Audiences, mark your calendars
SEPTEMBER
11
POP MUSIC
Call it hip-hop history or unbearable hype -- pop’s hottest showdown pits 50 Cent against Kanye West as both rappers offer releases meant to top the charts. 50 has threatened to retire if West’s “Graduation” outsells his “Curtis.” Start shopping for a condo in Florida, Mr. Cent: West’s new single, the Daft Punk-sampling “Stronger,” KOs the limp “Curtis” track “Ayo Technology,” despite the latter’s special guests, Timbaland and Timberlake. Rum-hawking country hedonist Kenny Chesney’s “Just as I Am: Poets and Pirates” might clobber both anyway.
“Curtis,” Interscope Records; “Graduation,” Roc-A-Fella Records.
15
DANCE
Stanley Holden was a world-class character dancer in England’s Royal Ballet, unforgettable in the travesty role of Simone in Frederick Ashton’s comic masterpiece, “La Fille Mal Gardée.” But his most valuable contribution to ballet may have been as a teacher in Southern California, where he inspired generations of students and professionals to the highest artistic standards. An extended tribute to Holden, who died in May at 79, will form the centerpiece of the eighth annual Los Angeles Dance Invitational, a varied but invariably celebratory event.
Nate Holden Performing Arts Center. www.ladanceinvitational.org
16
ART
It wasn’t exactly remodeling, but when Gordon Matta-Clark took a chain saw to a house, an old building or an industrial shed, he transformed it from a place of familiar function into a sculptural surprise. Dead from cancer at 35 in 1978, he didn’t have time to create a large body of significant work. But Matta-Clark’s legacy has grown steadily more influential, as the widely admired traveling retrospective arriving at MOCA attests.
Museum of Contemporary Art through Jan. 7. www.moca.org
18
DANCE
As titles go, “Slow Dancing” could hardly be more concise. David Michalek’s giant outdoor installation was first seen this summer at New York’s Lincoln Center: a trio of 50-foot-high screens showing video images of 44 dancers, three at a time, executing five-second phrases slowed down to 10 minutes. Now the project will be on view nightly as part of the Dance at the Music Center series. The screens will be smaller -- 16 feet high -- but they’ll be closer to the ground, and there will be four of them, one on each side of the Music Center fountain.
Los Angeles Music Center through Sept. 26. www.musiccenter.org
19
THEATER
Playwright Wendy Wasserstein couldn’t resist questioning long-standing assumptions. And in “Third,” which had its premiere at Lincoln Center shortly before her death last year, she casts her satiric eye on the subtle prejudices of a liberal academic who finds herself at loggerheads with a privileged rich kid. The West Coast premiere will welcome Christine Lahti, another probing investigator of human contradiction, back to the stage.
Geffen Playhouse, Westwood, through Oct. 21. www.geffenplayhouse.com
THEATER
British critics were stunned by the profane violence of Gregory Burke’s “Black Watch,” making its U.S. debut under the auspices of UCLA Live, when it premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival. The Guardian called it a “great dirty ballet of pulsating machismo and terrible tenderness”; the Sunday Times hailed it as the most celebrated Scottish cultural artifact since “Trainspotting.” Based on recent interviews with soldiers, the drama, directed by John Tiffany for the National Theater of Scotland, follows six Black Watch privates deployed to Iraq.
Freud Playhouse, UCLA, through Oct. 14. www.uclalive.org
THEATER
A Korean American widower gets laid off, and the shock launches him on a road trip through the Southwest with his 13- and 21-year-old sons aimed at bridging the emotional distance from them he’s created. That’s the setup for Julia Cho’s “Durango,” receiving its West Coast premiere by East West Players. As last season’s dark drama “The Piano Teacher” showed at South Coast Repertory, Cho is fascinated with how people suppress truths until they’re cornered by them. Chay Yew directs “Durango,” as he did last year’s New York production, which prompted the New York Times to praise Cho as “a young playwright of clear promise [who] develops even the potentially hackneyed themes with a laconic, natural ease that earns respect and admiration.”
East West Players through Oct. 14. www.eastwestplayers.org
22
POP MUSIC
This year’s L.A. Salsa Festival, “El Cantante de Los Cantantes,” will be a tribute to the late singer Héctor Lavoe, featuring Willie Colón, his former partner, and other associates from the salsa boom of the 1970s, including singers Cheo Feliciano and Ismael Miranda, veterans with Lavoe of the New York-based supergroup the Fania All-Stars. Other top names on the bill are Venezuelan singer and bassist Oscar D’León, New York diva La India, Puerto Rican sonero Domingo Quiñones, pianist-arranger Isidro Infante and the beloved Yomo Toro on the traditional Puerto Rican guitar the cuatro.
Greek Theatre. www.greektheatrela.com
POP MUSIC
He’s given us some of the last decade’s swooniest piano pop; now he’s writing an opera. So what does Rufus Wainwright do in his spare time? Channel Judy Garland, of course! The out-and-proud singer-songwriter who, like Garland, was born in a trunk, won raves for his 2006 on-site re-creation of her 1961 Carnegie Hall show. “Rufus Wainwright Sings Judy Garland” resurrects that material and reinterprets the legendary trouper’s subsequent visit to the Bowl. Broadway notable Stephen Oremus conducts.
Hollywood Bowl. www.hollywoodbowl.com
24
OPERA
Peter Gelb’s first season as general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera included the high-definition telecast of several productions to movie theaters around the country. To open his second season, the company will offer a new take on Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” by one of the numerous theater directors Gelb has recruited, Mary Zimmerman (“Metamorphosis”), starring beloved French soprano Natalie Dessay. The production will be seen in June and July at San Francisco Opera.
