Much Pain and Little Gain in Bay’s New Flick
By Charly SHELTON Once in a while, a director makes a movie around a singular idea. The 1930s serials done with a big budget became the Indiana Jones films. High-tech action in Alice in Wonderland – “The Matrix.” And now director Michael Bay has made a new film around one singular idea: “Hey guys, I […]
Move It or Lose It
By Mary O’KEEFE Kids have boundless energy. Dancers have energy with style. Combine the two and you have Move It or Lose It. Ignite Dance Workshop, a non-profit organization, is partnering students with professional industry dancers for a performance at the Alex Theatre on Friday. The organization is dedicated to community advocacy for youth […]
Mendelssohn, Hovhaness, and Beethoven Close SCO Season
By Ted AYALA Richard Wagner famously remarked of Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7” that the piece represented to him the “apotheosis of the dance.” The Santa Cecilia Orchestra’s closing concert of its 20th season on Sunday conveyed an impression of that remark. Something of Wagner’s Venusburg bacchanalia could be sensed in Sonia Marie de León de […]
LACO Offers Visions of the Concerto from Handel, Mozart, Norman, and Ginastera
By Ted AYALA A faint echo of the Brooklyn Festival, which started at Disney Hall on April 16, could be heard last Saturday at the Alex Theatre when the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s composer-in-residence took his star turn on the stage. Andrew Norman, a Southern California native now living in Brooklyn, had his latest LACO […]
CLIP: Pain and Gain
Le Salon de Musiques performs music by Chopin, Delius, and the other other Schumann
By Ted Ayala How is musical excellence defined? Does a composer’s willingness to go against the grain of his times and fight for his personal convictions bespeak of “greatness?” When considering the latter question, one usually thinks of composers like Beethoven, Mahler, Stravinsky, Webern, and Cage for starters; all of them composers who struggled […]
» BOOK REVIEW
Opening the Eyes of ‘The Disillusioned’ By Sabrina WALENTYNOWICZ Usually when looking for a new book, I lean towards historical fiction. The setting is a real place, but the characters are imagined and there is likely some sort of fantastical element that could never be possible in our universe. Sadly, this is not the case […]
Reflecting on the 20th SCO Season: A Dream Fulfilled, A Vision for the Future
By Ted AYALA Toys, coloring books, cartoons, play. For most of us, our lives as first-graders revolved around these and other innocuous pastimes. It’s only later – for some of us beginning in our teens, for others later still – when our minds turned to the study and contemplation of those facets of life that […]
Pacific Opera Project Transports “The Marriage of Figaro” to 1980s Miami
By Ted AYALA Before I begin this review, let’s just get one thing straight. As of the moment I’m typing this, only two opera companies in all of the Greater Los Angeles area dare to perform opera as a living art: Long Beach Opera and the up-and-coming Pacific Opera Project. With all due respect to […]