Free Music Under the Stars comes to a close this week. It’s been a very musical summer and we’ll be sad to see it go, which it will, thankfully, with a bang and not a whimper. Thursday it’s Chuck Mead, a co-founder of the Grammy-nominated BR549, serious players in the blossoming alt-country scene of the […]
Summer is almost over, which means the California Philharmonic’s Festival on the Green is, too: the last show is tomorrow. The title doesn’t leave much to the imagination—there will be Beethoven, and there will be show tunes. Specifics: the concert opens with Beethoven’s Leonora Overture, No. 3 and ends with the Choral Movement of the […]
Since July 22, Boston Court’s world premiere run of The Good Book of Pedantry and Wonder has been picking up some very good reviews. Set in the English 1880s, The Good Book follows James Murray as he goes about creating the Oxford English Dictionary. The monumentality of the task—and his monomania for it—have left Murray […]
Southwest Chamber Music is wrapping up its summer season with two nights of music at the Huntington. On the agenda are works by Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, as well as one piece by a contemporary American composer, Alexandra du Bois: L’apothéose d’un rêve, which etymological intuition (and Google) tells me means “the culmination of a dream.” […]
Excuse me, that should say “Mark Haskell Smith wrote Baked,” a pot-laced Los Angeles crime and revenge novel. Experimental botanist Miro Basinas wins Amsterdam’s Cannabis Cup with a strain that tastes like mangos, after which he is promptly gunned down and jacked of his prize-winning stash by an enterprising gangster, whom Miro then goes in […]
The Pasadena POPS has quite the jazzy evening lined up for this Saturday. Pianist Alfredo Rodriguez, a native of Havana who was “discovered” by Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival, will play Rhapsody in Blue. Actress and Tony-nominated vocalist Valarie Pettiford—best known perhaps for her role as Big Dee Dee Thorne on Half & […]
Every Wednesday this August, the Americana at Brand is having a free outdoor concert in their courtyard. Produced by Chris Isaacson of Upright Cabaret, the lineup looks to be mostly solo vocal artists of some repute. Last week it was Steve Tyrell, a Grammy-winning vocalist. This week it’s Natasha Bedingfield, the UK’s self-proclaimed biggest female […]
We’re very fond of the Pasadena Museum of California Art, especially their extra-curricular programming. The fourth installment of their Design Biennial, which began two weeks ago and runs until Halloween, is using a new format. Rather than have a juried competition, the PMCA asked notable professionals from five fields to curate their discipline’s category: Rose […]
Chris Holden is the Pasadena City Councilperson for District 3, which has a funny shape and includes most of Old Town and the Playhouse District. This Saturday, he is hosting a summer block party for District 3, which you can attend even if you are from District 9. There will be live music, hot dogs […]
The Ancient Future Quintet, one of the band’s many configurations. Ancient Future is a band, I think. They’ve been playing world fusion music, a term bandleader Matthew Montfort claims he coined, since 1978. Their upcoming date at the incredibly atmospheric Folly Bowl (an amphitheater in the yard of a private Altadena home) is but one […]
