Washington (ANI): Victoria Beckham is set appear on Oprah Winfrey Show later this year in an attempt to woo U.S. TV audiences into supporting her fashion label. The former Spice Girl has accepted the offer in a bid to prove she is not just a soccer star's wife. "She's spoken to Oprah's TV firm Harpo and wants to prove she isn't just David Beckham's wife but has a career in fashion," Contactmusic quoted a source, as telling Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper. Beckham has become better recognised as an international style icon, rather than a music artist. Posh designed a limited-edition fashion line for Rock & Republic called VB Rocks in 2004, before launching her own denim label of which she acts as creative director called dvb Style. On 14 June 2007 Beckham launched her dvb Denim collection in New York at the high-end Saks Fifth Avenue.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Richard Ashcroft
Artist: Richard Ashcroft
Genre(s):
Rock
Pop
ROck: Alternative
Discography:
Keys To The World
Year: 2006
Tracks: 11
Human Conditions
Year: 2002
Tracks: 10
Alone with Everybody
Year: 2000
Tracks: 11
As the frontman for the epical British drone-pop banding the Verve, Richard Ashcroft proven himself the religious descendant of rock & wrap icons like Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison -- rivetingly magnetic, menacingly snaky, and obsessed of an almost shamanic intensiveness, he embraced and articulate the anthemic fervor of rock music with a great power and eloquence unique by whatsoever of his coevals. Ashcroft was innate September 11, 1971, in the Wigan suburban area of Billinge, attending Upholland Comprehensive School alongside future Verve match Simon Jones, Simon Tong, and Peter Salisbury; after losing his father at years 11, he hide under the influence of his stepfather, a member of the ancient profane monastic order of the Rosicrucians, wHO regularly performed experiments in judgement enlargement and the healing arts. While a scholarly person at Winstanley College in 1989, Ashcroft co-founded Verve with bassist Jones, drummer Salisbury, and guitar player Nick McCabe; signing to Virgin's Hut imprint to exit their 1992 debut single, "All in the Mind," Verve earned widespread praise for their majestic, oceanic guitar belt down, with the eminently quotable Ashcroft earning the dismissive cognomen "Insane Richard" from the U.K. press.
Contempt their critical hail, Verve oftentimes seemed at the mercifulness of forces away their control condition -- piece touring with the Lollapalooza fete in support of their 1993 debut LP, A Storm in Heaven, Ashcroft was hospitalized after excruciation from knockout dehydration, and within months the lot as well entered into a prolonged sound conflict with the American jazz label Verve, which resulted in an official call variety to "The Verve." Recorded under the influence of a massive ingestion of rapture, 1995's brilliant A Northern Soul efficaciously rent the band apart, although Ashcroft re-formed the lineup a few weeks later on. The re-formed Verve achieved international success with 1997's celebrated Urban Hymns, marking a series of hits including "Bittersweet Symphony," "The Drugs Don't Work," and "Lucky Man"; however, legal hassles awarded century percent of "Celastrus scandens Symphony"'s publication rights to ABKCO Music -- the song was reinforced on a Rolling Stones sample distribution -- and as friction between Ashcroft and McCabe resurfaced, the guitarist give up the group, and following a terminal duty tour, the Verve once more disbanded, this time for good.
Ashcroft's solo debut, Alone with Everybody, followed in mid-2000. Later that fall, Ashcroft far-famed his solo success with a ten-date sold-out American tour. Two days prior to kickoff in Chicago, the entire circuit was postponed due to Ashcroft's malady, and speculations were rapidly coupled to his old drug-using behaviour with the Verve. Those rumors were too wiped out cursorily, and the U.S. dates were rescheduled for January 2001. The following year, Ashcroft returned with his soul-searching, unearthly irregular record album, Human Conditions. Over the adjacent few days, Ashcroft returned to living a quiet life with his family. He too inked a recording compress with Parlophone subsequently his longtime label home base, Hut, went bankrupt in mid-2004. Ashcroft's long-awaited third gear album, Keys to the World, was released in March 2006.
