Don’t just sit there … jive with your hands!
Ed. note: We’re pleased to feature a fun item contributed by an expert in American popular dance, Julie Malnig. Take it away, Julie! The Hand Jive was one of the most popular rock and roll group dances of the late 1950s and became a hit on televised teen dance programs of the era such as ...
Saturday afternoon with the in-crowd — and Ramsey Lewis
Jun
15
2020
How much more of an in-crowd guy can you be? The cool cat seated in front of the yellow backdrop is the GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist Ramsey Lewis. Lewis, an NEA Jazz Master who is still rocking it at 85, has a nice invitation to get onto your Saturday schedule — it’s a way to check ...
Lost Martha Graham solo finds contemporary context in world premiere @ The Soraya
Martha Graham, ‘Immediate Tragedy’ 1937. Photo by Robert Fraser. Courtesy Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc A scholar’s cache of rediscovered materials—remnants of a 1937 Martha Graham solo fashioned in response to the Spanish Civil War—has spawned a digital collaboration between Martha Graham Dance Company and the ...
Memorial Day 2020: Los Angeles theaters we miss 1
coveted during covid quarantine – the egyptian theatrethis spectacular photo of the egyptian’s balcony by morgan glier for the ucla daily bruin It all feels surreal — but my essential problem during the theater shutdown of the Covid-19 pandemic is that for me, art happens at night. Rarely during the day, sometimes at matinees, and ...
In Yiddish: ‘Vash di hent!’ Wash your hands.
Mar
23
2020
photo courtesy yale strom That’s the sage advice of our meshugenah but so-talented friend Yale Strom, who is hosting a special Facebook live offering this coming Wednesday on Radio Free Covid-19. The program, The Tshudne Shtunde (Bizarre Hour) features music from Strom’s ethnographic trips in Eastern Europe collecting klezmer and Yiddish songs from 1981-through today. ...
Exit the jazz giant: McCoy Tyner
Mar
12
2020
Meandering, plucking-and-picking, pouring forth, cascading. In the video, pianist McCoy Tyner (1938-2020) both reveres and rips into “My One and Only Love.” It’s a ditty with underpinnings so thin it’s just humbling the mighty mountain of sound Tyner constructs of it. Personnel include McCoy Tyner (piano), Azar Lawrence (saxophones), Juini Booth (contrabass), E. W. Wainwright, ...
Bird Lives — to 100 — at CAP UCLA
Mar
2
2020
Urban legend has it that the Kansas City native, alto saxophonist and legend, Charlie Parker, copped the nickname “Bird” (shortened from “Yardbird”) due to his hankering for southern fried chicken. We’ll buy that; and while that finger-licking dish comes from a bird that rambles close to the ground, the self-taught virtuoso of American jazz who ...
Soulful, spiritual, aspirational: Yuval Ron Ensemble revisits Spain’s Golden Age
The first time I heard the music of virtuoso guitarist Yuval Ron was, gosh, it must have been twenty years ago, in an intimate concert at a private home — his own. Packed into a living room on three sides in chairs arranged three rows deep, a group of total strangers passed an indelible evening ...
Schoenberg, Schoenberg & Mehta at Disney Hall
Jan
21
2020
Not a new law firm, although the gent on the left, E. Randol Schoenberg, is an attorney. And he is a friend of artsmeme. This charming backstage-at-Disney-Hall portrait taken January 10, 2020 features Zubin Mehta, Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, following a pithy program at the L.A. Phil of music by Wagner and ...
Get serious, Los Angeles!
Richard Valitutto, Pianospheres Jan 14photo: Jonathan Nesteruk It’s January. So, no excuses. Clear the eggnog out of your noggin — and get ready for some serious art. In Los Angeles, it’s all around us. Artists and their presenters are hitting the new decade afresh, and with force. It does not get headier than the L.A. ...