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Using the Blues to Bridge Across the Great Americana Divide
One of the things I most enjoy about benefit concerts (beyond the whole save-the-world ethos), and music award shows (beyond the awards themselves) is seeing a wide spectrum of artists, each doing 3-5 songs. It’s sort the musical equivalent of a smorgasbord – enough to hear a favorite artist or song and discover someone worth exploring more and short enough to move from those who hold no appeal . Which is why I so enjoyed ‘Across the Great Divide,” a… -
Luciana Souza's New Recording, "The Book of Longing" Translates Poetry into Jazz
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomteicholz/2018/11/23/luciana-souzas-new-recording-the-book-of-longing-translates-poetry-into-jazz/#30ef91717901 On her new recording, “The Book of Longing,” Luciana Souza marries poetry and Jazz in an idiom all her own with spare accompaniment and her uniquely atmospheric vocals to haunting effect. Souza will be performing her lyrical new songs along with some of her more Brazilian-inflected tunes at UCLA’s Royce Hall on December 1 and at New York City’s Jazz Standard, December 14-16. Recently I sat down with Souza to talk about the new recording and the path she… -
Good Vibrations at The Hilbert Museum
You never know where you might find a new museum these days. I was recently down in Orange, California visiting Chapman University when I came upon The Hilbert Museum of California Art which bills itself as “California’s newest Art Museum.” Take that with a grain of salt as new Art museums seem to be opening every week in LA. Still, the Hilbert is a newcomer and also smart enough that what they exhibit is distinctive. The Hilbert houses the collection… -
Steve Leder Knows Things (More Beautiful than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us)
Steve Leder knows things. As the senior Rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the 155-year-old Los Angeles congregation that is home to some 2400 families (including mine), where Leder has served for 30 years, when his phone rings, it is often not good news. He has had to comfort, support, minister to and officiate at hundreds of funerals, make thousands of hospital visits and counsel individuals and families as their lives and families fall apart. When cancer is diagnosed, when adultery… -
Tsinandali: Zubin Mehta Leads the IPO in an Enchanted Evening of Music in Georgia's Kakheti Region
To listen to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) conducted by Zubin Mehta playing Tchaikovsky in a newly constructed 1000-person open-air auditorium at a country estate on a summer’s night is heavenly and it is hard to imagine a classical music experience more intimate and emotional. Even more remarkable, this concert was taking place on the grounds of the Tsinandali Estate in the Republic of Georgia’s Kakheti region, some two and a half hours from Tbilisi, the capital, to launch a… -
The Real Jerusalem (Nir Hasson's Urshalim)
Tom Teicholz , CONTRIBUTOR I write about culture and the cult of luxury Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Tom Teicholz The Temple Mount Nir Hasson covers Jerusalem for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz with particular attention to the residents of East Jerusalem. Hasson approaches Jerusalem very much as a city beat reporter, although the municipal issues in Jerusalem concerning real estate, zoning, water, power are, more often than not, political and at times even existential. Hasson’s reporting reflects… -
Belonging to Jerusalem's Season of Culture
Jerusalem is as much idea as physical entity, existing in history and in the present, in literature and in prayers, in hearts and minds, as the soul, the dream (and even at times the nightmare) of diverse peoples, as a place fraught with politics and nationalism, convictions and resentments that can be as transcendental as they are oppressive, as spiritual as they are mundane – which is a way of saying Jerusalem is eternal and ever changing. Michal Fattal Jerusalem… -
Pop Culture in Carson, CA: A Galaxy of Fans for Manchester United
So there I was on a Saturday night, July 15th to be exact, at the StubHub Center, which is the name of the stadium in Carson which is itself a small city of 100,000, located 13 miles south of Downtown LA and about a half hour from Santa Monica. It’s a very nice stadium. It was opened in 2003 and was called the Home Depot Center for its first decade. It seats 27,000 and is both the second venue developed… -
LA's Modern Art Maven: Galka Scheyer
Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena through September 25, 2017 At the Norton Simon Museum it is easy to be distracted by the many Rodin sculptures at its entrance or to be seduced by the Museum’s beautiful outdoor sculpture garden set in its backyard with a pond that surely would have captivated Monet, or be transfixed by the Van Goghs and Impressionist masterpieces in the galleries, or even the Adam & Eve… -
Happy Birthday, Mr. Hockney
David Hockney who turned 80 on July 9, is being celebrated by major exhibitions traveling the globe. The Tate Modern held its comprehensive exhibit about Hockney’s work from February 9 through May 29th which is now at The Pompidou Center in Paris (June 21-Oct 23) before ending its run at New York’s Metropolitan Museum (November 26- February 25, 2018). It’s the kind of career-spanning retrospective to warm an artist’s heart and please his fans. It is the kind of exhibition… -
Rauschenberg: Making Art "Among Friends"
For those of us who came of age in the second half of the 20th Century, it was dogma that the greatest artist of the 20th Century was Pablo Picasso – he was everywhere, at the forefront of transformative artistic movements such as Cubism and he worked in almost every possible medium, in some cases revealing never-before-realized artistic potential in painting, collage, sculpture, and ceramics. He was constantly creative and prodigiously prolific, leaving footprints on the art scene that most… -
Paul McCarthy's Summer Shock
The new Paul McCarthy exhibit at Hauser & Wirth in downtown Los Angeles, “WS Spinoffs, Wood Statues, Brown Rothkos,” triggers a set of opposing emotions and reactions: McCarthy’s large scale wooden figurative creations and abstract wall hangings are as sensual and gorgeous as they are hideous and transgressive. They are deeply thought-out and yet strangely impulsive. Provocative and rule-breaking yet completely within McCarthy’s canon. © Paul McCarthy Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Installation view, ‘Paul…