The Spice Girls - Alphabeat Supporting Spice Girls Would Have Been Weird
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Fleshcrawl
Artist: Fleshcrawl
Genre(s):
Metal: Death,Black
Discography:
Made Of Flesh
Year: 2004
Tracks: 10
As Blood Rains From The Sky... We Walk The Path Of Endless Fire
Year: 2000
Tracks: 12
Bloodred Massacre
Year: 1997
Tracks: 9
Bloodsoul
Year: 1996
Tracks: 8
Impurity
Year: 1993
Tracks: 10
Descend Into The Absurd
Year: 1992
Tracks: 9
Formed in 1987, death metallic element unit Fleshcrawl released its outset album, Descent Into the Absurd, in 1992. The record, featuring the lineup of vocalizer Alex Pretzer, guitarist/bassist Mike Hanus, guitar player Stefan Hanus, and drummer/vocalist Bastian Herzog, john Drew the stripe patronize comparisons to the likes of Cannibal Corpse. Their soph effort, Impurity, followed in 1993; afterward threesome long time of unremitting touring, Fleshcrawl released Bloodsoul in 1996. For 1997's Bloodred Massacre, Pretzer was replaced by Sven Gross. As Blood Rains from the Sky, We Walk the Endless Path of Fire followed in the outpouring of 2000.
Miroslav Vitous
Chester French, those Harvard grads with street cred
Before we can get into any substantive discussion of why the Los Angeles-based power pop duo Chester French should be taken seriously as one of the fastest rising "It" bands of the moment, the group's members would like to dispel certain Ivy League misconceptions about them.
Granted, singer D.A. Wallach and multi-instrumentalist/arranger Maxwell Drummey have been known to wear button-down shirts, blazers, ties and khakis, especially in promotional photos. But that doesn't mean they're preppies. To hear them rationalize it, they simply couldn't afford nicer -- or weirder -- clothing and settled for a "business casual" look.
And to be certain, although the band mates graduated from Harvard University last spring, they're not "the next Vampire Weekend" (as some online pundits have called them). Whereas the Columbia University alumni in that indie band lean toward an African-inflected alterna-rock, Chester French, which will take the stage for a sold-out performance at the Viper Room tonight, is all about wry-yet-rockin' '60s-accented narrative pop.
Their shimmering songs can conjure Dr. Dre and the Kinks, psych rock and surf music, while still sounding totally modern.
Most important, though, even with the band members' prestigious academic pedigree and profoundly Caucasian racial profile, never assume that Chester French is anything less than totally down with the streets.
Opening up on tour for the electro-funk-rap-rock group N.E.R.D. in March, Chester French managed to win over legions of opinionated urban music fans, building expectations for its upcoming album, "Love the Future." Among those in the audience at the group's maiden New York gig last month were hip-hop impresario Damon Dash, up-and-coming rapper Charles Hamilton and the controversial rap radio host Miss Info from Hot 97 FM.
Pretty fly for some white guys.
"Most of our fans -- we've really had a lot of folks who, from the best I can tell, are primarily fans of hip-hop," Wallach said recently over lunch at a Beverly Hills boutique hotel. "I think that's really cool. You look at their profiles on MySpace and we might be one of two or three acts that aren't rap that they are into."
The crossover didn't come without a certain amount of institutional backing, however. Chester French is signed to Star Trak Records, a boutique imprint distributed by Interscope and operated by the multi-platinum hit-making producer duo the Neptunes (responsible for hits for Justin, Britney, Madonna and Snoop, among many others).
The group's profile in the hip-hop world was super-sized when word leaked that three of urban music's foremost shot callers -- Kanye West, producer-rapper Pharrell Williams and So So Def Records label chief Jermaine Dupri -- took part in a frenzied bidding war to land the rights to Chester French's new album even before Drummey and Wallach had graduated from Harvard.
So why all the love from the hip-hop community?
"In all our early promo stuff, we had blackface on," Drummey deadpanned.
He's joking, of course. But the comment belies Chester French's ascendance in a rapidly changing landscape where barriers between rock and rap are falling faster than ever and divisions between black and white music are no longer even enforced.
