Ludacris, The Beastie Boys' DJ and other performers will grace the stage at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, in a new festival that will no doubt help fill the void for Southern California hip-hop fans that are waiting for another big festival to come around.
The Hip-Hop 101: Music and Arts Festival has just been announced as hitting the Arena, located a couple miles to the southwest of downtown L.A., at 6:30 p.m. on February 21.
GIANT, a nightclub chain based in Los Angeles, is about to throw its epic New Year's Eve party, entitled GIANT Maximus, for the third time, with Moby, Paul Oakenfold, Dirty South and Benny Benassi set to headline.
Giant Maximus 2008/2009, in keeping with the omitted but implied "Circus" in its title, will not only feature some of electronica's best acts on three stages (actually three heated big tops) and a "Monster Midway Club" at its Downtown LA site, but also an entire amusement park (complete with ferris wheel), ongoing acrobatics shows and other interactive delights during its operation.
Already boasting two ostensibly blow-'em-away gigs by pianist Freddy Kempf and woodwind master Paquito D'Rivera during the winter, the Ventura Music Festival has just added another dimension to the officially pre-festival fun by soliciting applications from high school students to play onstage with D'Rivera during his Valentine's Day set at Ventura High School.
Leaving a gap of more than month between Kempf's performance (on January 11th at the Community Presbyterian Church in Ventura) and that of D'Rivera and his new apprentice might leave a bit too much time for Latin and jazz education enthusiasts to hold their breath.
Although the official 2nd season hasn't started for Los Angeles's Festival of New American Musicals, the first Festival-sponsored event, 7th & Schwartz, will be playing at the Performing Arts Center of Thousand Oaks High School today and tommorrow, December 13th and 14th, respectively.
The musical, conceived by Thousand Oaks's voice coach, takes the audience through an Across The Universe-style tribute to and revue of the works of composer Stephen Schwartz, will feature student performers from ten high schools and seven middle schools singing songs from Wicked, Enchanted, Godspell and other Schwartz classics. The night performance on the 13th will be hosted by on- and off-Broadway star Michael Arden, who will be performing in a production of Wicked by the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles; the afternoon performance on the 14th will feature a discussion about the TOHS's creation with the author of Wicked, Winnie Holzman. Schwartz himself, who is an honorary co-chair of FNAM's Board of Directors, will undoubtedly be in the audience himself.
Initially conceived in a roundtable of the elite of Los Angeles's high culture, to include more than 50 cultural and performing arts organizations all based in LA and officially announced by members of LA County's board of supervisors, tbe second largest city in America will in two years produce an intensive two-month tribute to the works not of a local heavyweight composer such as John Williams, but of a favorite son of Leipzig, Germany: Richard Wagner.
Prophesied to be "a defining moment in the cultural history of Los Angeles" by the Los Angeles Opera's General Director and powerhouse tenor Placido Domingo, Ring Festival LA, which is slated to begin on April 15th, 2010, will feature special exhibits and performances, symposia and other events all focused on the Los Angeles Opera's presentation of Wagner's four-epic opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Read more »
Starting with an intense Opening Gala Concert at UCLA's Royce Hall, the World Festival of Sacred Music-- Los Angeles will once again be the talk of the town on L.A.'s music scene when it takes over venues all over the City and County, comprising 41 events over 16 days.
With 1,000 artists participating, 2008 marks the fourth such gathering of musicians from sources as diverse as the small republic of Tuva in western Asia to the halaus, or classical performing arts schools, of Hawaii. Since its inaugural run in 1999, the festival has taken place in intervals of three years, with the second and third editions having been held in 2002 and 2005. Read more »
