In the 1950s, saxophonist Big Jay McNeely (left) - now 90 - got teenagers so excited that city officials wouldn’t let him play in LA for a while. ... We do in-depth with Jeffrey Kahane, who is about to play his final concerts as musical director of the LA Chamber Orchestra. ... Anatomy of Innocence, a new collection of memoirs by people who have been exonerated after being jailed for major crimes. ... In “They Shoot Mexicans, Don’t They?,” cultures and personalities clash as a silent film director tries to make a movie at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse.
At the piano, Maestro Jeffrey Kahane previews his final LA Chamber Orchestra concert
In 2014, Jeffrey Kahane announced that he was going to step down as musical director of the LA Chamber Orchestra in 2017, his 20th anniversary with the orchestra. The time has come; his final concerts are Saturday, May 20, and Sunday, May 21.
A couple weeks ago, at Kahane's music studio at his home in Altadena, I sat chair-to-music bench with him to talk about leaving the job. Here are some highlights of our conversation.
We talked a couple years ago when it was announced that you were leaving ... Have you changed your mind?
(LAUGHING) No. I haven't changed my mind.
Have you ever given up something this big?
Well, this is the third orchestral position I've had. I was music director of the Santa Rosa Symphony for almost 11 years. I was music director of the Colorado Symphony in Denver for five years. But 20 years is a very long time to do anything, and my relationship with this orchestra is therefore of a different nature. Los Angeles is the city in which I grew up and I think the answer to your question is no, I have never given up anything this big.
BONUS: Kahane says it's okay to applaud between movements, if the music's great
Have you mentally prepared for what comes after?
That's a long process. It was almost four years ago that I decided, because I wanted the orchestra to have plenty of time to do a proper search, so I've had a lot of time to prepare, but I think it's incredibly difficult to prepare for something this big.
Many people have said, 'So what are you going to do now that you're retiring?' and I laugh because I don't know why people would think I'm retiring. I'm not retiring; I just happen to not be doing the LA Chamber Orchestra anymore. I have a brand new position as the music director at the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida, I have a tremendously full schedule as a guest conductor and a soloist, I'm on the faculty at USC teaching piano and other things. So my life is just as busy as its ever been. But there will be a great spiritual, emotional void where the LA Chamber Orchestra has been for 20 years.
It's a very bittersweet time. I look at where the orchestra is now, compared to where it was when I took over 20 years ago, and there is no one who knows the orchestra who would not say that tt is possibly in the best shape its ever been, and it is certainly in infinitely greater shape than it was 20 years ago because I took over a very troubled organization. It was an organization that had been through very difficult financial struggles.
We accomplished things some people believed would never happen. We went to Carnegie Hall, we did a major European tour, we made recordings, but most importantly we've established an incredibly loyal and enthusiastic base of supporters.
And the Orchestra sounds like a million dollars right now.
By the way, it's difficult to express on the radio how beautiful Kahane's grand piano is. It's a Fazioli, handmade in Italy. Just look at the beauty of the wood on the inside ...
And woodworkers in the audience will get how much work it is to bring such a depth to the finish of the case:
Tickets are still available for Jeffrey Kahane's farewell concerts with the LA Chamber Orchestra. As usual, they play on the East and West Sides: Saturday, May 20 at 8pm at the Alex Theatre in Glendale; and Sunday, May 21 at 7pm at Royce Hall.
The program: The world premiere of the LACO commission by Christopher Cerrone, "There Be Singing. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major. Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C major, “The Great.”
Off-Ramp Recommendation: Scientists needed! Giant ants invade Union Station Friday night!
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Let's face it. Ants are nobody's favorite. They ruin summer picnics, sneak under the door to steal your crumbs, and are... HUGE?! In 1954 sci-fi film "Them!" ants are gigantic, radioactive, flesh-eating, and coming directly for you!
Friday night, as part of the Metro Art series, Union Station is screening the second film in its "Sci-Fi at Union Station" series. It's the 1954 sci-fi classic "Them!" LA Times entertainment reporter and classic Hollywood expert Susan King will provide a background on the film and its historical significance to both the sci-fi genre and LA.
