Monthly music-art series at LACMA starts Nov. 9

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which was widely criticized in May for ending its four-decade support of the Monday Evening Concerts, will offer a new musical series beginning in November that will cover some of the same ground.

The main difference is that “Art and Music: Concerts at 8,” which is scheduled to premiere Nov. 9 and run once a month through June 2007, has been designed to complement LACMA’s special exhibitions as well as its permanent collection.

“In a lot of ways, the series is an outgrowth of Monday Evening Concerts,” LACMA music program director Mitch Glickman said Thursday. “But it’s a little broader in reaching out into the community and to new genres.

“Musically, the series has a new music feeling, but the exhibits give us a little broader palette to work with. The special exhibitions are really the points of departure and inspiration, but obviously there’s a lot of great stuff in the permanent collection as well.”

The series will open with Italy’s mdi ensemble Milano and Kitty McNamee’s L.A.-based Hysterica Dance Company performing a program of contemporary Italian music to complement an exhibition titled “Breaking the Mode: Contemporary Fashion From the Permanent Collection.”

The final concert, on June 12, will be a smaller-scale reprise of a Los Angeles Master Chorale concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall in May focusing on Spanish New World music. That program will be linked to the special exhibition “Arts in Latin America 1492-1820.”

“Music of Pollock,” on Dec. 7, will include scenes from Ed Harris’ 2000 film biography of Jackson Pollock, a panel discussion with some of the moviemakers and music from the film as well as jazz standards that inspired the painter, performed by a chamber orchestra led by composer Jeff Beal. A selection of Pollock paintings from LACMA’s permanent collection will be on view at the same time.

The series will also include the new music groups eighth blackbird and Argento New Music Ensemble, the Assad Brothers, L.A.-based Xtet and Grammy-winning pianist Dave Grusin.

In the coming season, the museum will continue its free Friday night jazz programs, Saturday afternoon Latin music series and “Sundays Live” classical concerts. The series, however, will require paid admission. It will take place at 8 p.m. in the Bing Theater, Monday Evening Concerts’ old venue, with individual tickets ranging from $5 to $25.