"Hip-hop has been a music with an entrenched understanding of authenticity; there was a stigma associated with listening to anything that seemed counter to it in any way," said Drummey. "But at this point, those lines don't exist. And there's starting to be more of both a critical and artistic recognition of that fact."
Wallach, a Milwaukee-born African American studies major, and Drummey, a Boston native who majored in anthropology, met in Harvard's dining hall freshman year and forged both their friendship and musicianship while recording songs in their dorm's basement studio.
Taking their band moniker from the sculptor responsible for the Lincoln Memorial, Daniel Chester French, the group cut a demo their sophomore year and began sending it out to record companies, including many of the usual indie label suspects such as Fueled by Ramen, Domino and Brillo.
"But they didn't respond at all," Wallach said. "So you just sort of make the rounds, and we thought, 'Let's try and send it to the hip-hop guys.' Specifically, we though maybe Pharrell and Kanye would like this."
It proved to be a shrewd move. At Star Trak, Williams -- one of the members of N.E.R.D. and an avowed Steely Dan fan -- had shown an openness toward indie rock, having signed and toured with the Minneapolis pop rock band Spymob. Likewise, West had collaborated with several white rockers in the past, including Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, Chris Martin from Coldplay and singer-songwriter-producer Jon Brion.
"Unlikely white dudes are hot in hip-hop at the moment," pointed out Jonah Weiner, senior editor at Blender magazine, "They're, like, a must-have."
The group floated a CD to West's manager. Inside of a week after nailing an audition with West in Los Angeles, they were sent a contract to sign with the rapper's Island Def Jam-distributed G.O.O.D. Music imprint. Concurrently, an operative for So So Def Recordings alerted Dupri that West was circling Chester French, prompting him to make a counteroffer.
But Wallach also had made contact with Williams' recording engineer, who hyped the producer about Chester French's CD. Star Trak maneuvered to land the group, offering something the others didn't: total artistic freedom.
"It came down to being on Interscope versus being on Island," Wallach said. "We loved everyone we met. But we asked people which company had their [act] together."
Nonetheless, the band mates are hardly the biggest rock stars to recently have graduated from America's preeminent citadel of higher learning. That honor belongs to Rivers Cuomo, introverted frontman for the multi-platinum-selling nerd-rock quartet Weezer -- an obvious influence on Chester French's narrative songwriting -- who departed Harvard with a bachelor's degree in English in 2006.
A year earlier, while all three were still there, Wallach and Drummey succeeded in tracking down their guitar hero. Which is when Cuomo opened certain doors of perception.
"We ended up having dinner with him, the two of us and 11 female Asian college sophomores," Drummey recalled. "He recommended we try Vipassana meditation." That is, a restrictive Buddhist practice that prohibits speaking and mixes mental discipline with physical abstinence to purify body and spirit. "We had read Rivers did it and were interested as a creative adventure," Drummey continued. "We followed his advice and ended up going on a 10-day silent meditation retreat in western Massachusetts."
But not everything went as planned. "We left after four days," Wallach said. "It was too boring!"
chris.lee@latimes.com
Granted, singer D.A. Wallach and multi-instrumentalist/arranger Maxwell Drummey have been known to wear button-down shirts, blazers, ties and khakis, especially in promotional photos. But that doesn't mean they're preppies. To hear them rationalize it, they simply couldn't afford nicer -- or weirder -- clothing and settled for a "business casual" look.
And to be certain, although the band mates graduated from Harvard University last spring, they're not "the next Vampire Weekend" (as some online pundits have called them). Whereas the Columbia University alumni in that indie band lean toward an African-inflected alterna-rock, Chester French, which will take the stage for a sold-out performance at the Viper Room tonight, is all about wry-yet-rockin' '60s-accented narrative pop.
Their shimmering songs can conjure Dr. Dre and the Kinks, psych rock and surf music, while still sounding totally modern.
Most important, though, even with the band members' prestigious academic pedigree and profoundly Caucasian racial profile, never assume that Chester French is anything less than totally down with the streets.
