By Jane Rosenberg As subject matter for a full-length story ballet, Romeo and Juliet has it all, from tender romance to violent passion, from youth and hope to despair and death, from horseplay to swordplay. It’s no wonder that so many choreographers have found it irresistible. Of all the musical settings of the play, Sergei… Read More Los Angeles Ballet Performs Frederic Ashton’s Romeo and Juliet at Royce Hall
By Jane Rosenberg Ushio Amagatsu, the founder of the singular dance company, Sankai Juku, is not simply a choreographer; he is, as his creation Umusuna illustrates, a visual artist, a poet, and a philosopher. On a set of starkly modern, sculptural beauty, located at the intersection of Earthworks and Minimalism, Amagatsu grapples with questions of… Read More The Butoh Dance Company, Sankai Juku, Performs “Umusuna” in a CAP UCLA Program at Royce Hall October 16-17
By Jane Rosenberg There is no choreographer who draws meaning from the simplest gestures as well as the masterful Twyla Tharp. No one gets more out of a flexed foot, the cock of a head, or the pitch of a shoulder. It is the way she achieves these seemingly effortless gestures that is at the… Read More Dance: Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour Presents “Preludes and Fugues” and “Yowzie” at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts through October 4
By Don Heckman Los Angeles – Sept. 23. (Wed.) Laura Dickinson. She’s probably your nine year-old daughter’s favorite singer, her voice familiar from the Disney Channel’s animated hits Phineas and Ferb and Sofia The First. But Dickinson’s vocal skills also include far-reaching jazz abilities, as well. She will offer them in an evening that celebrates… Read More Picks of the Week: Sept. 21 – 27 in Los Angeles, Oregon, Chicago, New York, London, Copenhagen, Milan and Tokyo.
The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills opens their 2015-2016 season of dance programming on October 1-3 with: Twyla Tharp: a 50th Anniversary Celebration, a program of new work by Ms. Tharp, co-commissioned by The Wallis (in partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Joyce Theatre,… Read More The 2015-16 Season of Dance and Classical Music at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills
By Brick Wahl In my heart of hearts, my favorite jazz festival ever has always been the one held every year on Central Avenue in the shadow of the Dunbar Hotel. It’s close to the roots of jazz in this town, it has band after swinging band, the musicians play like their lives depended on… Read More The Central Avenue Jazz Festival This Weekend
By Jane Rosenberg Famous artists in torment are a subject of fascination in the popular imagination. Make it two tormented artists in a romantic relationship and the appeal doubles. Biographies, films, and even novelizations of the lives of, for example: Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, or Simone de Beauvoir and… Read More Ballet: Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg Performs “Rodin” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
By Norton Wright Santa Monica, CA. One of the unique experiences on today’s jazz scene is “Big Band Night” at Typhoon Restaurant at Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles. On Memorial Day evening listeners are ready to experience a veritable bacchanal as the band on stage is Paul McDonald’s big, powerhouse, 17-piece orchestra. The band… Read More Live Music: The Best Memorial Day Party Ever! Paul McDonald’s Big band at the Typhoon Jazz Restaurant.
By Jane Rosenberg In the magnetic opening sequence of Tania Pérez-Salas’s Ex-Stasis, a lone woman stands in a spotlight, long hair shrouding her face. Music erupts and, as a scattering of dancers recline on the stage, watching her intently, she begins her solitary dance. At first her movements appear to be simple rifts on Sixties’… Read More Dance at the Music Center Presents: Tania Pérez-Salas’s “Ex-Stasis” and “Made in Mexico” at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles
By Don Heckman – April 16. (Thurs.) The Mutter Bronfman Harrell Trio. Three international virtuosi – violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, pianist Yefim Bronfman and cellist Lynn Harrell – apply their remarkable skills to a program of classic piano trios: Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97 “Archduke” and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op.… Read More Highlights of the Long Weekend: In Los Angeles
The International Review of Music 