Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

T.E.U.C.L.A. by Richard Serra
Photo: Mine 2007

I've been so busy mourning Alan Gilbert's departure from Santa Fe Opera that I haven’t been able to comment on a number of LA-related tidbits lately, so I’ve got some catching up to do.

ITEM: Tomorrow is the big kick-off of the LA Opera’s broadcast season, which will include performances from all of this year's productions carried on the WFMT radio network. Locally, KUSC will broadcast and stream all the performances (including the Recovered Voices concert from this spring) Saturdays at 10:30 AM starting with last year's season opening La Traviata featuring Renée Fleming and Rolando Villazón. The complete schedule can be seen here. This has been a particularly good season in LA and virtually all of these programs are worth checking out.

ITEM: Apparently, the name Torroba and keyword “zarzuela” are not the draws they once were, so LA Opera has decided to alter the name of their upcoming production of Luisa Fernanda to:


LA Opera must have already capped out on their English-language productions for the year so the marketing folks have had to resort to other crass strategies to sell tickets. Heck, why bother with the title of the piece at all? Ain't private arts funding grand?

ITEM: I’ve been meaning to give recognition to the perhaps burgeoning local classical music blogging scene. When I started Out West Arts, I (erroneously) believed there weren’t many other blogs out here in LA doing what I do. But since then, a number of fine bloggers have joined the game and I’ve become aware of others that I'd like to recognize here. Christian Chensvold publishes FineArtsLA.com devoted so far to interest stories and chat about some of the ongoing bigger arts events in LA and has featured interviews with Lofti Mansouri and Alan Rich. A young man by the name of Blake Oliver has started up Shake It or Bake It chronicling his travails as a struggling cellist in the big city which I have read with great interest. There is also the similarly themed lone oboe from another young local musician. Of course there are composer blogs, too, including UCLA faculty-member Roger Bourland’s and Joel McNeely's. Fellow listener George M. Wallace publishes his blog under the title a fool in the forest which occasionally covers music events as well as other cultural events around town and is also worth looking at. Although I still like to think of OWA as somewhat unique, it’s nice to be part of an expanding neighborhood. (By the way, if I've left anyone out, drop me a line and introduce yourself.) Oh, and with all the big media critics jumping in the game, where is the Mark Swed blog?

Until that fine day, we may be forced to result to this bit of mania. Not exactly LA centric, but certainly "la" centric.