Opening up on tour for the electro-funk-rap-rock group N.E.R.D. in March, Chester French managed to win over legions of opinionated urban music fans, building expectations for its upcoming album, "Love the Future." Among those in the audience at the group's maiden New York gig last month were hip-hop impresario Damon Dash, up-and-coming rapper Charles Hamilton and the controversial rap radio host Miss Info from Hot 97 FM.
Pretty fly for some white guys.
"Most of our fans -- we've really had a lot of folks who, from the best I can tell, are primarily fans of hip-hop," Wallach said recently over lunch at a Beverly Hills boutique hotel. "I think that's really cool. You look at their profiles on MySpace and we might be one of two or three acts that aren't rap that they are into."
The crossover didn't come without a certain amount of institutional backing, however. Chester French is signed to Star Trak Records, a boutique imprint distributed by Interscope and operated by the multi-platinum hit-making producer duo the Neptunes (responsible for hits for Justin, Britney, Madonna and Snoop, among many others).
The group's profile in the hip-hop world was super-sized when word leaked that three of urban music's foremost shot callers -- Kanye West, producer-rapper Pharrell Williams and So So Def Records label chief Jermaine Dupri -- took part in a frenzied bidding war to land the rights to Chester French's new album even before Drummey and Wallach had graduated from Harvard.
So why all the love from the hip-hop community?
"In all our early promo stuff, we had blackface on," Drummey deadpanned.
He's joking, of course. But the comment belies Chester French's ascendance in a rapidly changing landscape where barriers between rock and rap are falling faster than ever and divisions between black and white music are no longer even enforced.
"Hip-hop has been a music with an entrenched understanding of authenticity; there was a stigma associated with listening to anything that seemed counter to it in any way," said Drummey. "But at this point, those lines don't exist. And there's starting to be more of both a critical and artistic recognition of that fact."
Wallach, a Milwaukee-born African American studies major, and Drummey, a Boston native who majored in anthropology, met in Harvard's dining hall freshman year and forged both their friendship and musicianship while recording songs in their dorm's basement studio.
Taking their band moniker from the sculptor responsible for the Lincoln Memorial, Daniel Chester French, the group cut a demo their sophomore year and began sending it out to record companies, including many of the usual indie label suspects such as Fueled by Ramen, Domino and Brillo.
"But they didn't respond at all," Wallach said. "So you just sort of make the rounds, and we thought, 'Let's try and send it to the hip-hop guys.' Specifically, we though maybe Pharrell and Kanye would like this."
It proved to be a shrewd move. At Star Trak, Williams -- one of the members of N.E.R.D. and an avowed Steely Dan fan -- had shown an openness toward indie rock, having signed and toured with the Minneapolis pop rock band Spymob. Likewise, West had collaborated with several white rockers in the past, including Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, Chris Martin from Coldplay and singer-songwriter-producer Jon Brion.
"Unlikely white dudes are hot in hip-hop at the moment," pointed out Jonah Weiner, senior editor at Blender magazine, "They're, like, a must-have."
The group floated a CD to West's manager. Inside of a week after nailing an audition with West in Los Angeles, they were sent a contract to sign with the rapper's Island Def Jam-distributed G.O.O.D. Music imprint. Concurrently, an operative for So So Def Recordings alerted Dupri that West was circling Chester French, prompting him to make a counteroffer.
But Wallach also had made contact with Williams' recording engineer, who hyped the producer about Chester French's CD. Star Trak maneuvered to land the group, offering something the others didn't: total artistic freedom.
"It came down to being on Interscope versus being on Island," Wallach said. "We loved everyone we met. But we asked people which company had their [act] together."
Nonetheless, the band mates are hardly the biggest rock stars to recently have graduated from America's preeminent citadel of higher learning. That honor belongs to Rivers Cuomo, introverted frontman for the multi-platinum-selling nerd-rock quartet Weezer -- an obvious influence on Chester French's narrative songwriting -- who departed Harvard with a bachelor's degree in English in 2006.
A year earlier, while all three were still there, Wallach and Drummey succeeded in tracking down their guitar hero. Which is when Cuomo opened certain doors of perception.
