[contextly_auto_sidebar] Back in the mid-'80s, I was in a Calculus class when a friend I knew mostly from our shared love of punk rock handed me a hand-labelled cassette of a musician I'd never heard. When I got home, I played this selection of songs by Billy Bragg -- A New England, Greetings to the New Brunette, It Says Here -- which reminded me of the Clash in their political force and Dylan … [Read more...]
Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile at the Ace Hotel/ LA
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IN some ways, this pairing makes absolutely no sense -- a jazz pianist and a bluegrass mandolinist, playing together? But in another, it's nearly inevitable. And, the other night, not just a natural union but often a spectacular one. Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile are not just universally well-regarded musicians but also virtually parallel figures. Both are (still) … [Read more...]
The Literary Richard Thompson
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FEW living musicians fascinate me as much as Richard Thompson, the London-reared, Los Angeles-dwelling, Fairport Convention-founding guitarist and songwriter whose recording career just hit the 50 year mark. I've been listening to Richard's work for three decades now -- since I first heard "Valerie" and "A Bone Through Her Nose" on WHFS as a teenager -- and have been … [Read more...]
Bryan Ferry, Art, and Roxy Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar] EVEN a decade after their heyday, when I first heard them in the mid-'80s, there was nothing like Roxy Music. The sleek, almost alien sound, with its world-weary vocals, European touches, and deep, if bruised, romanticism, was among the most bracing things a suburban teenager could put on his turntable. It struck me then, and still does, as some of the first and most … [Read more...]
Two Los Angeles Choral Groups
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR reasons I don't entirely understand, I've had a harder time with vocal and choral music than most other sorts of classical music. The human voice is the first ostensibly musical instrument we ever hear -- why should it not strike strike my ear and naturally as the violin, cello or piano? In any case, I've tried to make up for it this year by seeing more … [Read more...]
Brooklyn Rider and a New Cellist
[contextly_auto_sidebar] The celebrated New York-based string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which appears at the Wallis Annenberg Performing Arts Center on Saturday night, added a new cellist last year. Today Michael Nicolas, who replaced founder Eric Jacobsen, spoke to CultureCrash about the group, its repertoire, and his own role in the mix. The quartet will play music by Glass, Janacek, … [Read more...]
A Musicologist Muses on John Adams
[contextly_auto_sidebar] One of the most insightful and eclectic thinkers on music I know is UCLA musicologist Robert Fink, who has written a book on minimalism -- Repeating Ourselves -- and both teaches music history and run the school's music-business program. On the occasion of John Adams' 70th birthday, and a series of related events in Los Angeles, I corresponded with Fink about the … [Read more...]
Nixon in China in Los Angeles
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IF you live in LA long enough, you might come to think you've seen John Adams' iconic opera not once but several times. There are few more talked-about or written about works from the last four or five decades; maybe "Einstein on the Beach" or "Angels in America." Adams' music -- his violin concerto, "El Nino," "Naive and Sentimental Music" -- gets performed all the … [Read more...]
Guest Columnist: A Real-Life Maria
[contextly_auto_sidebar] This week I offer our latest column from guest Lawrence Christon, a former Los Angeles Times staff writer on theater and comedy, and a longtime culture freelancer in Southern California. This one needs no further ado. A GIRL NAMED MARIA By Lawrence Christon I’m standing in the deserted home furnishings section of a department store late at night, shopping for … [Read more...]
James Baldwin, Film and the Zeitgeist
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SINCE the summer or fall, it's struck me that a writer long considered the little brother -- perhaps even the gay little brother -- of black literature's Big Three had become the essential artist of our time. Here is my story on him, timed in part to the Oscar-nominated films Moonlight and I Am Not Your Negro, both of which are excellent. Update: Moonlight, of … [Read more...]