Monthly Archives: February 2007

Zip Notes on an uncommonly splendid week at Zipper Concert Hall – and what a valuable asset to musical life that handsome, small room has become! The second in the reborn Monday Evening Concerts drew an almost-capacity crowd, despite there … Continue reading →

It is hardly news that Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Philharmonic’s spellbinding music director, draws a turn-away crowd at a personal appearance. The difference, on a recent Thursday night, is that this appearance is without the usual 106-member Philharmonic as backup, and … Continue reading →

Immersion, Conversion “The last 80 years,” writes Ned Rorem in Facing the Night, his latest collection of terse and invigorating personal observations, “have been the sole period in history wherein music of the past takes precedence over the present .?.?. … Continue reading →

Turning Point Mahagonny is back in town, and it’s time to take to the trees. Eighteen years ago, when the steel-edged words and music of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill were last at the L.A. Opera, they were accorded polite … Continue reading →

Stormin’ Norman When the Monday Evening Concerts began in 1939 – they were called “Evenings on the Roof” back then – the first composers bore names strange and unfamiliar to local audiences: Béla Bartók, Charles Ives, Ferruccio Busoni. Audiences came, … Continue reading →