Arts Alive

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein has played the music of J.S. Bach all of her life, and on her CD of Inventions and Sinfonias, shows them to be much more than just exercises in counterpoint. She says they’re almost ‘pure music’ – which teach, but are at the same time stand-alone pieces of great beauty.

KUSC’s Alan Chapman has a lot to say about music, but can he say it in 60 seconds? That’s the Chapman Challenge. We ask a question and Alan has a minute to answer it. Today’s question is from Angela in Westminster who wants to know “What makes a Christmas concerto a Christmas concerto?”

Motherless Brooklyn is a new noir film written and directed by Edward Norton. It’s about a private eye in 1950s New York, played by Norton, who’s chasing down a case of corruption and conspiracy that got his partner killed. The soundtrack is more pivotal, and more multifaceted, than usual.

Composers have long been writing instrumental imitations of birds. The cuckoo is probably the easiest to recognize, and it shows up in a variety of works. Since it was first possible to bring recordings into the concert hall, there have also been times when nothing but the actual sound of specific birds will do.

A new movie about an epic racecar competition is the subject of today’s Arts Alive. And LA Times and Arts Alive film critic Kenneth Turan tells our Gail Eichenthal the new James Mangold film “Ford Versus Ferrari” is a drama that comes at you full-throttle.

Music You Can Dance To! That’s the theme of this weekend’s New West Symphony concerts, part of the orchestra’s 25th anniversary season under new music director Michael Christie. The concerts take place Saturday night at 7:30pm at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, and Sunday at 3pm at Camarillo’s Rancho Campaña Performing Arts Center.

One of the long-held dreams of amateur inventors – like building the proverbial ‘better mousetrap’ – is to come up with a way to create a machine that powers itself, without ever slowing down or stopping. The quest for Perpetual Motion isn’t only limited to devices, though – it’s also used as a musical concept. Composers such as Niccolò Paganini and Johann Strauss II have works that seem to go on and on without ever stopping.

KUSC’s Alan Chapman has a lot to say about music, but can he say it in 60 seconds? That’s the Chapman Challenge. We ask a question and Alan has a minute to answer it.

Today’s question is from George in Santa Monica who wants to know what happens when a violinist breaks a string.

For 12 years, players have been able to step into the shoes of an elite secret society of hooded warriors who have sought to right wrongs and fight against political injustice. The Assassin’s Creed series has taken us everywhere from the dusty streets of 12th century Jerusalem, to the Italian Renaissance, Colonial America, on the high seas with a band of pirates, to ancient Egypt, and the mythical city of Atlantis. Like the franchise’s geographical settings, the musical scores are equally expansive and epic.

The Grammy Award-winning PARTCH Ensemble heads to Jacaranda for a performance of Partch’s The Wayward – a chronicling of composer Harry Partch’s life from 1935 – 1941. The PARTCH ensemble plays fourteen custom-built instruments, including a few that were built just for this specific piece.