Cultural Events LA- the weekend of March 27th

Fire and Spice: West LA Symphony

Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez performed and conducted by Sir Angel Romero

Featuring Singers Diego Torre and Jose Adan Perez, from the Los Angeles Opera Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program*

Sun. March 29; 7-9pm

Royce Hall, UCLA Campus

Free Admission.

For more information, please call: (310) 873-7777

Visit:  http://www.uclalive.org/event.asp?Event_ID=644

 

Folk Songs: Brahms and Copland.

Los Angeles Master Chorale

Sun. March 29, 7pm

Bela Bartók. Slovak Folk Songs; Johannes Brahms, Zigeunerlieder; Aaron Copland, Old American Songs; Francis Poulenc, Chansons Françaises; and Veljo Tormis, Forgotten People’s Cycle;

Grant Gershon, Music Director. Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hal.111 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

For more information, visit: http://lamc.org/0809-090329-learn-more.php

Casa De España Concert. Sun., March 29th, 3:30 pm.

Opera Recital in benefit of Hispanics for Los Angeles Opera. Members of the La Opera Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program*: Diego Torre, Adan Perez, Karen Vuong and accompanist Matthew Lobaugh. Tickets $25 per person and $40. Including tapas, sidra, cava and wine. Casa De España. 6532 Greenleaf Ave. Whittier, CA 90601

Call Rosa Kelly to make your reservation: (909) 628-5062.*Created and overseen by Plácido Domingo, the Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program at LA Opera is one of the world’s foremost training programs for emerging professional opera singers of potentially international stature.

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Review: Rebirth at the Pasadena Symphony

Rebirth at the Pasadena Symphony

by Leticia Marie Sanchez 

A few months ago, the Pasadena Symphony unfortunately reported the cancellation of several concerts due to the recession.

Good news Pasadena- Spring is on the Horizon.

On March 14, the Pasadena Symphony, led by the ever-vivacious Jorge Mester, performed an uplifting troika celebrating “Rebirth.” The reinvigorating and thematically unified program was composed of Spring by Vivaldi, Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland, and Spring Symphony by Robert Schumann. 

Complementing the revitalizing music was the resurgence of community support on stage. Before the concert started, the Women’s Committee presented Mr. Mester with a $90,000 check to the Pasadena Symphony, a contribution that helped to make the March Rebirth and April New World concerts possible. 

The revival of the Pasadena Symphony could be heard through the ebullient spring program. One of the liveliest pieces of the night was Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, a ballet score for which Copland won the Pulitzer Prize. The seventh section of the ballet derives from “Simple Gifts,” a one-verse dance song composed in 1848 by American Shaker Elder Joseph Bracket. The lyrics to Simple Gifts embody the fortune of the Pasadena community, blessed to have our local symphony once again in our midst.  

 

 

“Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free; ‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right; Twill be in the valley of love and delight.” 

 

 

 

 

The night of Rebirth was a renaissance of music and community support. We are slowly moving towards the place that we ought to be.: A community that treasures our artists. A community filled with love and delight. Listening to the stirring music we are unshackled from the chains of worry in daily life. Only then can we be uplifted. Only then can we truly be free.

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Cultural Events March 19-22

A Conversation with James Conlon, Music Director of LA Opera

Thurs. March 19. 7pm.Huntington Library. 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108

To register, call: 626-405-2128.

http://www.huntington.org/

 

 

Sound and Color: Henri Matisse and the Music of His Time.

Fri. March 20, 7:00-8:00.

Piano and Lecture: Polli Chambers-Salazar.Norton Simon Museum of Art. 411 W. Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA, 91105. 626.449.6840.

http://www.nortonsimon.org/

 

 

Motezuma* in Venice with Georgio Luke

Sunday March 22. 3pm. Museum of Latin American Art.

American Premier of Motezuma.

Andreas Mitisek and the Long Beach Opera cast of Vivaldi’s opera will take you on a journey into the composer’s life and his musical imagery.Gregorio Luke will lecture about the Aztec leader and the times of the Spanish conquest. *Motezuma (as Vivaldi liked to spell it), was the first opera penned about the Americas. 628 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90802 (562)437.1689.

http://www.molaa.org/

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre

Thurs March 19- Sunday March 22. 

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. 135 North Grand Ave. LA, CA 90012. 213-972-0711 

http://www.musiccenter.org/ 

See website for times.

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Cultural Events LA March 12-15

New Music For Flute and Piano: Performed by Antares Boyle, flutes, and Rory Cowal, piano.

Sunday, March 15 7:00 P.M.

Featuring World Premieres of works by Qasim Naqvi and Chappell Kingsland. Also works by Tristan Murail, Beat Furrer, and Diego Luzuriaga. Brand Library and Art Center. 1601 West Mountain Street. Glendale, CA, 91201. (818) 548. 3782

*FREE*

 

Pasadena Art Night

Friday, March 13: 6:00 – 10 p.m.

Pasadena’s Cultural Institutes invite you to a FREE open house.

