The motivation for young pianists to tackle Chopin’s etudes, pieces that are monuments of technical razzle dazzle, is youthful vanity. The motivation for 40-year-old Louis Lortie to do the same is less obvious. Read more...

Imagine scenes of a young woman in ecstasy, a wife about to hit her husband with a bottle, or a daughter stealing from her dying father. Read more...

Joan Didion’s “Political Fictions” introduces an angle on American politics few have seen. It’s like visiting the vacant set of a television show: what appears real and sincere is revealed to be fake. Read more...

President Bush’s “Axis of Evil” includes a country torn by politics but connected through heritage as an industrialized South Korea mourns its northern communist counterpart, a remnant of the Cold War. Read more...

If art can truly be said to imitate life, then in a new age filled with impending war and other political tensions, museums have begun to adapt their exhibits to focus on new media such as film and documentary. Read more...

Beliefs, like shapes and colors, fill our world in various forms. Tonight, beliefs portrayed through art will fill the New Wight Gallery with various shapes and colors in the UCLA art department’s exhibit titled “to believe much more than that.” Five UCLA art graduate students are curating the Kinross Building’s first exhibit, showcasing the artwork of 16 art students from schools around Southern California, all focusing on belief. Read more...

Have you ever lived music? When you are so happy or so full of whatever emotion that you just remember your favorite song and start singing? Read more...