It’s easy to get jealous in Los Angeles. Most everyone came here from somewhere, even if it was here, to try and create art of some sort, to go behind the curtain of media-making in an attempt to toss in a pinch of their own individual ingredients. The result is an endless stream of Facebook invitations, familiar postcards on coffee shop pin-boards, and a daunting sense that others’ ingredients—some friends, some enemies, some people who just got to town—are taking over the stew.
But if there’s anything I learned in college—a smaller, but similar stew—it’s that the work of my peers, in analysis or collaboration, is often the best teacher out there. And it’s precisely because you are jealous, because you can view their creative process as a mirror of your own. You can say, “Huh, this person is no genius, they’re practically an idiot, but they made this choice. I never thought about doing that. Maybe I too can make that choice, only better.” It’s creative capitalism, but the only way it works is when you’re actively supporting one another.
This seems to be motto of the Los Angeles-based art collective, This Is What We Imagine (TIWWI, or Teewee), a group of young video, film, photography, and design makers—many of whom I went to school with—that are exhibiting their latest projects tonight, Saturday night, at the Echo Park Rec Center. Beginning at 9:00 PM, the program, called “Show and Tell.” boasts the premiere of two recent collaborative efforts: “Weekend of Wonderment 6” and “Remember When.” If you haven’t heard of the first five installments of the “Weekend of Wonderment” campaign, it’s comprised of about four or five projects, all made within the time-span of two days and with the help of anybody and everybody available. “Remember When,” also the product of many (as opposed to few), is a new comic web-series about a group of friends who try to recreate the lost memories of their amnesia-begotten buddy.
TIWWI’s “Show and Tell” begins tonight, Saturday, 9:00 PM, at the Echo Park Rec Center, located at 1161 Logan Street in Echo Park. For more information, please visit www.tiwwi.com.
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 hereor call (213) 972-3454 for more information.
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.
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.
Anyone who’s spent even a small amount of time on the African continent has a good idea of what people mean when they use the phrase “African nostalgia.” Even if you haven’t traveled there, it’s easy to get a back-to-our-roots sense from the culture, art, music, and design available to us in the US. Everything from HBO’s “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” to Youssou Ndour’s documentary I Bring What I Love shows this simple side of life, but not in a melancholy way. Instead, we see this beautiful, rhythmic, traditional lifestyle in which tribal differences are as often respected as they are fought over. A primary part of what we know, culturally, about the continent is the music of Angelique Kidjo – a singer who hails from Benin and whose voice sooths as it entices.
With formal jazz music training from the CIM in Paris, Kidjo performed last March at USC’s Bovard Auditorium and has worked with some of music’s greatest performers including Carlos Santana, Ziggy Marley, and Peter Garbiel on her recent album Djin Djin. Her music will, we have no doubt, be of the strength and soul that it will fill the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday evening (February 28) during her solo performance. To make sure that we’re all on the same page with this brand of “African nostalgia,” we’re giving away tickets for Kidjo’s Sunday evening performance!
This is, indeed, an Extra! Extra! giveaway – a reluctant one, since we wanted to keep this tickets for our greedy little selves. Just keep in mind that by entering into this giveaway, you’re automatically entered into the next three we agree to giveaway. All we need is your first name, last name, and your email address and voila – you’ll feel like you’re picking through markets in Dakar in no time.
(Click hereif the nostalgia is all too much and you’d rather buy your own tickets.)
It’s pretty safe to say at this point in Beethoven’s posthumous career, that the man was not a one hit wonder. Sure, we’re more familiar with some of his works than others, but generally speaking – he’s a heavy hitter. His Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor” is considered one of the most magical and beautiful pieces amidst the enormous anthology of his compositions – it has a sort of romance and familiarity that is sweeter than Moonlight Sonata and less intense or dramatic than his famed Fifth Symphony.
Then there’s his Symphony No. 7. It has an almost dancing rhythm, with plenty of drama, fantasy, and familiar melodies hidden within an abundance of brass and string instruments doing what they do best. Perhaps the most recognizable movement of Symphony No. 7 is the Allegro con Brio.
