Tag Archives: UCLA

ABDULLAH IBRAHIM — FOR HUGH MASEKELA

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This weekend at Royce Hall, Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya will celebrate the late Hugh Masekela and pay tribute to South Africa’s first black jazz band The Jazz Epistles—the collaboration between the Dollar Brand Trio from Cape Town, Kippie Moeketsi from Johannesburg, and Moeketsi’s protégés Jonas Gwangwa and Masekela.

(Dollar Brand would later be known as Abdullah Ibrahim and his Trio, with Johnny Gertze on bass, and Early Mabuza or Makaya Ntshoko on drums. At the Royce Hall concert, Freddie Hendrix will play trumpet.)

“Mr. Ibrahim’s stark pianism and gently rapturous compositions are steeped in the bright harmonies and bouncing rhythms of his native Cape Town, and they seem to suggest that escape or transcendence could almost be possible. But then there’s the inevitable longing for home, for harmony, for rest. He lives in that balance.”*

 

ABDULLAH IBRAHIM & EKAYA IN TRIBUTE TO THE JAZZ EPISTLES, Saturday, March 3, at 8 pm.

ROYCE HALL, UCLA, 10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles.

cap.ucla.edu/jazz_epistles

nytimes.com/jazz-epistles-abdullah-ibrahim-review

hughmasekela.co.za/family-statement

abdullahibrahim.co.za

Abdullah Ibrahim.

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CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

“I am glad that in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, we are getting off the chest some of the terrible things that we have to say about human fate. I want to keep the core of the play very hard… as hard and fierce as Big Daddy… A terrible black anger and ferosity, a rock-bottom honesty. Only against this background can his moments of tenderness, of longing, move us deeply.

“This is a play about good bastards and good bitches. I mean it exposes the startling co-existence of good and evil, the shocking duality of the single heart.” — Tennessee Williams, in a 1954 letter to Elia Kazan*

Jack O’Connell and Sienna Miller star as Brick and Maggie (Colm Meaney is Big Daddy) in the best revival in years of Williams’ 1955 classic. Recently on the boards at the Apollo in London, this raw-edged Young Vic production was directed by Benedict Andrews.

The first of two L.A. Theatre Works presentations of the National Theatre Live broadcast will screen this weekend at UCLA.

 

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF—NTLive screening

Sunday, February 25, at 3 pm.

Saturday, March 10, at 3 pm.

James Bridges Theater, UCLA

235 Charles E. Young Drive, Los Angeles.

Sienna Miller and Jack O’Connell in the 2017 Young Vic production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

SONDHEIM’S FOLLIES

FOLLIES—a psychological, philosophical memory play with showstoppers (“Broadway Baby,” “Who’s That Woman,” “Losing My Mind,” and the trouper’s biographical tour de force “I’m Still Here”)—is Sondheim at zenith, brilliantly staged in its current London revival by director Dominic Cooke, and available to Los Angeles audiences via a series of National Theatre Live screenings presented at UCLA by L.A. Theatre Works.

Set in a half-destroyed Broadway theater, the original producer and co-director Hal Prince was inspired by a photograph of Gloria Swanson—dressed to the nines—standing amid the wreckage of New York’s Roxy.

The show takes place during an onstage, thirty-year reunion party of former chorus girls, where they are joined by the ghosts of their younger selves—a musical confluence of the past and the present, and a brilliant demonstration of how illusion unchecked feeds regret.

“[FOLLIES] does not condemn the past… it condemns our tendency to hide behind a false depiction of the past rather than let ourselves be confronted by the reality of the future.” — Bert Fink*

Imelda Staunton and Janie Dee—wonderful interpreters of Sondheim’s material—stand out as once-best friends Sally and Phyllis.

 

FOLLIES—NTLIVE screening

Sunday, December 17, at 3 pm.

Saturday, January 13, at 3 pm.

Sunday, January 21, at 3 pm.

