Peace for Ukraine: the paintings of Leonid Steele 1

Visual arts
Daisies (1971), Leonid Steele ed. note: We are pleased to share images of the work of Leonid Steele shared by his son Alexey Steele, who himself is a painter of great force, a host of Classical Underground, and a friend of artsmeme (FOAM). Alexey and his wife Olya have organized a group in Los Angeles, ...

Look at your neighbor, urges artist Alexey Steele in Carson exhibit

Ideas & Opinion · Visual arts
We just spoke to our good friend, Alexey Steele, the Russian born-and-trained neo-realist painter and the impresario of the hugely popular “Classical Underground,” music series which we attend and enjoy. Alexey has a new project opening this week in the city of Carson, California, the multicultural hotspot in Los Angeles where Alexey-and-family reside in a ...

March means chamber music

Music
Well, Jacaranda. The blossoming bushes that seduce with the color purple reinvented as a cutting-edge contemporary classical music presentation series. On monthly Saturday nights in Santa Monica, there convenes the cognoscenti, a considerable who-is-who of Los Angeles’s serious music universe. They meet, greet, and eat (cookies served during the break). The thirteen-season-running series, a labor ...

Classical Underground in holiday mood

Music
Classical Underground, the highly personal and pleasantly renegade performance series housed in an loft in the industrial heartland of Los Angeles, has a cozy evening of chamber music on tap Monday night. Sakura, an ensemble of five cellists — Jonathan Dormand, Michael Kaufman, Yoshika Masuda, Peter Myers, and Sarah Rommell — attributes its name to ...

Classical Underground looks above ground — and it’s a mess! 1

Music · Visual arts
As part of its holistic approach to the arts (“In Art We Trust,” its tagline), the informal classical music showcase, Classical Underground, now in its sixth season, features the work of visual artists. November’s concert highlights a neo-realist painting that resonates — much as we wish it didn’t. The work, Among The Ruins by New ...

Midori, humble page turner 2

Music
[click photo to find Midori] The bohemian-style classical music series, Classical Underground, offered a rich roster of Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Piazzolla and Mozart Monday evening at the funky-junky art atelier of Alexey Steele and Olga Vlasova. The two music mavens, soon to be the parents of twins, host the five-year-running series at their marvelous artist digs, ...

Classical Underground rocks

Music · Reviews
Clamor filled the central-Los Angeles industrial loft last Thursday evening, when the Russian expatriate painter, Alexey Steele, and his wife Olga opened their funky-junky, atelier-style home to the music lovers of Los Angeles. Amidst a clutter of books, art supplies, burning candles, and oversized classical paintings, propped onto surfaces or hanging from walls, habitués of ...