You can find At Home With Gustavo on KUSC Radio in Los Angeles and on KDFC in the Bay Area. The concept of these broadcasts is that Dudamel will share, in conversation with KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen, many of his favorite recordings. Instead of conducting the music, he’ll be able to express precisely what each composition and recording means to him.

Anyone who has attended an LA Phil concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall knows that Dudamel is very passionate about music. That comes through in every single performance. What’s most appealing about these radio shows is that he will explain where that passion for each piece comes from.

Dudamel will record each session in his living room as he explains in this video:

You can tune in Tuesday-Friday at 6 PM on both stations. On Sunday, when the programming will be in Spanish, it will air at 6 PM on KDFC and 7 PM on KUSC. Each episode will be unique. Dudamel will occupy approximately 10 minutes or so of each broadcast. (These broadcasts can also be streamed on each radio station’s website.)

While we wait to see how long this pandemic lasts and when we’ll be able to see Dudamel on the podium at the Hollywood Bowl (his first scheduled performance is July 7th where he’ll lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus in a performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana), for now we can invite him into our homes to share his passion for music with us.

Photo of Gustavo Dudamel by Smallz Raskind (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic)

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Last Saturday The Soraya’s onstage Jazz Club presented Chilean singer/songwriter Camila Meza. They continue that series with another Chilean, saxophone player Melissa Aldana, who performs on Thursday and Friday night.

The concert she will be performing is called Visions for Frida Kahlo. This is a suite she composed to honor the famous artist and her work. Visions is also the name of her first quartet album released in 2019.

Surrounded by all male musicians on the recording she draws parallels between herself as a female instrumentalist in the primarily male-driven world of jazz saxophone to that of Kahlo forging her way in the male-dominated art world.

Brian Zimmerman in Jazziz Magazine said of this project, “With its richly textured soundscapes and emotionally arresting material, Visions makes a clear connection to Kahlo and other Latina pathbreakers past and present… Melissa Aldana [is] a bandleader and musician at the top of her game.”

Aldana won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition in 2013.

As a reminder, the audience will be seated on stage with Aldana.

In addition to her two performances at The Soraya, Aldana will also perform on March 11th at La Jolla’s Auditorium at The Scripps Research Institute.

For tickets on Thursday night at The Soraya go here.

For tickets on Friday night at The Soraya go here.

Photo of Melissa Aldana by Fanny Delsol (Courtesy of The Soraya)

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Dionysus takes on the form of a butch lesbian gardener named Diane (Rami Margron). The goal is to bring the earth closer to its natural order. In order to get the other characters in the play to go along with this idea, Diane will have to use all of her seductive powers. In other words, to be rather like Dionysus.

Jesse Green of the New York Times called George’s play, “astonishing.”  George was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her 2013 play, The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence.

James Vásquez directs this production of Hurricane Diane. Joining Margron in the cast are Opal Alladin, Jenn Harris, Jennifer Paredes and Liz Wisan.

This looks like not just a very funny play, but also a thoughtful one, too. Perhaps just the kind of play the god of ritual madness and theater might love. Whether he/she goes by Bacchus, Dionysus or Diane.

Hurricane Diane runs 90 minutes and does not have an intermission. There is strong language in the play.

For tickets go here.

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The program is the same at both concerts. These all-Bach recitals include: Chaconne from Partita No 2. in D minor, BWV 1004 (arr. Brahms); Prelude, Gavotte and Gigue from Partita No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006 (arr. Rachmaninoff); Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542 (arr. Liszt) and The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080.

When I heard Trifonov perform the Tchaikovsky in December, I realized there are still discoveries destined to be made about classical music and artists that want to make them. Trifonov is that artist.

You might be thinking, what’s going to be so special about a performance of these works by Bach? Forget those thoughts. I can assure you no one plays with the same degree of curiosity and passion as Trifonov.

I would recommend that any opportunity to see Daniil Trifonov to perform is one worth taking advantage of.

For tickets, please contact the venues by phone. The websites do not show tickets available online. That may indicate that these two performances are already sold out.

Photo of Daniil Trifonov courtesy of the artist’s website.

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In 2013, rock musician/actor Sting released his first album of new material in a decade. It was a song cycle meant as part of a theatre piece. In 2014 the musical The Last Ship (also the name of the album) made is debut on Broadway. The touring production of the show just concluded its run at the Ahmanson Theatre and opens this week at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre. The musical will run there from February 20th to March 22nd.

A little backstory before getting into the show itself. When The Last Ship opened at the Neil Simon Theatre, Jimmy Nail was playing the role of Jackie White. Ticket sales weren’t quite what everyone had hoped and slightly more than two months after opening, Nail was replaced by Sting in an effort to boost the box office. Those efforts did not succeed and the last show of The Last Ship was on January  24, 2015 after a run of only 105 performances (not counting previews of which there were 29.)

