NEXT to Esa-Pekka Salonen, the most visible Finnish classical musician over the last few decades has been his old partner in crime Magnus Lindberg, who is completing a three-year term as composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic.Lindberg is a playful kind of modernist who has recently, as he told me, started to blend his avant-garde tendencies (interest in electronica, industrial music, … [Read more...]
LA’s New Opera Company
WHAT would it look like if Hurricane Katrina blew across an Italo Calvino fable? We might be able to find out when Crescent City, whose creators call it a "hyperopera," comes to Atwater Crossing later this week.Recently I visited the set, much of which was designed by local visual artists, and met with director Yuval Sharon and composer Anne LeBaron of CalArts. Here's my story.Sharon, who used to … [Read more...]
Remembering Spalding Gray
THERE'S a new collection of journals by the great actor and storyteller Spalding Gray, with a tribute event tonight at the Laemmle Sunset 5. (More detail here.)Soon after Gray's 2004 disappearance -- it was eventually deemed a suicide -- I spoke to several theater and performance figures who walk in Gray's footsteps. I wrote:With his mix of despair, humor, preppy shirts and New England dryness, he … [Read more...]
The Roots of Christine Ebersole
YOU'VE got to be in awe of an actress who can portray both Little Edie and Big Edie from Grey Gardens. Winning a Tony for the feat is not likely easy, either.I spoke recently to Christine Ebersole, the actress and singer who's done everything from Tootsie to Saturday Night Live to Noel Coward. That piece, part of my Influences series for the LA Times Culture Monster page, is here.I should not … [Read more...]
The Struggle Over Middlebrow
I JUST finished a very intriguing Louis Menand piece on culture critic Dwight Macdonald and the notion of middlebrow. (For those Easterners snorting that I am getting to the story so tardily, let me quote my friend and fellow Angeleno Manohla Dargis, who says that most weeks we get the New Yorker so late it seems to've been delivered by pony express.)The notion of cultural hierarchy -- which works … [Read more...]
Brad Mehldau’s LA Years
ACCLAIMED jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, who has become, probably, the most celebrated jazz instrumentalist of his generation, was in town this weekend, performing at Disney Hall. (Quite a good concert - Chris Barton's review here -- with both a chamber orchestra and a percussion-heavy combo, though I think he's best in a club in a trio format.) He made a brief mention, in between songs, to his years … [Read more...]
Living by Chance With Rachel Rosenthal
IF laurie anderson was a parisian-born octo-genarian theater pioneer she might be rachel rosenthal. for rosenthal -- to whom many figures of the american avant-garde are indebted -- john cage's "indeterminacy" proved as influential as the velvet underground's dazed strum was on anderson's generation. (okay, that's enough metaphors for one paragraph.)here is my profile of rosenthal, who extols the … [Read more...]