Metropolitan Opera, New York. www.metoperafamily.org
25
POP MUSIC
The baby boomer icons are out in force! Bruce Springsteen reunites with the E Street Band (again); Bob Dylan tours with Elvis Costello; Robert Plant teams with bluegrass crooner Alison Krauss for a covers collection. But Joni Mitchell deserves the biggest nod: “Shine,” her “Starbucks record,” features her first new music in a decade, and it’s rumored to be awesome. Smart shoppers can get a great twofer by picking up “River: The Joni Letters,” a star-studded meditation on Mitchell’s oeuvre by her pal the jazz great Herbie Hancock.
“Shine,” Hear Music; “River: The Joni Letters,” Verve.
26
THEATER
“Bridge & Tunnel” stars Sarah Jones, Sarah Jones and Sarah Jones . . . in a solo comedy that has the versatile writer-performer portraying more than a dozen characters from diverse cultural backgrounds who get together in a Queens, N.Y., coffeehouse for a poetry slam. Impressed by an early performance, Meryl Streep produced “Bridge & Tunnel” off-Broadway in 2004 before it went on to Broadway acclaim and a special Tony Award in 2006.
Brentwood Theater through Oct. 21.
JAZZ
Alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman has come a long way since the pitched battles of the ‘60s triggered by his decision to improvise freely, beyond the boundaries of meter and harmony. But a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “genius” award and more haven’t diminished the fascination of his still-innovative musical adventuring.
Royce Hall, UCLA. www.uclalive.org
27
OPERA
Three years ago, Karita Mattila got a certain amount of predictably salacious press for stripping during Richard Strauss’ “Salome” at the Metropolitan Opera. But the statuesque Finnish soprano attracted far more serious attention for her intense character portrayal and vital, dramatic singing. She can be even more compelling rendering Janácek’s complex heroines, and she’ll make her Los Angeles Opera debut in the Czech composer’s most famous role with a new production of “Jenufa” shared by the Met.
Los Angeles Opera through Oct. 13. www.losangelesopera.com
28
THEATER
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies (“Dinner With Friends,” “Brooklyn Boy”) returns to South Coast Rep (with actor Gregory Itzin, above) with “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment.” Inspired by the tall tales of Louis de Rougemont, who mesmerized Victorian England with his over-the-top high seas chronicles, the play marks a voyage for Margulies, best known for his explorations of middle-class Jewish angst. Director Bart Delorenzo of the Evidence Room puts his auteurial stamp on the world premiere.
South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, through Oct. 14. www.scr.org
ART
Richard Prince got his start by photographing advertising images and presenting them as his own work, launching a career that continues to question the notion of artistic originality. Stealing images from popular culture -- the Marlboro Man, muscle cars, biker chicks and pulp fiction -- he has created a body of work that simultaneously celebrates and critiques America’s sensibilities and values. The most comprehensive survey of his work to date will appear in “Richard Prince: Spiritual America.”
Guggenheim Museum, New York, through Jan. 9. www.guggenheim.org
CLASSICAL MUSIC
The glass ceiling gets raised a notch as Marin Alsop begins her first season as music director of the Baltimore Symphony, thus becoming the first woman to lead a major American orchestra. Don’t, however, read too much into the program: John Adams’ “Fearful Symmetries” and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which starts off with a funeral march. Alsop is remaking Baltimore into a fearless orchestra that will highlight living American composers all season.
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore. Season extends through June 22. www.baltimoresymphony.org
30
THEATER
Harvey Fierstein, the Great White Way’s grandest drag queen, not only stars in “A Catered Affair” but has also written the book. OK, so he’s in male duds this time, but you can count on full-strength hilarity. Based on the old Paddy Chayefsky teleplay (later turned into a Bette Davis movie), this Broadway-bound musical, which features music and lyrics by John Bucchino, revolves around a Bronx family’s plans for a little wedding that quickly snowballs into an uncontrollable (and unaffordable) monster. The always adventurous British director John Doyle leads an A-list cast that includes Faith Prince and Tom Wopat.
Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, through Oct. 28. www.oldglobe.org
ART
The first large-scale museum show in the United States devoted to the Belgian-born, Mexico City-based artist, the UCLA Hammer Museum’s “Francis Alÿs: Politics of Rehearsal” will include paintings, drawings, films, videos and photography. More interested in repetition and recalibration than in the finished work, the former architect has examined the art of walking by pushing a block of ice through Mexico City until it melted. His political statements have included leading a flock of sheep into the Mexican capital’s central square to symbolize bureaucrats who authorized the suppression of a protest there in 1968.
UCLA Hammer Museum, through Feb. 10. www.hammer.ucla.edu
OCTOBER
2
POP MUSIC
Retro-soul is all the rage, and young revivalists such as Amy Winehouse have reaped the benefits. Now Sharon Jones will claim her due. The 51-year-old belter radiates maturity, wit and heart; her recordings with the Dap-Kings (whom Winehouse borrowed for her breakthrough album) set the standard for post-millennial funky stuff. The group’s newest, “100 Days, 100 Nights,” is a nonstop pleasure. And -- sweet justice -- she’ll grace the stage at soul’s mecca, the Apollo Theater in Harlem, tonight.
