The Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, ended June 10. What a whirlwind for the competitors and the audience between May 25 and then!
Thirty pianists performed recitals in the preliminary round, 20 performed recitals in the quarterfinals, 12 performed recitals and Mozart concertos with the Fort [...]

Saturday night’s concert of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) at the Alex Theatre in Glendale was a concert mostly of lasts. It was the last concert of LACO’s 2016-2017 season (repeated on Sunday at UCLA’s Royce Hall). It was also the last concert for Jeffrey Kahane as music director. The program featured two major [...]

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic heralded the arrival of spring with a series of concerts in May exploring all nine symphonies of Franz Schubert, paired with the song cycles of Gustav Mahler — Songs of a Wayfarer, Kindertotenlieder, Rückert Lieder and Des Knaben Wunderhorn. This reviewer attended the May 18 concert that featured [...]

The Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition — one of the most exciting and highly anticipated classical music events in America — starts in one week. It happens only every four years. Do you have your tickets?
Culture Spot LA will be in Fort Worth for the semifinals and finals, blogging about all of the performances at Bass [...]

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) Music Director Jeffrey Kahane conducts the world premiere of Christopher Cerrone’s Will There Be Singing, commissioned by the Orchestra, as part of his final concert with the Orchestra on Saturday, May 20, at 8 p.m. at the Alex Theatre and Sunday, May 21, at 7 p.m. at Royce Hall. The program will also include [...]

Soprano Anna Netrebko made a rare visit to Los Angeles with her tenor husband Yusif Eyvazov for a May 4 concert of opera highlights at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with the LA Opera Orchestra guest conducted by Jader Bignamini.
Having a Russian opera superstar on the stage attracted a sizable attendance from the Russian community in [...]

There’s something very comforting about re-reading a favorite book or watching a movie you remember all the words to. Opera-goers know all about that. That’s why warhorses like “Tosca” pop up every season. LA Opera has brought back its 2013 production of Puccini’s dark masterpiece, complete with torture, murder and suicide, to the Dorothy Chandler [...]

Things being what they are in Washington right now, politics has been a subject on everyone’s mind lately. While it’s still early after the seismic election results of last fall, it seems likely that playwrights will, after a certain amount of cogitation and fermentation, inevitably get around to sharpening their pencils about it. For now, [...]

Celebrating its 16th anniversary, the Los Angeles-based Dance Camera West Dance Media Film Festival reels out this week, starting on Thursday, April 20, and ending Sunday, April 30. Visiting West Side venues including UCLA’s Fowler Museum, Glorya Kaufman Hall, Royce Hall and the Santa Monica Pier, the presentations are divided into groups of international short [...]

Finnish conductor and composer and Conductor Laureate of the LA Phil Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to Disney Hall on Sunday to conduct an all-Sibelius program consisting of Finlandia, Six Humoresques, and the Symphonies No. 6 in D minor, Op. 104, and No. 7 in C major, Op. 105.
Salonen has the music of Sibelius flowing through his [...]