Results tagged “classicalmusic”

If you're looking for some Classical music to set the mood for your festive evenings, here are a few Halloween-y pieces. The clip above is the Ave Santani theme from the film the Omen by Jerry Goldsmith.

Whether you listen to classical music or not, we all know this famous music quotation: Da da da DUM! And when you hear it played by an orchestra, you're listening to it in the key of C-Minor. Does that matter? Why not some other key? Those questions and many others will be answered in an upcoming Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's concert where music director Jeffrey Kahane and the orchestra will lead the audience on a "guided tour" of the inner workings of Beethoven's 5th Symphony before performing it in full during the second half of the program.

       

It was an amazing night for Los Angeles. The Dodgers won, the Angels won and Gustavo Dudamel with the LA Philharmonic dominated Walt Disney Concert Hall, winning over audiences and signaling the start of an amazing season for classical music.

To celebrate USC Thornton School of Music’s 125th anniversary, Michael Tilson Thomas conductor and music director of the San Francisco Symphony, returns to his alma mater for a concert with the USC Thornton Symphony Orchestra tonight at 7 pm at Bovard Auditorium. The multimedia presentation includes historic photos of him with some of his mentors and fellow students while he conducts Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. Tickets are $18; seniors, USC alumni and non-USC students are $12; current USC students, staff and faculty are free with valid ID.

       

If there was one thing to say about Saturday night's concert at the Hollywood Bowl, which was 28-year-old Gustavo Dudamel's premiere as its conductor and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is that it brought excited crowds out from all walks of life.

Today is the big day, the one that is expected to be the first in the return of classical music, not only in Los Angeles, but the world (no pressure, there, buddy). 28-year-old Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the first time as the symphony's new conductor and music director. The young Leonard Bernstein, as some like to refer to him as, is presenting this first concert free at the Hollywood Bowl. Although all the tickets are gone, in an unprecedented move, the Phil is streaming the concert, which begins at 4 p.m., live online. The streaming begins at 3 p.m. with some pre-activities, so check it out at HollywoodBowl.com!

“This is the picture that I want to be remembered by," Charlie Chaplin said of his film, "The Gold Rush," when it opened. Subtitled “A Dramatic Comedy,” the film finds Chaplin portraying a lone prospector who searches for love and acceptance in the frenzy of the great Klondike gold rush. The flick contains many of Chaplin’s most celebrated comedy sequences, including the boiling and eating of his shoe, the dance of the dinner rolls, and the teetering cabin.

The Los Angeles Film Forum and Cinefamily present an evening of Animated Documentaries tonight at 8 pm at the Silent Movie Theatre. “Rendering the Facts” While most people are only exposed to animation in terms of the latest Pixar smash or through Saturday morning cartoons, animation is being used to tell more stories, real stories and real experiences. There are nearly a dozen films on the “Rendering the Facts” program, which is part of the Cocoa series - and you guessed it - filmgoers get to sip hot cocoa while contemplating the burgeoning genre. Michael Renov, USC professor, will introduce the program and there will be a Q&A with Jen Sachs, director of "The Velvet Tigress," and others. Tickets are $12.

The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival opens tonight at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica with its Champagne Gala and Awards Ceremony at 7 pm. The festival will also present the Integrity, Eternity, Rainbow and Maverick Awards to five distinguished women for their contributions to theatre and the performing arts by Honorary Co-Chair Hattie Winston (of the TV series Becker and Pasadena Playhouse Artistic Director Sheldon Epps. Entertainment for the evening will include two excerpted theatre pieces: Angela Dean-Baham in “The Unsung Diva” that explores the life of 19th Century opera singer Matilda Sissieretta Jones, known as “The Black Patti” (a comparison to the celebrated Sicilian soprano Adelina Patti. That piece will be followed up by Rose Weaver in “The Incomparable Ethel Waters: A Night of Stormy Weather.” Waters was the first African American Broadway star as well as the first Black actress to star in a television series. “A celebrated singer, she was a favorite of composer Harold Arlen, who wrote the song “Stormy Weather” explicitly for her.” Champagne gala tickets are $60.

See for yourself if the film(s) Tokyo! is worth the hype. It opens tonight in two SoCal Theatres: the Nuart and the Westpark 8. It’s a surreal triptych set in modern Tokyo with segments directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Léos Carax (The Lovers on the Bridge), and Bong Joon-ho (The Host). As a bonus, Gondry and Ayako Fujitani, the lead actress in Gondry's "Interior Design" film, will appear in person to introduce the 7:15 pm show at the Nuart.

Tonight and tomorrow at 8 pm famed conductor Zubin Mehta takes to the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage to lead the Vienna Philharmonic. On the program are Angela Maria Blasi, soprano, Bruckner’s “Symphony No. 9,” Wolf’s “Italian Serenade” and Marx’s “Selected Songs.”

Last week until yesterday, we ran a contest for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's concert this weekend. To enter, you had to tell us your favorite orchestra instrument found in the orchestra, which the cello one with overwhelming support. The clarinet came in second with the triangle at a close third (just kidding... about the triangle part).

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra continues their exciting concert season next week Saturday (tickets) and Sunday (tickets) with a wide ranging concert featuring Joseph Haydn, Bizet and a Tango work by the Grammy award winning film composer who wrote the original Mission: Impossible TV score.

29-year-old Hilary Hahn has been in Los Angeles for the past week, first to play with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and then this weekend to attend the Grammy Awards where she is nominated--along with LA Phil's Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra--for Best Classical Album and Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra).