Sting returns to the part for this tour (which will also include at stop at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre immediately after closing in Los Angeles.)

The Last Ship follows Gideon Fletcher (Oliver Savile) in Wallsend, North East England in 1986. He’s been away at sea for a decade-and-a-half. When he returns he finds he woman he loved, Meg Dawson (Frances McNamee) has moved on. He also discovers that the shipyard that gave the town its life and purpose is closing.  Jackie White (Sting) is a foreman who wants to see his men finish one last ship before that happens.

All the songs in the musical were written by Sting. The Last Ship features a new book by Lorne Campbell. The original book was written by John Logan and Brian Yorkey. Campbell is also the director of the show.

Here’s the good news. The show has been significantly reworked since its Broadway run. I didn’t see the show there ,but did attend yesterday’s opening night. The Last Ship has terrific songs, wonderful performances (and kudos to the casting director Beth Eden who put together not just a talented ensemble, but one that genuinely looks like they work in ship building in Northern England) and while it might be a tad long, it is still involving. The Last Ship is certainly far better than its history would suggest.

Once this mini-tour of The Last Ship is completed, Sting will begin a residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on May 22nd.

For more information, check out our interviews with Frances McNamee and Oliver Savile.

The Last Ship runs 2 hours and 40 minutes with one intermission.

For tickets go here.

Update: This post has been updated after seeing a performance of the show. 

2nd Update:  This post has been updated for its run in San Francisco and also includes links to interviews with  cast members Frances McNamee and Oliver Savile.

Photo: Oliver Savile and Sting in The Last Ship (Photo by Matthew Murphy/Courtesy of Center Theatre Group)

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Orfeh made her Broadway debut as an understudy in Footloose. She went on to play the role of Annette in the Broadway musical version of Saturday Night Fever. In 2000, Andy Karl joined the show to replace Sean Palmer as Joey. It was there that he and Orfeh fell in love.

She went on to appear in Legally Blonde: The Musical. He appeared in that show as well as Rocky, On the Twentieth Century, Groundhog Day and they both appeared in Pretty Woman: The Musical.

Orfeh and Andy Karl have two shows this week at Feinstein’s at Vitello’s. They will be celebrating their recording and 2017 show Legally Bound which finds them doing duets and taking turns on such songs as Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, I’m Your Baby Tonight and Kiss. There are also songs from their Broadway shows.

Orfeh and Karl are bonafide Broadway stars, but they also know how to rock. Expect a combination of styles if you attend these shows on Tuesday or Wednesday at Feinstein’s.

For those of you in San Francisco, they will be performing at Feinstein’s At the Nikko on Friday and Saturday.

Photo of Orfeh and Andy Karl courtesy of andykarl.com

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We’ve covered this play before, so it begs the question what prompts us to offer up details about this production, too. Simply put, Lauren Yee is a graduate of UC San Diego and this marks a homecoming for her in addition to a local premiere.

In Yee’s play a young woman tries to wrap her head around her family and its history three decades after her father left Cambodia. The way into this story is through the rock ‘n’ roll music of Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s.

The play features music by Los Angeles band Dengue Fever who celebrate precisely the kind of music depicted in Cambodian Rock Band. They wrote the songs for the play.

Yee has received great reviews for this play across the country and it is one of the most produced plays regionally this year.

The cast in this production includes Brooke Ishibashi, Abraham Kim, Jane Lui, Joe Ngo, James Ryen, Daisuke Tsuji and Moses Villaram. Chay Yew directs.

For tickets go here.

Photo from Cambodian Rock Band by Jim Carmody/Courtesy of the La Jolla Playhouse

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That production was directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and was awarded the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. (Technically this marked its first Broadway production, but plays that have had extensive life off-Broadway and or regionally that later make their way to Broadway are usually put in the “Best Revival” category.) Santiago-Hudson returns to direct this production.

Jitney tells the story of cab drivers. Specifically cab drivers who are operating without a license. They do so because regular taxis will not make their way to the Pittsburgh Hills neighborhood in the 1970s. When the city threatens to shut down their business, these men have to figure out what to do. The pressure this puts on the men reveals far more than just business challenges.

Wilson first wrote Jitney in 1979 and it was first produced in 1982. The playwright did significant re-writing in 1996 and it is that version that is considered definitive and is being performed here.

Appearing in Jitney at the Old Globe Theatre is a mix of cast members from New York and some new actors:  Francois Battiste, Harvy Blanks, Amari Cheatom, Anthony Chisholm, Brian D. Coats, Steven Anthony Jones, Nija Okoro, Keith Randolph Smith and Ray Anthony Thomas.

To read interviews with cast members Steven Anthony Jones and Francois Battiste, click on their names in this sentence to be directed there.

For tickets go here.

