If you were to ask jazz trumpeter Avishai Cohen what prompted him to title his new ECM Recording Cross My Palm With Silver, he'll tell you that he was inspired by the expression's origin wherein a silver coin is played across a fortuneteller's hand before having your future told.
"It talks about the titles of the tracks that are, in a...
Before Taylor Mac returns next year with the full 24 Decade History of Popular Music at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel, take a look a Taylor's pov on the entire project with an interview I did that posted at LAMag.com in March of 2016:
This July 4, America will turn 240 years old. To celebrate this monumental anniversary, singer/actor/playwright...
If you were a fan of silent film star Buster Keaton, you were no doubt open to the idea of Johnny Depp playing a man obsessed with him in the 1993 film Benny and Joon. 24 years after the film, a musical is having its world premiere at the Old Globe in San Diego.
In case you haven't seen the film,...
You wouldn’t expect openly gay actor/singer/comedian Lea DeLaria to have a baby daddy. But she does. And it’s David Bowie. “He’s totally my baby daddy,” she says. “First of all because I love him, and second, when we consider that this record is my baby, then David Bowie is my baby daddy.”
The record in question is House of David, her jazz...
When Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott Launched their theater company, A Noise Within, in a tiny Glendale space 25 years ago, their critics were not optimistic. “There were people who said we’d be dead within two weeks,” Rodriguez-Elliott says. The mission of A Noise Within has always been to produce classical theater (Shakespeare, Shaw, Arthur Miller). Now, as they begin their Silver...
In 2014, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and artists like Lalah Hathaway, Bilal, and En Vogue saluted a selection of seminal and beloved musical tracks from seven decades of black cinema. As classic arrangements from Shaft and The Bodyguard were played, clips of famed actors like Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr., Jamie Foxx, and more flashed on the Bowl’s jumbo screens. The show, dubbed The Black Movie...
Broadway behemoth A Chorus Line turns 40 this week, and what better way to celebrate than with three performances of the iconic show at the Hollywood Bowl? Once the longest running show in Broadway history, ACL is a meta meditation on the Great White Way’s casting process. Actor Baayork Lee was there for the beginning of the show’s success—not only did she originate the...
Composers have long been using musicals as a medium for social commentary. Given what we know (or think we know) of Cabaret from the memorable 1972 film—or the countless productions of the show—it was considered very provocative when it debuted in November of 1966: Here was a show that dealt with the rise of the Nazis (in a much darker way...