By Nestor CASTIGLIONE It’s easy to lose track of the fact that beneath the encrustations that have disfigured the Christmas season — the avarice, the sentimentality, and above all the sales, sales, sales — there remain the holiday’s roots, perhaps looking worn, but still plunging deep into the soil of religious rite. Music, Beethoven once […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE Local men and women who have served in the armed forces and need a home may soon have another chance at finding a roof over their heads at Glendale’s Veterans Village. Tony Carnegie, a representative for Thomas Safran & Associates, which developed and manages the facility, said the waiting list for Veterans […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE The members of the Sunland Tujunga Neighborhood Council presided over a meeting on Wednesday night where the mood was spirited unto raucous. Over 75 people packed into the council chambers that night, all of them eager to give voice to their concerns over the future of the Verdugo Hills Golf Course. Last […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE As Christmas looms ever nearer, performances of sacred and secular music inspired by the holiday proliferate accordingly. Two of the region’s finest chamber music organizations – Dilijan Chamber Series and Salastina Music Society – will be devoting programs this weekend to performances of the former. Across three days and in just as […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE Performances of Handel’s “Messiah” have engraved in listeners’ minds two things: Christmas and huge masses of singers and instrumentalists. “I want a bloody row,” roared Sir Thomas Beecham at the Philadelphia Orchestra’s management when they suggested trimming the number of musicians for a scheduled performance of Mozart symphonies in the late 1950s […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE Fads come and go – and games are no exception to this axiom. Witness this summer’s mania over Nintendo’s “Pokémon Go” and the subsequent sharp paring away of interest in it. But one game has tenaciously held its own for millennia, eliciting the interest and even obsession of laymen and philosophers, […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE “The past is never dead,” William Faulkner once famously wrote. “It’s not even past.” Never was that truer than in the record business. CDs, though still the leader in physical music sales, have seen their appeal wane in the last several years, especially competing among the young streaming music services and online […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE When Osvaldo Golijov’s star first came to prominence in the firmament of contemporary music, I have to admit to having become very excited. Hearing of the massive success in 2000 of his La Pasión según San Marcos, which had earned widespread critical and public acclaim, I became intensely curious to know the […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE Crescenta Valley residents lined up to cast their votes – again – on Friday and Saturday, this time to determine the winners of this year’s Crescenta Valley Town Council race. Nearly 300 votes were cast at St. Luke’s of the Mountains Episcopal Church by locals eager to give direction to the CVTC. […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE Representatives from Caltrans heard an earful from local residents on Thursday night at the Crescenta Valley Town Council (CVTC) monthly meeting at the La Crescenta Library community room. Frustration was bubbling over lane closures and traffic snarls that have cropped up since Caltrans began work on a multi-phase, nearly $150 million project […]