While we’re on the subject of classical musicians who are worth their salt, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, performing on Wednesday, February 17 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, is the oldest civic concert orchestra in the world. Founded in 1743, the Gewandhaus Orchestra is no stranger to performing Beethoven – they performed all of his symphonies during his lifetime. For those who are skimming, that was during his lifetime. We love our LA Philharmonic just as much as Gustavo Dudamel likely does, but even they can’t boast having played all of a composer’s works during his lifetime. (Maybe we can accomplish this with Esa-Pekka Salonen’s compositions? Hint, hint!)
Because there is absolutely nothing like seeing the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” and his Symphony No. 7 with Riccardo Chailly at the conductor’s stand and guest pianist Louis Lortie gracing the stage, we’re actually giving away the pair of tickets hidden behind our backs for the performance on February 17 at 8:00pm. It’s the kind of thing we’d normally just keep for ourselves.
Here are some Extra! Extra! details you’ll want to keep in mind: by entering into this giveaway, you’re also entered into the next three giveaways! All we need is your first name, last name, and email address and voila – you’re reminiscing about the days of yore when Beethoven was just a young man and a gewandhaus was just a meetinghouse for textile merchants. Ah, the good old days.
(Click hereif you’d rather not risk it and you’d like to buy your own tickets.)
I may be living in the “age of technology” here in 2010, with the smart phones and the talking GPS devices and the iTunes auto-DJ always at my disposal. We’ve all become pretty accustomed to—and spoiled by—this kind of “smart” technology that’s taking over at such a rapid rate. But, to this day, when I hear “robot technology” or “artificial intelligence,” I still think of Rosie—the sweet, lovable, wheel-legged house-bot from The Jetsons. And that’s just what I was expecting when I attended the SCREAM Festival at the REDCAT this Wednesday night, where the KarmetiK Machine Orchestra performed a unique symposium of electronic North Indian music.
The Karmetik Music Orchestra is the creation of music director Ajay Kapur, production director Michael Darling, and a whole team of musicians and designers both within and without the CalArts sphere. Ajay Kapur is the Director of Music Technology at CalArts and the creator of KarmetiK, a body of artists and engineers working to redraw the line between music and technology. KarmetiK uses artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction technologies to create new digital works of art. This is more than just reinventing the sitar, though. This is a whole new man behind the sitar. I’m talking about robots, here. The researchers and engineers at KarmetiK have pushed the technological barrier so far as to create custom-built robotic instruments that can improvise with a human musician, fusing musical tradition and modern engineering.
Neat! But are these robot-musicians self-aware? Maybe not, but this was nothing like what I expected. At Wednesday night’s performance, five robots shared the stage with a dozen or so musicians. Two strange looking drum sets hovered on each side of the stage, roughly seven feet from the ground, with drums, bells, cymbals, gongs, strings, and shakers splaying from the center. A rain stick spun slowly on an automated pinwheel at stage left. There was a gamelan-bot, like the Reyong used in the Balinese tradition, with upside-down metal pots suspended on a wooden frame. Tammy, a master-bot of sorts, stood high in the center. Tammy was designed by the well-known instrument sculptor Trimpin, Michael Darling, and Ajay Kapur, and built by students in the Robotic Design class at CalArts. Made up of a marimba, a self-plucking drone device, and five bells—all recycled objects found in the electronics junkyard—Tammy stands 14 feet tall and is certainly nothing like my dearly-beloved Rosie.
The program consisted of music in the North Indian style, beginning with a sparse call-and-response piece, Digital Sankirna, demonstrating the performer-robot interaction, in which the robots seemed to learn and play more as the piece progressed. Amazing was the robot’s sense of restraint—it seemed to intuitively know just when to release. Accompanied by Ajay Kapur’s ESitar and Curtis Bahn’s most beautiful EDilruba, it made for an arrestingly haunting opening. A second highlight was the appearance of the Ustad Aashish Kahn, considered one of the greatest living sarodists in the world, for a performance of the an Indian raga Shivranjani. Finally, the dance of the dalem, in the Balinese masked-dance tradition, concluded the program, complete with five gamelan players, the Reyong Bot, and the dancing white-masked king.
