Listen to our extended interview with playwright Dillon Chitto.

A new play about a teenaged bingo caller at a crossroads opens March 9th at The Autry. Edward is the center of his Pueblo’s bimonthly bingo game, but when college acceptance letters start to arrive, he has a decision to make: stay in his community, or venture out into the world. Bingo Hall is the latest from the museum’s Native Voices program. Playwright Dillon Chitto stopped by the KUSC studios for a chat with Out & About’s Kelsey McConnell.

A few eyebrows were raised when the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) named world-renowned flute player turned conductor Jaime Martín as its sixth music director late last month. For one thing, he’s only been a full-time podium presence for the past five years, conducting primarily in Scandinavia and his native Spain. For another, the search process started in 2014, and Martin only made his debut as a LACO guest conductor in September 2017. “I thought I had arrived too late to be considered for the post,” he recently admitted. Here he joins KUSC’s Gail Eichenthal to talk about his new post.

The Joffrey Ballet used to spend part of every season in Los Angeles. Now the company is based in Chicago, but they’re back in town for not one, but two productions at The Music Center. Their Romeo & Juliet opens Friday, March 9th and sets the doomed lovers in Mussolini-era Italy. And starting Saturday, March 10th, the company is on stage with LA Opera dancing the choreography of world-renown John Neumeier in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. I spoke with Joffrey Artistic Director Ashley Wheater about what’s unique about both productions and the demands on modern dancers.

Welcome to the first episode of a new podcast, Music for Moving Pictures. Your host, Tim Greiving, will sit down with the composers who write for films and peel apart the musical craft and psychology and storytelling skills that go into what they do—and illustrate it with lots of great music. In our premiere episode, Tim talks to James Newton Howard about his symphonic score for the new film “Red Sparrow” and more.

At the Oscar’s ceremony last Sunday, Mark Bridges was the big winner twice. He took home an Academy Award for Best Costume Design AND the jet ski ceremony host Jimmy Kimmel promised for shortest acceptance speech (Bridges’ speech timed in at just 36 seconds). It was Bridges’ work on The Phantom Thread that won him gold. The movie from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is about an obsessive fashion design and his relationship with the waitress who becomes his muse. KUSC contributor Sheila Tepper talked to Bridges at the FIDM Museum, which currently has costumes from The Phantom Thread (alongside other Oscar-nominated and otherwise notable designs from the past year of films) on display.

LA Times and KUSC film Ken Turan critic talks about the Israeli film, “Foxtrot”, and the upcoming Jennifer Lawrence spy film, “Red Sparrow”.

Laura Karpman is a composer who is comfortable writing in just about every genre imaginable. Today, Karpman is a Grammy- and Emmy-winning composer, whose music has been featured in films, television, and the concert stage. Karpman was the first woman to be elected to the music branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors. As part of The Academy’s partnership with the LA Phil, Karpman and fellow governor Michael Giacchino, have created a special concert showcasing great film scores and the process of making a score come to life on the silver screen. In a wide-ranging conversation recently at the KUSC studios, Laura Karpman and KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen talked about how the program came together, where the film industry has succeeded and failed in the area of diversity and inclusion, and why, despite those failures, there is hope for the future.

Ludwig Göransson has come a long way since his days of listening to Metallica and playing guitar while growing up in Sweden. He fell in love with film music in high school, and—after studying jazz guitar at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm—he was accepted into the film scoring program at USC. There he became friends with a young filmmaker named Ryan Coogler. Together, they’ve worked on a few projects including the new film, Black Panther. Black Panther is Göransson’s biggest canvas yet. It’s a giant action-adventure superhero movie, with huge fight scenes and urban car chases. Most of it is set in the fictional African country of Wakanda, which is built with stunning futuristic technology. The score is full of big themes, African musical traditions, and even more hip-hop. If you weren’t aware of Ludwig Göransson before, you sure are now.

Out & About Extra: Designer and FIDM spokesman Nick Verreos walks you and KUSC’s Sheila Tepper through the FIDM Museum’s annual exhibition of movie costume designs. Get the dish on how this year’s Oscar-nominated designers created looks meant to be drenched, “upholstered” Queen Victoria and designed for a beast.