Ring In the New

What an inspired choice The Times made in inviting Michael Stipe to share his views on “artists” facing the new century (“Ready to Make the Turn,” by Susan Freudenheim, Nov. 28). This is the genius that dismissed the Beatles as “elevator music.”

Admittedly R.E.M. has occasionally come up with some interesting songs, but face it, Mike, without the Beatles you would be pumping gas at some backwoods gas station in Georgia and The Times would have Wayne Newton or Liza Minnelli on their panel.

ROGER GARVIN

Redondo Beach

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Congratulations. You managed to find five people with absolutely nothing interesting to say.

AIMEE WHITSON

Pasadena

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Michael Phillips was spot-on in his appraisal of the shabby way that Los Angeles playwrights are shunned by the professional theaters here (“Calling All Risk Takers,” Nov. 28).

I--along with other resident playwrights who have had productions on Broadway, off-Broadway, in London or regional theaters--am frustrated that when we or our representatives submit our work to the major L.A. theaters, we not only get rejected outright but typically receive no response whatsoever.

Equally frustrating is seeing the dollars thrown at translations of foreign plays, revivals of the same safe “classics,” or multitudinous replays of “How I Learned To Drive” and “. . . Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” I applaud Phillips’ challenge for L.A. professional theater to “get our nerve back” and utilize the talent we have here. We’re ready. Isn’t there an artistic director with guts who will give us a chance to show what we can do?

Yes, we may fail. But many plays from Seattle, New York, Scandinavia and Belgium have failed here too. Our audiences deserve the opportunity to discover new plays for themselves.

THOM THOMAS

Silver Lake

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Michael Phillips: What a breath of fresh air you are! Those of us in the theater community for the last 20 years remember a time when great experimental work was rewarded by being plucked off the 99-seat stages and onto the stages of Center Theatre Group or into film. People came to the theater to discover something new or discover old works with a new spin. I now find myself doing more and more productions--even 99-seat--centered around a “star” or tried-and-true scripts. ( I actually have done “Man of La Mancha” three times in the last few years.)

I earn a living but I yearn for L.A. to get back its soul. Some of us involved in musical theater have been involved in the Musical Theatre Guild out of Pasadena Playhouse and Reprise! to at least try out works previously unknown to us. There is an audience for it, as can be seen by our packed houses.

CAROL BROLASKI KLINE

Studio City

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Phillips hit the nail on the head with his fervently sardonic piece about the state of L.A. theater. Any self-respecting artist or patron would agree with his views on the type of work largely being done here.

However, I take exception with his first attack. Instead of jumping on the proliferation of one-person shows, AIDS plays or the round-the-clock need for Justin Tanner’s oeuvre, he disparages “lame plays about people trying to make it in the movies.” Phillips’ perceived wish that they would just go away is in direct contrast with his desire to “figure this city out.” He bemoans the lack of L.A. writers’ work given full production and that recent plays aren’t “site-specific enough, in terms of relating to a given region.”

Well, like it or not, the No. 1 industry in this region is filmmaking, and one can’t encourage L.A.-set pieces without expecting a fair share of them to be set against that backdrop. Lame plays should indeed be avoided. It is profoundly unfair to suggest that all plays set in the film industry are lame, lack “nerve” and should no longer be produced.

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE

North Hollywood

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Joyce is the author of the forthcoming industry-set play “Kill Switch.”

Re Robert Hilburn’s “Outsiders Looking In” (Nov. 28): Why no mention of (probably) the only pop style that not only wasn’t bad-mouthed when it appeared but is presently in the middle of an exciting renaissance, i.e. swing! After all, to paraphrase the Duke, if it don’t swing it don’t mean a thing--and most of those other styles don’t!

TRUMAN REX FISHER

Azusa

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Mark Swed (“To Err is Both Human and Divine,” Nov. 28) unwittingly proves his point that to err is indeed human when he claims Claudio Monteverdi was “the most inspired member of the Florentine Camerata.” Monteverdi, clearly the most inspired of the early composers of opera, never lived in Florence, but hung out in Mantua and Venice.

JEROME S. KLEINSASSER

Professor of Music

CSU Bakersfield

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Bravo to Don Heckman for his wonderful article (“Not So Long a Way From Satchmo,” Nov. 28). The avant-garde 1960s and the fusion 1970s are a part of jazz history, just as much as any other era. It’s about time that certain musicians and critics acknowledged this fact. Start seeing the forest, not just your personal tree!

ROGER REMICK

Studio City

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Heckman credits Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew” of 1969 as the forerunners of “what quickly came to be called jazz fusion.” This viewpoint is shared by many.

However, to a growing number of people stateside (the Europeans have long respected his distinguished lineage), the name David Axelrod has become synonymous with the term “fusion.” He produced countless legendary albums for Capitol Records in the 1960s and created three solo albums for the label close to the decade’s end. The first, “Songs of Innocence,” hit the scene hard in 1968. Its funk backbeat, electric bass lines and screaming electric guitar solos led Billboard critic Elliot Teagle to call Axelrod’s opus “fusion.” And the first major example of fusion it was--a mixture of a Third Stream-esque approach to jazz with the funky instrumentation that would come to be associated with rock.

Hopefully, with the pending CD reissues of his masterpieces, Axelrod will soon be recognized for the genius we students of hip-hop know he is.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

WRVU-FM, Nashville

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Bill Desowitz missed the most important reason why movies haven’t gone digital yet: Film resolution is still many times better than the best digital resolution when it comes to images on a 40-foot screen (“But Will They Still Be ‘Movies’?,” Nov. 28).

If you saw “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace,” then you saw how poorly the digital backgrounds transferred back to film. The digital “graininess” effect was very evident. Even the best HDTV image, projected on a 40-foot screen, doesn’t come close to good 35-millimeter film, not to mention 70mm or Imax resolution.

My opinion of digital imaging is that it’s fine for 4x6-inch photos, but not movies.

DOUG HUGHES

Long Beach