So maybe we haven’t yet advanced artificial intelligence to the point where robots are self-actualizing, but after watching KarmetiK, I feel that we are frighteningly close. This is more than a simple case of deus ex machina. Music is one of mankind’s most primitive forms of communication, fastening us together on the most gut level. The technology powerful enough to create a robot that can tap into the human psyche on that basic plane may be the great equalizer between man and machine, and that is a loaded possibility. Rosie is with us, certainly more than we might have known.
- By Helen Kearns
To see the full calendar of upcoming shows at REDCAT, pleaseclick here.
Glorya Kaufman’s contribution to dance in Los Angeles, and specifically at the Music Center, has already begun to impress. They recently presented the Joffrey Ballet’s Cinderella and up next, on February 16 – 17, we Angelenos have a chance to see the critically acclaimed Kings of the Dance at the Ahmanson Theatre.
If you haven’t heard of Kings of the Dance, you’ve more than likely heard of its components (hint: some of the world’s most phenomenal male dancers) like Guillaume Cote, Marcelo Gomes, David Hallberg, and Denis Matvienko. Spoiled as we are in Southern California, and now by Glorya Kaufman and her welcomed and generous contribution, the performances will also include special guest appearances by Desmond Richardson, Jose Manuel Carreno, Nikolay Tsiskaridze, and Joaquin DeLuz. These dancers have graced the stage with some of the world’s most prestigious companies like the American Ballet Theatre, Kirov Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, and New York City Ballet.
Admittedly, when you think of ballet, the first images that come to mind are of pointe shoes, beautiful ballerinas in tutus in a perfect arabesque, or dancers with their hair pulled into tight buns and wearing enviable tiaras. Finally recognizing the beauty and strength of male dancers, Kings of the Dance celebrates these virtuosos in some of dance’s most incredible choreography by such inspiring artists as Roland Petit, Sir Frederick Ashton, Christopher Wheeldon, and Leonid Jacobson.
Because we’re so generous (and because we want to have someone to gush over the performance with), we’ve got tickets to give away! Enter below to win a pair of tickets to the performance on February 17 at 7:30pm and then let us know what you thought after – we’ve got a good feeling your email will be filled with exclamation points and many synonyms for amazing.
Here are some Extra! Extra! details you’ll want to keep in mind here: by entering into this giveaway, you’re also entered into our next three giveaways! All we need is your first name, last name, and email address, and voila – you’re a connoisseur of dance. Or, at the very least, you’re on your way to watching some of ballet’s most muscular (er, talented) examples at the height of their careers.
(Click hereif you feel like you need to witness what’s on stage and can’t risk the whole giveaway thing.)
I headed downtown, sniffling and sneezing the whole way, determined to revel in the magic of the Joffrey Ballet’s production of Cinderella at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. With a pounding sinus headache and hot soup calling my name, I knew that if there was one reason to leave the house on Thursday evening, this performance was it. A ballet dancer through most of my life, I had never seen Cinderella performed and more importantly, this was the Joffrey!
To say that the Joffrey’s performance is a delight would be a gross understatement. The inexplicable energy that comes from an impenetrable technique and preparation was abound on opening night; you focused not on the choreography itself, instead you were invited to focus on the story the choreography was telling.
As Cinderella, Victoria Jaiani was convincingly transformed from poor maiden to princess – her first scene having been dressed by her fairy godmother was performed with a shopoholic level of excitement. The new, white, sparkling tutu redefined her as a veritable, although expiring, princess in every sense of the word. It seemed her posture even improved. In a refreshingly aggressive move during the famous “glass slipper” scene when the prince approaches Cinderella’s stepsisters first, Victoria practically throws her partnering shoe at the Prince to prove herself – quite unlike the demure, embarrassed display of politesse in the book.
One of the more joyous characters of the ballet, and simultaneously one of the most scarily talented on the stage, was undoubtedly the Jester, played by an enormously flexible Derrick Agnoletti. Prior to the roar of applause given to him by the audience, he moved us through each scene at the Prince’s ball with huge leaps and great comic timing. Likewise, the two gentlemen (yes, men) playing Cinderella’s stepsisters are so entertaining and flailing, it convinces you that while their roles are significant, these dancers aren’t being used to their full potential as stepsisters.
