Internationally renowned ballet stars and prominent role models Ashley Murphy and Brooklyn Mack guest star in Los Angeles Youth Ballet’s critically acclaimed production of The Nutcracker by award-winning choreographer Andrea Paris-Gutierrez, which caps the holiday season with four performances Dec. 21 to 23 at Glendale’s Alex Theatre.
Enhancing the rich compendium of this much beloved classic, Paris-Gutierrez’s [...]

A chill breeze set in late Sunday afternoon in Downtown Los Angeles, wafting through the skyscrapers, and setting trees swaying with a rustling that was a harbinger of the winter that will arrive in a matter of days. Its bite was already felt at the tips of one’s fingers, in the hollow of one’s cheeks. [...]

Michael Tilson Thomas began a two-week stint with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this past weekend with performances of his own Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 (“Pathétique”) at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Tilson Thomas originally composed Four Preludes in 2003, and then revised it in [...]

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Jean Sibelius was the most popular composer then living in the Anglosphere, not to mention in his native Scandinavia. Fame was a double-edged sword for the notoriously self-critical composer. Doubt, its flames stoked by alcoholism, gnawed away at his creative drive, aggravated further by the disdain of the modernists [...]

Philip Glass’ Satyagraha is a complicated opera with many layers of thought and artistry. At the same time, it is a minimalist work that does not follow the rules of traditional opera. In other words, it is quintessential Glass. Which means you may already have formed an opinion about whether you will like LA Opera’s [...]

If you love opera and don’t know the Verdi Chorus, perhaps it’s time you did. Their 35th anniversary season culminates with Passione! Opera! for two performances only at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on Saturday, Nov. 10, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 11, at 2 p.m.
The Verdi Chorus is the only choral [...]

I’m not crazy about pumpkin spice anything, but one thing I definitely look forward to each fall is Wicked Lit — the Halloween-themed theater experience that haunts Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery in Altadena each October and November.
This is Paul Millet and Jonathan Josephson’s 10th annual fall production of Wicked Lit; and instead of going [...]

The new release in the Pittsburgh Live! series is a revelatory performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 by Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
It’s been a few years since we’ve heard Manfred Honeck and the PSO perform Beethoven, and that was a recording of the fifth and seventh symphonies [...]

MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins worked at “The New Yorker,” but has said in interviews that his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play “Gloria” is not based on his experience there. No matter. It rings so true — as any good fiction does. You can see the Echo Theater Company’s West Coast premiere of his 2015 work, [...]

Composer Mark Abel’s 2018 DELOS CD release, Time and Distance (DE 3550), features acclaimed Los Angeles area vocalists, soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano. Their task was immense in this endeavor — to mediate operatic texts by Abel and area poets Joanne Regenhardt and Kate Gale that address difficult social, psychological and political issues. [...]