JAMES BRIDGES THEATER, UCLA, 235 Charles E. Young Drive, Los Angeles.

web.ovationtix.com

latw.org/HD

 

FOLLIES, through January 3.

OLIVIER THEATRE, National Theatre, Upper Ground, South Bank, London.

nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/follies

*Bert Fink—program notes for the 1985 New York Philharmonic FOLLIES concert at Avery Fisher (now Geffen) Hall—in Ted Chapin, Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (New York: Knopf, 2003)

From top: original 1971 Broadway poster by Donald E. Byrd, reflects the Art Deco revival of the time; scenes from the 2017 National Theatre production of Follies, by Stephen Sondheim, including Imelda Staunton as Sally, sitting on a stoop.

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04004 Imelda Staunton as Sally Durant Plummer in FOLLIES at the National Theatre (c) Johan Persson

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BEST OF 2014: LOS ANGELES CULTURE’S TOP 10

2014 was an exciting year for Los Angeles, when the world finally acknowledged the city’s ascendancy as America’s culture capitol. It was a banner year for gentrification, with rising real estate prices forcing residents out of neighborhoods now deemed “hip”, like Highland Park and the L.A. River’s string of warehouses, renamed the “Arts District”–making Los Angeles the least affordable rental market in the country. And in the midst of all this, L.A.’s repertoire of museums, top galleries, nonprofit art institutions, and artist networks continued to grow at a stunning rate.

Here are ten of my favorite events (and places) of the year:

1. Mike Kelley at MOCA

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The New York Times called it a “game-changer” for Los Angeles and the international contemporary art world. For countless L.A. artists, though, the work of multimedia master Mike Kelley had been an inspiration for decades, since Kelley’s days as a CalArts wunderkind and later years teaching at Art Center College of Art and Design. Ending its tour at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary from MoMA PS1 and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the show featured over 250 works over all of the Geffen’s 55,000 square feet of exhibition space with videos, room-sized installations, drawings, intimate sculptures, and a large gallery featuring all of Kelley’s transfixing Kandor sculptures. Kelley addressed broken dreams and childhood trauma in every imaginable medium, to truly moving effect.

2. Paramount Ranch Art Fair

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Only in L.A. would an international art fair occupy the clapboard storefronts of an abandoned Western saloon town movie set. In late January, several dozen galleries from New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, and other cities around the world set up shop on the dusty wood floors of Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, used by Paramount Studios in the 1930s and ’40s to film Westerns. The atmosphere was palpably relaxed: patrons roamed with beers in hand, participating in a collaborative painting project hosted by Ooga Booga and watching projection-mapped performances by artist duo Animal Charm.

3. The Ace Hotel

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Although arguably not an event, the Ace Hotel opened in the historic United Artists building on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles in late January, and from the very start became of hub of music and art. The hotel’s Spanish gothic theater has hosted talks with art world luminaries like John Baldessari and Hans Ulrich Obrist, film previews of movies like Inherent Vice, and concerts by big-ticket bands like Coldplay. Patti Smith is slated to perform there next month. Many have credited the Ace for revitalizing South Broadway, which since early January has become home to atelier Acne Studios, Aesop, Tanner Goods, and OAK, among others.

4. Paris Photo

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Yet another “only in L.A.” fair, 2014’s Los Angeles edition of Paris Photo, the international fine art photography fair from Paris, was held in the historic New York City backlot of Paramount Studios. Fake brownstones in facsimiles of NYC’s Upper East and West Sides, Greenwich Village, and even Downtown neighborhoods held photographic work from galleries on four continents. Meandering through the streets of the elaborate urban set, one couldn’t help but think of Jean Beaudrillard’s simulacrum. Most ingeniously, Paris Photo’s location embodied the illusion and artifice inherent in the photographic image.

5. Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films at UCLA CAP

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It was difficult to choose a favorite event from the packed fall calendar of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, formerly UCLA Live. The same month that featured a performance of Japanese sound artist Ryoji Ikeda’s Superposition also brought together four incredible musicians to live-score never-before-seen short films by Andy Warhol. Soundless and often shot in a fixed position, the films were brilliantly accompanied by Martin Rev of Suicide, Tom Verlaine of Television, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, and Eleanor Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces.

