Happy 70th birthday, Captain Beefheart

Ideas & Opinion · Music · Visual arts
Guitarist Gary Lucas‘s Captain Beefheart symposium was already in the works when he received a text message December 16 that Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, was no more. After years of suffering from multiple sclerosis, the enigmatic rock vocalist and musician, who had long forsaken music for painting, died at 69. Speaking to a theater ...

OCPAC reborn as Segerstrom Center for the Arts

Architecture & Design · Dance · Music · Theater · Visual arts
The erstwhile Orange County Performing Arts Center — Costa Mesa, California’s artistic mecca worthy of the 1.5- hour caravan southward from Los Angeles — entered a new era yesterday. In a burst of fireworks — $100,000 worth it is rumored — the center honored its founding patron Henry Segerstrom in a special way. Dropping its ...

Dance ambassador Lula Washington heads to Middle Kingdom 2

Dance · Music
A U.S. consulate representative’s positive feedback of a Vladivostok performance by Lula Washington Dance Theatre — they were in Russia in November and December on a 20-city tour — resulted in a six-figure grant in support of a visit to China for the ebullient Los Angeles-based dance troupe. The Washington-ites will visit Henan and its neighboring central ...

Ringing in 2011 at the Neujahrskonzert

Dance · Music
They’re gonna have to tie me into my seat when the Strauss waltzes kick in at this weekend’s Neujahrskonzert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. New Year’s concerts — famous, festive, and now franchised — are an old Austrian tradition. You know, like sacher tortes and California governors. [How did the Austrians come up with something ...

Sugarplum heart attack

Dance · Music
arts•meme thanks Lou Beach Like Pytor Illych? I love him. Read more: Ken Russell & Dr. Kildare tackle Tchaikovsky

Glendale’s Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, dies

Music · Visual arts
Fine artist represented by Michael Werner gallery, New York & Köln. Van Vliet’s irrepressible California creativity captured in New York Times obituary — must reading. photo: anton corbijn

Satchmo blesses Herb Alpert with Blessing trumpet

Music
On November 10 the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation presented the first “Satchmo Award” to recording legend Herb Alpert. The award was presented to Alpert at the Newark Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey, during a WBGO jazz-radio gala. Singer Dee Dee Bridgewater acted as master of ceremonies. The Satchmo award recognizes Alpert”s contributions to ...

Judy Garland doesn’t care, and I don’t care either! 1

Dance · Film · Music
I love the insouciant song written for vaudevillian Eva Tanguay in 1906, “I Don’t Care.” It’s my theme song. Here Judy Garland sings it in “I Don’t Care,” from “In the Good Old Summertime” (1943). The anthem is also the arts•meme theme song. They say I’m crazy Got no sense But I don’t care They ...

JOHN LENNON SHOT DEAD

Music
Leaving home for classes at Hunter College, I stepped out the front door of my East 4th Street tenement walk-up, pausing on the top step to acclimate to the biting-cold December air. Gloria, the black single mother from the first-floor-rear apartment, was smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, chatting with a friend. At the foot of ...

I just love the guy: John Lennon

Music
It’s not his song writing or performance that grabs me, although I like and admire that too. It’s his total artistic nature, flamboyant personality, troubled personal journey, and his bonding with a really wacky Japanese artist that endears him to me. Yes, bonding; John and Yoko were a deeply bonded couple, for better or for worse. LENNONYC, ...