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I felt as if I was on the set of a Star Wars film when I entered the famous Mount Wilson Observatory 100-inch telescope structure to attend the inaugural “Cosmic Sounds” music and stargazing event. After a magical journey up the Angeles Crest Highway, a telescope docent led us into the structure where composer Jeff Talman, composer of the evenings “Of Sound Before the Stars,” was waiting to present his piece, which was commissioned by the museum for this event. Talman, a sound install...
On August 2 at The Rose in Pasadena and August 17 in Santa Clarita, legendary singer-songwriter Don McLean will be "driving his chevy to the" stage on his 2019 concert tour. He is best known for his magnum opus, "American Pie," an impressionistic ballad inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. The song popularized the expression "The Day the Music Died" in reference to this event. It reached number one...
Three concerts that you don't want to miss are landing at The Canyon Club. On July 20, The Fab Four, will take the stage at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank. If you close your eyes and listen to The Fab Four sing a Beatles song, you will think that the boys from Liverpool had transported themselves back from the '60's. That's how accurate and authentic their sound is – arguably the world's best Beatles tribute band. They will even bring along their own "Ed Sullivan" to introduce and interact w...
Rita Wilson, actress turned singer, and Italian living legend of the classical-song world, Andrea Bocelli, both made separate appearances recently in the intimate, 200-seat Clive Theatre at The Grammy Museum for a Q & A and performance hosted by Executive Director Scott Goldman. Wilson, native of Los Angeles and also wife of actor Tom Hanks who was in the audience supporting his beloved, was there to discuss her new album Halfway To Home (March 2019), her fourth studio album. Even though she...
Living legend classical guitarist, Christopher Parkening, again spearheaded his fifth international classical guitar competition at Pepperdine University in Malibu where he is also a professor and Distinguished Chair of the Classical Guitar Department. 2006 was the inaugural year and it continues to go strong, occurring every four years. The competition is the most prestigious in the world of classical guitar, honoring Parkening's lifetime commitment to fostering musical excellence in young...
There are five great concerts coming to the Canyon Clubs. In Agoura Hills, Raul Malo, charismatic frontman for The Mavericks, is taking a break from their tour to take the stage solo on May 9 for a special performance. The Grammy winner is the sole writer of many of their songs and has a hauntingly beautiful and lush baritone voice. Drawing on a mix of classic country and cow-punk standards, Malo, a son of Cuban immigrants, and his genre-defying band have been entertaining their adoring fans...
Two concerts that you don't want to miss are landing at The Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. On April 26, living legend Jon Anderson, former lead singer, songwriter, and co-founder of Yes will be treating his adoring fans to his distinctive vocal excellence, one of the most recognizable voices in the history of music. Anderson was the author and a major creative influence behind the ground-breaking album 'Fragile' as well as the series of epic, complex pieces such as "Awaken," "Gates of...
There are five great concerts coming to the Canyon Clubs. In Agoura Hills, Raul Malo, charismatic frontman for The Mavericks, is taking a break from their tour to take the stage solo on May 9 for a special performance. The Grammy winner is the sole writer of many of their songs and has a hauntingly beautiful and lush baritone voice. Drawing on a mix of classic country and cow-punk standards, Malo, a son of Cuban immigrants, and his genre-defying band have been entertaining their adoring fans...
Two concerts that you don't want to miss are landing at The Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. On April 26, living legend Jon Anderson, former lead singer, songwriter, and co-founder of Yes will be treating his adoring fans to his distinctive vocal excellence, one of the most recognizable voices in the history of music. Anderson was the author and a major creative influence behind the ground-breaking album 'Fragile' as well as the series of epic, complex pieces such as "Awaken," "Gates of...
Four concerts that you don't want to miss are landing at the The Canyon: Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, The Rose in Pasadena , and Santa Clarita in the month of March. On March 9 at the Saban Theatre, the esteemed Canadian folk-music legend Gordon Lightfoot, with over 50 years in the music business, and now on his "80 Years Strong Tour" will be treating his adoring fans to his poetic songwriting and vocal excellence. He resides with some very exclusive company atop the list of all-time greats...
On opening night, British director and choreographer Matthew Bourne put his spin on the classic fairy tale, Cinderella, which took the stage at the Ahmanson Theatre. Bourne's reworking, and score by Sergei Prokofiev, has the story set in World War II where Cinderella creates a wartime romance with a dashing young RAF pilot (her prince). The performance is divided into three Acts...the first being a frenetic London Blitz which has Cinderella and her family chaotically swirling around in a...
Larger-than-life actor Brian Dennehy, 80 years of age, knocked it out of the park as he accepted the challenge of two roles in two different plays during the same performance at Geffen Playhouse on Sunday. He was Erie Smith in Eugene O'Neill's play Hughie and then after intermission tackled the role of Krapp in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. It was a privilege to witness Dennehy, a living legend, up close in an intimate 120-seat Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre. He is a giant of film and...
Los Angeles Ballet kicked off their 2018-19 season at Royce Hall performing a program with three different scenes called "Modern Moves." Aszure Barton's "Les Chambres des Jacques," Alejandro Cerrudo's "Lickety-Split," and George Balanchine's 1954 classic "Western Symphony." LA Ballet ventured into unchartered waters, taking a road not usually taken by performing more contemporary modern pieces. The first piece is Les Chambres with unconventional choreography and anomalous music -- Vigneault,...
