THIS weekend your humble blogger will be around the LA Times Festival of Books at USC... That is, if I don't accidentally end up at UCLA.I'll be there both days, and on Sunday at 3 p.m. will moderate a panel on authors with backgrounds in music. The panel -- I don't name these things, folks, is called "A New Chord: From Stage to Page."My three panelist:Nathan Larson was lead guitarist for Shudder … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2011
Cameron Carpenter, Classical Wild Man
THE young organist Cameron Carpenter is a thinker, a talker, a rebel and a nearly androgynous figure in white jeans -- I think of him as a cross between '50s Glenn Gould and '70s David Bowie. He makes other classical iconoclasts I know -- Jeremy, for instance -- seem middle of the road.I spoke to Carpenter for the Los Angeles Times Influences column, which I am taking over for a while. When I told … [Read more...]
Composer Peter Lieberson, RIP
IT"S easy to recall the rude good health with which Peter Lieberson, a serene and gracious Santa Fe-based composer who was in town for a new piece with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, greeted me in 2005.Peter Lieberson, 1946-2011We spoke about the poetry of Neruda -- the inspiration for his latest piece -- his range of classical influences, the music of jazz pianist Bill Evans, his interest in … [Read more...]
Conference for Aspiring Musicians
NEXT week ASCAP will hold a conference dedicated to beginning and mid-career musicians and songwriters: The I Create Music Expo, held at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, will school them in the business side of things and in staying afloat during a very tough time in the industry. It's an especially tough time for aesthetes and introverts: The current climate requires a strong degree of … [Read more...]
Sofia Coppola’s "Somewhere" on DVD
EVERYTHING was nicely lined up -- and then the sky started falling. “The week before the filming was about to start,” Sofia Coppola recounts, “the studio changed the deal, and it fell through. And my dad came to the rescue; our French distributor got involved… But it was really nerve-wracking. It’s stressful enough, already, making your first film.” Who needs a funding disaster on top of … [Read more...]
Record Store Day 2011
TOMORROW, Saturday, is dedicated to an endangered species that had an important role in raising yours truly: the humble record shop. Record Store Day was launched in 2007 to recognize and help preserve independent shops, which have taken a serious beating from the economy, predatory chains and the music's shift online.The holiday includes various live events, sales, cookouts, and so on. (Check out … [Read more...]
The Sitar and Abstract Art
RECENTLY I spoke to Anoushka Shankar, daughter of sitar legend Ravi Shankar, about her influences across the artistic genres. Some of her answers did not surprise me -- she mentioned her father, saying, "Having taught me from my very first day playing the sitar, he's shaped my technique, style and sound." Others, like abstract painter Mark Rothko, were less obvious: She talked about the … [Read more...]
British Sea Power invades the West Coast
JUST a quick note to say that I remain convinced that British Sea Power is one of the best live bands from the dreary isle. Your humble blogger has caught the Brighton band on all three of its Los Angeles appearances -- two at Spaceland and now last night's at the Troubadour.The goofy faux-military costumes are gone, but their blend of early '70s Bowie and early '80s is stronger than ever. The … [Read more...]
USC Historian Discovers Witches (and Vampires)
WHEN I heard that a USC professor had written a bestselling vampire novel I thought, This sounds like what the English call a train-jumper -- someone who latches onto a trend, half-heartedly and after the fact. Boy was I wrong. Deborah Harkness is the real thing, and her novel, A Discovery of Witches, comes out of her scholarship on the shift from the supernatural medieval period to the … [Read more...]
Is Gen X an Afterthought?
THE new issue of MOJO magazine has a cover story on the 25th anniversary of the Smiths' The Queen is Dead LP, an article on the 20th of Primal Scream's influential Screamadelica record, and another on a reunion tour by Mick Jones' Big Audio Dynamite.It's a great issue, of course, of our favorite music magazine. But it also feels like the Gen X teenage years have now been fully commodified and sold … [Read more...]