"We ended up having dinner with him, the two of us and 11 female Asian college sophomores," Drummey recalled. "He recommended we try Vipassana meditation." That is, a restrictive Buddhist practice that prohibits speaking and mixes mental discipline with physical abstinence to purify body and spirit. "We had read Rivers did it and were interested as a creative adventure," Drummey continued. "We followed his advice and ended up going on a 10-day silent meditation retreat in western Massachusetts."
But not everything went as planned. "We left after four days," Wallach said. "It was too boring!"
chris.lee@latimes.com
Falkenbach
Artist: Falkenbach
Genre(s):
Metal: Death,Black
Rock
Metal
Discography:
Heralding - The Fireblade
Year: 2006
Tracks: 8
Ok Netna Tysbar Ty
Year: 2003
Tracks: 7
Ok Nefna Tysvar Ty
Year: 2003
Tracks: 7
...Magni Blandinn Ok Megintiri...
Year: 1997
Tracks: 6
...En Their Medh Riki Fara...
Year: 1996
Tracks: 7
Laeknishendr
Year: 1995
Tracks: 6
Demo
Year: 1995
Tracks: 3
Falkenbach is the one-person black metallic element project of multi-instrumentalist Vratyas Vakyas (once guitarist with Crimson Gates), wHO is based in Düsseldorf, Germany, merely reportedly hails from Iceland, and subscribes to the genre's more than epic style, prevalent with keyboards, Viking themes, and folks music tendencies (a possible grounds for making up those unconfirmed Icelandic roots). Active under the Falkenbach assumed name since 1995, when no less than threesome demos dead emerged (Laeknishendr, Skinn Av Sverdhi Sol Valtiva, Asynja), Vakyas recorded two albums in 1996's ...En Their Medh Riki Fara and 1997's ...Magni Blandinn Ok Megintiri, before turn his attention to his record mark Skaldic Art Productions. He ultimately revived Falkenbach in 2003 and really drafted early musicians (vocalizer Tyrann, guitar player Hagalaz, and drummer Bolthorn) to help oneself verboten with third base album Ok Nefna Tysbar Ty, but he was back to his solo ways by the discharge of its reexamination, Heralding the Fireblade, in 2005.
AC/DC to sell new album through Wal-Mart: paper
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rock band AC/DC will sell its new album only through Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Sunday, citing unnamed sources .
The AC/DC album is expected to come out in the fall, the paper reported. Wal-Mart did not have an immediate comment.
(Reporting by Paritosh Bansal; Editing by Alex Richardson)
The AC/DC album is expected to come out in the fall, the paper reported. Wal-Mart did not have an immediate comment.
(Reporting by Paritosh Bansal; Editing by Alex Richardson)
All over the map in Libbey Bowl
OJAI -- Steve Reich, who came to Ojai in 1973 as a radical, returned over the weekend a sage. Same music. Same ambience. Some of the same people. Pretty much the same town. But very different times.
The 62nd Ojai Music Festival began Thursday -- a warm, soft evening air and supernal sunset pink enveloping the outdoor Libbey Bowl -- with raucous urban sounds. It ended at dusk Sunday, the moment not yet quite pink, with Psalm 150 -- drum and dance, strings and winds, sounding and clanging cymbals all in praise of the Eternal. Beginning and end belonged to Reich, this year's featured composer.
There was much in between. David Robertson was music director, and the context was impossibly rich -- war and peace, modern times and tradition, technology and divinity.
Ojai is a casual, easygoing festival without easygoing music and with a punishing schedule in an idyllic town center free of chain businesses. Shortly before Sunday's finale, Robertson stood in line at a nearby un-Starbucks, chatting. The theme of the festival, he said, was accompaniment, an avoidance of solo performances.
He didn't elaborate, but the festival did. One thread was Reich then and now but also us then and now. In 1973, the composer's "Four Organs" had its West Coast premiere at the festival. An early example of the process music that was a seed of Minimalism, it consists of a chord played again and again on four electric organs, against a steady beat on maracas, gradually extended in time. A 1973 performance in Carnegie Hall is famous -- the softer-eared in the audience, complaining of mind-numbing torture, howled in anguish. The organists couldn't hear themselves through the racket.