The dancers of Diavolo, based in Los Angeles, brought their Architecture in Motion dance performance to the Ahmanson Theatre on Sunday. A spectacular acrobatic-movement spectacle that is the dream of founder and artistic director French native Jacques Heim. It's a combination of contemporary dance, martial arts, acrobatics, gymnastics and hip-hop with the utilization of large, creative stage props. There were two different scenes: Voyage, the west coast premiere, and after intermission,...
Author: Steven Lieberman The Los Angeles Master Chorale (LAMC) kicked off their 2018-19 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall, their 55th, on Saturday with two epic compositions that rocketed the audience to the next dimension: Shawn Kirchner's "Songs of Ascent" and Mozart's "Requiem." Artistic Director and Conductor Grant Gershon was very wise in laying the foundation with these two masterpieces which will be sturdy enough to build the rest of the season on. In the first half, Kirchner warmed up...
To honor the memory of the late, great superstar singer and guitarist Glen Campbell, his chief Grammy-winning songwriter Jimmy Webb, and his youngest banjo-strumming rising country star daughter Ashley Campbell will be appearing together at Smothers theatre on the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu on Saturday, September 22. In June of 2011, Glen announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease six months earlier and decided to go on a farewell tour to say goodbye to all of...
Peter Cetera, former front man, lead singer and the "Voice of Chicago," treated a crowd of 1,200 fans to a great concert at Hyatt Regency Newport Beach amphitheater. After leaving Chicago in 1985, Cetera tore-off the rear-view mirror and never looked back. His career skyrocketed to the next dimension when he went solo. The charismatic stage performer and Grammy Award-winner sang all of his big hits with his distinctive and unmistakable golden tenor voice. He also is famous for not only being...
Two Classic Rock bands "keep pushin'" on. REO Speedwagon and Chicago teamed up for a concert tour and landed at the Fabulous Forum on Friday to the delight of all their adoring fans. Nobody can call these guys fossil rockers…they sounded as good as they did when the two bands started making hits back in the '70's. REO got the party started with frontman Kevin Cronin belting out the first song of the set "Don't Let Him Go," and ending with a tribute to the late, great Tom Petty singing "Listen to...
The long awaited revival of Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry's gripping Tony Award-winning murder mystery musical PARADE as presented five years ago at Fullerton's Plummer Auditorium by 3-D Theatricals (3DT) of Los Angeles and Orange County, will wrap up this weekend June 24, 2018 at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. Broadway's JEFF SKOWRON*, RUFUS BONDS JR.* and DAVIS GAINES* lead many returning cast members of the original 2013 3DT production. Co-conceived, produced and directed by...
The Verdi Chorus celebrates its 35th anniversary season with their Spring 2018 concerts entitled “The Force of Destiny” at the acoustically-sound First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on April 28 and 29. A jewel of the opera scene, they are the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music for opera chorus. Their Founding Artistic Director/Conductor Anne Marie Ketchum and Julliard-trained piano accompanist Laraine Ann Madden have fas...
Two concerts that you don't want to miss are landing at The Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. Fab Four This Friday April 27, The Fab Four, will take the stage. If you close your eyes and listen to The Fab Four sing a Beatles song, you will think that the boys from Liverpool had transported themselves back from the '60's. That's how accurate and authentic their sound is – arguably the world's best Beatles tribute band. They will even bring along their own "Ed Sullivan" to introduce and interact w...
In Santa Monica, there's a school called Elemental Music created by a Santa Monica-Malibu School District (SMMUSD) music teacher about fourteen years ago to train, inspire and nuture elementary and middle school students and give them an opportunity to play in an orchestra throughout the school year to get experience. It is a supplement to the basic instruction the students are getting at their schools and help develop both technical and musical skills that prepare them for continued study at...
"Great Scott!" Christopher "Doc Brown" Lloyd made an appearance on Friday at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts to treat his adoring fans to a screening and Q & A of his famous film, "Back to the Future." Lloyd decided to ride the seemingly endless wave of interest from one generation to the next by continuing to keep the love alive for the film. If it hadn't of been for his agent setting him up with an audition for another cult classic, "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest (1975)," Lloyd...
By Steven Lieberman Observer Reporter Martin Rayner (Sigmund Freud) and Martyn Stanbridge (C.S. Lewis) are a dynamic duo as they rocket the two-man show concept to the next dimension during the presentation of off-Broadway hit Freud's Last Session at the Odyssey Theatre. Three weeks before Freud died of mouth cancer (a sixteen year fight) in 1939, he invited Lewis - a respected author, Oxford professor and a fundamentalist Christian - to his home for an adversarial debate about their beliefs in...
Legendary folk rock band "America" featuring the highly-talented harmonizing of duo Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley will be making a stop on their tour at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts (CCPA) on February 2. Formed in 1970, their recording success has continued to delight audiences by performing over 100 shows per year. Their anthem is "Horse With No Name," but also are known for "Ventura Highway," "Sister Golden Hair," "Tin Man," "Daisy Jane," "Lonely People," among many other...
