By Ted AYALA Richard Wagner famously remarked of Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7” that the piece represented to him the “apotheosis of the dance.” The Santa Cecilia Orchestra’s closing concert of its 20th season on Sunday conveyed an impression of that remark. Something of Wagner’s Venusburg bacchanalia could be sensed in Sonia Marie de León de […]
By Ted AYALA A faint echo of the Brooklyn Festival, which started at Disney Hall on April 16, could be heard last Saturday at the Alex Theatre when the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s composer-in-residence took his star turn on the stage. Andrew Norman, a Southern California native now living in Brooklyn, had his latest LACO […]
By Ted Ayala How is musical excellence defined? Does a composer’s willingness to go against the grain of his times and fight for his personal convictions bespeak of “greatness?” When considering the latter question, one usually thinks of composers like Beethoven, Mahler, Stravinsky, Webern, and Cage for starters; all of them composers who struggled […]
Opening the Eyes of ‘The Disillusioned’ By Sabrina WALENTYNOWICZ Usually when looking for a new book, I lean towards historical fiction. The setting is a real place, but the characters are imagined and there is likely some sort of fantastical element that could never be possible in our universe. Sadly, this is not the case […]
By Ted AYALA Toys, coloring books, cartoons, play. For most of us, our lives as first-graders revolved around these and other innocuous pastimes. It’s only later – for some of us beginning in our teens, for others later still – when our minds turned to the study and contemplation of those facets of life that […]
By Ted AYALA Before I begin this review, let’s just get one thing straight. As of the moment I’m typing this, only two opera companies in all of the Greater Los Angeles area dare to perform opera as a living art: Long Beach Opera and the up-and-coming Pacific Opera Project. With all due respect to […]
By Ted AYALA Toys, coloring books, cartoons, play. For most of us, our lives as first-graders revolved around these and other innocuous pastimes. It’s only later – for some of us beginning in our teens, for others later still – when our minds turned to the study and contemplation of those facets of life that […]
By Charly SHELTON “Jurassic Park” is one of the best movies ever made – from a technical viewpoint, an audience viewpoint, a critic viewpoint and a science viewpoint. It is a very well done film. And now, 20 years after its initial release, it is back on the big screen looking as good as ever. […]