The Ojai premiere, Reich recalled at a Friday symposium, may not have pleased everyone, but it caused little outrage, piqued curiosity and generated a commercial recording. Friday night, four young members of So Percussion gave an up-to-date rendition. They used small keyboards that generated sampled sounds of the original Farfisa organs. Reich manned the soundboard, pumping up the volume.
What lasted 25 minutes 35 years ago was here encapsulated in 15. Audience members sat uniformly transfixed, and I noticed many smiles. Aural pain has turned, over time, to sensual and spiritual pleasure.
Abstract sounds
But much else has changed in Reich as well. "Four Organs" is pure music creating a psycho-acoustic phenomenon that has the ability to take over your bodily rhythms. To different listeners, that can seem erotic, fascistic or mystical. And Reich has continued to write inspired abstract music. Friday's concert began with "Eight Lines," full of bright, bopping counterpoint.
But as in Bach, counterpoint can lead to profundity. Politics, philosophy and religion have entered Reich's realm. Friday's concert ended with the recent "Daniel Variations," a tribute to Daniel Pearl, the American journalist murdered in Pakistan six years ago. Here short texts by Pearl and excerpts from the biblical Book of Daniel are like shards set within intricate musical patterns like secret messages hidden within the patterns of Persian rugs. Brad Lubman conducted a new New York ensemble, Signal, in a version for small ensemble with two embedded vocalists (rather than the chorus and orchestra arrangement that the Los Angeles Master Chorale has performed) with gripping vehemence. From the soundboard, Reich created distorting, disturbing amplification.
Robertson, leading a chamber ensemble of many top L.A. players, devoted Friday night to an odd look at popular culture. George Antheil's insinuating "Jazz Symphony" was prelude to the U.S. premiere of "El Gran Masturbador," by François Narboni, a French jazz musician turned avant-garde classical composer. Using 117 snippets of '70s funk, soul, jazz and rock, Narboni created a 16-minute fantasy about an unloved era for orchestra and digital synthesizing keyboards.
The second half was a screening of Charles Chaplin's 1936 "Modern Times" with orchestral accompaniment. It was a revelation. Chaplin's own score isn't really Chaplin's own score. It was put together by David Raksin, a young composer who went on to a distinguished film career, and I seriously doubt that Chaplin put in the sly references to Stravinsky and other music of modern times.
Greek myth
Saturday night, Robertson turned to sex and politics. First, French composer Philippe Manoury's "En Écho" proved a lively study in sonority as soprano Juliana Snapper sang a text that connected Greek myth and "Lolita." Her alluring voice was made all the more alluring by electronics run by Miller Puckette.
The evening's big work, and a festival highlight, was Michael Jarrell's "Cassandre," which featured the German actress Barbara Sukowa, best known for her appearances in the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films. Delivering from memory an hourlong text based on Christa Wolf's 1983 novel "Kassandra," Sukowa proved a riveting presence, personalizing the plight of Cassandra, who forecasts the destruction of Troy in the "Iliad."
Hers becomes the woman's voice of war and its opposite, love. Among her messages: War starts when the prewar drumbeat starts, and war starts when a public is deceived. Jarrell's score remained mostly in the background, murky and haunting, supporting the spoken word and making a dramatic point only when it really mattered.
Mornings and afternoons in Ojai also really mattered this year. Dawn Upshaw sang a recital of favorite things from all over the map Saturday morning, illuminatingly accompanied by Gilbert Kalish. She is a singer who does not stay in the same place. Her voice is filling out, and her involvement in music keeps reaching new levels of intensity.
Sunday morning, Reich, along with members of Nexus and So Percussion, performed "Drumming," from 1971 -- his first great score. As if in a ceremony of great moment, wise men (some of the Nexus players are also original members of Reich's ensemble) initiated a new generation (the So). Ojai felt, for that hour, like holy ground.
Days and nights were full. Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic and author of "The Rest Is Noise," spoke. Chamber music by Elliott Carter was presented Saturday afternoon and Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" late that night, superbly played.