To put it plainly, the style of ballet performed in Cinderella is a kind of anomaly, at least when it comes to ballet performed in Los Angeles of, say, the last 5 to 10 years. It does not fall into either of the most widely performed styles of ballet: Russian and Balanchine. (Yes, balletomanes, I am generalizing.) Choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton, who was born in Ecuador and whose Cinderella premiered with Sadler’s Wells Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London in 1948, the style and movement has much more fluidity than Russian choreography, but isn’t nearly as esoteric as a George Balanchine choreographed work. It’s accessible, comedic, and yet no less impressive.
On for two more performances (well, three if you hurry), Cinderella is a gorgeous display of how well technique, set and costume design, and wit come together on stage for such a grabbing, beautiful, and entertaining performance. Even the little girls sitting with their parents were on the edge of their seats at the end to see the prince and his princess walk off into the gold and glittering future. As was I, actually, which was impressive considering my sickly condition pre-performance. My evening had ended happily, after all.
Cinderella is on for three remaining performances: Today (Saturday) at 2pm and 7:30pm and tomorrow (Sunday) at 2pm at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. For more information, please call (213) 972-0711 orclick here.
Click hereto watch a Joffrey Ballet produced video introducing their Cinderella.
In an outburst of song, dance, and color, Center Theater Group, Disney, and Cameron Mackintosh present a rare touring production with electric showmanship, mesmerizing production design, and powerhouse orchestration.
On a faint wind of nostalgia, “Mary Poppins” floated into the Ahmanson Theatre with her magic carpetbag of endless marvel. The excitement was palpable as audience members, old and young (even if it was just at heart), awaited a promise that anything really can happen. No one could disagree that “Mary Poppins’” timing was, for lack of a better phrase, “practically perfect in every way”.
Based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the 1964 Walt Disney Film, the performance features original Academy Award winning music and lyrics by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman as well as new music by Olivier Award winning team George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. Director Richard Eyre and Co-Director/Choreographer Matthew Bourne (he of the famed all-male Swan Lake production in London) introduce a kaleidoscope of whimsy that ranges from the over-the-top (a nanny who flies out over the audience and into the rafters with her magical umbrella, then returns to center stage, landing primly atop a chimney) to the old-fashioned (a simple magic trick involving a bouquet that appears out of thin air and a cheeky, knowing smile).
The production opens upon the set of the Banks family household where we find Mr. and Mrs. George and Winifred Banks and their two children, Jane and Michael in the midst of their daily navigation through marital issues and family dilemmas. Kezler is appropriately gruff as a regimented banker, who later finds his compassion at home after his career takes a turn for the worse; Grey and Thomas are the epitome of textbook battiness and childhood curiosity, while Osterhaus is heartwarming as the empathetic mother holding her family together.
The carnival heaves into view with the first act’s “Jolly Holiday”, where the Banks children follow new nanny Mary Poppins (played by Ashley Brown) and an animated jack-of-all-trades named Bert into sidewalk paintings, through pastel gardens, and over rooftops of tap dancing chimney sweeps. Brown plays Mary with the perfect air of self-assurance, and Gavin Lee masterfully harnesses comedic horseplay in his spot-on rendition of Bert. Valerie Boyle’s performance as Mrs. Brill, the Banks’ overly burdened household maid, is wildly entertaining and a definite highlight of the production, and Ellen Harvey as Mr. Banks’ former nanny, the “holy terror” Miss. Andrew, nearly steals the whole show with her operatic performance of “Brimstone and Treacle”. While each musical act is guaranteed to delight, the second act’s “Step In Time” delivers some serious razzle-dazzle with melodic tap dancing and a jaw-dropping re-creation of Fred Astaire’s gravity-defying “walking-on-the-ceiling” act.
With noteworthy talent (on and off the stage), a little Disney magic, and a pleasantly tolerable amount of cheese, “Mary Poppins” proves to be an all around crowd pleaser and a must-see. If you aren’t already on your feet after the 78th repetition of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” then you certainly will be by curtain call.
- By Harper Flood
“Mary Poppins” will run through February 7, 2010 at the Ahmanson Theatre. For more information, please call (213) 628-2772 orclick here.
