UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) presents Aaron Neville Duo Grammy Award-winning American R&B and soul singer Aaron Neville is arguably one the most distinctive vocal stylists on the planet. Performing with keyboard player Michael Goods, this intimate evening showcases “the other side of Aaron” with songs from throughout his career, including those […]

On Saturday night, members of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble performed works by Brahms, Beamish and Mendelssohn. The concert opened with the dense and intensely personal String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36 by Brahms. The piece is scored for two violins, two violas and two celli. Brahms […]

Dressed in a windowpane suit and hat while carrying a briefcase, Siegfried Tieber embodies the type of person you expect a magician to be: animated, affable and almost unbelievable. Whether performing a trick or reciting the Magic Castle’s history to his guests, his hands are always moving, which is likely why he excels at sleight-of-hand. […]

In its current role as Company-in-Residence, Los Angeles-based BODYTRAFFIC (contemporary dance) brings three premieres to the Bram Goldsmith Theater at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts this Thursday through Saturday, Sept. 26-28, at 7:30 p.m.  The exciting and adventurous program includes the world premiere of “Snap,” choreographed by LA resident Micaela Taylor, the U.S. […]

In 2017, Opéra National de Paris set its “La Bohème” in a spacecraft and on the moon. (The production comes back in 2020.) LA Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel conducted. It was bold and exciting, and unlike any other “La Boheme” I’d seen. So when LA Opera scheduled the old warhorse as the opener of […]

When Lilly Bright retches on stage, you feel it in the back of your own throat. Her one-woman show, American Standard: A Story of Enough which premiered at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, follows a years-long battle with disordered eating, a journey marked with retching, laughing and crying tears of sadness and joy. Bright’s […]

The Philharmonic Society of Orange County is offering Culture Spot LA readers 20 percent off tickets to Camera Lucida on Sunday, Oct. 13, at 8 p.m. Comprised of world-class instrumentalists, Camera Lucida explores the whimsical tunes and lyricism of Shostakovich’s most popular chamber work and Bartók’s lively Contrasts, known for its colorful, melodic ornamentation. SUNDAY […]

Manfred Honeck, the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, can apparently read my mind and has been doing so for some time now. He seems to know what I want him and the PSO to record on the spectacular Fresh Series from Reference Recordings. For example, Honeck and the PSO have so far recorded […]

IGNITE @ the FORD brings another stellar dance company to its hillside Hollywood location this Friday, Aug. 30, at 8 p.m. Urban Bush Women, now led by Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson-Johnson and Samantha Speis, will present “Hair & Other Stories.” Described in promotional materials as “a radical reimagining” of the original “HairStories” (2001), the new work […]

It’s clear who the real monster is in Nick Dear’s “Frankenstein.” Hint: It’s not the guy stitched together with dead body parts. Dear’s play, which premiered at London’s Royal National Theatre in 2011, tells Mary Shelley’s story from the perspective of Victor Frankenstein’s creature. It gets its California premiere at A Noise Within in Pasadena […]