“100 Days, 100 Nights,” Daptone Records. Apollo Theater, New York. www.apollotheater.com
ART
Stormy weather was a specialty of British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), and it isn’t just the wind, rain, sky or roiling sea that displays gale force in his work. Paint, color and light churn and toss on his canvases, which went a long way toward defining the modern concept of the Romantic sublime. The 140 paintings and works on paper in the show at the National Gallery of Art constitute the largest, most comprehensive Turner retrospective ever.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., through Jan. 6. www.nga.gov
2, 4-7
DANCE
Dance companies seldom offer sequels to major successes (though some of us would love to know what happened to that newly married couple in Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring”). However, contemporary choreographer Lin Hwai-min has used Chinese calligraphy as the inspiration for three acclaimed works in his “Cursive” series. Now his Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is touring the third installment, “Wild Cursive,” to a number of U.S. venues. You can find it at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on these three nights (plus the afternoon of the 7th) and also in Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, on Oct. 13.
www.bam.org, www1.umn.edu
3
DANCE
With its large-scale orchestral and choral forces, Frederick Ashton’s “Daphnis and Chloe” is a big investment for any ballet company. But the Birmingham Royal Ballet is about to become the first company in England to perform this neglected one-act masterwork after the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, which premiered it in 1951. The story is an antique tale of abduction and miraculous escape, not unlike Ashton’s “Sylvia.” But the telling is much more original. Its premiere will allow a new audience to revel in Ravel and bask in Ashton’s luminous choreography.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham, England. www.brb.org.uk
5, 7
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Angela Hewitt, an elegant and communicative Bach pianist, will begin the daunting task of conveying Bach’s intimate “Well-Tempered Clavier,” 48 preludes and fugues, in a large space. She’ll be tackling the ultimate Bach keyboard challenge at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County over two evenings.
Orange County Performing Arts Center. www.ocpac.org
OPERA
“Appomattox,” Philip Glass’ 20-somethingth opera, receives its world premiere in San Francisco. It is hard to determine the exact number of Glass’ operas because the composer, a master of music theater, keeps messing with the form. But this one, commissioned by San Francisco Opera, promises to be on the more conventional side of the spectrum. The Civil War drama has a libretto by Christopher Hampton, who was librettist for Glass’ last opera, the deeply affecting “Waiting for the Barbarians,” and will star the popular American baritone Dwayne Croft as Robert E. Lee.
San Francisco Opera through Oct. 20. www.sfopera.com
7
ART
Cool might be today’s ubiquitous slang for unvarnished approval, but the paradoxical word went from meaning “chilly” to meaning “hot” barely 50 years ago. The looming question for “The Birth of the Cool: California Art & Design at Mid-Century” -- a sprawling interdisciplinary survey of artists, architects, musicians and designers who emerged in Southern California after World War II, making L.A. the epicenter of midcentury modern urbanity -- is this: Will the exhibition be as cool as they were?
Orange County Museum of Art through Jan. 6. www.ocma.net
ARCHITECTURE
Ever since its publication in 1971, Reyner Banham’s “Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies” has been a handbook for L.A. newbies and stalwarts alike. Now the local company Esotouric, where three of the hosts studied under the late professor when he taught at UC Santa Cruz, is launching a four-hour bus tour, “Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles,” to join such other offerings as “Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles: In a Lonely Place” and “John Fante: Dreams of Bunker Hill.”
www.esotouric.com
9
CLASSICAL MUSIC
The Gustavo Dudamel buzz couldn’t be buzzier, nor could the young Venezuelan conductor who’s set to become music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009 be busier. Even so, we hardly know him, so here is a welcome chance to find out more: the release of Dudamel’s second recording with his Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. The Caracas-based band of teens, who are a marvel of Venezuela’s unique music education program, performs Mahler’s powerful Fifth Symphony.
“Mahler 5,” Deutsche Grammophon.
10
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Bached out? Buck up. Three days after pianist Angela Hewitt finishes her traversal of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” at OCPAC, András Schiff, himself an elegant and thoughtful player, sets off on a cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas at Walt Disney Concert Hall that will take him two seasons to complete. (The second installment is Oct. 17.) The Hungarian pianist is also halfway through recording the sonatas, and the four volumes so far suggest that, with its clarity and focus, this will become a classic set.
Walt Disney Concert Hall. wdch.laphil.com
THEATER
In Jane Anderson’s new play, “The Quality of Life,” Laurie Metcalf plays a left-leaning woman with a dying husband; they live in a yurt because their house and its contents have been consumed by a brush fire. Company intrudes on their misery in the form of visiting relatives: a born-again couple trying to cope with the death of their daughter. The clash of outlooks plays out in this world-premiere production.
Geffen Playhouse, Westwood, through Nov. 18. www.geffenplayhouse.com
11-14
DANCE
An experiment in audience development, the “Fall for Dance” festival at the Orange County Performing Arts Center takes its inspiration from a successful annual series at New York City Center emphasizing creative variety and low ticket prices. Program 1 (Oct. 11-12) features works by Susan Marshall, Srishti from Britain, the Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and South Africa’s Via Katlehong Dance. Program 2 (Oct. 13-14) includes pieces by Charles Moulton, the Dutch National Ballet, Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, the Martha Graham Company and Rennie Harris Puremovement. Take your pick for $10 a ticket.
Orange County Performing Arts Center. www.ocpac.org
12
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Esa-Pekka Salonen starts working through all seven Sibelius symphonies in two weeks of concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. In the process, one Finn will face off with another -- this being the first time that the orchestra’s music director has directly confronted the complete symphonic oeuvre of his country’s most famous musician. The cycle will then become the centerpiece of the Philharmonic’s European tour in November.
