Classical Music

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.

NEW DELHI - When Gavin Martin and his family moved here from southern India in the early '70s, the country's capital city offered the gifted young pianist exactly one option for continuing his music education: the Delhi School of Music. It was the only place in town - perhaps in the whole of northern India - that taught Western classical music with any degree of competence. Even so, life wasn't easy for the serious student born in a country where the sitar is king. "Growing up in India playing the piano was kind of like [being]

Ludwig Van Beethoven. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Johann Sebastian Bach. Oh yes, we all know about those guys. We know we're supposed to nod our heads appreciatively at the mere mention of their names. But for most of us, classical music is the aural equivalent of green vegetables. They're good for you, no doubt about it -- but not a lot of fun. Robert Greenberg begs to disagree.

The Seoul Philharmonic wants to be the one, not just the classical music soul of Seoul, but the first Asian orchestra to make it big on the international scene. At their Walt Disney Concert Hall debut Thursday night, the Koreans were -- in a program of Debussy, Ravel and Tchaikovsky standards -- exhilarating and, at their best, even awesome. It's an orchestra of noticeably young players, and they weren't always at their best. The Seoul Philharmonic is not quite there yet, but it's on its way. And it has more than a little help from friends in high places to help it get there.

NEW DELHI - When Gavin Martin and his family moved here from southern India in the early '70s, the country's capital city offered the gifted young pianist exactly one option for continuing his music education: the Delhi School of Music. It was the only place in town - perhaps in the whole of northern India - that taught Western classical music with any degree of competence. Even so, life wasn't easy for the serious student born in a country where the sitar is king. "Growing up in India playing the piano was kind of like [being]

Musically, Venezuela is like no other place on Earth. Along with baseball and beauty pageants, classical music is one of the country's greatest passions. In the capital, Caracas, superstar Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is mobbed wherever he goes. Classical music teeny-boppers run up to him for autographs when he walks off the podium at concerts. The state-run music education program, which is known as El Sistema and from which Dudamel emerged, is the most extensive, admired and increasingly imitated in the world.

Popular music and classical music may be distinct genres with their own traditions and social mores, but cross-pollination has long been the way of most musics. If nature abhors a void, she adores a hybrid. Jazz, for instance, developed when 19th century African Americans filtered the waltz and other aspects of Western music through African musical traditions, producing a new language to express their situation in America. Take a peek at 21st century Brooklyn, which John Adams called the new Montmartre at a Green Umbrella concert last season.

Gene Parrish, a longtime host of classical music programs on KUSC-FM (91.5) who also wrote and produced syndicated programs on worldwide jazz and American choral music, has died. He was 82. Parrish, of Hermosa Beach, died Friday of lung cancer at a Kaiser Permanente hospice-care facility in Harbor City, said his wife, Eleanor. Soon after joining KUSC in 1984, Parrish co-hosted a daily arts magazine with Gail Eichenthal on the Olympic Arts Festival.

The classical music industry loves Nikita Pacheco. They don't know the 29-year-old graphic artist personally. But she represents their future and they're striking every note in their new digital media handbooks to please her. To many, digital media is the sound of salvation for classical music. To others, it's another power chord crushing the soul of the art form itself. Take the "tweet-cert" held by the Pacific Symphony last month at its summer home, Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.

There's nothing new about classical musicians trying to expand their fan base. Even if deeds don't always match goals, plenty of performers make the effort. Still, one doesn't expect a largely unknown, foreign artist with little connection to this country to undertake such a project in America -- let alone mostly fund the enterprise himself. Yet here is Johannes Moser, a Berlin-based cellist of German and Canadian parentage, doing just that. He is scheduled to appear this afternoon at Pepperdine University's Raitt Recital Hall, presenting "Sounding Off: A Fresh Look at Classical Music," the fourth of six concerts in a cross-country tour he conceived to reach audiences that might otherwise be unfamiliar with or even resistant to classical music.

Classical music has a long and fruitful history serving as an informal olive branch between hostile countries. Cultural exchanges between the former Soviet Union and the West helped to thaw Cold War tensions as early as the 1950s. Few people today know the diplomatic power of classical music better than Myung-Whun Chung, the South Korean conductor who has embarked on a one-man mission in recent months to reestablish cultural ties with North Korea. Chung, who leads the Seoul Philharmonic, is in a unique position to use the podium as a diplomatic vehicle.

