2005 Year

LUCINDA WILLIAMS Singer-songwriter In a nutshell, I think the great thing that's happened is the continued resurgence of this great roots music scene here.... When I moved back from Nashville about four years ago, I was really delighted that it had kind of been revived and was going stronger than ever. Chris Morris from the Hollywood Reporter started hosting the "Watusi Rodeo" radio show on Indie 103. That's a great outlet for roots music....

SENSATION-SEEKING premature reports of the death of a mature art, classical music, did not cease in 2005. Naysayers howled into the wind. But it was a very good year. Peter Sellars continues to make waves and move mountains. If there had been any question that Sellars is the single most creative force in the world of opera today, he took care of that in 2005.

THERE have been a substantial number of good-to-better Hollywood films this year and a wide range of notable independent and foreign films.

FIRST, if you need to feel wanted, consider a career in museum management. Second, be wary of new ventures involving flooded orchestra pits. And third, be jealous of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where life at the moment seems almost impossibly good. For the movers and shakers of highbrow Southern California -- and indeed for arts leaders nationwide -- these are just some of the larger lessons of 2005, as well as clues, in some cases, to what 2006 may bring.

THERE were lots of excellent albums during 2005, but only three brilliant ones: Bright Eyes' "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning," Kanye West's "Late Registration" and the White Stripes' "Get Behind Me Satan." All three are works of immense ambition and craft, and the reaction to them has been so extreme -- from near suffocating praise in one case to considerable puzzlement in another -- that you wonder about the effect of it all on their creators.

THE year 2005 was the best of art times, and it was the worst of art times. * The UCLA Hammer Museum offered an invigorating survey of new art that crystallized an emerging sensibility among younger artists, braced against the feeling of dissolution so prevalent now. "Thing: New Sculpture From Los Angeles" was a rarity -- a fresh and meaningful overview.

WHEN Philip Johnson died early this year, at the age of 98, a certain alluring but ultimately damaging definition of architecture may well have gone with him. Both in his own designs and in his role as his profession's leading tastemaker, Johnson helped popularize the notion that what architects contribute to the culture has more to do with image and a kind of urbane glamour than with the way people actually use buildings or how cities develop over time.

DANCE in Southern California had its share of milestones in 2005. Three contenders announced their intention to create world-class ballet companies in the Southland -- none more promising than Ethan Stiefel, the new artistic director of Ballet Pacifica. The Dance at the Music Center series presented its first dauntingly expensive, top-of-the-line international ensemble: Russia's superb Kirov Ballet. And two television networks discovered how dance could serve the needs of reality TV through L.A.