Last night’s Green Umbrella concert was programmed as part of “West Coast, Left Coast”, and it certainly sounded as if almost all of the 1500-or-so of us had as much fun as I did. The program ended on a high with five selections from Frank Zappa‘s The Yellow Shark album (1992), conducted by John Adams, our festival curator (and conductor, and occasional composer, and friendly guide). You can read Adams’ comments made during rehearsals here (just read the second half of yesterday’s entry and then scroll down to the November 25 entry). The concert ended with a riotous (orgasmic?) performance
Read moreThe Los Angeles Master Chorale gave the Phil’s West Coast, Left Coast Festival the opening it deserved: a joyous statement, a vibrant concert, and a rousing end that left us wanting more and looking forward to our next event. Regrettably, last night’s concert wasn’t the opening, but the second event. The opening occurred Saturday night in a hodge-podge concert that just drained away. But more on that, later. It’s much more fun to talk about the good things. Grant Gershon and the LAMC put together a program of four works by four composers (all alive, present, and introduced at the
Read moreThis coming Saturday is the official opening concert of the L.A. Phil’s exciting new festival, West Coast, Left Coast, but performances introducing the concept have now begun. REDCAT showed a “re-interpretation” of a noted performance piece with music by Morton Subotnick and choreography by Anna Halprin, and Jacaranda Music had another full audience for its concert last night as a prelude to the festival itself. Parades & Changes, the Halprin-Subotnick performance collaboration from 1965 is coming to New York, and it provides a fascinating hour. The use of electronics in music has advanced so much in the past forty years,
Read moreThe new Jacaranda season began last night with a concert that almost filled the church and brought out the Los Angeles Times critic, with photographer as well. The program comprised three key works from the 70s: Morton Feldman‘s Rothko Chapel from 1971, Ben Johnston‘s Quartet No. 4 “Amazing Grace” from 1973, and Philip Glass‘ Einstein on the Beach: Five Knee Plays from 1976. God, it was a gorgeous concert. I didn’t want the performance of Rothko Chapel to end, but it did, and too soon, coming in at less than 25 minutes. The spaces between notes could have been a
Read moreGustavo Dudamel is here! But I should quote the posters on buses, lamposts and billboards: “Pasion Gustavo”, “Radiante Gustavo”, “Dramatico Gustavo” (please forgive the absence of diacriticals). The home page of the Los Angeles Times, the still-staid Times, has a special section on Dudamel, down to an article on his childhood (gosh, that’s recent history) complete with photos at age 5, treatment awarded to the most headline-worthy. With the posters on buses, I really don’t think that the Phil is trying to sell concert tickets to bus riders. Instead, they are blanketing the area with the word that something exciting
Read moreThe Ojai Music Festival came to a triumphal ending last night with a raucous, committed, glowing performance of Louis Andriessen’s “Worker’s Union” (1976). The performance of the Andriessen began four and a half hours after the start of the Sunday evening concert. The six musicians of eighth blackbird came on stage and played two or three iterations. Then one of the other musicians of the evening came on stage from the wings and joined in. Then another. Then two more. Then four more came through the audience. Then more. Almost three dozen playing and joining in “Workers Union”, including Tom
Read moreThe Friday night concert at the Ojai Music Festival was the premiere performance of “Slide”, a musical work of theatre by Steven Mackey and Rinde Eckert, and performed by the two with eighth blackbird as performer/musicians. For the title, think of those cardboard holders of 35mm photographic images. The composition was named for a series of related psychological experiments in which subjects were shown out-of-focus images from slides, and asked to guess the subject of the image, which would then abruptly come into focus. In “Slide”, the principal character is the psychologist who ran the experiments, sorting through his box
Read moreThe freeway ends a few miles from Ojai. You have to slow down to get there. You look at the hills and at the valley floor. You look at the trees. You think about the concerts you’ll hear over the next hundred hours. The group eighth blackbird was named Music Director of this 63rd instance of the Ojai Music Festival, and this initially-surprising choice is looking to be one of Thomas Morris’ more inspired ideas. They’ve put together an exciting program. (Yes, I do say that almost every year.) Here’s an eighth blackbird blog about this year’s event. Last night’s
Read moreSunday afternoon was the final concert provided by Esa-Pekka Salonen as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has consistently said that he’ll be back with us on a regular basis, but before the start of the concert, the administrative management and the Board came on stage to announce to us the Salonen now has the title of Conductor Laureate and will return on a regular and “significant” basis in the future. The nature of the continuing role was not announced, but it is consistent with how well the Phil (and Salonen) have handled this transition that the details
Read moreLast night Salonen conducted the premiere of his new Violin Concerto, performed by Leila Josefowicz. You can be sure there’s a lot of advance buzz about a piece when the Wall Street Journal publishes an essay about the soloist of a piece of classical music; unfortunately, much of the WSJ is protected by a subscription-only wall, but here’s the link in case you are willing to try. The work was initially scheduled for premiere back in January when Salonen conducted the Chicago Symphony, but it wasn’t ready and he substituted performance of the new Los Angeles Symphony (No. 4) by
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