SINCE I first fell hard for classical music in my mid-20s, my favorite style to see live is chamber music. Early on, I think that came from my love of seeing rock n roll and small-combo jazz in small clubs. The intimacy of a string quartet in, say, an old stone church had some of the same energy and directness.In recent years, perhaps the best venue for chamber music I've found is the Clark … [Read more...]
The Long Shadow of John Cage
ONE hundred years ago today, a child was born in Los Angeles who would go on to... well, what exactly was Cage's impact anyway? I've been trying to figure that out since I studied experimental music at Wesleyan two decades ago.Whatever it is, part of what interests me about Cage is how his influence -- ideas like indeterminacy, his reworking of certain Asian ideas including the Tao, prepared … [Read more...]
Frenchman at Neutra’s House
RECENTLY I was invited to architect Richard Neutra's old house in Silver Lake to check out the "intervention" by the French artist Xavier Veilhan, who created a number of sculptures to refer to the pioneering modernist's life and work.The press events and opening were quite groovy -- movie stars, French people, music by a member of the French band Air.Los Angeles' Silver Lake, of course, is … [Read more...]
Indie Rockers Finding Second Wind
IT seems, sometimes, that every awful band from the past is back together again for a lame-ass shed tour. And it's also started to seem, at least since the heavenly Go-Betweens reunion of about a decade ago, that some of the groups reuniting were not only good, they were better -- or close to it -- the second time around.How can both of these things be true at the same time? It took me 2,000 words … [Read more...]
Classical Music on the Radio
NOT long ago I got to hang out at the Hollywood Bowl in the middle of the day -- which was a decadent pleasure in itself -- while talking to Brian Lauritzen, the KUSC deejay who has come to dominate classical broadcasting in town.Brian is still young yet, but he has several decades of commitment to both music and public radio, and he has a deep feeling for the sometimes complex role that music can … [Read more...]
Hollywood Novelist Bruce Wagner
A FEW years back I spent some time at the Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge with Bruce Wagner, who was much more at home there than I was. (He grew up nearby and has spent his career as a writer skewering Hollywood.)Wagner has a new novel, Dead Stars, out, and returns to his main subject, the excesses of the movie world and its network of agents, moneymen, wannabes and so on.When he and I spoke, … [Read more...]
The Roots of a Jazz Pianist
EVEN as a lover of the jazz standards, when a solo piano disc arrives with all the obvious, shopworn numbers -- "Round Midnight," "All the Things You Are" -- I'm not in a rush to play the damn thing. (Unless it's by, say, Thelonious Monk or Randy Weston.) So I was knocked out by the nuance and mystery the pianist Kenny Werner summons in his new recording -- called Me, Myself and I -- of mostly … [Read more...]
True Eclecticism with Wild Up
ONE of the oddest and most beautiful concerts I've been to this year took place at the Hammer Museum a few weeks ago.Here's a bit of what was on offer as the museum and the musician's collective wild Up (they don't cap the "w") came together:The fruit of this union was a July concert that began with a conductor in a cowboy hat, a menacing toreador, the sound of tumbleweed being rolled through the … [Read more...]
Farewell to Gore Vidal
MUCH of the literary world is mourning Gore Vidal, who died at his home here in the Hollywood Hills. Vidal was important, of course, as a social and political critic as well as a as a novelist. (He was also of course, an actor, television writer, playwright, bon vivant, curmudgeon, and so on.)Photo by Carl Van VechtenI encountered Vidal just twice -- once by phone, for a story I wrote after the … [Read more...]
The Roots of an Opera Singer
For my latest Influences column, I speak to left-of-the-dial opera soprano Juliana Snapper, who will be part of a festival of new work at REDCAT starting this Thursday.Snapper's work, some of which she's created with LA artist Ron Athey, is pretty out there. She was part of what's considered the world's first underwater opera, for instance.I found her down-to-earth and easy to talk to, and was … [Read more...]