At the risk of sounding like Rex Reed, let me just throw out a few preliminary comments: “Run, don’t walk to this extravaganza,” “You’ll want to pay the piper for this ‘Flute,’” “If there’s one show you see this season…,” “The hottest ticket in town!” Well, you get the idea. The new production of Mozart’s [...]
The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts opened its doors in October with the distinction of being the first performing arts center built in Beverly Hills. “Parfumerie,” the Wallis’ inaugural production at the 500-seat Bram Goldsmith Theater, certainly sets the technical standards high for future shows there.
Allen Moyer’s simply gorgeous set of a 1937 [...]
The first release in a new series of recordings by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra led by its music director, Manfred Honeck, contains three of the most popular tone poems by Richard Strauss: Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, and Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. These three compositions are the earliest and shortest of the Strauss tone poems.
These [...]
Bach is primarily known for his compositions for keyboard instruments. With a few notable exceptions (the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin), he is less well known as a composer of works for violin. Thus, this Decca album of Bach concertos, featuring the violin concertos and sonatas for violin and harpsichord, performed by Janine Jansen [...]
If Saturday night seemed more rowdy than usual, it wasn’t because of the college kids grinding and twerking to hip-hop music blasting out of night clubs in Old Town Pasadena. The savage music and dance came from the Ambassador Auditorium, as the Pasadena Symphony performed its first concert of the 2013-14 season under its new [...]
Los Angeles boasts several musical gems that, at least in the view of many Angelenos, rank it among the world’s great cultural centers. One of those gems is surely the Los Angeles Master Chorale. On Nov. 3, in the second concert celebrating its 50th season, the LAMC and the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus accompanied by [...]
Oscar Wilde said that “youth is wasted on the young,” but don’t tell that to Yuja Wang and Gustavo Dudamel. Both have teamed up for the first time to record two of the most demanding piano concertos in the repertoire: the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff and the Piano Concerto [...]
On Tuesday night, in the first concert of the 2013-2014 Cliburn Concert Series, Vadym Kholodenko made his eagerly awaited recital debut in Ft. Worth, Texas, since taking home the gold medal in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in June. If the audience was expecting a recital full of pianistic fireworks à la Lang Lang [...]
For the month of September, the Falcon Theatre hosts the talented, hysterically funny Impro Theatre completely improvising “Twilight Zone UnScripted,” an evening of four original episodes in homage to Rod Serling’s classic 1960s TV series.
These master improvisers (co-directed by company members Jo McGinley and Stephen Kearin) play off each others’ verbal and physical cues seamlessly, [...]
Although I hate to admit it, I have known about the iconic American guitarist/composer John Fahey and played his music on the guitar for more than 40 years. So, I’d like to begin my review of the documentary “In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey,” written, directed and produced by James [...]
