Fairly sure the title literally means “the arrival of the new Beaujolais,” Beaujolais being a French AOC known for light-bodied reds with relatively high acidity*. “l’Arrivée du Beaujolais Nouveau,” it turns out, is an international marketing event. Our favorite Francophiles, the Alliance Française de Pasadena, are having a wine tasting at Monopole this Friday to [...]
The mission of the wonderfully named Parson’s Nose Productions is to introduce “classic theater to family audiences,” through original one-hour adaptations of dramatic masterpieces. These staged readings are designed to be both smart enough for grownups and boisterous enough for kids. They used to put on shows at Jameson Brown Coffee Roasters, but moved a [...]
Georgia O’Keeffe. All those flowers, all those skulls. A great American artist. And, in Karen Karbo’s new book, a model, maybe, for living as a woman today. How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living is a non-traditional biography; each chapter is built around a facet of life that concerns women of all [...]
Nothing, that’s what. Fun fact: The trade term for lute players is not the bisyllabic “lutist,” as one (read: I) might expect, but the slightly more exotic “lutenist.” What a difference that ‘n’ makes. Anyway. Musica Angelica is having a concert this Saturday called “In Memory of the Masters – The Bigger Picture,” a tribute [...]
If you are at all cognizant of the arts in the greater Los Angeles Area, you have likely been made aware, repeatedly, of Pacific Standard Time, the pan Angeleno (“Pangeleno?”) celebration of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Sixty cultural institutions are participating, which is a lot, as cultural institutions are generally an unruly [...]
Everybody loves the Harlem Renaissance. Very few people, possibly zero, harbor any affection whatsoever for the Great Depression. The stories of both have, of course, been told often. Blues for an Alabama Sky, showing at the Pasadena Playhouse until November 27th, is a story of their overlap. Set in the summer of 1930, Blues follows [...]
Among the many potentially preposterous things about democracy, as practiced in the great state of California, is the initiative process, whereby any sufficiently large group of crackpots, or, more insidiously, well-funded special interest types, can get anything they damn well please on the ballot. The League of Women Voters Pasadena Area are hosting a forum [...]
Edouard and Luvena Vysekal arrived in Los Angeles in 1914. Within a few years, they were fixtures in the LA art scene, regularly exhibiting with the California Art Club and the California Progressive Group. In a fairly conservative artistic climate, they (practically) made the case for modernism, and opened the door to a more experimental [...]
At long last, Southern California’s most celebrated classical repertory theatre company, A Noise Within, is raising the curtain on its brand new Pasadena location, just in time for the start of its 20th season. Their first production, which opens this Saturday and runs through December 16th, is Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Shakespeare’s gender-bending [...]
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp has a hell of a name. She also wrote a hell of a book, Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s, which chronicles LA’s emergence as an international force in visual art in the late 50s and early 60s. It came out from Henry Holt in July, and has [...]