Walt Disney Concert Hall through Oct. 26. www.laphil.org
DANCE
Choreographer Bill T. Jones has always challenged the contemporary dance world to be as edgy, opinionated and political as any art form anywhere. “Blind Date” continues this tradition by using the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and music by Daniel Bernard Roumain to depict the disintegration of tolerance and social progress at this juncture in history. Can exciting movement theater emerge from such a downbeat topic? It has before in Jones’ pieces about racism, catastrophic illness and natural disaster -- so expect to reap the whirlwind as well as be upbraided for complacency.
Royce Hall, UCLA; also Oct. 13. www.uclalive.org
THEATER
A woman quits smoking and gets lost in a haze of paralyzing self-analysis and friendly advice. That’s the premise of Michael John LaChiusa’s musical “Little Fish,” which premiered off-Broadway in 2003, netting unfavorable comparisons to Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” as an evocation of an urban single’s angst. But for L.A.’s Blank Theatre, LaChiusa is the Big One That Never Gets Away: “Little Fish,” having its West Coast premiere, will be its fifth production of his work, with the cast singing unamplified in the intimate Hollywood space.
Blank Theatre through Nov. 18. www.theblank.com
13
ART
South African artist William Kentridge calls his home-made animation technique “stone age filmmaking,” which he creates by photographing successive charcoal drawings -- but always on the same sheet of paper to preserve traces of the previous drawing in each new image. Kentridge is one of 14 artists who have adapted animation concepts and technologies for their work and are featured in the San Diego Museum of Art’s “Animated Painting.” The exhibition also has works by Julian Opie and Kota Ezawa. Some pieces include music.
San Diego Museum of Art through Jan. 13. www.sdmart.org
14
ART
There’s more to Salvador Dali than paintings of melting watches. “Dali & Film,” the first exhibition to focus on the relationship between the Spanish Surrealist’s paintings and his collaborations with filmmakers, argues that his fascination with the cinema was essential to the development of his career. While bringing films to life in fantastical paintings, he infused the big screen with an otherworldly perspective.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Jan. 6. www.lacma.org
16
ART
If you didn’t get enough ancient Egyptian bling at 2005’s King Tut exhibition at the L.A. County Museum of Art, head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for “Gifts for the Gods: Images From Egyptian Temples.” The show focuses less on jewels and riches for a tomb than on the art and significance of metal statuary from places of worship. It includes statues spanning 2,000 years, including rare examples from the high point in Egyptian metalwork, 1070-664 BC.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through Feb. 18. www.metmuseum.org
18
ARCHITECTURE
With concert ticket prices going up, up, up, audiences want bang for their buck. Nokia Theatre L.A. Live should deliver. It’s the prestige spot in a huge project by developer AEG that eventually will surround the Staples Center with a smaller club, an open-air plaza and a hotel. The theater’s 7,100-seat capacity makes it just bigger than the Greek and perfect for an “intimate” big event. The opening bill fills the bill: It teams newly reactivated L.A. icons the Eagles with their favorite ladies, the Dixie Chicks.
The Eagles and the Dixie Chicks, Oct. 18, 20, 21, 24, 26, 27.
OPERA
Louis Andriessen -- the hard-edged Dutch Minimalist and composer of three memorable, politically biting, beautifully made and sometimes shocking operas -- is completing a fourth based on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” The premiere will be in Amsterdam in June in a production directed by the filmmaker Hal Hartley, but the Los Angeles Master Chorale will preview one of the score’s five sections, “The City of Dis,” at Disney Hall. Andriessen describes it as being close to Fellini in spirit -- “part nightmare, part dream.”
Walt Disney Concert Hall. www.lamc.org
ARCHITECTURE
One of the few prominent architecture firms in the U.S. run by women, Hariri & Hariri was founded in 1986 in New York City by Iranian-born sisters. Gisue and Mojgan Hariri studied architecture at Cornell and worked briefly for established New York firms before hanging out their own shingle. Although they are still best known in academic circles, where their digital design work has been influential, and for a series of sumptuous private residences, they are beginning to operate on a larger -- and more public -- scale. Gisue Hariri will present the firm’s work at 6:30 p.m. as part of LACMA’s Masters of Architecture lecture series.
Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. www.lacma.org
19
THEATER
Ian McKellen will have to bring all his immense theatrical cunning to Royce Hall when he stars in the UCLA Live presentation of the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” The formidable Trevor Nunn directs these two very different classics, one panoramically tragic, the other intimately comic -- yet both providing spectacular opportunities for a master actor to showcase his wizardry.
Royce Hall, UCLA, through Oct. 28. www.uclalive.org
19-20
POP MUSIC
If they’re not the world’s premier Latino power couple, who is? On their first tour together, Jennifer Lopez & Marc Anthony will make two Southern California stops: at Staples Center, then Honda Center in Anaheim.
www.juntosenconcierto.com
19-21
DANCE
He was born in 1894 and quickly became the greatest female impersonator Chinese dance theater had ever known -- an international drag celebrity, in fact. But the Communist era considered his stylized artifice passé if not corrupt and “reformed” it out of existence at the Peking Opera. Now, however, the Guangzhou Ballet of China is bringing the full-length ballet “Mei Lanfang” to the UC Berkeley campus. With music by Liu Tingyu and choreography by Fu Xingbang and Zhang Dandan, this biographical tribute in dance proves anew that one generation’s bête noire is the next generation’s white swan.
Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu
20
DANCE
Forty-two years after he founded it, Ronn Guidi is taking back the reins of the Oakland Ballet, a company that gained international recognition under his leadership for its ambitious premieres and especially its painstaking revivals and reconstructions of lost classical repertory. In the last decade, it suffered under other directors from declining popularity and flagging financial support. But now that Guidi has come out of retirement at age 71, his opening program is attracting the same attention as everything the company did in its heyday.
Paramount Theatre, Oakland. www.paramounttheatre.com
20-21
DANCE
In “Mozart Dances,” the Mark Morris Dance Group has a full-evening work set to the Piano Concerto No. 11, the Sonata in D for Two Pianos and the Piano Concerto No. 27: Amadeus at his most sprightly and sophisticated. The New York Times called the result (featuring 16 dancers and backdrops by British artist Howard Hodgkin) “magical,” and the work was recently telecast on PBS -- though not in Los Angeles. Attending to Mozart in L.A. will be pianists Garrick Ohlsson and Yoko Nozaki, along with an orchestra conducted by Jane Glover. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion www.musiccenter.org
21
ART
A master of illusion, perception and experiential effects, Robert Irwin played a leading role in defining the West Coast’s ethereal Light and Space movement in the late 1960s. Having moved from Abstract Expressionist painting to Minimalist canvases to breathtaking installations that appear to be composed of pure nothingness, he also has taken on commissioned projects, such as the Getty Center’s central garden. You can track his evolution in this two-part survey.
“Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries,” Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through Feb. 23 at the Jacobs Building and April 13 at 1001 Kettner. www.mcasd.org
ART
If you went to Rome on the Grand Tour in the mid-18th century, you might have had your portrait painted by Pompeo Batoni -- if you were lucky. The most celebrated Roman painter of his day, he recorded the visits of international travelers and produced eagerly collected portrayals of historical events, religious subjects and mythological themes. “Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-Century Rome” will mark the tercentenary of the artist’s birth.
Museum of Fine Arts Houston through Jan. 27. www.mfah.org
23
POP MUSIC
The highly anticipated new album by Colombian singer-songwriter Juanes is due in stores. After exploding onto the scene in 2001 with seven Latin Grammy nominations for his first solo album, Juanes set chart records with two follow-ups that disappointed some critics but made him an international superstar. Universal is planning a global push for his fourth and most accomplished work, which recaptures the soul and artistry of his still relevant debut.
“La Vida Es un Ratico,” Surco/Universal.
POP MUSIC
Hard rock leftist brainiac Serj Tankian gained fame, represented for California’s Armenian community and helped refresh the heavy metal subgenre in the musically dazzling band System of a Down. Now the glamorously bearded tenor is offering his first solo album. Recorded in his Calabasas home studio, the CD is reportedly a more intimate affair than SOAD’s output -- it features opera singer Ani Maldjian, synthesizer forays and some acoustic numbers -- but it’s still likely to rip your head off.
“Elect the Dead,” Serjical Strike/Reprise.
POP MUSIC
Carrie Underwood’s late-summer single, “So Small,” is a by-the-book uplifting ballad about not sweating the frustrating stuff, but it’s also a stunning vocal performance, the kind that’s making the former “Idol” winner a classic country artist at age 24. She’s a true Nashville professional, wringing heartfelt emotion out of well-deployed clichés by modulating her powerhouse voice to capture every emotional turn. Expect more triple-axel performances on her sophomore album, which may or may not be titled “Carnival Ride.”
Arista Records.
27
ART
Pies, cakes, scoops of ice cream, gum balls, all rendered in paint that itself looks good enough to eat -- those are the signature subjects of painter Wayne Thiebaud, who, startlingly, will turn 87 in November. The time, however, is always ripe for an exhibition of this scion of Long Beach, and that’s what the Laguna Art Museum is presenting with “Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting.” If you go, expect to see a lot of smiling faces.
Laguna Art Museum through Jan. 27. www.lagunaartmuseum.org
ART
Since her death in 1954, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s fame has grown steadily. She’s become a feminist icon (played on film by Salma Hayek), and her mustachioed visage has adorned beaded screens, bamboo fans, tin hearts and untold other knickknacks. All of which has tended to obscure her genuine achievement. Now, to mark the 100th anniversary of her birth, Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center is mounting a retrospective that, with about 50 paintings, will include about a third of her output. When it leaves the Twin Cities, it will go first to Philadelphia, then arrive in San Francisco in June.
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. www.walkerart.org
DANCE
Although American Ballet Theatre is best known in the Southland for woozy stagings of 19th century war horses, back home in New York the company periodically abandons the cavernous Metropolitan Opera House for contemporary work at the more intimate City Center. There it’s premiering a provocative collaboration (as yet untitled) between Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo and composer Philip Glass. Even if the new work turns out to be a triumph, it’s unlikely to turn up on the invariably conservative ABT programs out here, but it’s nice to know that the company believes in ballet as a living art.
New York City Center. www.abt.org
27-29
POP MUSIC
Summer pop festivals can be a drag, with the heat, the fried food and the smelly Porta-Potties seriously undercutting the pleasure of the music. So how about an October fest? Vegoose pegs itself to Halloween -- and since it happens in Sin City, plenty of carnival-esque shenanigans take place. This year’s lineup includes Rage Against the Machine, Mastodon, Lupe Fiasco, Daft Punk and the Stooges (performing their classic “Fun House” album) along with special nighttime club shows by Michael Franti and Spearhead, moe. and more.
