Ring Festival passes 'event baton' to Getty for 'Pacific Standard Time'

After sipping wine and munching grilled fruit in the J. Paul Getty Museum’s entrance hall Wednesday, about 200 members of the Los Angeles arts scene witnessed the business at hand: a literal passing of the baton so that arts-impresarioship as a community-wide undertaking continues.

The passer was Los Angeles Opera, orchestrator not only of its own just-concluded production of Richard Wagner’s epic “Ring” cycle, but of the Ring Festival that sprang up around it, as 122 cultural organizations hitched themselves to the Wagnerian wagon and mounted their own exhibitions, performances, film screenings and talks, discussions and symposia related directly or tangentially to the composer and his magnum opus.

The recipient was the J. Paul Getty Trust, which is marshaling a regionwide project, “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980” that will start in the fall of 2011, with more than 50 participants enlisted, and counting.

The conductor’s baton, white with a tan cork handle, came from the desk of L.A. Opera’s music director, James Conlon, and bore his signature.

“We’re thrilled to accept this baton and the challenge it represents,” Deborah Marrow, interim president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, said after L.A. Opera’s chief operating officer, Stephen Rountree, had passed it to her amid applause.

In an interview this week, Barry Sanders, the L.A. Opera board member who led the Ring Festival, said the festival had introduced a fruitful new math to Southern California’s cultural equation: “We were able to demonstrate that one and one equals three.”

He was referring to the synergy of having different cultural groups do their own things, at their own expense, but with a unifying theme. Sanders said that the early returns from an ongoing survey of festival participants shows that the organizations and their events enjoyed more exposure, and ultimately a bigger audience, than they were likely to reap for their typical stand-alone offerings.

*[Updated] KCRW switches theater commentators: Critic out, stage producer in

Exit another theater critic, enter a theater insider.

Those are the stage directions coming from KCRW-FM (89.9). The Santa Monica-based public radio outlet announced Friday that the curtain has closed on James C. Taylor's seven-year run of four-minute weekly reviews and commentaries in the Thursday afternoon "Theatre Talk" spot. Opening Tuesday at 4:44 p.m. is a new take on the stage, "Opening the Curtain on L.A. Theatre," with Anthony Byrnes.

The idea is to keep the focus strictly on the Los Angeles stage, rather than the wider view "Theatre Talk" would sometimes take, said Matt Holzman, a longtime KCRW staff member who recently became director of program development after Jennifer Ferro succeeded Ruth Seymour as general manager in February.

Byrnes certainly has been in the belly of the L.A. theater beast: He's a producer of "Live at the Sahara," the L.A.-spawned musical about Louis Prima and Keely Smith that has Broadway ambitions, and from 1999 to 2005 he was associate producer for new play development for Center Theatre Group, the biggest stage company in town.

According to his bio on the website of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where he teaches theater movement classes, Byrnes has acted and directed as well.

All of which raises the question: Will a fully immersed fellow like Byrnes pull punches that an arm's-length observer like Taylor (a regular freelance contributor to the Los Angeles Times since 2003) would not hesitate to land? (He's hardly the only L.A. theater critic to have his job eliminated or downsized: see here).

"Somebody who is part of the L.A. theater community...might be a little more of a booster or promoter of L.A. theater," Taylor said Friday, allowing that being on the inside can also lend a useful perspective. Given how "spread out" the L.A. theater scene is, Taylor said, the job of commenting on it weekly is "hard to do. I wish anyone who comes next luck."

Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman talk 'Road Show' on KCRW

Michael Silverblatt has spent 20 of his 56 years as host of KCRW's "Bookworm," but his fascination with musical theater -- and particularly the work of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim -- goes back to when he was 7.

At that tender age, Silverblatt's family took him to see "The Sound of Music," thinking the young bookworm might enjoy the show because the cast included children.

Instead of being delighted by the prospect, Silverblatt says, "I was not good at playing with children, and I was terrified that they were going to ask me to go up onstage and play with the children."  Luckily, Silverblatt was not faced with this social torture, and instead "The Sound of Music" inspired in him a lifelong passion for musical theater.

As part of that passion, Silverblatt developed a special bond with Sondheim by working the British-style Cryptic Crosswords that the composer/lyricist created for New York Magazine earlier in his career. "The definitions were very tricky," Silverblatt says. "Here's a sample clue: 'Broken harmonicas floating in Manhattan.' You 'break' harmonicas and rearrange the letters to get 'maraschino'  -- the cherries floating in the drink called a Manhattan. The puzzles reshaped my way of looking at words."

Now, after all these years, Silverblatt will be side by side with Sondheim -- and Sondheim's frequent collaborator, John Weidman -- for a discussion of the tangled evolution of the Sondheim-Weidman musical "Road Show."

The program, titled "Lyrics as Literature," will air Thursday from 2:30 to 3 p.m. on the public radio station KCRW-FM (89.9).

Shepard Fairey assumes his DJ alter-ego for KCRW

When he's not designing posters or squaring off in court, Shepard Fairey can often be seen DJ'ing at local clubs, parties and festivals. (He sometimes uses the stage names DJ Diabetic and Emcee Insulin.) Now the artist has taken his weekend job to the airwaves as part of KCRW's guest DJ series on "Morning Becomes Eclectic."

During the show, Fairey discusses at considerable length his famous Obama "Hope" poster and his recent legal battles in Massachusetts. Appropriately, the artist chooses the Equal’s “Police on My Back” to kick off his set.

"I've said frequently that I became addicted to DJing because it has the same rewarding problem-solving aspects as design," Fairey says.

"And, in fact, it's even more fun because you're listening to great stuff as you're figuring out how to put it together in a way that works, that’s both sharing something that people may know, but also combining it in a new way that they're not expecting, so it's that double-up punch that’s gonna really make it something fun to listen to."

