Arts roundup: Police escort Los Angeles Philharmonic in Caracas ...

Gustavo Dudamel returned to his native Venezuela with Los Angeles Philharmonic last weekend, where fans treated them like rock stars. Mark Swed in the LA Times has the report:

After the end of the Los Angeles Philharmonic?s excitable and radiant performance Saturday night at?Teatro Teresa Carre?o of Mahler?s hauntingly elegiac Ninth Symphony,?Gustavo Dudamel stopped to sign autographs?for screaming fans who ran up to the foot of the stage of Caracas? main concert hall.

The L.A. Phil had arrived in Venezuela late the night before, and the orchestra's caravan of buses had been given a police escort from the Sim?n Bol?var International Airport to the orchestra?s hotel. More motorcycle police accompanied the players Saturday afternoon on the 5-mile drive from their hotel to the first of five performances in the country?s capital.

Not only is the L.A. Phil the first major international orchestra to visit Venezuela in more than two decades, but the Venezuelan conductor and his L.A. orchestra are rock stars here. So popular is Dudamel that Frank Gehry was commissioned to design a concert hall for Dudamel's hometown of Barquisimeto that the town?wants to name after the 31-year-old conductor. It will replace a soccer field and serve the kind of youth orchestras Dudamel played in while growing up.

Many artists defy conventional wisdom and get better with age. From the Guardian:

While visual artists have the late works of Rembrandt and Titian to inspire them, other art forms are more closely associated with youth. Yet Woody Allen, 76, has an Oscar nomination for Midnight in Paris and Roman Polanski, 78, received plaudits for his latest film, Carnage. Meanwhile, Leonard Cohen, 77, is No 2 in the album charts.

And finally, the debate over Philip Glass, who turned 75 Jan. 31, has no end. The latest to weigh in is the ever-articulate Justin Davidson in New York:

To criticize Glass for excessive reiteration is a little like complaining that the rain is too damp. He repeats therefore he is. But even as he abandoned the rigors of early Minimalism, he continued to wear out the products of his own invention. In November, the New York Philharmonic finally performed its first Glass work, Koyaanisqatsi, the soundtrack to Godfrey Reggio?s documentary. As the camera pans over the doomed and derelict hulk of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, the score?s wavy scales, chiming brass, and chanted syncopations accumulate into a sonic panorama. It?s a gripping moment, and there are enough like that to make me wish he valued them more. But he is less craftsman than musical trucker, tirelessly eating up the road. But he is less craftsman than musical trucker, tirelessly eating up the road.

-- David Stabler

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2012/02/arts_roundup_police_escort_los.html

occupy oakland general strike occupy oakland general strike mike quade mike quade sticks and stones sticks and stones top chef