Monday, March 16

Making music the organic way

How practical is it to try and bill oneself as "organic" when trying to break into today's increasingly digitized music industry? More practical than one would think. Read more...



Weekend Review: “No Strings”

Appearing atop a short set of stairs front and center on the Freud Playhouse's stage, Barbara (Sophina Brown) opens "No Strings" with the haunting song, "The Sweetest Sounds." She is tall and delicate, standing in front of the live band and to the side of a gauzy Eiffel Tower. Read more...


Rock bottom can be the best place for a network

At around this time last year, as I looked at each network's prime-time schedule for the 2006-2007 season, one thing jumped out: NBC had a great lineup. From returning shows such as "The Office," to interesting new fare including "Studio 60," "Friday Night Lights," "Kidnapped" and "Heroes," I was intrigued by the Peacock's lineup for the first time since "Seinfeld" went off the air. In this very column, I predicted that NBC's lineup could potentially turn around the network's fortunes in the same swift fashion that "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and "Grey's Anatomy" had done for ABC. Read more...


Weekend Review: “Sleeping Beauty Wakes”

What would you do if you went to sleep and woke up in 1,000 years? What would the world be like when you woke up? The musical "Sleeping Beauty Wakes" answers this question and more in its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Read more...


A harmonious pair

When sequencing the excerpts to be performed at tonight's Opera Gala, Neal Stulberg, director of the UCLA Philharmonia, resorted to a tactic all too familiar to any student who has attempted to construct an exhaustively researched paper. Instead of note cards, though, he used leaflets of paper with various excerpts from popular operas to determine the succession of pieces for the gala. Read more...