Big Ideas

L.A. Phil Mixes It Up With Famous Finns,

New Works and a Glimpse of the Future

by Julie Riggott

Bigger is better when it comes to the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“One of the things that I’ve noticed about working with Esa-Pekka [Salonen] is that ideas can’t be big enough,” said Chad Smith, who as vice president of artistic planning interprets and implements the music director’s vision for the Phil.

The new season brings a variety of programming. After the gala opening night with celebrity soprano RenĂŠe Fleming on Thursday, Oct. 4, the Phil has three festivals featuring orchestral works complemented by new music, symposia and other events: Sibelius Unbound, the International Youth Orchestra Festival and Concrete Frequency.

“We have to scale our projects bigger. Our audiences expect it, the city expects it, our orchestra expects it, and, indeed, Esa-Pekka expects it,” Smith said.

The season kicks off this Thursday with a program of French and Italian music by Ravel, Berlioz

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Whip ‘Um Good

Whip 'Um Good

REDCAT Season-Opener Jumps Into the Worlds of Performance and Amnesia

by Daria Benedict

The phrase “avant garde” gets applied fairly frequently in the 21st century, if not always accurately, as the tag is sometimes affixed to anything just slightly out of the mainstream. A production opening this week at the REDCAT theater, however, lives up to the name.

On Wednesday, Sept. 26, New York-based Cynthia Hopkins kicks off the 2007-2008 REDCAT season with Must Don’t Whip ‘Um. The Los Angeles premiere of the multimedia narrative spectacle will play a run of five shows through Sept. 30. It is a sequel/prequel to Accidental Nostalgia, the first in a trilogy exploring the pros and cons of amnesia. Hopkins is quick to point out that you do not have to know anything about the first installment to see or understand part two.

Must Don’t Whip ‘Um combines music, video, dance, set design, lighting and theater to tell two parallel and intermingling narratives about

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Doug Davis

Original political cartoons from Downtown News by Doug Davis, [email protected]

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Howser Finds New York in Downtown

KCET Series Continues With the ‘Film Shoots’ Episode

by Jon Regardie

In the first few months of his “Downtown” series, KCET television host Huell Hoswer has discovered community treasures including the Eastern Columbia Building, the Los Angeles State Historic Park and the Downtown Art Walk. In an episode that airs this week, however, he encounters something that many in Downtown probably would not expect: New York City.

For the episode titled “Film Shoots,” Howser drops by the set of the TV show “CSI: NY,” much of which is actually shot in Downtown Los Angeles, not the Big Apple. It’s the latest in a long, long line of productions that have masked Downtown as New York, or many other cities (Baltimore, Washington, D.C., etc.), for that matter.

In the episode, Howser chats with some of the show’s actors, and explores one of Downtown’s most common sights – the film crews and their loads of trucks and production workers.

“Film Shoots” airs

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Little Radio’s Big Problem

Little Radio’s Big Problem

Royalty Rules Could Force a Change for Downtown Internet Pioneer

by Evan George

When Dave Conway founded Little Radio, a Downtown-based Internet radio station, he was sending out clandestine playlists to friends using illegal rooftop antennas.

Three years later, Little Radio is a multimedia company that deals in brand marketing, event planning, rock shows and even the sale of environmentally friendly electric cars. Its five employees work in two large rehabbed warehouses in the Industrial District.

But at heart – and by name – Little Radio remains centered around the web streaming of music that Conway calls the company’s “life blood and our heart and soul.” The free 24-hour radio station informs all of the other business endeavors, he said.

Not if the recording industry has anything to say about it.

In a ruling earlier this month, the Copyright Royalty Board, which manages fees that radio stations pay to the recording industry, upheld a decision to

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Downtown Flaunts A Fashion of Its Own

Culver City Has Smashbox, but the Los Angeles Theatre Knows How to Party

by Kathleen Nye Flynn

I’m no fashion expert, but in the last few years I’ve snuck into my fair share of catwalk events. I’ve wiggled into Culver City’s biannual Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios a few times, either through the front door or the back.

So I had an inkling of what I was getting into when I showed up (through the front door) at Downtown’s first Fashion Week event in years, which began March 16. The two nights of shows at Broadway’s Los Angeles Theatre, I knew, had the potential to be memorable.

I arrived at the Friday night show just in time for Jared Gold’s collection. The theater’s ornate ceiling swooped above a crowd glammed out in avant-garde dresses, handmade hats and vintage styles.

The lustrous, colonnaded walls and wide, tumbling staircases, combined with the artsy folks on the guest list and DJs spinning tunes,

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Rat Pack Redux

Rat Pack Redux at Cicada

The New Old Lounge Act at Cicada Restaurant

by Kristin Friedrich

If you’re committed, and your shoes are semi-comfortable, Thursday nights in Downtown Los Angeles can include endless combinations of the following: symphony, theater, live music, an art walk, sporting events, a speakeasy, and bars of the wine, dive, faux bordello, frat boy and velvet rope variety.

As if the list needs to get any more colorful, there is now a Texas-born crooner who channels Sinatra and cracks wise, Rat Pack-style, with an orchestra that does not exist.

Max Vontaine appears every Thursday at Olive Street’s ornate Cicada restaurant, his rich baritone teasing out hits from the Chairman, Bobby Darin, Cab Calloway, Tom Jones and Elvis. He also tosses in the odd chestnut such as The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” and the theme song from “The Love Boat.”

One imagines a conversation with Vontaine to be filled with wafting smoke, deep chuckles and “You’re money” and “Daddy-O” asides. But

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Coming Into Focus

With 162 Projects, Downtown Continues to Evolve

Coming Into Focus|With 162 Projects, Downtown Continues to Evolve

by Evan George, Andrew Haas-Roche, Kathryn Maese, Kathleen Nye Flynn and Jon Regardie

Excerpts from the list relating to arts, entertainment and culture follow. Complete list of 162 projects is here.

Development Map The traditionally slow winter period had little effect on the pace of development in Downtown Los Angeles. Over the last several months, even as temperatures dropped and people tended to remain indoors whenever possible, the community not only continued its residential revolution, but began adding the bells and whistles that mark the turn from a collection of separate housing complexes into an actual neighborhood.

In the last several months, in fact, the community began to come into focus, with the opening of nearly a dozen restaurants, bars and retail outlets – everything from the upscale J Restaurant & Lounge to a second installment of coffee shop Groundwork to two locales

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‘Sexo y Violencia’for the People

Lucha VaVoom Brings Burlesque and Wrestling Back to the Mayan

by Lea Lion

It is a hazy Thursday morning in early February and three women are doing warm-up stretches in an unassuming, wood-floored dance studio in Atwater Village. They are chatting about their upcoming Valentine’s Day show and killing time waiting for the fourth dancer to arrive.

One of the dancers, Rita D’Alpert, who goes by the stage name Ursulina, has two-tone hair – blonde on top, black underneath – cut into a shaggy ‘do. She is wearing black low top Converse sneakers and matching arm-warmers. Moana Santana has dark brown bangs across her forehead and is dressed head-to-toe in black, including a tank top that reads “Sexo y Violencia” in cursive script across the chest. Audrey Deluxe, a tall blonde, embodies the most all-American look of the crew.

They could be any dancers with any troupe in the country. But their conversation reveals otherwise.

“Why don’t you try wrestling?”

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