Photo:  Amari Cheatom, Harvy Blanks, and Brian D. Coats in Jitney. Photo by Joan Marcus/Courtesy of Center Theatre Group

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The range of music she can perform spans many genres including jazz, soul, gospel, pop and more. Her most recent album (which came out in 2017) is called Twenty Sixty Four. In 2014 she released TheSunRoom and in 2010 came her first full-length recording Avery*sunshine Album.  Along the way there have been multiple EPs, bonus tracks and singles.

Sunshine co-writes the songs with her husband (and producer) Dana Johnson. She also plays piano. Critics have praised her for her incredible range, the diverse styles of music she performs and how effortlessly she marries those styles.

We will have an interview with Sunshine tomorrow, but for fans of her music, she is putting finishing touches on two new albums for next year. One will be an album of new material and later in 2020 will come a live album.

If you live in the Bay Area, she’ll be performing Wednesday and Thursday at Yoshi’s in Oakland.

Photo by LANSTU/Courtesy of AverySunshine.com

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Bell is currently on a four-stop California tour with Italian pianist Alessio Bax. They begin their performances Wednesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall before moving on to performances in Palo Alto, Davis and Oxnard.

On the cusp of turning 52 in December (and still holding to the fact he’s 51 for now), Bell is touring, he is the Music Director of the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields and he is also a father of three boys. This seemed like a perfect time to look back on his childhood, how someone like 18-year-old violinist Daniel Lozakovich can navigate similar territory as Bell did and when, if ever, Bell can have done it all.

You said in an interview on Violin Channel that if you could go back in time you would have practiced harder during your teenage years.

How challenging was it for you to balance being a teenager with being a musician?

I had a slightly unusual sort of teenager years. From the age of 12 I started getting really into music and studying at university. All of my closest friends were much older than I was. I went through the motions in high school, but I wasn’t really well understood there.

I can’t say I had a normal upbringing. I graduated high school at 16 and moved out of the house. I was young to be living on my own at 16, but I was close to my family – just ten minutes away – and  I could bring laundry over.

As far as balancing things, I was into tennis and basketball. I  was totally addicted to video games. I did waste a lot of hours when I was 13-16. My mother would drop me off at music school and I would sneak  out the back and go to the video arcade. I had my name on a lot of the games with the high score. I was a perfectionist and always wanted to do better. I did a lot of fun activities. Maybe that’s why I still love what I’m doing and I never got burned out and had that big crisis that others had.

I recently saw Daniel Lozakovich play with the LA Philharmonic the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. He earned so much applause at the end of the first movement…

If there is no applause after the 1st movement, there’s a problem. The first movement is an entity in itself. It ends so bombastically it seems ridiculous not to clap.

…Esa-Pekka Salonen was conducting and had to tell the audience there was more to come. But what I’m wondering is how do you handle that kind of attention and not let it overcome you, particularly now in the social media age?

If you are really sensitive, and we all are as musicians because you are baring your soul on stage – or at least you should be. Today people are brutal and cruel online. They hide behind their computers. It’s really a phenomenon that is so destructive. For me it is difficult. I try to avoid looking at social media places where people can be mean.

For a young person it might be more difficult. But you have to have good influences around you that balance the right amount of praise with the right amount of constructive criticism. 

When did you as a performer realize you had moved from knowing how to play a piece to knowing why you were playing a piece? In other words, where your level of maturity caught up to the work of the composer?

There’s no beginning or end to that. It’s a constant process. There’s never knowing a piece. Maybe because of my teachers, particularly Josef Gingold, it was never just about playing the piece, it was always about getting to the emotional content of the piece. It’s always cute when I talk to very young kids and I say, “Have you done the Bruch concerto?” And they respond, “Oh I’ve done that.” As if they’ve learned it, but they haven’t quite understood that this is an ongoing process. It’s a constant evolution about how you think about a piece. That’s why we play classical music, because it presents endless challenges. It’s never boring. You can always find new ways and it strikes you in different ways each time.

You’ve spent time lately playing more chamber music as you will this week with Alessio Bax. How do these concerts challenge you in ways being a soloist with an orchestra does not?

Going in and playing Mendelssohn is enjoyable, but you are there for 30 minutes and you leave. You usually have one or two rehearsals with the orchestra, but it doesn’t allow for the level of depth of rehearsal that chamber music does. I love that I can work hour and hours exploring the music and going on a tour and performing night after night. Each time we work to see what we can improve.

Violinist Jascha Heifetz said, “There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.” What further heights do you want to reach?

Of course he’s right. I’ve never heard that quote from him. If there was a top, he was pretty close. For me it is just as personal.  For me it is expanding my repertoire. I would like to get into doing more composing. I write all my own cadenzas for the major violin concertos and I’ve been doing arrangements.  I’m kind of a wannabe composer and that’s what I want to explore in the next decades. Life is a little bit too short or a lot too short that we can’t do all the things we want. That’s something, as I am getting older, I’m more aware of than when I was younger. I won’t  get to do everything I want to do.

Main photo of Joshua Bell by David Bazemore

All photos courtesy of Joshua Bell

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