Devastated by the Pacific Palisades Fire: publisher of works of Arnold Schoenberg
Jan
14
2025
ed. note: We learned of the brutal fate of Belmont Publishing from the grandson of Arnold Schoenberg, a friend of artsmeme, Randol Schoenberg. This sad story we publish here while offering the Schoenberg family our deepest condolences The fire that ravaged the Pacific Palisades community in early January left a trail of devastation, and unfortunately, ...
Merce Cunningham goddess Carolyn Brown enters modern-dance eternity
Jan
13
2025
Carolyn Brown and Merce Cunningham in Suite for Five. Photograph by Marvin Silver, 1968, courtesy Cunningham Trust It’s all in the photo. An unusual pose, but Merce Cunningham rolled that way … unusual. With the early female Cunningham dancers — Viola Farber and Sandra Neels come to mind, each an iconoclastic dancer — Carolyn Brown ...
Colman Domingo’s star power galvanizes new film, ‘Sing Sing’
Director Greg Kwedar, Colman Domingo, Jane Fonda, Clarence Maclin attend A24’s Sing Sing Screening hosted by Jane Fonda, London Hotel in Los Angeles, Sat Jan 4, 2025 Following his Oscar-nominated turn as the civil rights leader in Rustin (2023), Colman Domingo is back in the awards spotlight this year with Sing Sing. The critically acclaimed ...
Clothes make the man, in ‘Monte Cristo’ & ‘West Side Story’
If clothes make the man in real life, then it’s only more so in the movies. That’s when an audience is maximally focused and alert, and processing quick information about characters. I found myself repeatedly distracted, in an awesome way, by the stunning men’s wear in THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (2024), which I recently ...
Doubling down: MOMO, major Naharin work for Batsheva Dance Company, soon at Music Center
Jan
7
2025
“Sorrow and beauty” forms a bittersweet promise augured in Batsheva Dance Company‘s upcoming performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, February 14-16, in which a challenging-looking full-evening work dating to 2022 by choreographer Ohad Naharin, MOMO, will have its North American premiere. It is the first time the groundbreaking and influential national dance company of Israel ...
‘The Brutalist’ leads crop of Oscar hopefuls exploring Jewish-American experience
As awards season heats up in Los Angeles, The Brutalist seems to be a likely (arguably, the likely) frontrunner for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars on March 2, certainly for those who’ve seen it. But that last bit is an important caveat. For, with a running time of three hours, twenty minutes (and a ...
Best of 2024, arts•meme movie picks!
Dec
23
2024
in mumbai, with ‘all we imagine as light’ We’ll leave THE BRUTALIST, Timothée Chalamet, Angelina Jolie descending the staircase of the Metropolitan Opera House in a St. Laurent cape, possibly confusing herself with the diva she played in MARIA. Leave all that to others. Can we say a polite “no thank you” to the horrifying ...
‘Once Upon a Mattress’ at Ahmanson: from Carol Burnett to Sutton Foster
Dec
22
2024
Well, she certainly passed OUR “sensitivity test.” The adorable, kooky, brave and prodigiously talented triple-threat performer, Sutton Foster, commandeered the barn-like Ahmanson Theatre from a royal roost atop twenty mattresses in Once Upon a Mattress, a vastly entertaining re staging of the goofball classic musical-comedy treatment of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, “The Princess and ...
Jeremy Denk’s profound encounter with ‘crazy uncle’ Charles Ives at 92nd & Lex
Jeremy Denk, pianoall photos: Joseph Sinnott for 92nd St Y Jeremy Denk, one of our leading classical pianists, winner of a MacArthur fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, originally dismissed the gnarly genius Charles Ives as “the crazy uncle of American music, weaving familiar tunes—hymns, ragtime, marches—into unsettling quilts.” But over time Denk has evolved ...
Stirring farewell to ‘Dancing Spirit’ Judith Jamison at New York City Center
There was a vast family gathering at New York City Center on Wednesday December 11, and it felt like a warm embrace encompassed everyone in the theater. While there were no blood relatives of Judith Jamison speaking from the stage at this superbly and lovingly produced tribute, the Alvin Ailey family was out in full ...