Sam Boyd Stadium and surrounding venues, Las Vegas. www.vegoose.com
28
ART
Art and TV are typically oil and water. The complex and contradictory nuance of one is usually flattened by the blunt stereotyping common in the other. Now in its fourth season, the PBS series “Art in the Twenty-First Century” bucks that rule by letting well-known artists speak for themselves. What Robert Ryman, Mark Bradford, Nancy Spero, Lari Pittman, Alfredo Jaar and the rest have to say may or may not change your judgments of their art, but the commentary is unlikely to be dull.
Public Broadcasting Service, through Nov. 18. www.pbs.org
THEATER
In a tale sure to reverberate in seismically challenged Los Angeles, Bolivia’s Teatro de los Andes’ “En un Sol Amarillo, Memorias de un Temblor” (In a Yellow Sun, Memories of an Earthquake), directed by César Brie, re-creates the corruption and social upheaval in the wake of Bolivia’s massive 1998 quake. It will be performed in Spanish with English supertitles.
Kirk Douglas Theatre through Nov 25. www.centertheatregroup.org
ARCHITECTURE
“You’ve gotta be a showman,” David Adjaye said a few years back, when he was already a bright young thing on the British building scene, designing houses for the likes of Ewan McGregor and Alexander McQueen. Now the Mile-High City becomes the first U.S. location for the Ghanaian Adjaye’s brand of “emotive” architecture with the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver. Clad in etched gray glass, the building, according to its chief curator, “is a museum without a door, where one enters through a corridor which becomes a transition between the street experience and the museum experience.”
www.mcartdenver.org
29
ART
Takashi Murakami is Japan’s answer to Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons. A walking, talking creation of Pop culture, he’s an artist-entrepreneur who ignores yesterday’s boundaries between high and low art, production and consumption. This mega-exhibition will offer 90 paintings, sculptures, installations and films, not to mention a fully functioning shop stocked with handbags and accessories designed by the artist for Louis Vuitton.
Museum of Contemporary Art through Feb. 11. www.moca.org
30
ART
You don’t have to go to Cleveland this fall. A big load of the city’s artistic riches is coming to L.A. in “Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasure: Medieval Masterworks From the Cleveland Museum of Art.” The 125-piece compendium will offer a view of Medieval European culture in paintings, sculptures, metalwork, decorative arts, textiles and illuminated manuscripts.
Getty Center through Jan. 20. www.getty.edu
POP MUSIC
This summer, the Internet got leaky for R&B; boy wonder Chris Brown. A cut from his in-the-works sophomore release made the rounds -- and when it became an unexpected hit, people started whispering that the kid’s new effort might be a monster hit. Subsequent tracks, including a blatantly club-banging T-Pain collaboration, “Kiss Kiss,” support the assertion.
“Exclusive,” Jive Records.
31
WORLD MUSIC
At 25, CéU (pronounced “cell”) is already well on her way to establishing herself as the next fascinating musical export from Brazil. Her music combines Brazilian soul, American jazz, global electronica and a trace of dub with the irresistible rhythms of the samba -- a relaxed blend that Brazilians describe as malemolência. And her self-titled initial recording is receiving high visibility as part of Starbucks’ Debut CD series.
El Rey Theatre. www.theelrey.com
NOVEMBER
1-2
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela will appear live, at last, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in what will be both the American debut of his amazing student orchestra and Dudamel’s first appearance here since the announcement of his appointment as the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s next music director. The 26-year-old maestro will lead two evenings of concerts -- set to include Beethoven’s and Mahler’s fifth symphonies -- before heading off to Carnegie Hall to make his New York debut.
Walt Disney Concert Hall. www.laphil.org
3
ART
Featuring more than 130 paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings made over more than half a century, “Jasper Johns: Gray” will demonstrate what the venerable American artist’s work has in common with thunderclouds, ashes, a hornet’s nest and a flannel suit. As such, the show -- to be seen first in Chicago, then at New York’s Metropolitan Museum -- is likely to be, by turns, ominous, melancholy, mordant and warmly sensual.
Art Institute of Chicago through Jan. 6. www.artic.edu
4
ART
When the Getty Center last year erected an elevator tower adjacent to Martin Puryear’s monumental outdoor sculpture “That Profile,” the work’s site-specific relationship to the landscape was thoughtlessly disrupted. Now that the sculptor is the subject of a major retrospective at the world’s most important modern art museum, it will be interesting to see whether the Getty takes steps to rectify its grievous error.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, through Jan. 16. www.moma.org
THEATER
Having asked New Yorkers, with “The Coast of Utopia,” to attend a trio of plays about three decades in the lives of some 19th century Russian intellectuals -- and been rewarded with his fourth Tony Award for best play -- Tom Stoppard now will be represented on Broadway with “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which spans two decades in the late 20th century. Stoppard looks at Czechoslovakia from the perspectives of Prague, where a rock band represents resistance to the Communist regime, and Cambridge, where love and death shape the lives of three generations of the family of a Marxist philosopher. Brian Cox, Sinéad Cusack and Rufus Sewell, who created their roles in London, star.
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York. www.shubertorganization.com
8
THEATER
The screenplay of Mel Brooks’ first movie, “The Producers,” may have won him an Oscar, but the film’s critical reception was, shall we say, underwhelming. So what did Brooks do? In 2001, he turned the picture into a musical comedy that received 12 Tony Awards, earned untold millions and became part of Broadway history. By contrast, Brooks’ 1974 film “Young Frankenstein” was rapturously received by critics, but its screenplay failed to take home the Oscar. So what did Brooks do? He turned the picture into a musical comedy. Likely outcome? World domination.