Watch the trailer for "Them!" ... if you dare
Director Gordon Douglas helped created the nuclear monster genre with "Them!" and due to its campy horror, the movie has become a cult-classic. "Them!" follows the creation and subsequent terror of carnivorous insects and their pursuit of film stars James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, and Joan Weldon. The film culminates in a battle scene set in our very own city, featuring shots of beautiful Union Station, LA's neighborhoods, and storm drains.
The movie is extra-notable for two reasons:
1. It's one of the rare sci-fi movies in which the politicians believe the scientists THE FIRST TIME. "Hey, you say there are giant radioactive ants menacing the populace? We'll get right on that. And thanks, scientists!"
2. "Them!" also includes an early appearance by Leonard Nimoy:
This is a totally free event and seating is first-come, first-serve. The screening begins Friday night at 8:30 (doors open at 8p) on the station's north patio.
Saxophonist Big Jay McNeely, 'King of the Honkers,' still steals the show at 90
Off-Ramp's jazz correspondent Sean J. O'Connell talks with the irrepressible showman and sax master Big Jay McNeely, who'll be honored May 17 at The Grammy Museum in Downtown LA. He's also playing May 26 at Suzie’s Bar & Grill, 1141 Aviation Blvd, Hermosa Beach.
McNeely is a true original and the last of a generation of blues/R&B musicians who inspired the early rock pioneers, and are still around to remind us where popular music came from.
-- The Grammy Museum
The scene is a small house in South LA. Big Jay McNeely is attired in immaculate black Dickies, a perfectly pressed royal blue dress shirt, and a carefully chosen silk necktie. As he talks, you start to think this 90-year-old jazz legend is going to climb off his mobility scooter, grab his sax, and blow like he did one day in 1951 .
As Sean J. O'Connell puts it: "Big Jay McNeely was etched into pop music immortality in 1951. Photographer Bob Willoughby captured McNeely at a concert at Los Angeles's Olympic Auditorium 1951. In the photo, the Watts native is blasting his tenor sax on his back, the camera capturing the raised fists of post-war teenage hysteria seething in undershirts and pompadours at the foot of the stage. From Central Avenue with Charlie Parker and Art Tatum in the 1940s to the R&B circuit of the '50s and '60s, McNeely was there through a roller coaster of musical evolutions and had a good time along the way. His showmanship and soul are both youthful and timeless. He is rock & roll history, alive and well."
Big Jay McNeely can't get down on the floor anymore, but he can still get down: he performed two concerts for his 90th birthday, and has two more scheduled this month.
Big Jay was born in Watts on April 29, 1927, given name Cecil James McNeely. Back then, Watts was country ... Cecil chopped wood for his mom's stove, they had livestock at the house, and the actual iceman cometh. He played with Little Richard, Junior Wells, B.B. King, and Etta James, and had his biggest hit in 1949, with "The Deacon's Hop," which hit #1 on Billboard's R&B chart. He played through the 40s, 50s, and 60s, retired from music in the 1970s, then returned to music in the 1980s.
McNeely is a showman, the last of a particular type of sax player called a "honker," who integrated showmanship with musicianship. "It wasn't really part of my program to lay on the floor (and play)," he says. "But I was working in a little town called Clarksville, Tennessee. We were working upstairs, blowing out brains out, but nothing happened. So I got on my knees. Nothing happened. So I laid down on the floor, and man, they went crazy. Everybody from downstairs would come up because they heard all this noise."
Then there was the time he had a gig with Lionel Hampton in LA's old Wrigley Stadium. He started playing up in the bleachers, moved all around the stadium, and wound up crawling across the infield. He also painted his sax fluorescent colors and used black lights to heighten the visual experience. And when he plays, he concentrates on engaging the audience ... with repeated notes, dramatic pauses, "overblowing" the horn, and other techniques he talks about in his interview with Off-Ramp jazz correspondent Sean J. O'Connell.
