UCLA Live, the venerable outlet for music, dance, and theater at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. Edmunds, an American, born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, comes to UCLA Live from Australia’s University of Melbourne, where she was head of the ...
Boulez’s masterful “sur Incises” at Disney Hall 2
It was a privilege, last night, to watch Pierre Boulez conduct his own work from the late 1990s, “sur Incises,” written for a triplet of threesomes: three harps, three pianos, and three percussion clusters (xylophone, marimba, bells, tympani). A guided journey through a landscape of crystalline sound, the work clung miraculously to the air of ...
Get stoned … go higher! See David Dorfman’s “Prophets of Funk”
Dance maker David Dorfman throws down the gauntlet. And the gauntlet is this: Can he out-do, in his choreographed tribute to Sly & the Family Stone, what the great sixties interracial funk band achieves in a cold television studio? Check out this video: I wouldn’t miss it — if only because the cast includes Kyle ...
L.A. dance patron honored by NYC’s Joyce Theater Foundation
We’re very proud of Liz Hirsch, the longtime supporter of dance in Los Angeles, who is being honored along with her mother, Mimi Levitt, by the Joyce Theater Foundation on April 11. Liz, a classy gadabout, always superbly dressed and full of fire, was a key supporter of the Joffrey Ballet when it was resident ...