Imani Winds to bring breezy, jazzy, dancey woodwind sound to 92nd St ‘Y’
Oct
10
2023
In a chamber music program that can only be described as scintillating, the trailblazing wind-instrument quintet, Imani Winds, will make their first 92NY appearance with acclaimed pianist Terrence Wilson in a program conceived around rhythm and dance. Repertoire includes Paquito D’Rivera’s take on the Venezuelan joropo, Fleur de Cayenne, Imani hornist Jeff Scott’s arrangement of ...
Karel Zeman’s ‘painted cinema’: wondrous, playful, intriguing films @ The Panorama
Oct
2
2023
The Stolen Airship (1966) Live action, special effects, painted backdrops, puppets and animation are all ingeniously combined in the fantastic films of Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman. 50 years after the earliest days of cinema, Zeman returned to the magical techniques of Georges Mélies to create films of unmatched beauty. Now, courtesy of the Velaslavasay Panorama, ...
German Currents Film Festival a glimpse into latest & best European cinema
Sep
25
2023
We are fans and supporters of the Goethe-Institut’s spectrum of wonderful German/American cultural activities in Los Angeles, but since it’s Los Angeles we especially love the movies. That’s why we so anticipate a fun weekend at the annual German Currents Film Festival, lively ads for which you see posted on artsmeme now. Click on ’em ...
REVIEW: When opposites attract, Bridgewater & Charlap at CAP UCLA 1
It was a provocative entry to a fall jazz season: singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and pianist Bill Charlap, performing in a duo format at Royce Hall for UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. Like a pro wrestling match between a pile-driving heel and a gymnast babyface, it was a potential mismatch too tantalizing to ...
Boy, uninterrupted: Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky in new biography 3
alexei ratmansky, center, rehearses the sleeping beauty: from rosalie o’connor photo The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet, Marina Harss’s biography of one of the world’s most active choreographers, is just exactly that: a beautifully written, close examination of the many ways in which the 55-year-old artist’s work and life are intertwined. Moreover, her ...
SoUNDz’ of Savion, at The Soraya
Ed. note: This story by Susan Reiter, commissioned and published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is reprinted with permission. Savion Glover has been in the spotlight on stage and screen since an impossibly young age. In his third appearance at The Soraya, on October 7, the one-of-a-kind tap virtuoso brings ...
artsmeme to glimpse CAP-UCLA ‘Nimoy’ the erstwhile Crest Theatre
photo courtesy chris nichols for los angeles magazine Named in honor of artist, actor, director and philanthropist Leonard Nimoy, The Nimoy is a reimagining of Westwood’s historic Crest Theatre, acquired by UCLA in 2018 and since renovated into a flexible 300-seat off-campus performing arts space. The show artsmeme will attend features performances by Grammy Award-winning ...
Movin’ & groovin’: Black teen dance shows of ’50s, early ’60s
Teenage dancers on the set of Teenage Frolics (Raleigh, NC), ca. 1960. Courtesy of Yvonne Lewis Holley. Ed. note: artsmeme is delighted to share the second of three excerpts from an marvelous new book by author Julie Malnig. Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and 1960s (Oxford ...
To the Tetons with Lear: loving memories of Christopher McHale 8
Sep
18
2023
It was April 2008, and a glorious time to be in the region of the Grand Teton mountains of Utah. I was there, of course, for the majestic scenery but also to hunker down, indoors, in a dark theater, watching my longtime friend Chris McHale (1954-2023) scale his own high peak playing the titular role ...
Opening the floodgates of early-cinema disaster movies at Laemmle Theatres
Sep
18
2023
Irving Cummings’ THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926), a pioneering disaster and special effects movie, starring Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien, re-creates one of the greatest disasters in American history, when, in 1889, over 2,000 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lost their lives. In her first major role, Gaynor plays a teenage girl smitten with dashing engineer O’Brien, ...