By Nestor CASTIGLIONE A bag of varied news from Glendale Water & Power (GWP) elicited mixed responses from a group of local residents at the Adult Recreation Center off of East Colorado Blvd. on Thursday. The utility is seeking to move forward with a new five-year rate increase for its customers. That increase would be […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE The passing of nearly a century – and with it a transformation from democracy to dictatorship to, eventually, democracy once more – has yet to still the aftershocks of Spain’s bloody civil war, its rumblings making themselves felt to this very day. It was last year when Catalonia, one of Spain’s most […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE As many residents in Glendale are well familiar, the city is often known as “The Jewel City,” a sobriquet that has helped carry its reputation across the region. The glittering aura the city conjures has in the past decades made it a destination for shopping and cultural edification regionally. Dig further into […]
By Néstor CASTIGLIONE When Hollywood or perhaps the Westside are not thought of, downtown is the place that many people, mostly the never-ceasing new transplants from elsewhere in the country, think of when they think of “Los Angeles.” The newly revived and self-aware urban center – already the home of such cultural institutions as the […]
By Néstor CASTIGLIONE Two California composers head their namesake program this upcoming Sunday at Caltech. But while they may share the same hometown and surnames, they could not be any more different from each other. “I’m very surprised that, despite their California connection, they’re unrelated,” said Glenn Price, conductor of the TEMPO (The Epicenter Musical […]
By Néstor CASTIGLIONE America has had a long love/hate relationship with classical music – mostly love – in the years leading into the mid-20th century, reversed by the 1960s “counterculture” to a collective feeling of indifference that sometimes can be roused to “hate.” One thinks of the writings of various pop music critics over the […]
By Néstor CASTIGLIONE It’s Saturday, the night is young, and you’re looking for a change of pace from your usual round of drinks over at The Regal Beagle. What to do? Pittance Chamber Music might have just the thing for you with its “Three’s Company” program. Pittance Chamber Music, a series featuring players from the […]
By Néstor CASTIGLIONE Pianist Charles Fierro, a stalwart of the local musical scene best known to locals as a regular guest performer at the Glendale Noon Concerts, passed away last December after a brief illness. During his life his art elicited praise from the likes of Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger, the latter praising his […]
By Néstor CASTIGLIONE Considering the epochal nature of World War II and how its aftermath has essentially bequeathed to us our world of today, the disappearance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Sixth Symphony” from concert programs and recordings, at least in the United States, is a scandalous omission in our collective cultural memory. “[To] anyone who […]
By Néstor CASTIGLIONE The title of last Saturday night’s Salastina Society program was a tellingly double-edged one. Called “Second Class Citizens,” the program’s name resonated as much for composers marginalized from the grand narrative of musical history as for the present-day concern for those peoples who live and work in the midst of our society, […]