Tonight the series “Torn Curtain: Two Germanys on Film” kicks off at LACMA. These are 16 films that were made between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. “The opening weekend presents four Trummerfilme or ‘rubble films’—one West German, one East German, and two American—shot immediately after the war amid the ruins of German cities.” At 7:30 pm is The Murderers are Among Us (Die Mörder sind unter uns) followed by In Those Days (In jenen Tagen) at 9:15 pm. The film series is being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures” showing through April 19, 2009 at BCAM.

       

If you don't know Gustavo Dudamel's name yet, get ready. Not only will he be a Los Angeles cultural icon, he will be an international one. Hailing from Venezuela, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra hand picked the young (his birthday is in a few days) and well-known conductor known for his intensely fun energy and passion for music.

Now if you want to get out there and revel in Obama’s day events, then check out our post from yesterday; but see the listings below for non-Obama events:

REDCAT screens Brigitte Cornand’s 1995 documentary on artist Chère Louise tonight at 8:30 pm. “Documentarian Brigitte Cornand first met Louise Bourgeois in 1994 and over the next dozen years made a trilogy of intimate videos about the iconic artist, now 97, through an idiosyncratic form of collaboration between filmmaker and subject. The first installment of the trilogy, Chère Louise (Dear Louise), traces the inspirations, autobiographical sources and everyday routines that shape Bourgeois’ powerful art.” Cornand will appear in person at the screening.

The marimba is one of the most beautiful instruments in the world. Today in its repertoire, players must be skilled enough to play with two mallets in each hand (one held like a drum stick, the other usually held between the middle and ring finger). When you hear a master play the instrument, it's not just the beautiful expressiveness that can be created out of the the wooden bars, but also the sight too see a musician dance across the instrument.

The Pasadena Symphony is citing "recent extraordinary conditions in the financial markets" as reason why they are canceling their November concert, according to Laurie Niles, a violinist who writes a blog. "What?" she writes. "A couple weeks of plummeting stocks and...kablouey? What about the sponsor that the Symphony already had lined up for the concert? Or the tickets that have been sold?" The symphony's website does not note any cancellation and a concert is also scheduled for this month. (h/t LAO)

Tomorrow, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra will celebrate 40 years with their season concert opener, which is LAist's classical pick of the week. KPCC put together a very nice report on the group starting off with the city's mural dedicated to classical music that shows off Alan Vogel and ten others over the 110 Freeway near the Staples center.

If you haven't read LA Times columnist Steve Lopez' book, The Soloist, it comes with a high recommendation. And if you're a fan of reading books before the movie version comes out, then you've got to November 21st.

On the list of things you must see in Los Angeles is the Los Angeles Philharmonic playing in their home space at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Frank Gehry designed building opened in 2003 and with tickets for classical shows often selling out or out of price range for some, many still have yet to experience one of Los Angeles' aural and visual gems.

There are some pieces of classical music that are truly rock n' roll, in a sense. Hector Berlioz composed the grandiose Symphonie Fantastique ("An Episode in the Life of the Artist") in 1830. There are no words, but the morbid and exciting program music has tales of opium and death. Good stuff, even if you don't know the story line, it sounds fantastic. The LA Phil plays it tonight at the Hollywood Bowl.

If Wagner was still alive today, he would have just celebrated his 195th (!) birthday yesterday. His influence was felt by many including Baudelaire, Freud, Joyce, Nietzsche, and any/every important contemporary of his. Some recent adaptations in mainstream media that come to mind include a terrible Tristan + Isolde movie and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (based off of Wagner's Ring cycle).

In 1991, "resocialized" murderer and Austrian writer Jack Unterweger visited Los Angeles to pen a story about the difference between attitudes toward prostitution between Europe and the United States. Unterweger's initial long term imprisonment was for killing a prostitute by strangling her with her own bra, but was released after 14 years. While in the the LA area, he killed three prostitutes and fled California, eventually being caught by the FBI in Miami. Once back in Austria, he was convicted of eleven homicides and committed suicide.

Not only does California ranks dead last in per capita state spending for the arts, its largest city is losing its media art critics. After LA Times dance critic Lewis Segal was bought out last month, news comes that LA Weekly classical critic Alan Rich was given the ax yesterday. Public Relations blogger Laura Stegman has the scoop:

After getting the news earlier today, I spoke with Alan late tonight, and he said, "It's open season on critics. We are an endangered species. I was surprised, but I wasn't surprised." He says the decision was made "by the corporate people in Phoenix," and that when Editor Laurie Ochoa gave him the news over lunch, "she was as sorry as can be."

You probably relate David Hockney's name with his famous California photograph called "Pearblossom Highway #2." But one of the contemporary artist's early loves was opera and he's back, for the third time ever with Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" with the LA Opera, a "great ode to sexual ecstasy," the production company writes in the tag line of the title.

As the year enters week two, organizations are programming newer music, that which was composed in the last century. This weekend, the Los Angeles Philharmonic began their Concrete Frequency series to an excellent start wth Aaron Copland's "The City" played to film and Edgard Varèse's "Amériques." After the concert, hip-hop violinist duo Paul Dateh and inka one (we interviewed Paul him this summer) played in the lobby by the cafe while Breakestra funked up the BP Hall.

For the third year, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is producing a series that explores a single topic, usually one that reaches from the hardcore to the non-traditional classical going audiences. In 2006, it was Minimalist Fest. featuring famed compositions of the minimalism movement and an all night concert til 4 a.m. with The Orb and other trance artists. This past year was From Shadow to Stalin, an exploration of Eastern Europe, classical musics to the band, DeVotchka.