Classical Music

When Blair Jackson first heard that the Georgia-based composer Lee Johnson had written a suite for symphony orchestra based on 10 songs by the Grateful Dead, he was unimpressed. "There is a long and ignoble tradition of butchering rock songs by rearranging them in lame and unimaginative 'classical' settings.

What does a renowned, Harvard-educated, Pulitzer Prize-winning classical music composer say just after the standing-ovation world premiere of his new symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of its wildly celebrated new music director, Gustavo Dudamel? "That was rockin', wasn't it?" says a beaming John Adams. Yeah, that's the way "we old boomers" talk, Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. President Deborah Borda, 60, jokes of her longtime friend and colleague Adams, 62. It doesn't seem to surprise her during a conversation at the gala party after the Oct. 8 premiere that Adams would use the phrase when talking about "City Noir," a work inspired by Hollywood's classic noir films of the 1940s and '50s.

Moshe Cotel thought he was leaving music behind when he forsook a successful career as a composer and high-ranking conservatory professor in order, in his mid-50s, to become a rabbi. Fate, however, turned out to be not entirely on board with the plan. As he finished his studies, Cotel proposed, out of laziness, to perform a rabbinical thesis rather than write one. So he was permitted to give a piano recital in which he paired traditional rabbinical monologues with pieces of classical music.

Rarely does chopping wood or smashing rocks count as orchestra practice. But when the piece in question is Gustav Mahler's mighty Symphony No. 6, pretty much anything goes, at least for percussionists. The symphony, first performed in 1906, is not Mahler's longest -- the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth all surpass it -- but it may require the most stamina for the percussionist delivering its defining hammer blows. That's right: hammer blows, like the kind that ring bells on high strikers at carnivals.

THE classical Grammy voters, whoever and however many they may be among the Recording Academy members, have spoken with one voice. Joan Tower's 13-minute exuberant fantasy, "Made in America," an upbeat, patriotic, bountifully orchestrated fantasy on "America the Beautiful," is the big winner. The piece is part of an all-Tower disc of orchestral works performed by the Nashville Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin on the budget label Naxos.

Composer and conductor Rob Kapilow has a kindred spirit: the irrepressible promoter of that titular culinary dish in Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham." Kapilow's mission is giving people a taste of classical music. The Seuss book "is a parable about prejudice," Kapilow says. "It represents all those things that we're sure we're not going to like before we try them. It's the perfect metaphor for classical music in America." In the lively "What Makes It Great?"

Easter eve. Spring's second day, and Purim's. The moon, coming off full, hangs over Santa Monica Bay. The weather is balmy. Night-blooming jasmine perfumes soft air. Lovers walk hand in hand. But all is not well in paradise. The homeless add their misery to the Palisades. Raymond Chandler would have had a wisecrack and a crime for such a scene. Instead, there is, a block from the shore, music -- Jacaranda in flower with Messiaen.

Most California schoolchildren learn the basic facts about the state's mission history in the fourth grade. Established from 1769 to 1823 by Franciscan monks from Spain to spread the Roman Catholic faith among the area's Native American population, the series of strategic-religious outposts spanned 650 miles of California coastline, from San Diego to Sonoma, providing Spain with a powerful presence on the Pacific frontier.

A few years ago, I began working toward my retirement goal of being an intolerable old man. I'm way ahead of schedule on knowing enough about wine to bore anyone, but classical music has proved much more difficult, largely because no matter how much you listen, it does not get you drunk. But because my cultural 401(k) depends on being able to cite conductors, orchestras and recording years, I called David Moore, a bassist for the L.A.

In THE last year, listeners to classical music radio in Los Angeles have noticed something different about segments of the weekday sound of KUSC-FM (91.5) -- evidence of human beings talking to them live between the symphonies and concertos of Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms.