The Hammer Speaks

What is Mindulful Awareness? And how do you do it?
Right now my brain thinking of a way to describe this new-age, medical concept while sending signals to the muscles in my fingers in order to type out, letter by letter, the words and eventual sentences to communicate this notion to an imagined, future audience. Oh, and I’m hungry. That’s Mindful Awareness: the “moment-by-moment process of actively and openly observing one’s physical, mental and emotional experiences.”
To hear more specific information about the proven health benefits of such exercises, as well as how to do them, head to the Hammer Museum at 12:30 PM this Thursday for their free weekly “drop in” session. Leading the discussion is the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center’s Director of Mindfulness Education, Diana Winston, alongside Dr. Marvin Belzer, an expert practitioner of Mindful Awareness.
What is Gesamtkunstwerk? And how do you sing it?
Well, Gesamtkunstwerk, pronounced ‘guess-amt-kunst-verk,’ is a term made famous by German composer, conductor, director, anti-Semite, and writer Wilhelm Richard Wagner, and it’s usually translated to mean “total artwork.” Wagner, in all his “Ride of the Valkyries” gusto, had a vision of a kind of ‘future art,’ in which the end-result would be a synthesis for every art-form known to man (i.e. music, performance, drama, architecture, poetry, etc.). It’s debatable whether or not Wagner actually achieved a true Gesamtkunstwerk in his work, but his deep influence and brilliance as a composer/writer of opera is hard to match, let alone perform.
At 7:00 PM on Thursday night at the Hammer Museum, Wagnerian singers Linda Watson and John Treleavan of the on-going Ring Festival LA (an enormous cultural compilation of lectures, exhibitions, shows, and conferences revolving around the first-ever Los Angeles performance of Wagner’s four-opera masterpiece, The Ring of the Nibelung) will discuss the intricacies of belting out complex tonal and chromatic changes, while still remaining a simple piece of the overall Gesamtkunstwerk.
What is the connection? And why would you attend both lectures?
Besides the obvious similarity in setting, there does seem to be a thematic crossover between these two programs. Both attempt to explain the whole in terms of its parts, and those parts in terms of their smaller parts, and so on. This mode of thinking assumes there’s a greater organism at work, spinning wheels inside wheels, and what better way to get lost inside these rotations than to spend a day at the Hammer? Either that, or write an opera.
“Mindful Awareness” starts at 12:30 PM on Thursday, March 11. “Ring Festival: The Challenges of Singing Wagner” begins at 7:00 PM. Both programs are free of admission, and take place at The Hammer Museum, located at 10899 Wilshire Blvd. For more information, please call (310) 433-7000, or visit hammer.ucla.edu.
Tags: Diana Winston, Gesamtkunstwerk, Hammer, John Treleavan, Linda Watson, Marvin Belzer, Mindful Awareness, Ride of the Valkyries, Ring Festival LA, The Hammer Museum, The Ring of the Nibelung, UCLA, Wagner
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The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and LACMA are both about to come into a little bit of an inheritance. The private collection of Sidney and Frances Lasker Brody, which is filled to the brim with enviable works, will go up for auction at Christie’s in May. According to the LA Times’ Culture Monster, The Huntington is set to get a share of the upcoming sale, while LACMA will be the lucky recipient of a 12-by-11-foot mural that the Brody’s commissioned from Matisse. Go back. Read that again. They commissioned a mural, called “La Garde,” from Matisse.
In an obvious turn of events, considering the children are the future, youth orchestras in Los Angeles have a chance to give the LA Philharmonic a run for their money own their own home court.
With “See the Music, Hear the Dance,” an evening of three challenging choreographies by
Unleashing powerful, lightning-fast athleticism coupled with uncanny fluidity, Melissa Barak commands the stage. There is, apparently, nothing she can’t do. She is squarely in her element in this piece. Her partner, the long-limbed and majestic Andrew Brader, is a perfect foil for Barak’s abandon. His stunning lifts break laws of gravity. Shadowing Barak is exuberant gamin Grace McLoughlin, who danced an endearing Effie in last year’s “La Sylphide.” Her diminutive size belies a large personality, and she expertly “works the room” for laughs during a series of Charleston-on-steroids maneuvers. Rounding out the quartet of soloists, Drew Grant’s guides his compact frame through the blazing pace with confidence and discipline.
Have you ever wondered what a fight for equal rights looks like through our contemporary artistic minds? Forget what it looks like when Anderson Cooper discusses the issue and interviews the experts on CNN. Nevermind what it looks like when thousands of angry protesters come together on the street waving signs telling passing cars to honk if they agree with the cause. What does the fight for an equal rights issue look like through a painter’s eyes, a photographers eyes, and what does it sound like when a DJ spins a soundtrack to it all?
A DJ spins accompanying tunes during the day as locals, tourists, and curious passersby wander through the space taking a look at pieces of art and memorabilia that speaks to this no longer just grassroots movement. The gallery will be open through this Sunday, March 7 at 10pm and it’s really worth shifting some plans around to make even a quick run through of the space.
A while ago,
The last time the
Truthfully, the opera is an indulgent college project from a very, very talented student, with glimpses of the Projectors’ current, much more successful musical incarnation nestled in like raisins studded into a very wobbly gray oatmeal. In the first song (er, movement), “
Ever wonder what happened to