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.

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.

The Brody’s served on both museum boards and their collection and their house are both points of pride for art and architecture lovers in Los Angeles.  Christie’s has estimated that the sale will garner $150 million especially considering that they’ll be auctioning off works by Picasso, Giacometti, Braque, and Degas.

Click here, or here, to read more about it.  Wonder if we can afford anything up for auction!

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.  This Saturday at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, three youth orchestras have been invited to participate in the LA Phil’s Youth Orchestra Festival Day.  The Renaissance Arts Academy Orchestra, Korean American Youth Symphony, and the Santa Monica High School Orchestra will all take the stage to perform Mozart, Bizet, Tchaikosvky, Dvorak, and Bernstein in concerts set to last all day.

The Youth Orchestra Partners Program has six total participants that are presented with free concert tickets, master classes with LA Phil musicians, and this kind of opportunity to perform on stage at Disney Hall during their two year run in the program.  It is the Philharmonic’s way of making sure, six schools at a time, that classical music programs and youth orchestras are nurtured as they should be and are made to feel like valued parts of our local arts community.

Saturdays performances are set to provide us all with a marvelous perspective on what high school students are capable of when they have the right instruments in their hands.  From 1 – 1:45pm, the Renaissance Academy will delight with compositions by Holst, Bizet, Mozart, Adamis, and Orff.  Run off, have a snack at the café on the Music Center campus across the street.  Come back from 2:30pm – 3:15pm for the Korean American Youth Symphony’s take on works by Suppe, Saint-Saens, and Dvorak – a very enticing combination, if you think about it.

Run off again for a coffee, and jet back to your seats to finish off your day of discovering classical music with the Santa Monica High School Orchestra’s performance of works by Bernstein, Tchaikovsky, and Saint-Saens from 4 – 4:45pm.

You’ll discover that children are, indeed, the future and so is classical music.

The Youth Orchestra Festival Day performances will be held on Saturday, March 13 from 1pm – 4:45pm at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Click here or call (213) 972-3454 for more information.

With “See the Music, Hear the Dance,” an evening of three challenging choreographies by George Balanchine at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, the Los Angeles Ballet has reaffirmed its ascendance as the ballet company for which Los Angeles has waited decades.

Chosen from the vast catalogue of works from Balanchine’s prodigiously long career, the LAB premieres of “Kammermusik No. 2” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2,” and reprise of “Serenade” from Season 1, give audiences a glimpse into the limitless creativity of the greatest of 20th century choreographers.

As usual, Co-Artistic Directors Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen greeted the packed auditorium. After a brief description of the dances and a couple of anecdotes about Neary’s work with Balanchine, the curtain rose on “Serenade” – the first of Balanchine’s creations after arriving in America in 1933. The perfection of the pale blue tableau of the women in the corps de ballet elicited spontaneous applause from the audience. With its kaleidoscope patterns of razor-straight lines melting into liquid curves, the piece showcases what has been perceived as LABs greatest strength – the flawless precision of their women’s ensemble.

With “Kammermusik No. 2,” the company has takes another huge step forward. The dance features two couples backed by an eight-man ensemble. In last year’s Prodigal Son, though the men’s corps showed their technical proficiency and strength, they had not quite homogenized their collective ears to Prokofiev’s score, such that they could dance together with absolute precision. But what a difference a year has made. The Hindemith piano/chamber ensemble opus is very difficult – but the group’s solid, cohesive musicianship allowed them to move as one through the avant garde combinations.
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.

The final work, “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2,” is Balanchine’s 1973 revision of his “Ballet Imperial” from 1941, and utilizes every resource available to dazzle and astonish.  Monica Pelfrey shines in this very classical Balanchine homage to Petipa. Grand breadth of gesture and superb balance distinguish her dancing. New to LAB, one is confident that she will adapt her ‘English Royal Ballet’ style as she relaxes into this very American company. Also new to the company, Zheng Hua Li is a pleasant surprise as the romantic cavalier.  His beautiful, expressive face is no small asset, and his feet are about as perfect as feet get. The audience rewarded his clean execution of double tours-en-l’air and big, floating jetee’s with enthusiastic applause. As were the prolonged standing ovations that required multiple curtain calls.

By Penny Orloff

“Balanchine – ‘See the Music, Hear the Dance,’” has one last performance… Tonight! Head to the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center for the 7:30pm performance. Click here or call (310) 998-7782 for more information.

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?

