Here are more pictures from last Saturday’s first concert of Southwest Chamber Music’s 2013 Summer Festival, their 20th anniversary season. All images are care of my good friend and photographer extraordinaire, Tim Strempfer, exclusively for All is Yar. To read my review of the concert, click HERE. One reminder: folks who use Google Chrome as … Continue reading
Last Saturday night, Southwest Chamber Music opened the 20th anniversary season of their annual Summer Festival. Stravinsky’s Octet and Mozart’s Gran Partita provided the primary motivation for attending, especially if one happened to be a fan of wind instruments. But deep in the hundred acre woods of The Huntington where Jeff von der Schmidt and … Continue reading
The setting for last week’s first classical music concert of the 2013 Hollywood Bowl season couldn’t have been more perfect: the temperature was a picnic-perfect low 70’s, cooling down just a little as the sun set; the sky was clear and cloudless, and a very slight breeze blew through the amphitheater. It was, as the great … Continue reading
For many people, learning to drink scotch is a lot easier than learning how to pronounce the names on the bottles. Have you ever wondered whether “BAL-ven-ie” or “Bal-VEN-ie” is the correct way to say The Balvenie? Or perhaps you didn’t know Glenmorangie is supposed to be pronounced “Glen-MOR-an-gie.” Let’s not even get started attempting … Continue reading
Inspired by Tim Mangan’s identically titled blog series, I offer up two brief scenes from Being John Malkovich which use the same excerpt from the second movement of Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta by Béla Bartók. The first is the opening scene of the movie featuring some startlingly life-like puppetry (John Cusack plays the puppeteer). The second … Continue reading
On the 4th of July, most Americans’ musical thoughts turn to John Philip Sousa — AKA “The March King.” However, there is another composer of marches that could justifiably have claims to the same title: Karl L. King. He was so well-regarded by his peers that composer Henry Fillmore actually re-titled one of his own … Continue reading
For those of us who appreciate a good deal on concert tickets — and let’s face it, that’s all of us — comes news that the Los Angeles Philharmonic is offering a 50% discount for all seven of their Classical Tuesday/Thursday concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in the month of July. The deal is available … Continue reading
When thinking of summertime music in SoCal, one’s thoughts usually go first to the Hollywood Bowl. There’s a good reason for that: the iconic venue in Cahuenga Pass is not only the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it hosts a dizzying array of jazz, world music, alternative rock, musical theatre, and more. Where … Continue reading
One of the joys of living Los Angeles is having a plethora of wonderful places to eat. The challenge, however, is finding time in one’s schedule to make your way across town to try the latest place, and that is IF you actually can get a reservation for a day/time that fits your schedule. If … Continue reading
As you may have noticed, posts during June have slowed down. That’s because the All is Yar IT Department (that’s me) has been co-opting time and energy from the All is Yar Editorial Department (still me) to develop the first design refresh of this website in two years. Unfortunately, like many remodeling projects, this one … Continue reading
Listening to music you’ve never heard before is, by definition, full of unknowns. One aspect you don’t always think about is how long a piece will take to play. Printed program notes frequently include estimated timings, but that isn’t always the case, and you’re at the mercy of the composer’s and musicians’ ability to keep … Continue reading
At the opening talk of this year’s Ojai Music Festival last Thursday, Ara Guzelimien (Provost & Dean of The Julliard School and former Artistic Director of the Ojai Festival) astutely observed that The Rite of Spring has become big business. What used to scare audiences now regularly packs houses. With all of the buzz surrounding … Continue reading
My two-part review of this past weekend’s 67th Ojai Music Festival will be up very soon. In the meantime, please enjoy these photos from the weekend (see the gallery below). Except for a few shots taken by me (as noted in the descriptions), most of the photos — in fact, pretty much all the really … Continue reading
Mad props to the esteemed Brian Lauritzen for unearthing this gem. As he says, it’s better than the original. And don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with the audio — it’s supposed to be like that, you’ll see. (Oh, and if you’re wondering what the original is like, click HERE) Continue reading
When the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival was in town last year, I managed to catch two of the three concerto performances that different soloists were performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The one I soloist I missed: Alisa Weilerstein. At the time, someone told me I had made a mistake. Judging by the strength of … Continue reading
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