New Village Arts’ ‘Fun Home’ an Emotional Ride

Bruce teaches Alison to draw.

Those unfamiliar with Fun Home may arrive expecting a lighthearted 60s period piece, thanks to the production materials and the title… they’d be wrong. The show, which traverses a series of times and places throughout one woman’s life, is a visceral one, packing an emotional punch on the New Village Arts stage.

Read More

New Athenaeum Art Center And School Opens In Logan Heights

Logan Heights was awash with art lovers during a large neighborhood open house for the newly completed Athenaeum Art Center that opened to the public on Saturday, February 6th, 2016. The center is the new offsite campus for the Athenaeum Music & Art Library’s respected art school, which also still holds classes at their La…

Read More

Lortie’s Elegance Headlines Symphony Program

The pianist Louis Lortie headlined this week’s Jacobs Masterworks concert by the San Diego Symphony in more ways than one. Mr. Lortie not only provided the marquee performance but the work in which he was featured turned out to be the most interesting of the three on the program…

Read More

Tchaikovsky’s Third or Thayer’s Second?

The San Diego Symphony titled last Friday evening’s Jacobs Masterworks program “Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony”, but when the audience rose to its feet in wonderfully noisy acclamation just before intermission, it was pretty clear that they had spontaneously re-named the evening “Jeff Thayer’s Second”, to honor the San Diego Symphony’s concertmaster for his impressive performance of one of the monuments of the violin repertoire, Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2…

Read More

Dohnányi, Historical Seating, Produce a Riveting Beethoven Fifth

If the four-note thunderclap – da-da-da-DUM – that opens Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony does indeed evoke Fate knocking on our door, that fearsome presence arrived at Copley Symphony Hall in a hurry last Friday evening. Conductor Christoph von Dohnányi, leading the piece without a score before him, launched the first movement with a brisk tempo that riveted both players and audience. I have rarely seen – or heard – the San Diego Symphony playing with so much concentrated clarity as it displayed in the opening pages of what may well be the most famous piece of music in the Western world…

Read More