Since its founding in 2003, Jacaranda has proved itself one of the best and most adventurous chamber music series in the country. Based at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica, Jacaranda offers a mix of new and old, with an emphasis on West Coast composers. (This season the group - whose motto is "Music at the Edge" - has put on pieces by Nico Muhly, Philip Glass and Toru Takemitsu, and it will close out its season in May with a minimalist piece by Terry Riley and a Lou Harrison work, arranged from gamelan for string orchestra.)

No one's ever called music impresario April Williams lazy. She began booking and producing music in the upstairs room at Vitello's restaurant in Studio City at the end of 2009. It's now one of the most coveted jazz spots - for musicians and listeners alike - in Southern California. On April 18, she breaks new ground with a spring music series at the Federal, in the heart of the NoHo Arts District near a Metro Rail station. She could hardly inaugurate her new enterprise more auspiciously: Williams has tapped Bob Sheppard, one of the preeminent West Coast jazz saxophonist stylists and busiest recording session players in the Hollywood studios.

The public doesn't warm to every instrument it hears. Every winter audiences are enchanted by the celesta, a kind of keyboard glockenspiel, because Tchaikovsky made its sweet sound famous in "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from "Nutcracker. " The jury is out on the siren. Edgard Varèse shocked listeners in 1930 when they heard its high-pitched wailings in his all-percussion "Ionization. " The siren will get another hearing when percussionist Steven Schick joins 47 other percussionists in a performance of John Luther Adams' outdoor piece, "Inuksuit," at the Ojai Music Festival in June.

In a recording studio on Sunset Boulevard, Thomas Bergersen and Nick Phoenix are banging on two giant taiko drums built especially for their company, Two Steps From Hell. The brawny musicians exude the fierce intensity prevalent in much of their music - until they suddenly get off-beat and let out loud laughs that reveal just how much fun this is for them. Bergersen and Phoenix revel in the world of music for movies, but not in the same way as film score maestros like Hans Zimmer and John Williams.

Jennifer Higdon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2010, says her desire to write classical music as hospitable as a Southern dinner stems from a childhood trauma: seeing performance art in the 1960s. She blames her father, a "hippie before the hippie movement," who took her and her younger brother to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta when they were kids. One "art happening," Higdon says, featured an artist, dressed in black, covered with rubber cement, strapped to a black canvas.

The seminal story of how modern classical music turned Louisville, Ken., into a mid-20th century cultural phenomenon feels far less thrilling than it should, at least in the hands of co-directors Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler. That's because their documentary, "Music Makes a City," despite its gorgeous soundtrack, historical sweep and wealth of archival material, is weakened by sluggish pacing and an overly detailed, increasingly narrow focus. Singer-songwriter-actor Will Oldham's lecture-like narration tells how the 1937 formation of the Louisville Orchestra helped rejuvenate the city after the Great Depression and, later, a devastating flood.

Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, 42, returns to the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday with a program of Mahler and Bruch. The boyish classical superstar talked about music, friends and adrenalin rushes from his home in New York. You've done a lot of TV, like VH1, and film, and I'm wondering whether you're consciously trying to bring more young people into the classical music fold. Yes. It's hard to say what my main motivation is, but I'm definitely conscious of trying wherever I can to bring young people in, whether it's doing "Sesame Street" or going into schools.

Ravi Shankar, 91, India's most famous classical musician in the West since his collaborations with Beatle George Harrison and violinist Yehudi Menuhin in the 1960s, makes an infrequent concert appearance when he performs at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach on March 25. Tell me about your upcoming concert. What do you have planned? I do my usual performance, the Indian classical music, playing on my sitar. And I have the usual accompaniment of drums and a drone instrument.

Among the many guest conductors who pass regularly through Southern California armed with fat music scores and frequent-flier miles, Nicholas McGegan is certainly one of the more recognizable faces. In the past 10 years, McGegan has become a presence with' the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducting frequently at the Hollywood Bowl and at Walt Disney Concert Hall. He has led nearly 30 performances with the orchestra since 2001. This month the British conductor will make his debut with another local group, the Pasadena Symphony, in two concerts at the Ambassador Auditorium.