Everything’s Coming Up Roses

Now that the heavy rains are over, spring is blooming everywhere. To quote Stephen Sondheim, “everything’s coming up roses” and so are our creative art venues.

To mention four of them – Dance at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center, Music at 2220 Beverly Boulevard and the Visual Arts at The Broad and LACMA.

The opening of the 20th Season of the Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center.
Paul Taylor Dance Company
April 28-30, 2023
135 N. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles

This program includes Kurt Jooss’s “The Green Table.” On a personal note, this is one of the most moving choreographies I have ever seen anywhere. The program also includes the world premiere of Dreamachine, choreographed by the company’s first choreographer Lauren Lovette.

The Music Centers dance program begins and how wonderful it is that companies feel safe enough to tour again.

For tickets & information go to musiccenter.org

Hear Now Music Festival
April 13-16, 2023
2220 Arts + Archives, located at 2220 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles

Here Now, founded in 2011 by Artistic Director Hugh Levick, presents contemporary chamber, electroacoustic, and (biennially) orchestral compositions by Los Angeles composers. Over its 12-year history HEAR NOW has grown in number of concerts, collaborators, and audience. It has expanded its local and international outreach while offering services to youth in underserved communities and has provided 172 Los Angeles based composers with performances of 224 of their works.

Festival 2023 will consist of three chamber concerts and one electro-acoustic concert. One of the chamber concerts will be dedicated to multidisciplinary collaborations – “Music and…” a new aspect of Hear Now presentations. This year we have engaged the street dancer Storyboard P (“..the Basquiat of street dance.” – NY Times) to choreograph and perform a work of about 20 minutes to a newly commissioned piece by Artistic Director Hugh Levick. “Music and…” continues with a moon film by artist Christopher Richmond and composer Brandon J. Rolle; multiple pianos, pianists, dancers and percussionists finding an echo that doesn’t rhyme in a work by Daniel Newman-Lessler and a New Take on the Old West with the art of Jerry Kearns with music by Russell Steinberg.

In addition one of the chamber concerts will present a Hear Now commission by Arash Majd – Continuum: Cause & Effect for 10 instruments The commissioning program, one Hear Now commission per year supports and spotlights a promising young composer.

The UCLA Phiharmonia Soloists, an ensemble composed of fifteen UCLA students and recent alumni, was formed specifically for this year’s festival to perform conducted chamber ensemble works by Los Angeles composers and to interact directly with the composers in rehearsal. The musicians have been selected and are led by UCLA Director of Orchestral Studies Neal Stulberg.

Other ensembles include Lyris Quartet, Brightwork Ensemble, Trio Accento, and Eclipse Quartet among 70+ musicians participating in the festival.

For tickets & information go to hearnowmusicfestival.com/tickets/

The Broad Museum and LACMA visual arts new exhibitions.

The Broad is opening “Keith Haring: Art Is For Everybody.”
May 27-Oct 8, 2023
221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles

This is the first ever museum exhibition in Los Angeles dedicated to his expansive body of work. The show will feature over 120 artworks and archival materials plus his participation in nuclear disarmament and anti-Apartheid movements.

The show gives the artist the recognition his work deserves on the West Coast focusing on his activism as well as his view of art’s capacity to bring joy and draw from inspirations such as the music, culture and fashions of his era that continue to influence us now.

There will be a gallery lit completely in blacklight like the 80’s.

Many more features await.

For tickets & information click here.

LACMA presents WOMAN DEFINING WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY ART of the MIDDLE EAST and Beyond
April 23 – September 24, 2023
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond, an exhibition comprising works by artists who were born or live in what can broadly be termed Islamic societies. Depicting a breadth of inventively and often ideologically conceived women’s imagery, the works bear witness to rapidly shifting political developments and often accelerated social transformations taking place in lands extending from Africa to Western, Central and Southern Asia, as well as in diasporic communities. Across generations and working in different media, the artists share a common sense of identity not exclusively “Middle Eastern” but certainly female expressing both personal and universal concerns.

For tickets & information go to lacma.org

PostScript: Ethel Merman introduced “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” on Broadway in 1959, and I was there!

Backstage with the Buzz is written by Sheila Tepper, Producer Cultural Programming. Sheila has lived in the Larchmont area for fifty years, among her passions have been passing legislation for children with disabilities and interviewing outstanding artists appearing in the Los Angeles area.