BONUS: Hear Sean J. O'Connell play piano at The Blue Whale in Little Tokyo
The reaction he got from teenagers in the city of LA, he says, worried officials here, who apparently thought he was some sort of Pied Piper. "The kids were responding to the music," he says, "and they didn't know why were responding in that way. They'd take pictures, I guess they'd try to analyze it, and they couldn't find out what's happening." So they wouldn't give him a permit to perform.
McNeely attributes at least part of his longevity to "living a clean life" as a Jehovah's Witness. "I was in Germany and was walking around saying, 'Man, I'm 75. I haven't got much longer to live,' cuz the Bible says 80, you know. I got baptized as a Jehovah when I was 12, and my hope is for the Kingdom of God where you can live forever and ever. And that's what has kept me from getting involved ..." (in drugs or in focusing on success over happiness). "When you put your whole life into a career, and it don't happen, it affects some people. But to me the Kingdom is the only hope, so I'm still looking for that. That's all that matters."
Special thanks to the estate of Bob Willoughby for allowing us to use his truly astounding photo.
New book 'Anatomy of Innocence' allows wrongfully convicted to tell their stories
People who have made good faith estimates are hoping that our human system of criminal justice gets it right 95% of the time. If we got it right 95% of the time there would still be 110,000 innocent people in jail. -- Laura Caldwell, co-editor, "Anatomy of Innocence"
In recent years, wrongful conviction stories like the ones in “Serial” and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” have captivated audiences. The characters in these stories are ordinary people. That's what makes the stories so intriguing – this could happen to anyone.
“Anatomy of Innocence” is a new anthology that tells the stories of over a dozen people who were convicted of crimes they did not commit. What makes it unique is that the stories are told by the actual exonerees, with the help of thriller and mystery writers like Sara Paretsky, Lee Child, Brad Parks, and Laurie King. Laura Caldwell and Leslie Klinger teamed up to co-edit the collection of stories.
Author Laura Caldwell is a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. In 2008, she founded Life After Innocence at Loyola, which provides resources for innocent people who have been affected by the criminal justice system as they re-enter society. Leslie Klinger is best known for his annotated editions of “Sherlock Holmes,” “Dracula,” and the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
Off-Ramp archive: Leslie Klinger on H.P. Lovecraft ... great writer, horrible man
They worked together on “Anatomy of Innocence” to examine the real life consequences of wrongful convictions. “The idea was to present them almost like a novel to present the arc, to present the typical experience of the exonerees,” Klinger says. “From the very first moment from the arrest all the way through reentering society and the mental adjustments.”
Sales of the book support Life After Innocence, and if it sells well enough, some of the proceeds will go to the exonerees who tell their stories. The book sites statistics from the National Registry of Exonerations, kept by Michigan State, UC Irvine, and U of M, which says there are about 2,000 cases of exonerations that have been publicly recognized.
Klinger says they worked hard to mirror the overall demographics of the wrongfully convicted: almost a third are black, about 10% were first arrested under the age of 18, and half were under the age of 25 when they first became involved in their case and ended up incarcerated.
It’s not always about being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
“67% of wrongful convictions that involved big level felonies involved prosecutorial or police misconduct,” Caldwell says. “Now, that is not to say that the majority of police or prosecutors engage in misconduct… unfortunately we have seen such egregious things happen on behalf of police and prosecutors.”
“When we were envisioning this book “Making a Murderer” wasn’t out, but “Serial” was. The average person wasn’t as well versed in wrongful convictions,” Caldwell says. “By the time we got to actually publishing, the hope is that you understand that this happens. It’s a human system – it's bound to happen for various reasons – so now that it’s bound to happen for various reasons what does it feel like to be in that person's head? What does it feel like to be in their soul? What does it feel like to be in their eyes?”
On Sunday, May 21, at noon, Laura Caldwell and Leslie S. Klinger will be reading an excerpt from "Anatomy of Innocence" and taking questions at the Tam O’Shanter Inn in Los Angeles. They will be joined by authors Jan Burke and Gary Phillips and exoneree William Dillon.
For the full conversation with Laura Caldwell and Leslie Klinger click on the audio player above.