6. Made in L.A.

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Just south of UCLA’s campus, the Hammer Museum hosted its second installment of the ambitious Los Angeles biennial, Made in L.A. The show featured 35 Los Angeles-based artists with “an emphasis on emerging and under-recognized artists” (though as Artforum pointed out, it wasn’t clear who wasn’t recognizing whom). The exhibition occupied every gallery space at the Hammer–unprecedented in the museum’s 20 year history–and was the first major biennial exhibition to feature a majority of women artists. From curator Connie Butler’s collaboration with the ONE Archives to the phenomenal programming–superb films, live courtyard performances, debauched dance parties (co-hosted by KCRW), KCHUNG Radio’s TV studio in the museum lobby, and Piero Golia’s live-sculpting project of George Washington’s nose from Mt. Rushmore–Made in L.A. was not to be missed.

7. CicLAvia

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Los Angeles’ wildly popular CicLAvia biking-advocacy group shut down city streets between Echo Park and Boyle Heights this fall, opening scenic routes through downtown Los Angeles to cyclists from all over the county. Legitimizing years of DIY “protest rides” by biker crews like Crank Mob and Critical Mass, CicLAvia lobbied the city to close major streets to automobile traffic for just a few days a year. The event turned out hundreds of street vendors and nonprofit organizations. Most impressively, the city’s financial burden was shouldered entirely by the increase in Metro ridership, from bikers traveling to the starting line by train.

8. FYF Fest

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Turning 10 this year, FYF has grown fast…very fast. Started by then-18-year-old L.A. native Sean Carlson in 2004, the festival ditched its R-rated name (Fuck Yeah Fest) several years later, when it moved from the Echoplex to the Los Angeles State Historic Park to accommodate headliners like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Rapture, James Blake, and Devendra Banhart. Since its inception, FYF has been committed to showcasing the best new talent in independent music, and 2014 was no different. Although the two-day fête’s new digs at Exposition Park were a bit chaotic, stellar performances by Chet Faker, Darkside, Flying Lotus, Grimes, Mac Demarco, Jamie xx, and many others–as well as independent vinyl record vendors and nonprofit booths–kept the spirit alive and well.

9. A Club Called Rhonda

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This year the formerly “underground” bimonthly dance party A Club Called Rhonda bubbled up and spilled over the edges of LA’s nightlife scene like a boiling tidal wave. For the club night’s circle of self-styled “pansexual partiers, “[Rhonda] is the uncompromising queen: pushing thirsty throngs into the the loud and living throne of Dionysus through this thing we call body music.” In 2014, ACCR’s stage at the Pacific Coast festival in Newport Beach hit the front page of the Los Angeles Times; this month, its founders were featured in a large LA Weekly spread. Rhonda International now offers Caribbean cruises and a hedonistic poolside party at Palm Springs’ Ace Hotel during the Coachella music festival. While the hype might appear to stick mostly for the club’s effective branding and outrageous style, nothing matters more than music: past Rhonda DJs have included house-thumping favorites Basement Jaxx, Todd Edwards, Little Boots, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, and Etienne de Crecy, and its New Years Eve 2015 extravaganza at the Standard Hotel will feature electronic duo Hot Chip.

10. Pierre Huyghe at LACMA

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Last, but certainly not least, is French conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe’s new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Traveling from the Centre Pompidou, the LACMA installation is arguably the museum’s most ambitious for any contemporary exhibition yet. Shifting video screens, a ceiling Pong game, briny tanks of sea plants and crustaceans, a rink of black ice, a live beehive and dog, and a whirring snow machine are just a few of the show’s surprises–yet far from gimmicky, they combine to form an austerely beautiful whole. This totally immersive experience is not to be missed.

Thank you for reading the Paris, LA blog this year! As 2015 begins, we hope you join us and get lost in familiar places…