Classical Music

Dozens of young children, some wearing shirts with their Catholic school emblem, and with last names like Gonzalez, Mendieta and Santaolalla harmonized to the chorus of the "Dreidel Song. " " Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made you out of clay ," they sang. " And when it's dry and ready, with dreidel I shall play. " The Boyle Heights Community Youth Orchestra filled the Breed Street Shul with new life as it rehearsed for its first holiday concert. The concert, like the orchestra itself, is evidence of the community's ever-evolving history.

What does redemption taste like, Alex Guarnaschelli? "It starts out with hints of bitter almond, and it finishes like a chocolate souffle," she told the Los Angeles Times. One clue that Alex was destined to win Season 5 of "The Next Iron Chef"? When her competitors were asked to cook a passionate, "last supper" meal for the judges. The first two mystery ingredients were doled out -- the easy peasy proteins of chicken and haddock. Third in line, Alex ended up with sea urchin. Best of 2012:   Movies  |  TV  |  Pop music  |  Jazz  |  Video Games |  Art  |  Theater  |  Dance  |  Classical music While fellow finalists Nate Appleman appeared to smirk at the ingredient, and Amanda Freitag appeared to recoil, wide-eyed and wide-mouthed, Alex appraised the ingredient confidently with a nod and you could already see the gears turning in her head.

Marva Whitney, the R&B-funk singer who died Saturday at age 68, according to her official Facebook page, toured with the James Brown Revue from 1967 to 1970, and briefly held the spotlight on her own with three hits she charted in 1969. Rolling Stone reports the cause of death as complications from pneumonia. Whitney, whom Brown called "Soul Sister No. 1," got her biggest hit with a response to the Isley Brothers' “It's Your Thing,” a song she delivered as “It's My Thing (You Can't Tell Me Who to Sock It To)

The backlash in Washington over "Zero Dark Thirty" didn't reach the box office, as Kathryn Bigelow 's CIA thriller got off to an excellent start in limited release. Playing in five theaters, the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden grossed $410,000 over the weekend, according to an estimate from distributor Sony Pictures . That amounts to a robust per-theater average of $82,000 -- the fourth highest of the year for a movie in limited release, behind "The Master," "Moonrise Kingdom" and "Lincoln.

The slower the traffic on the 101 Freeway, the less time Rachel York will have as Mommy before she becomes Reno Sweeney again. "Shoot," York says on a recent Sunday, squinting through her windshield wipers at the straggling line of taillights on the on ramp. "This may have been a mistake. " At home - or at least, what's home at the moment - there is a little girl clutching a stuffed red Elmo who shrieks "Mommy!" as York walks inside and who puts on tiny patent-leather tap shoes so they can dance together to the music of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

It isn't often that the worlds of professional sports and classical music come together in harmonious union. But that is apparently what's happening at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, one of a several U.S. orchestras that has found itself in dire condition this year. The owners of the Indianapolis Colts and the Indiana Pacers announced this week that they have agreed to pledge $750,000 each to the troubled orchestra. The pledges were made as part of the orchestra's fundraising campaign to raise $5 million before Feb. 3. "Just like our Colts, every team can achieve success with a rallying cry from its fans and that time is now for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra," Jim Irsay, owner of the National Football League team, said in a news release.

Theater critics will tell you what they hate. What they really, really hate. In London, it's a new stage musical called "Viva Forever!" that uses songs from the British pop group Spice Girls. With a book written by Jennifer Saunders, of "Ab Fab" fame, the musical is backed by Judy Craymer, the producer who brought us another pop-jukebox musical, the blockbuster "Mamma Mia!" "Viva Forever!" opened over the weekend at the Picadilly Theatre on London's West End. The musical doesn't feature any of the original members of the Spice Girls, though the five singers -- including Victoria Beckham -- appeared at a curtain call on opening night.

It's been a year of hand-wringing at arts institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. The world economy has been particularly effective in scarifying orchestras and opera companies. In the United States, several orchestras are in various states of economic disarray - Atlanta, Indianapolis and Minneapolis being only the worst. Overseas, orchestras in Germany and Britain, opera houses in Italy are dropping like flies thanks to severe cuts in public funding. What's to be done? I would recommend stressed-out arts administrators crash a party in a Brooklyn bowling alley on Tuesday night.

Ravi Shankar was already revered as a master of the sitar in 1966 when he met George Harrison, the Beatle who became his most famous disciple and gave the Indian musician-composer unexpected pop-culture cachet. Suddenly the classically trained Shankar was a darling of the hippie movement, gaining widespread attention through memorable performances at the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh. Harrison called him "the godfather of world music," and the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin once compared the sitarist's genius to Mozart's.

Among the items the Grammy Museum included in its George Harrison “Living in the Material World” exhibit that opened about this time last year was a letter the ex-Beatle received following the all-star Concert for Bangladesh fundraiser he spearheaded at Madison Square Garden in 1971. The letter was from his friend Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar master who had sought Harrison's help in raising public awareness of the plight of residents of the small nation that had recently been devastated by floods and war. Shankar, who died Tuesday at age 92 , thanked Harrison in his letter for his efforts in rounding up some of the biggest names in rock music at the time -- including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell and Billy Preston -- to bring their celebrity to bear on behalf of people struggling half a world away.