If you’ve recently wondered just what a group of the most talented and relevant artists in our time think when it comes to the issue of equal marriage rights, now is the time to make your way to 1341 Vine St. in Hollywood – The Manifest Equality Gallery.  To be frank, the collection of artwork is not an abstract, nor a complex look at the issue so much as it is a blunt and to-the-point reflection of what’s wrong with the fact that equal marriage rights are still not availed to any and all that want them.  Artists represented in the big, warehouse-like group show, set up in the former Big Lots! space include Shepard Fairey, Gary Baseman, Robbie Conal, and Bary McGee.  Their work is an amalgam of mediums, focal points, and aesthetic styles that all fit under the umbrella issue of once and for all supporting equal marriage rights for gay couples.

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.

The Manifest Equality Gallery is located at 1341 Vine St in Hollywood and will be open through March 7 at 10pm.  It’s open from 10am – 10pm through then – Hollywood, here you come! Click here for more information.

A while ago, we posted an article asking what you, dear readers, thought about the distinction between art and vandalism.  Skating the line, with a very charged political message, is British street artist D*Face who has installed two enormous and menacing Oscar statues atop two iconic LA locations: Runyon Canyon and Mel’s Drive-In in Hollywood.  Both statues have skeleton-like figures with bits of flesh missing from their arms and legs exposing Oscar’s blood and bones.  The one that sat at Runyon had a placard that read “Beauty Is One Snip Away,” while the other at Mel’s Drive-In said “Beauty Is Skin Deep.” They’ve both been removed since they were spotted yesterday morning, but the whole incident begs a whole host of questions, not least of which is: really? Mel’s Drive-In? We get Runyon Canyon, but that’s a strange choice.

More importantly, what do you think of all this? The two most basic sides must be: applause to D*Face for exposing a vanity-obsessed culture at a time when it’s at its most self-congratulatory vs. how petulant of this artist to criticize a sector of popular culture that he need not participate in if he finds it so disheartening.

The last time the Dirty Projectors played in Los Angeles was on Halloween at the Jensen Recreation Center in Echo Park, where frontman David Longstreth wore a ten-gallon foam cowboy hat and his upside-down guitar with the confidence of a newly minted visionary. Fans of the Projectors’ odd, brilliant, shimmering music had been waiting for the band to play at Disney Hall since November, anticipating their breakout hit, 2009’s Bitte Orca, amplified by a lush string section.

But on Saturday night, Longstreth looked small and befuddled on the Disney Hall stage, fiddling with the tuning of his guitars for a half an hour during intermission. Longstreth is 28, with the refractory brain of a brilliant twelve-year-old with attention deficit disorder and the composing abilities of Mozart on mushrooms in Africa. After Saturday night, the audience learned his musical influences include Ligeti, Wagner, Ravel, and Don Henley.

Don Henley might seem like an odd choice. The program notes include an earnest letter Longstreth sent Henley in 2005, accompanying a free copy of The Getty Address, Longstreth’s 2005 opera about materialism, the homogenization of FM radio, and Sacagewea, or something like that. “I have included a copy of it here for you,” Longstreth wrote to Henley. “The album examines the question of what is wilderness in a world completely circumscribed by highways, once Manifest Destiny has no place to go- but in the end it is a love story.” Clearly, this makes sense to only one person: Longstreth himself.

The program was divided into three parts: the Philharmonic playing alone, the Projectors playing The Getty Address along with the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, and the Projectors playing alone. The program began with selections Longstreth hand-picked for the Philharmonic. Highlights included Ligeti’s Etude No. 13, played by gray-haired John Orge, who lingered on the piano keys after the last high notes for a long, indulgent silence, and Ravel’s beautifully orchestrated Mother Goose Suite. After a long intermission, the Projectors emerged, wearing color-coordinated hooded jackets, to play The Getty Address in its entirety. And here is where the problems began.

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), “I Sit on the Ridge at Dusk,” the beat kicked in, and the Projectorettes (Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle, and Angel Deradoorian) wailed “got a world of trouble on my mind,” in an indistinct language, moving very slightly from side to side, like shy sirens. But momentum was lost on the second song, and the album is so complex, the time signatures so twisted, it seemed that no amount of practice could have nailed it down. It didn’t help that Alarm Will Sound had some spotty synchronicity and tuning moments. The long, drifting passages on “But in the Headlights” and “Gilt Gold Scabs” sounded misguided and naked, as though a player were missing. Some members played on wine bottles, and a base flute was involved, as well as lots of gratuitous hand-clapping, which sounded messy at times, perhaps on purpose. Many in the audience began to get restless, but the ensemble soldiered on to no avail.

