[contextly_auto_sidebar] UNDERSUNG but widely respected, the sculptor Dora De Larios has been working in around Los Angeles for six decades now. I was pleased to be asked to write about her for Los Angeles magazine, and was able to tour her daughter's house, where a wide range of her sculptures and ceramic work sits. What interested me about De Larios' work right away was how firmly it sat … [Read more...]
Joe Henry, Poetry, and The Blues
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LIKE a lot of listeners, I've long considered Joe Henry to be a smart and vaguely literary songwriter -- smart, more-or-less sensitive, good with words. But I was pleasantly surprised when Joe came out of the closet about his love of poetry, and since it coincided with the release of the powerful, understated record Thrum, I made sure to corner him for an interview in … [Read more...]
The Murder of the LA Weekly
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SOUTHERN Californians have been bludgeoned with bad news lately, as a number of media outlets -- LAist, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles magazine, the LA Times, and the OC Weekly -- have either shut down or seen major layoffs. (In Orange County, editor Gustavo Arellano resigned after being asked to machine-gun his staff.) Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the fresh murder … [Read more...]
LA saxophonist Danny Janklow at The Blue Whale
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR the last few years, much of the attention to the resurgent Los Angeles jazz scene has gone to Kamasi Washington, a titan of a tenor saxophonist who I had the pleasure to see at the Hollywood Bowl over the summer. His communal, late-Coltrane, South Central approach to the jazz tradition is for real, powerful, even -- a word I try to avoid -- inspiring. But there … [Read more...]
The Literary Roots of Lou Reed
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Back in the spring, when I pitched the Los Angeles Review of Books on a regular column on musicians and their literary interests, my editor immediately came up with the title All the Poets. The phrase, of course, comes from the Velvet Underground song "Sweet Jane." So it seems somehow symmetrical that the latest installment of this feature is a conversation about Lou … [Read more...]
Arts Funding, US vs. UK, and Chamber Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the key issues which underlies this blog and the book which inspired it is the role of public funding in the arts. I hate to give the end away, but one of the concluding points of Culture Crash is the need for more funding in the US, and something closer to a British or European model. (This is hardly an unpopular opinion among my colleagues.) Similarly, I am … [Read more...]
Camerata Pacifica and Chamber Music in SoCal
[contextly_auto_sidebar] RECENTLY I've enjoyed a performance by the chamber group Camerata Pacifica and several conversations with its founder, Adrian Spence. I disagree with the cheeky Ulsterman on some points -- I am in some ways an American Anglophile with a European bent, he is a Brit who prefers American ways -- but I find him insightful and, with his group, unorthodox in an intriguing … [Read more...]
Comedian Dick Gregory and The Wallis in Beverly Hills
[contextly_auto_sidebar] WHEN I moved back to Los Angeles about a year ago, I was not surprised that the cultural life was rich and wide-ranging. But one spot surprised me: The Wallis Annenberg in Beverly Hills. I had covered some of the early planning for the LA Times, and had liked both architect Zoltan Pali, working to transform a WPA-era post office, and director Lou Moore, who like me is a … [Read more...]
Unions, Journalism, and the Creative Class
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IF we needed another reason to disdain the billionaires who increasingly dominate our political and cultural life: The Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts shut down several news sites, including Gothamist and LAist because the New York staff tried to unionize. This is from a new New York Times op-ed by Hamilton Nolan, "A Billionaire Destroyed His Newsroom Out of … [Read more...]
2017 PEN USA Literary Awards
[contextly_auto_sidebar] TYPICALLY, the PEN awards, held at a fancy hotel in Beverly Hills, ends up as one of the best parties of the year for literary and journalistic folk. The group and its events, of course, also have a bloody point to them: PEN is, mostly, a free-speech group, and its annual banquet is an attempt to honor artistry and freedom of expression and to raise money so they can do … [Read more...]