Free shuttles will loop throughout the evening with stops at each venue. Park at any one venue and ride to the others.

Venues include: the Alliance Francaise, the Armory Center for the Arts, Art Center College of Design, Norton Simon Museum, Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena City College, Pasadena Jazz Institute, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena Museum of History, Pasadena Public Library, and the Pasadena Symphony

For details on the event please visit:

http://www.artcenter.edu/artnight/

 

ARABIAN NIGHTS

3/12 through 3/14 8:00 P.M. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. Orange County Performing Arts Center. 600 Town Center Drive. Costa Mesa, CA 92626. (714) 556.ARTS.  Vivaldi: “Winter” from “The Four Seasons” for Qanoun and Orchestra; Baderddin: Concerto for Nai and String Orchestra; Jabri: Oriento Grosso for Clarinet, Cello and Orchestra;  Abdul karim: Tango for Bouzaq and Strings,Solhi Al Wadi: Meditation on a theme by M. Abdul Wahhab;  Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

http://www.ocpac.org

Camerata Pacifica

Mozart: Violin Sonata in A Major, K526;  Auerbach: Cello Sonata; Brahms:  Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op. 114

Thursday March 12. 8pm. Zipper Hall, Los Angeles.

Tuesday, March 17. 8pm. The Huntington Library, San Marino

Catherine Leonard, violin; Bil Jackson, clarinet; Ani Aznavoorian, cello; Warren Jones, piano

Contact: 805 884.8410

http://www.cameratapacifica.org/

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Review: Francis Alÿs’ Fabiola Portraits at LACMA

  The Fabulous Fabiolas

At LACMA Through March 29, 2009

An overwhelming sea of red greets visitors entering the Francis Alÿs’ Fabiola exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts. The darkly colored room on the museum’s second floor houses a hushed shrine. The LACMA pilgrim entering the room is struck at first glance by the undeniable likeness between more than 300 veiled women, mostly in red, mostly in profile. Upon closer observance, however, the hundreds of Fabiolas play with the viewer, exposing their differences. Some Fabiolas stare ahead somberly. Other lips convey the hint of a smile.  One fetching Fabiola resembles a 40’s movie star. Another typifies a Plain Jane. One is etched onto velvet, while another is comprised of beans. The exhibit transports the sacredness of iconography into the profane territory of flea markets, ceramics, and beans.  

Francis Alÿs, the collector behind the Fabiola exhibit, amassed at least 300 renditions of Saint Fabiola, the noble Roman saint who became a patron of nurses and abused women.

Alÿs’ acquisition of Fabiolas took him from regions as far-flung as Latin America and the Netherlands where he scoured high and low, from antique shops to open air markets. 

The iconic image that we now have of Fabiola originates from a now lost portrait of Fabiola, painted by the nineteenth century French academic, Jean-Jacques Henner. 

A reproduction of the now lost Henner portrait of Fabiola. The color and profile are similar, but the harsh countenance is very distinct from the 20th century Fabiolas currently at LACMA.

But while Henner’s rendition (reproduced here) is stern and austere, the 20th century Fabiolas discovered by Alÿs exhibit a soft youthful countenance befitting the nurturing saint who founded Rome’s first hospice for the poor.

In fact, the sweet faces in the majority of the Fabiola portraits more closely resemble the sitter in another of Henner’s paintings, the Study of a Woman in Red.

The face of this Henner painting, the Study of a Lady in Red, strongly resembles the majority of the faces in the more than 300 Fabiolas at LACMA. Perhaps modern artists conflated the original lost Henner Fabiola portait with this painting.

The proliferation of Fabiolas demonstrates not only the saint’s lasting universal popularity but also begs the age-old question, “What is art?” Can it be found in flea markets? Francis Alÿs had clear stipulations for objects to be included in the exhibit. Forbidden were printed reproductions. In the age of Xerox copies, the integrity of the Fabiola portraits lies in the fact that they are all constructed by hand, mostly anonymous hands.

 

One of the many Fabiola Portraits currently at LACMA.   The Fabiola Portraits embody the democratization of art. Art, like saints, should not be relegated to closed off reliquaries. They both exist in churches, temples, and flea markets. The word “Profane” originates from the Latin “Outside the Temple.” In the Fabiola Portraits, Francis Alÿs, takes the profane and makes it sacred.

 

 

 

 

 

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Cultural Events LA: the Weekend of March 7 and 8th

The Last Full Measure of Devotion:

Collecting Abraham Lincoln

Feb. 7–April 27, 2009

Library West Hall.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

1151 Oxford Road. San Marino, CA  91108. 626.405.2100

http://www.huntington.org/

 

 

America Youth Symphony

Royce Hall, UCLA

Sun. March 8 7 pm

Royce Hall. UCLA. Royce Drive at Sunset Blvd. LA, CA. 90095. (310) 470-2332

Mozart Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”)

Strauss Ein Heldenleben

Alexander Treger: Music Director and Conductor

Admission: Free

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