Hilton Theatre, New York. www.youngfrankensteinthemusical.com
CLASSICAL MUSIC
“Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind,” for klezmer-tinged clarinet and string quartet, was Osvaldo Golijov’s first big hit. Now he has arranged it for orchestra, turning it into a de facto clarinet concerto, and that version will be given its first Southern California performance in Orange County by the Pacific Symphony at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall with David Krakauer, who premiered both the string quartet and concerto versions, as the soloist.
Orange County Performing Arts Center. www.pacificsymphony.org
8-9
DANCE
It’s been eight years since local audiences sampled the groundbreaking, eye-opening, challenging, frustrating, genre-bending dance theater of German-born choreographer and company director Pina Bausch. But the wait is over, because the UCLA Live series is bringing the Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal back in “Ten Chi,” Bausch’s typically ironic look at some of the paradoxes in contemporary Japanese life. Expect your whole conception of dance to be challenged, if not overturned, by a woman who’s always said that she’s less interested in how people move than in what moves people.
Royce Hall, UCLA. www.uclalive.org
8-11
DANCE
Currently led by pianist and bandoneón player Cristian Zarate, Tango Buenos Aires is a much-traveled Argentine ensemble coming to the Orange County Performing Arts Center. On a previous tour, a Times reviewer called its performance “the rawest and grittiest of recent touring tango revues, refusing to Frenchify, balleticize or glamorize the tango idiom.” This edition features choreography by the classically trained Lidia Segni, who came to the company after a long association with Argentine ballet star Julio Bocca, himself a tango aficionado (and who in Argentina isn’t?).
Orange County Performing Arts Center. www.ocpac.org.
9
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Think of either the morning, the afternoon or the evening, John Cage advises in his instructions to the “18 Microtonal Ragas” of his epic “Song Books.” Then Cage suggests that the singer freely vocalize in such a way as to give “a description or account of recent pleasures or beauties noticed.” Amelia Cuni, an Indian-trained Italian German experimental singer, offers her account of pleasures or beauties in a rare performance of the 18 ragas (also known as “Solo for Voice 58”) at REDCAT.
Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater. www.redcat.org
POP MUSIC
Indie artists love to rock it symphonically, especially in Los Angeles, where bands such as the Decemberists and Belle and Sebastian have gone “with strings” to much acclaim. No such collaboration is quite as appropriate as Joanna Newsom fronting the L.A. Philharmonic. The Munchkin-voiced neo-hippie harpist was classically trained at Mills College, works far outside the three-minute pop-song box and understands romanticism and the humoresque as well as any tuxedo-wearing dandy. This performance is to feature orchestrations by Newsom’s recent collaborator Van Dyke Parks.
Walt Disney Concert Hall. www.wdch.laphil.com
THEATER
They called Ray Charles “the Genius.” Will genius also elevate “Ray Charles Live!,” the new musical in which scenes from his life are woven around selections from his songbook? Audiences can find out whether Pulitzer Prize-winning book writer Suzan-Lori Parks and director Sheldon Epps have done their subject justice in a treatment that uses Charles’ final recording session as a point of departure for the storytelling.
Pasadena Playhouse through Dec. 9. www.pasadenaplayhouse.org
13-14
CLASSICAL MUSIC
The Berlin Philharmonic, led by Simon Rattle, begins the first of two nights at Carnegie Hall as the centerpiece of the New York venue’s monthlong tribute to the German capital and its culture. The Phil’s programs include the American premieres of major new orchestral works by Thomas Adès and Magnus Lindberg, composers who also have close associations with the L.A. Philharmonic.
Carnegie Hall, New York. www.carnegiehall.org
14
THEATER
Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys” won multiple Tonys in 2006 for its dramatically comic portrait of a group of teenage whiz kids striving to make the leap from their lower- middle-class high school to the upper-class bastions of Oxford and Cambridge. Who knows how this touring production’s new, largely American cast will fare in a play that’s unabashedly British in all its eccentricity and eloquence? But there can be no doubt about the power of Bennett’s compassionate humor and intelligence.
Ahmanson Theatre through Dec. 9. www.centertheatregroup.org
THEATER
Aaron Sorkin, creator of TV’s “West Wing,” returns to Broadway with a new play, “The Farnsworth Invention,” about the legal battle over who would reap the credit and spoils for inventing television -- Philo T. Farnsworth, who dreamed up the technology as an Idaho farm boy and beamed the first experimental TV signal in 1927, or the corporate giant RCA and its combative executive, David Sarnoff, who had the wherewithal to tie up Farnsworth in court while exploiting his invention. The show, to be directed by Des McAnuff, is Sorkin’s first play since his career-making 1989 Broadway success, “A Few Good Men.”
Music Box Theatre, New York. www.farnsworthonbroadway.com
15
ART
Works on paper, films, videos, books, posters, public commissions, multiples and audio works. Sounds like the output of a Conceptual artist? Right. And that’s what the retrospective devoted to New York-based Lawrence Weiner (b. 1941), considered one of the central figures of Conceptualism, will offer at Manhattan’s Whitney Museum. Called “As Far as the Eye Can See,” the show was co-organized by L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where it will land in mid-April.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, through Feb. 10. www.whitney.org
18
THEATER
“Cry-Baby,” the latest musical based on a John Waters film, is to be unveiled at La Jolla Playhouse and seems destined to have a riotous future. The book is by funnymen Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, who also adapted Waters’ “Hairspray” for the stage, and the director is Mark Brokaw, whose Broadway revivals of “Reckless” and “The Constant Wife” demonstrated crack comic timing. Songwriters David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger may not have much of a theatrical track record, but risk-taking is what Waters has been all about.