Sunday afternoon, Robertson led Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater" and Reich's "Tehellim," which uses Psalm texts. Upshaw and a gorgeously deep young mezzo-soprano, Kate Lindsey, were the ingratiating soloists in the Pergolesi. "Tehellim" lifted the spirits high.
Next year's festival belongs to Eighth Blackbird.
mark.swed@latimes.com
The 62nd Ojai Music Festival began Thursday -- a warm, soft evening air and supernal sunset pink enveloping the outdoor Libbey Bowl -- with raucous urban sounds. It ended at dusk Sunday, the moment not yet quite pink, with Psalm 150 -- drum and dance, strings and winds, sounding and clanging cymbals all in praise of the Eternal. Beginning and end belonged to Reich, this year's featured composer.
There was much in between. David Robertson was music director, and the context was impossibly rich -- war and peace, modern times and tradition, technology and divinity.
Ojai is a casual, easygoing festival without easygoing music and with a punishing schedule in an idyllic town center free of chain businesses. Shortly before Sunday's finale, Robertson stood in line at a nearby un-Starbucks, chatting. The theme of the festival, he said, was accompaniment, an avoidance of solo performances.
He didn't elaborate, but the festival did. One thread was Reich then and now but also us then and now. In 1973, the composer's "Four Organs" had its West Coast premiere at the festival. An early example of the process music that was a seed of Minimalism, it consists of a chord played again and again on four electric organs, against a steady beat on maracas, gradually extended in time. A 1973 performance in Carnegie Hall is famous -- the softer-eared in the audience, complaining of mind-numbing torture, howled in anguish. The organists couldn't hear themselves through the racket.
The Ojai premiere, Reich recalled at a Friday symposium, may not have pleased everyone, but it caused little outrage, piqued curiosity and generated a commercial recording. Friday night, four young members of So Percussion gave an up-to-date rendition. They used small keyboards that generated sampled sounds of the original Farfisa organs. Reich manned the soundboard, pumping up the volume.
What lasted 25 minutes 35 years ago was here encapsulated in 15. Audience members sat uniformly transfixed, and I noticed many smiles. Aural pain has turned, over time, to sensual and spiritual pleasure.
Abstract sounds
But much else has changed in Reich as well. "Four Organs" is pure music creating a psycho-acoustic phenomenon that has the ability to take over your bodily rhythms. To different listeners, that can seem erotic, fascistic or mystical. And Reich has continued to write inspired abstract music. Friday's concert began with "Eight Lines," full of bright, bopping counterpoint.
But as in Bach, counterpoint can lead to profundity. Politics, philosophy and religion have entered Reich's realm. Friday's concert ended with the recent "Daniel Variations," a tribute to Daniel Pearl, the American journalist murdered in Pakistan six years ago. Here short texts by Pearl and excerpts from the biblical Book of Daniel are like shards set within intricate musical patterns like secret messages hidden within the patterns of Persian rugs. Brad Lubman conducted a new New York ensemble, Signal, in a version for small ensemble with two embedded vocalists (rather than the chorus and orchestra arrangement that the Los Angeles Master Chorale has performed) with gripping vehemence. From the soundboard, Reich created distorting, disturbing amplification.
Robertson, leading a chamber ensemble of many top L.A. players, devoted Friday night to an odd look at popular culture. George Antheil's insinuating "Jazz Symphony" was prelude to the U.S. premiere of "El Gran Masturbador," by François Narboni, a French jazz musician turned avant-garde classical composer. Using 117 snippets of '70s funk, soul, jazz and rock, Narboni created a 16-minute fantasy about an unloved era for orchestra and digital synthesizing keyboards.
The second half was a screening of Charles Chaplin's 1936 "Modern Times" with orchestral accompaniment. It was a revelation. Chaplin's own score isn't really Chaplin's own score. It was put together by David Raksin, a young composer who went on to a distinguished film career, and I seriously doubt that Chaplin put in the sly references to Stravinsky and other music of modern times.
Greek myth
Saturday night, Robertson turned to sex and politics. First, French composer Philippe Manoury's "En Écho" proved a lively study in sonority as soprano Juliana Snapper sang a text that connected Greek myth and "Lolita." Her alluring voice was made all the more alluring by electronics run by Miller Puckette.
