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Grand Performances Schedule Announced

Finding room to dance at Grand Performances / VFaL

Grand Performances, the summer concert series that reconnects Los Angeles to its own homegrown culture, and made downtown a stage for World Music, will open its 25th season this weekend with a one-man play, a work-in-progress, and spoken word from East Los Angeles.

On Friday, Cultural Affairs Artists Project offers Ian Ruskin portraying Thomas Pain in a one-man play, "To Begin the World Over Again." Also that evening is a multi-media dance piece-in-progress by Sheetal Gandhi based on "The Giving Tree," a children's book by Shel Silverstein (June 17, 8:30 pm).

Saturday has the first installment of Boyle Heights Project, a series that speaks of the neighborhood's multiethnic fabric through poetry, short fiction, essays, and music (June 18, 8pm).

Sunday brings librettist Terry Wolverton and composer David Ornette Cherry to Watercourt for a concert reading of "Embers," a jazz opera with some part world music and other part hip hop. Michael John Garces directs (June 19, 8pm).

The mix of local and world artists performing in the corporate highlands of California Plaza can be found by date in the Grand Performances brochure (PDF).  You can even select which performer to see under themes like Global Block Party, Las Artes en la Ciudad.  Boyle Heights The Other L.A.; Woman in the Mix; Celebrating All Things Jewish From Goy to Oy; and City of Angels City of Artists.

And really, where else but at Grand Performances will offer selections like Charles Phoenix guiding you through L.A. with a special show, punk Exene team up with folk Phranc, Yemen Blues, or the athletlic narrative of modern dance company, Diavolo?

While 27 acts are scheduled, you may still want to follow Grand Performances on twitter. They have been known to book a special guest or two during the season. Also, GP veterans recommend that you pack a picnic and enjoy the outdoors before the show to make sure you get good seating, and to take a sweater.

After the video and jump, a look at the season by theme.

Grand Performances  I FREE I Opens June 17 I California Plaza I 350 S. Grand I Downtown Los Angeles

 

 

Mariachi Mystery Tour will performs with Mariachi Rock-O Fri., Aug 12, at 8pm.

 

Off Topic

Someone in my professional movie/tv poster key art life sends along this short YouTube protesting an over used font. view [Trajan is the Movie Font]

Voices Waiting to be Heard

Pictured:  Juan Devis “Departures,” with Lydia Hernandez (NYT)

A modernization of the art of the mural is profiled in the NYTimes with Cybermural: The Web as the Wall, a series by multimedia artist Juan Devis that combines the traditions of muralism with street photography to tell the story of  a changing landscape in Boyle Heights while exploring it's history.

Visually the project seems clearly inflected by European modernism, starting with Dada and Surrealist photomontage. While editing, Mr. Devis said, he sought inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s 1928 book “One-Way Street,” a stream-of-consciousness meditation based on objects encountered in an imaginary Parisian street.

There is also the influence of film. To Rita Gonzalez, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art who works on many of its contemporary Latino art projects, “Departures” suggests the “city symphony” films of the 1920s, movies that limned the patterns and rhythms of urban life, like Walther Ruttmann’s 1927 “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” or “Manhatta,” a 1920 paean to New York by the painter Charles Sheeler and the photographer Paul Strand.

NYTimes reporter Carol Kino introduces the works as a "twist on the Los Angeles muralism of the 1970s, a movement born from the Chicano civil rights movement when Mexican-American artists like Judy Baca, David Rivas Botello and Willie Herrón adapted the Mexican muralist tradition for their own time."

Combined video and sound to an online exhibit platform does take the craft of the  mural to the new level. However, the use of photography for storytelling in the form of Mexican Murals is not that new. 

Jules Verne Adventure Festival

Jules Verne Adventure Festival is in full flight with Key Art showing the Shrine Auditorium and City Hall bathed in mysterious haze and soft light.  TV spots are already running for the documentary film festival and the website is up, all to create buzz including some hints that some Historic theatres on Broadway may host some screenings. Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival. December 6 - 10, 2007 Full poster after the jump.

Times Covers Filming Downtown

The Los Angeles Times now covers the conflicts with filming in the Historic Core with Downtown L.A. Residents yell "Cut". The article brings up the Bert Green mantra (and now credited to Russell Brown) of not being against filming––just wanting the industry to stop treating Downtown like a backlot with no residents around. 

The idea that location managers consider it a "drastic change" in Downtown seems like tap dancing. It wasn't really that drastic. The difference is residents and businesses were vocal together, as they were in the Arts District a few years prior. Also cited was the stand-by argument of shooting may become so "crimped", other cities that will welcome filming at a moments notice may be considered––leaving the City in a difficult position.

No need to leave, says the locals. Just maintain a courtesy of preventative disruption common in any other neighborhoods here or in other states, or even countries that have residents and businesses. Even the Vancover Film Office  has a sensitive location list where there are areas in which filming may be "restricted due to neighbourhood concerns."

At the same time, residents with this new voice may not want to protest every inconvenience. Is the nuisance no bigger than the blocked streets of October's 2007 LA Weekly's Detour Festival that had no real opposition from most residents or bloggers?

June Grand Performances

Downtown's Grand Performances will be part of the LAFilmFest with two events being held this month at California Plaza.  "Double G's Concert 9Net"  gives film soundtracks a jazz hip hop twist on June 29 at 8 pm. Just that is interesting. The website adds that "Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra, Geoff “Double G” Gallegos, will feature music from films from the 70’s (Psycho, Taxi Driver and Chinatown)  and from Disney (Fantasia, Mary Poppins and Pinocchio.)

Free screenings of Chicago Ten will be held Saturday, June 30, 8:30 pm. Again, from the website:

Our 3rd annual film series in partnership with the Los Angeles Film Festival and sponsored by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District continues. Archival footage, animation, and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention. A film by Brett Morgan and featuring (voices) Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber and Jeffrey Wright.

Other Grand Performances items for the rest of June:
06/21 -  8:00 PM: Musicology 101: World Music Appreciation with Tom Schnabel
06/22 -  12:00 PM: Mango Blue
06/22 -  8:00 PM: Ojos de Brujo
06/23 -  8:00 PM: Mandrill

The Los Angeles Film Festival opens with the World Premiere of Talk to Me in Westwood Village Thursday, June 21.  LAFilmFest

Last Call before the Envelopes

The Los Angeles Theater gets dressed up for Oscar Night. The sign was looking great at night until half the marquee went dark. As for the Oscars, in 24 hours we will know if it was a Dream or the Year of the Bore.

LAist looks at swag.
BloggingLA looks at closures.
LATimes Award Insiders look at Latinos ready for their Kodak Moments.
Variety says B.O. Bump only to be Blip.
The Hollywood Reporter expects suspense
Daily News says anything is possible.
Defamer calls it the week of Oscar and Britney Dueling Baldies.

Oh, Righty Then.

On February 13, from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m.,  The Orpheum Theatre will be holding red carpet arrivals for the premiere of The Number 23 (starring Jim Carrey). Expect the usual parking and traffic diversions as Broadway will be blocked off to handle fans, limos and photographers.

Other Showbiz Headache. Eecue deals with a surly security guard  blocking his exit in Rude Film Production Crew in Downtown LA.

Noms

That quiet little affair, once held Downtown at The Shrine Auditorium and The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, announced its nominees this morning. Oscar.

He can't go. We haven't had espresso.

From "Joe" and "Taxi Driver" to "Young Frankenstein" and later "Everyone Loves Raymond", he had comedy and drama nailed. Peter Boyle died Tuesday evening. He was 71. AP/LAT