Commentary: Is there a Los Angeles musical style?
The composer and critic Virgil Thomson once defined American music as music written by Americans. There is no arguing with that. Less obvious, however, is figuring out what, if anything, ...
Tag: Classical Music
UCLA, LACO, South Coast Rep: How Trump’s NEA cuts are hitting home
South Coast Repertory was celebrating the opening night of a play it had commissioned and spent years developing when it received the notification: The $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts ...
For beloved conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, a final bow from the podium
San Francisco — San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie had declared it Michael Tilson Thomas Day. City Hall glowed MTT’s trademark blue. Davies Symphony Hall, where Tilson Thomas presided over the San Francisco ...
How did Gustavo Dudamel end his L.A. Phil season? By saving the best for last
Gustavo Dudamel’s 16th and penultimate winter season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic has not been quite as ambitious as others. No big opera. Two full symphonies in his “Mahler Grooves” ...
This Italian made waves with a floating piano on Lake Como. Now he’s coming to L.A.
Pianist Alessandro Martire spent years convincing local officials to let him play while floating on the glittering blue waters of Lake Como in northern Italy, but when the show — ...
Post-Trump purge, can the Kennedy Center save itself? How Mark Morris showed the way
Washington, D.C. — Like much else in the nation’s capital, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is in a state of uncertainty. For 53 years, this massive performance complex ...
‘Last Repair Shop’ for LAUSD musicians gets $1-million gift, plus a visit from Yo-Yo Ma
In a downtown Los Angeles warehouse Sunday night, a few blocks north of the 10 Freeway, an unlikely quartet performed for the first and probably only time in front of ...
L.A. County officially creates the Grand Avenue Cultural District
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to create a Grand Avenue Cultural District to boost the visibility of the arts scene in a corridor of downtown that ...
Why the L.A. Phil’s Handel festival was downright revelatory
In 1707 George Frideric Handel, a 22-year-old radical composer working in Rome, startled the Vatican and the public with “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” (The Triumph of Time ...
Lopez: 20 years and counting: How a chance encounter with a street musician led to a lasting bond
I was driving through Westlake, on my way to pay Nathaniel Anthony Ayers a visit at his nursing home, when it hit me. My God. Has it been 20 years? ...