La Jolla Playhouse through Dec. 16. www.lajollaplayhouse.org
18-19
DANCE
It provoked a riot at its premiere in 1913, but “The Rite of Spring” marked a turning point in the history of music and dance. Now this daring collaboration between composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky has become the subject of a project by postmodern innovator Yvonne Rainer. Titled “Ros Indexical,” the piece is on view in New York as part of the Performa 07 arts festival. Obviously, the aftershocks of 1913 still reverberate in the art world, and Rainer will supply an update in her millennial reimagining.
Hudson Theatre, New York. www.performa-arts.org
20
DANCE
Call him Rumi, though he’s officially Mawlânâ Jalâl-ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî, a venerated teacher, poet and mystic who also invented a dance form. The Whirling Dervishes of Turkey have made that form a model of selflessness and spirituality, though as they celebrate his 800th birthday with their performance at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, we should remember that Rumi’s love of a young man, and agony after his murder, caused him to whirl for the first time. It was union with a lost beloved that moved him. Union with God and the formality of a religious rite came later.
Irvine Barclay Theatre. www.thebarclay.org
20-25
DANCE
George Balanchine’s most distinctive neoclassical muse stages unusual compilations of his works when the Suzanne Farrell Ballet performs at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Program 1 includes “Bugaku” (to Mayuzumi), “Pas Espanole Classique” from Balanchine’s “Don Quixote” (to Nabokov) and “Chaconne” (to Gluck), featuring guest dancers from the Cincinnati Ballet. Program 2 begins with “Bugaku” and then presents “Ballade” (to Fauré), “Pithoprakta” (to Xenakis), “Meditation” (to Tchaikovsky) and the fourth movement of “Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet” (Brahms orchestrated by Schoenberg).
Kennedy Center Opera House, Washington, D.C. www.kennedy-center.org.
21
POP MUSIC
If countercultural myths are to be believed, we all dream of being Bob Dylan: Aside from being an epically great songwriter and a masterfully elusive dude, he’s the most preoccupying archetype the rock era has produced. His autobiography was probably partly fictional, so when Todd Haynes cast six actors as Dylan in “I’m Not There” (including 13-year-old Marcus Carl Franklin and, in drag king mode, Cate Blanchett), he did the logical thing. The director’s past forays into music culture -- including the vastly underrated “Velvet Goldmine” -- indicate that this will be the loved-and-hated art house film of the year. Amazing soundtrack too.
In select theaters.
23
ART
They dubbed it the Master Plan Project: the renovation of the distinguished Detroit Institute of Arts, composed of the original 1927 structure and two wings built in the late ‘60s. The costs of construction and of reinstalling the collection were estimated at more than $100 million. Then came the news that asbestos removal would tack on $50-plus million more, along with an additional year of work. But the museum is at last reopening with its encyclopedic holdings freshly displayed and appropriate fanfare in Motor City.
Detroit Institute of Arts. www.dia.org
DANCE
George Balanchine’s “Jewels” continues its conquest of the ballet world, with the latest company to take it on being England’s Royal Ballet. The British troupe once scorned Balanchine’s style of plotless neoclassicism but in recent years has added more and more of his works to its repertory, including “Rubies,” the centerpiece of this three-part, 1967 full-evening abstraction. Now “Emeralds” and “Diamonds” will complete the trilogy, adding new glitter to the Covent Garden season and confirming “Jewels” as the touchstone of 20th century classicism -- one of the few works that every major company must measure itself against.
Royal Opera House, London. www.royaloperahouse.org
30
CLASSICAL MUSIC
John Adams’ Chamber Symphony, in which Schoenberg meets Road Runner cartoons, is one of his most successful works (and a regular part of the L.A. Philharmonic’s repertory). Now Adams has composed a follow-up, called “Son of Chamber Symphony,” that will be given its world premiere at Stanford University by the new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound.
Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, Palo Alto. www.livelyarts.stanford.edu
DECEMBER
1
ARCHITECTURE
Museum openings and extensions keep coming so fast in this country that, architecturally, they can seem a dime a dozen. But the $35-million new branch of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York has been highly anticipated since the first renderings were published. Designed by SANAA, the Tokyo-based firm whose sublime Glass Pavilion at the Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art garnered top-notch notices last year, the New Museum’s home, along the Bowery in Lower Manhattan, features a modest tower of loosely stacked, nearly windowless galleries: 60,000 square feet of Japanese cool.
www.newmuseum.org
3
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Born and raised in Romania, a citizen of France and a Swiss resident, Horatiu Radulescu is a questing composer of other weird worlds. His strange, spectral, spiritually evocative experimental music (his second piano sonata has the title “being and non-being create each other”) has made him a cult figure in Europe, yet he remains all but unknown in the U.S. Monday Evening Concerts figures to change all that by opening its season with a program devoted to this curious composer.
Zipper Concert Hall, Colburn School. www.mondayeveningconcerts.org
22
DANCE
When you’re listed in tourist magazines as one of the monuments of modern Argentina, you can’t just quietly retire. So ballet star Julio Bocca’s official farewell performance at the outdoor Obelisco arena in Buenos Aires will be a public blowout closer to a royal abdication than an ordinary gracias-y-adios event. Still disarmingly boyish at 40, Bocca has long been a force for creative experiment and new choreography in his native land. So don’t cry for him, Argentina: Nobody really expects Bocca to leave dance and take up Parcheesi.
Obelisco, Buenos Aires.
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