The job of a film archivist is a relatively new one. It sounds silly. (If my friend Pete has a massive DVD collection, is he suddenly considered an archivist?) But what a lot of people don’t know is that film is a kind of living organism. It decays quite rapidly over time. And as depicted so graphically in the latest Tarantino venture, Inglorious Basterds, most of the movies made in the silent-era were shot on an ultra-flammable cellulose nitrate film base. Due to this highly unstable stock, as well as the recklessness of early studio storage, a great many of the films made in America before 1920 are either lost, or have turned to dust. In fact, no type of truly durable film base was even introduced into the movie-making landscape until the early 1990’s with the popularization of polyester.
Enter the heroic film archivist, whose job it is to preserve the ever-growing, ever-decaying amount of film stock from the grips of its natural demise. Mark Toscano of the Academy Film Archive is one of these heroes, who most recently co-curated the REDCAT screening of Now You Can Do Anything: The Films of Chris Langdon. This series of fourteen short, experimental films were all made within the period of two years, from 1973 to 1975, and would have easily been lost were it not for the efforts of people like Mark Toscano and fellow filmmaker/Angeleno, Thom Andersen.
Yet Langdon’s shorts, interestingly enough, seemed to work in spite of preservation. The magic was in her apparent disregard for such preciousness. Her film “Bondage Boy,” for instance, featured 16mm shots of a guy in a basement dressed in a woman’s slip and bound with ropes in various positions, all to the soundtrack of an uppity 1950’s swing tune. “Picasso,” another one of Langdon’s works, was, in her words, “the first post-mortem documentary” of the famous painter, fully completed in four hours for a little under $5.
Langdon, who was present at the screening, addressed the audience afterwards. And it was clear that her main motivation behind the 83 minutes of film we had all just sat through was simply to film something. One piece was a joke, another was a bet, and one was just to get over the plain fear of wasting money through a camera. In a sense, she was fueling the need for future experimental film archivists like Mark Toscano. Because without artists with the courage to waste film, why would you need someone to preserve what’s special about it?
The Redcat is located Downtown at the Roy and Edna Disney/Calarts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall. For information about upcoming screenings and performances, please visitwww.redcat.org, or call (213) 237-2800.
It’s easy to get jealous in Los Angeles. Most everyone came here from somewhere, even if it was here, to try and create art of some sort, to go behind the curtain of media-making in an attempt to toss in a pinch of their own individual ingredients. The result is an endless stream of Facebook invitations, familiar postcards on coffee shop pin-boards, and a daunting sense that others’ ingredients—some friends, some enemies, some people who just got to town—are taking over the stew.
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. 
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), “
Anyone who’s spent even a small amount of time on the African continent has a good idea of what people mean when they use the phrase “African nostalgia.” Even if you haven’t traveled there, it’s easy to get a back-to-our-roots sense from the culture, art, music, and design available to us in the US. Everything from HBO’s 
It’s pretty safe to say at this point in Beethoven’s posthumous career, that the man was not a one hit wonder. Sure, we’re more familiar with some of his works than others, but generally speaking – he’s a heavy hitter. His Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor” 
I may be living in the “age of technology” here in 2010, with the smart phones and the talking GPS devices and the iTunes auto-DJ always at my disposal. We’ve all become pretty accustomed to—and spoiled by—this kind of “smart” technology that’s taking over at such a rapid rate. But, to this day, when I hear “robot technology” or “artificial intelligence,” I still think of Rosie—the sweet, lovable, wheel-legged house-bot from The Jetsons. And that’s just what I was expecting when I attended the 
I headed downtown, sniffling and sneezing the whole way, determined to revel in the magic of the 
In an outburst of song, dance, and color, Center Theater Group, Disney, and 
The job of a film archivist is a relatively new one. It sounds silly. (If my friend Pete has a massive DVD collection, is he suddenly considered an archivist?) But what a lot of people don’t know is that film is a kind of living organism. It decays quite rapidly over time. And as depicted so graphically in the latest Tarantino venture, Inglorious Basterds, most of the movies made in the silent-era were shot on an ultra-flammable cellulose nitrate film base. Due to this highly unstable stock, as well as the recklessness of early studio storage, a great many of the films made in America before 1920 are either lost, or have turned to dust. In fact, no type of truly durable film base was even introduced into the movie-making landscape until the early 1990’s with the popularization of polyester.
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