As a special addition to the L.A. Philharmonic’s Reykjavík Festival, the Walt Disney Concert Hall hosted the gloriously singular, Icelandic chanteuse Björk. Having spent the past two years touring around the world in support of her most recent album, 2015’s “Vulnicura”, Los Angeles had the distinct privilege of hosting one of Björk’s final “Vulnicura” performances. […]
There seems to be something about Johann Johannsson’s music which compels people to applaud in the middle of his pieces. During his performance of his piece “Drone Mass” with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble – ACME, obviously – at Big Ears a few weeks earlier, for instance, Rolling Stone reported that one particularly effective musical […]
I’ve always found opera to be the most difficult form of music to review, if only because there’s not supposed to be anything you can compare it to. If you go see the Strokes (or Tool or Miranda Cosgrove or whoever), you can asses their performance by comparing it to their studio recordings; the only […]
One of the first words that comes to mind to describe the music of Taiko drumming ensemble Kodo is “visceral”; I am far from the first to describe them this way, and it may have something to do with the word “Kodo” itself, which means heartbeat. Their performance of Dadan 2017 pulsed through the […]
There’s power in music. Especially during the holiday season. I spent all of my college career singing in a choral group, so I may be slightly biased when it comes to this topic, but I believe that there is something divine in the way human voices can touch souls. Without the accompaniment of musical instruments, or any technological […]
Given my deep love of both classics and cheese, it should be no surprise that I jumped at the opportunity to attend the Holiday Sing-Along at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on December 17, 2016. I’d been wanting to go to one of their Christmas shows for years, but just hadn’t ever been able to […]