Among the other singers and groups that Fairey chooses for the show are Henry Rollins, the Sex Pistols and Led Zeppelin.

You can listen to the entire show using the player above.

-- David Ng

David Lynch discusses Elvis, Janis and Richard Strauss(!) on KCRW

Art fans in L.A. know just how deeply David Lynch's creative cortex is rooted in musical inspiration. His recent photography exhibition at Michael Kohn Gallery was inspired by the new album "Dark Night of the Soul" by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, and was one of the L.A. gallery scene's starriest events of the year so far. In his films, the great enigmatic one has repeatedly inserted famous pop numbers at crucial plot junctures, signaling ruptures in psyches and consciousness, using them not as sonic wallpaper but as a fundamental part of the elaborate soundscape.

Today, Lynch reveals more about his musical preferences when he drops by KCRW as part of the station's guest DJ project. (A snippet of the show has aired on the program "Morning Becomes Eclectic," but the program is intended to be experienced online. You can click on the above media player for the entire session.)

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker and artist talks about the various pop singers who have influenced his movies and visual art, among them Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and more. One big surprise: Lynch singles out Richard Strauss and "Im Abendrot," which the German composer wrote when he was 84 as part of the series Last Four Songs.

And here's a mini-scoop for all of you Lynch-ophiles: Culture Monster has heard from a little birdie that the director is planning to release an album of his own music within the next few weeks. No title has been revealed yet, but stay tuned to davidlynch.com for further developments.

Keep reading for some of Culture Monster's favorite musical moments in the Lynch filmography...

Loving Lenny

While Gustavo Dudamel is being compared to the late, great Leonard Bernstein now and then, and Los Angeles awaits the stewardship of the young conductor at the L.A. Philharmonic, let's turn our attention for a moment to the original wunderkind, who died in 1990.

It seems to be his time, and only partly because he would have turned 90 this year.

Bernstein's little-known score for a 1950 musical play of "Peter Pan" (not the Mary Martin "Peter") is being given its first American revival this month in Santa Barbara, as Irene Lacher's Sunday Arts & Books story reports. A 1969 album of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" with Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic is newly available on CD. The umpteenth Broadway revival  of "West Side Story" is scheduled to open at the Palace in February. Two biographies find new ways to tell his story: "Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician" by Barry Seldes is due in May and "Leonard Bernstein: American Original" by Burton Bernstein (his brother) and Barbara Haws was released earlier this year.

This fall and winter, Carnegie Hall and the N.Y. Philharmonic are celebrating their city's adopted son with a series of performances and lectures under the umbrella title "Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds." The event's website includes a nice collection of vintage video and audio -- some of music and some of Bernstein speaking from the podium (as he did like no one else), plus comments from his brother, Stephen Sondheim and others. In the current issue of the New Yorker, critic Alex Ross uses this occasion to write about the conductor-composer's professional and personal highs and lows in "The Legend of Lenny."

Returning back to Southern California, fans here can start 2009 with a Lenny-athon. KCRW-FM (89.9) will broadcast the 11-hour Peabody-winning radio documentary series "Leonard Bernstein: An American Life," narrated by Susan Sarandon. It will air from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m. on New Year's Day.

It doesn't have to be a special birthday year for Bernstein to be relevant. Just a few years ago Times music critic Mark Swed wrote a lively remembrance for Calendar, "Lenny, the indispensable.''

--Sherry Stern

Photo credits: Gustavo Dudamel by Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times,  Leonard Bernstein by Erich Auerbach/Getty Images.

More MOCA: A letter-writing campaign and a panel today on KCRW*

More MOCA mobilizing:

The MOCA Mobilization, a Facebook group banded in support of the financially strapped Museum of Contemporary Art, recently used its Facebook page as a tool to draw about 450 people to the Geffen Contemporary for a rally intended to draw attention to the problems that threaten the existence of the museum.

Now, the group -- led by a committee including artists Cindy Bernard, Diana Thater, Judy Fiskin and Mark Pally -- have launched a letter-writing campaign to encourage the public to contact Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, MOCA trustees and city officials. And you don't even have to worry about what to say: The Facebook page outlines suggested talking points.

Meanwhile, to hear more about the MOCA situation, tune in to KCRW-FM (89.9) at 2:30 p.m. today, when Ruth Seymour hosts a panel discussion on MOCA's problems. Guests include Times art critic Christopher Knight (who tells you what he really thinks in his recent open letter to the Board of Trustees); artist Lari Pittman; and Dennis Szakacs, director of the Orange County Museum of Art.

*UPDATE: Former City Councilman Joel Wachs, who was originally scheduled to participate in the panel, has been replaced by Dean Valentine, former MOCA board member and contemporary art collector.

-- Diane Haithman

Photo credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times 

L.A. arts leaders talk economy on KCRW

It's always considered a little unseemly to talk about art and money in the same breath -- even though nonprofit arts organizations spend at least as much time behind closed doors talking about how to pay the bills as they do about what's onstage or installed in the galleries.

But now things are so bad that everybody's talking about the economy right out there in public -- including the executives of some of Los Angeles' most prominent arts institutions.

For a chance to hear what four of them have to say -- LACMA president Melody Kanschat; Los Angeles Opera chairman Marc Stern; Jim Royce, director of marketing and communications for Center Theatre Group, and Arvind Manocha, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic -- tune in at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday to KCRW-FM (89.9) for "Arts and the Economy," hosted by KCRW general manager Ruth Seymour.

-- Diane Haithman

Photo caption: KCRW executive Ruth Seymour. Photo by John Samargis/ Santa Monica College