The evening's big work, and a festival highlight, was Michael Jarrell's "Cassandre," which featured the German actress Barbara Sukowa, best known for her appearances in the late Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films. Delivering from memory an hourlong text based on Christa Wolf's 1983 novel "Kassandra," Sukowa proved a riveting presence, personalizing the plight of Cassandra, who forecasts the destruction of Troy in the "Iliad."
Hers becomes the woman's voice of war and its opposite, love. Among her messages: War starts when the prewar drumbeat starts, and war starts when a public is deceived. Jarrell's score remained mostly in the background, murky and haunting, supporting the spoken word and making a dramatic point only when it really mattered.
Mornings and afternoons in Ojai also really mattered this year. Dawn Upshaw sang a recital of favorite things from all over the map Saturday morning, illuminatingly accompanied by Gilbert Kalish. She is a singer who does not stay in the same place. Her voice is filling out, and her involvement in music keeps reaching new levels of intensity.
Sunday morning, Reich, along with members of Nexus and So Percussion, performed "Drumming," from 1971 -- his first great score. As if in a ceremony of great moment, wise men (some of the Nexus players are also original members of Reich's ensemble) initiated a new generation (the So). Ojai felt, for that hour, like holy ground.
Days and nights were full. Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic and author of "The Rest Is Noise," spoke. Chamber music by Elliott Carter was presented Saturday afternoon and Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" late that night, superbly played.
Sunday afternoon, Robertson led Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater" and Reich's "Tehellim," which uses Psalm texts. Upshaw and a gorgeously deep young mezzo-soprano, Kate Lindsey, were the ingratiating soloists in the Pergolesi. "Tehellim" lifted the spirits high.
Next year's festival belongs to Eighth Blackbird.
mark.swed@latimes.com
Sonora Poncena
Artist: Sonora Poncena
Genre(s):
Latin: Dance
Discography:
Salsa
Year:
Tracks: 1
La Sonora Santanera's loss leader, Carlos Colorado, belonged to a local orquesta in his hometown of Barra de Santa Ana, just it was not until he stirred to Mexico City that his grouping, Tropical Santanera, was born. The lot played private parties about the city, attracting the attention of showman Jesús "Palillo" MartÃnez, wHO helped them develop a fizgig at the Follies Bergere Theater. The lot changed its name to La Sonora Santanera and played a mix of dance-oriented styles, earning a shrink with CBS Mexico in 1960. Soon later, they had their low gear hits, "La Boa" and "Los Aretes de la Luna."
The lot continued to be hot passim the '60s and finally they changed their name once again to La International Sonora Santanera de Carlos Colorado.
Centennial State died in a railway car fortuity in 1986, leading to the irregular dissolution of the band. In 1997, though, left members reunited to freeing Como en los Buenos Tiempos, which attempted to repair the group's signature sound.
A Baby Girl For Tori Spelling
Tori Spelling and her husband Dean McDermott welcomed a baby girl on Monday (June 9) her representative announced, saying that mother and baby "are resting comfortably."
Stella Doreen McDermott, the couples second child together, was born at 3:13pm Pacific time and weighed 6 lbs 8 oz (3.08 kg) via C-section at a Los Angeles hospital, with the name Doreen coming from McDermott's late mother.
Spelling's representative told the news to Ok! magazine saying, "She's here! She's a healthy baby girl. Tori and baby are resting comfortably."
The former '90210' star has recently signed on to reprise her character Donna Martin in a new spin-off of the hit nineties show, which is set to debut later this year.
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Photo courtesy of Oxygen.
Chat To One Night Only On Gigwise Today
One Night Only will be joining us today (June 11th) for our Tuborg Webchat Wednesday, Gigwise can reveal.
The band will be online from 4pm to answer all your questions – and following last week's Babyshambles chat we expect it to be busy.
As ever, you will be able to ask the band anything like so make sure you prepare your questions now.
The band will enter the chatroom from 4pm. Simply log in here: http://chat.gigwise.com
See you in there!
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