After the opera finally ended, the Projectors (minus their drummer) took the stage for three songs: a very slow cover of Dylan’s “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” as well as their own “Temecula Sunrise” and “Cannibal Resource” from Bitte Orca. They sounded good, and Longstreth’s singing sounded much more comfortable, but the band would have sounded much better with a whole orchestra backing them up. None of the women got to sing lead on any song, though Angel Deradoorian singing “Two Doves” would have sounded lovely in this acoustic setting.

All in all, the event demonstrated what the Projectors are capable of musically. It also showed that some misguided musical experiments are better laid to rest, no matter how brilliant their 23-year-old composer may be. As the Eagles said, “And I don’t want to hear any more/ No, no, baby/ I don’t want to hear any more.” Here’s hoping the Projectors stick to Bitte Orca from now on.

By Cassandra McGrath of CWG Magazine

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles.  For more information on upcoming shows, please call (213) 972-7211, or visit www.laphil.com.

It’s hard to say exactly why, but art heists are so much more enticing and glamorous than regular heists.  Even jewelry thieves don’t hold a candle to the crazy men and women behind the greatest art heists of all time.

This film, which chronicles the scandal of the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, is about an art heist of a different ilk.  Check out the trailer below and scour the internet for showtimes in your area!

I recently found myself sitting on a couch in a dark room inside the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC watching a play-test of a brand-new interactive video game.  I use the term ‘interactive,’ because it was less like your typical Nintendo or PlayStation proceeding, and more akin to one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ movies, only digitalized, intricately detailed, and not a little influenced by the likes of Spielberg or Christopher Nolan.  The game takes place in a slightly futuristic society, and at one point, the protagonist, a detective, is sitting in his beat-down, windowless office going over clues, when he puts on a pair of special sunglasses.  These sunglasses allow him, and by proxy, us, the audience, to perceive his spacial environment as a pristine mountain-top, or a Redwood forest.  The effect is novel, and provokes a round of ‘wouldn’t-that-be-cool’ comments from anybody who’s watching, yet it also brings up an interesting, modern phenomenon.  I call it the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome, and it works like this: you’re sitting in a beat-down, windowless office, but…it’s not to you.

Don’t get me wrong, this syndrome is hardly new or original, although it is intensifying in our digital age.  And one person who’s exploring this intensification is artist Jeffrey Wells with his newest exhibit Seeing While Seeing at the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Art.  Wells attempts to recreate the optical illusions of everyday life—the after-image of an exit sign, the undulating intersection of two vertical walls that meet at a right-angle—using video projections.  Thus the viewer is left questioning whether or not an illusion is physical or digital.  Both are percepts, separate from what some would call “objective reality,” but only one is an intentionally manipulated percept.

What Wells—along with the interactive video game, to a certain extent—may be attempting to illustrate is the danger of the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome.  Because how do you really know what is?  Or who’s presenting what to you, for that matter?  And as the line between what is and what is to you gets smaller and smaller, what becomes of you?

Jeffrey Wells’s Seeing While Seeing is on view until April 17th at Project Room 1 in the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Arts.  Bergamont Station is located at 2525 Michigan Ave, Building G-1.  For more information, please call (310) 586-6488, or visit www.smmoa.org.

Ever wonder what happened to Ed Templeton?  That professional skateboarder turned internationally renowned artist, photographer, D.I.Y. innovator, entrepreneur, ‘Beautiful Loser,’ and book publisher?  Well if you haven’t, then Ed Templeton has.

His eclectic career as both a skater and an artist has always seemed to be about his own relationship to time and motion.  In his famous photography book, Teenage Smokers, for instance, each medium to close-up image of a young person with a cigarette has the feeling of personal impermanence, like a flash-memory of a kid you might have seen at the mall once when you were nine.

Templeton, especially in his most recent work, seems to be obsessed with these fragile, ephemeral moments, and what they might mean.  His 2008 book, Deformer, which took him 11 years to complete, examines his youth growing up in the ultra-conservative suburban “incubator” of Orange County, using childhood letters, notes, photographs, sketches, and paintings to tell his story with as much physical accuracy as possible—even if it’s all long gone.

His latest photography show, The Seconds Pass, at the Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Culver City once again has Templeton on the move.  These thirty-some separate collages of pictures, mostly all taken from the vantage point of a moving vehicle, attempt to capture exactly where he’s been these last few years, so as not to miss a passing second.

Ed Templeton’s The Seconds Pass can be viewed at the Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Culver City until April 3.  Roberts and Tilton is located at 5801 Washinton Blvd.  For more information, please call (323) 549-0223, or visit www.robertsandtilton.com.