The Colburn School of Performing Arts - Los Angeles

                                "the arts give life meaning under the most dreadful of circumstances." 
     
           - Herbert Zipper, stalwart Viennese conductor who formed a secret orchestra in a Nazi concentration camp and later took concerts to America's inner-city schools. 





COLBURN 100, A Season Celebrating Richard D. Colburn's Centenary. 




THE COLBURN SCHOOL, Zipper Hall, yesterday's setting for two Operas; THE SECRET KINGDOM, by Ernst Krenek, and THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS, by Viktor Ullmann with The Colburn Orchestra and The Domingo-Thornton Young Artists of LA Opera conducted by James Conlon, Richard Seaver Music Director of LA OPERA.


The voices, sublime, all of them standouts, excellent, brilliant. The costumes, black and white, pleated, pointed, flowing, colorful red, yellow slashed green, striking, grabbed my eyes and held them. The conducting, precise, in total command. The audience, spellbound and astonished and for me, grateful at the same time. The composers, masters. Ernst Krenek, (1900-1991) presents a fairy tale with a riddle, and takes us into nature to unfold it. Viktor Ullmann, (1898-1944) exhibits a chilling work written in the Terezin concentration camp where he "took an active part in the musical life which flourished there amid the appalling conditions." This work was suppressed by the Nazi regime, and I am fortunate to have been in the audience. I am fortunate through the music to experience scenes of my own childhood, the electric blue of the morning glories, the blazing orange of Mother's Zinnias, and the delight in being out of doors in the open air watching blades of grass, cars go by, the postman on the street, the direct contrast to the horrors that occurred only few years before. I am fortunate to capture, through music, over the years, Viktor Ullmann's feeling for life.


This is a realized dream of conductor James Conlon and Colburn President and CEO Sel Kardan, to raise public consciousness to these suppressed composers work. 


THE COLBURN SCHOOL for the performing arts is the example of excellence in every way. Whether you are a connoisseur of music, dance or drama. Whether you can pay or whether you need to go free, go, experience world class performing arts and how they do, in fact, give life meaning.




http://www.colburnschool.edu/

Food as Art - Eat it, Enjoy it, Confess the next day.

It is Angelini Osteria, again.


I know, I know, there are so many other places to eat in Los Angeles, so many worthy rooms like Campanile, which I love and go to regularly, Mozza, excellent, Marino on Melrose, still great value, fab food & big leather banquettes, very old world.  There is JAR and CRAFT and Drago and Matteo and it is wonderful to sample the delights the city has to offer. 


However, 


time after time I find myself right back at Angelini, especially for lunch when it is not as crowded, and tucking into a chop salad, or the heavenly lasagna, or the warm sliced swordfish with pistachios and baratta. Did I spell that right? Who cares? It's GINO ANGELINI and the magic he works. I took the New Yorkers there during their visit and their response was "I could eat here every night." http://www.angeliniosteria.com/vivalosteria.html







Here it is: "Harvey's Guss" Grilled Bistecca alla Fiorentina "for Two" Finished in the Wood Oven. 


Eat it, enjoy it, confess the next day. 

Photography - Michele Mattei

The photography of Michele Mattei


Remember in OUT OF AFRICA, when Karen Blixen sits at table with Denys Finch Hatton and Berkeley Cole, and tells the story of a woman who walked out on a beach so white...

well, here is the flip side,

a black that is so black...
a black that is drawn from a Lee Bontecou hole, a Courbet hole. Velvet black, pitch black, coal black, complete black.

Michele Mattei has transcended black in the background of her flower. It is the black that makes the white so very white, the green so very green, a green that takes me away to a soft shore on that Karen Blixen beach, to a meadow filled with blue bells in an English countryside, to the beauty, beauty, beauty in the corners of my mind.
The flower. The meditation.

Michele's exquisite photographs of flowers, artists, beauty, portraits are not to be missed.
Go to her website and experience her art.

http://michelemattei.net/

Charles Bukowski - Poetry

air and light and time and space  


"you know, I've either had a family, a job, something 
has always been in the 
way
but now
I've sold my house, I've found this 
place, a large studio, you should see the space 
and the light. 
 for the first time in my life I"m going to have a place and the time to 
create."


no, baby, if you're going to create 
you're going to create whether you work 
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or 
you're going to create in a small room with 3 children 
while you're on 
welfare, 
you're going to create with part of your mind and your 
body blown 
away, 
you're going to create blind
crippled 
demented, 
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your 
back while 
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, 
flood and fire. 


baby, air and light and time and space 
have nothing to do with it 
and don't create anything 
except maybe a longer life to find 
new excuses 
for.                                          - Charles Bukowski 
                                                            THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS
I tell myself to remember this, always.

My best LA: Flea Market

Santa Monica Flea Market at the Santa Monica Airport
1st & 4th Sunday's of the month:

Last time someone was selling a plethora of empty Hermes boxes, an unlikely sight, one I had never witnessed, and of course if you have any Hermes scarves without a box, here was your chance to get one.

Along with that comes vintage shoes, cashmere sweaters, french mirrors encrusted with roses, books, cutlery, china, shoes and more shoes, beds, paintings, jewellery, need I go on? You get the picture.

Make sure you take bags, and a hat, and a sweater. You never know if it is going to be hot or cold.

Food as Art, Providence

Spaghetti with Sea Urchin

I don't know how long I can go on like this. It's so good, and it's so rich,
and this one is sooooo good
and sooooo expensive,
but worth it.
They deliver, the taste is sublime.

Providence on Melrose.

Back in Los Angeles

God of Carnage at the Ahmanson

This is Virginia Woolf, Martha & George cloned in another couple. For 90 minutes the bullets of language pass back and forth between the couples, punctuated by the long stretches of necessary silence.
Funny. Hilarious. Real.
When the bottle of rum is cracked the gloves come off.

my LA

Here we are, driving the streets, with funny little things that appear. Cash cows, tiny cars, and the rhythm of a city that constantly moves east to west, north to south, and the tires are blowing and the hum of the motors is going, and whatever car you are driving is being torn up by the pot holes on Wilshire Blvd., constantly. Ever think about the dirt that accumulates in your house from all these cars?

Still....I love LA.

Los Angeles what a week.....

Here's the view from my terrace window. I live in LA. I love it. Ok, Ok, I know the traffic is bad, but the upside is the neighborhoods have improved, by a long shot, better eating, better shopping, more movies. This week was packed. Saw an evening with Joel Grey at the Paley Center for Media and watched fabulous old film of his early days on TV. I hit the Los Angeles Art Show in downtown and was gobsmacked by John Baldessari's A to Z collection, sold as a set in mixgrafia, as well as Michele Mattei's glorious flowers in photography. Did the girl thing & bought new capri pants at J.Crew. Jumped into the writing life again with Jack Grapes and his merry band of pranksters, poets and tempest tossed writers. Spent a lovely Saturday evening at the Colburn School of Music downtown for a Brahms concert, and did the flea market in Santa Monica yesterday with Lisa. Finished off the week with dinner at Angelini Osteria, my favorite restaurant in town. I mean really, the weather is 75, the rest of the country is in the deep freeze and even though my car needs some repair from the major pot holes in Wilshire Blvd., I can't complain about this city. LA? I love it.