Colburn School

I was fortunate enough to have been among the guests invited to the opening of the Colburn School of Performing Arts two Sundays ago. Since CalArts will be a neighbor of the Colburn School once our own new theater opens at the Walt Disney Concert Hall site, it was with particular interest that I made my way among the assembled civic, arts and education leaders into this gracious new building.

The Britten year in Los Angeles has begun with a bang. This weekend, you can hear Britten in Walt Disney Concert Hall, at Jacaranda in Santa Monica -- and most of all, in the Colburn School's Zipper Hall where the ever-on-the-move sparkplug James Conlon is presiding over an extraordinary marathon of songs and opera that rarely get a live hearing in this country. For starters Thursday night, in a setting that imaginatively re-invents the format of an art song recital, there was a long “prelude” of often stark songs by Benjamin Britten and others by his teachers Frank Bridge and John Ireland and his foremost predecessor in English opera, Henry Purcell.

"It's a completely new experience," said Matthew Zuber, a 21-year-old bassoonist studying at the Colburn School. "I've never done an opera before. " He was referring to his participation -- along with 21 other young musicians at the downtown conservatory -- in a new collaboration between Colburn and Los Angeles Opera's Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program. That union gets its first showcase this weekend, when the combined forces present two one-act operas: Ernst Krenek's "The Secret Kingdom" and Viktor Ullmann's "The Emperor of Atlantis.

Two years ago Alexei Lubimov, the peculiar Russian polymath pianist, made a rare appearance in Los Angeles to open the season of Monday Evening Concerts at the Colburn School's Zipper Concert Hall. He was back Monday to do the same. He proved no less strange this time around. Lubimov's program on Monday began with Satie and ended with Debussy, not a big stretch, it might seem, the two French composers having been friends and having influenced each other. In between came three short prepared piano pieces by John Cage from the 1940s that were written at a time when Satie was much on Cage's mind.

On Sunday, the Colburn School of Performing Arts will dedicate its new home alongside the Museum of Contemporary Art and the future site of the Music Center's Walt Disney Concert Hall. Although parts of the school have been open for months, the school's formal unveiling marks the arrival of the latest addition to a string of projects meant to transform downtown Los Angeles' Grand Avenue into a bustling cultural haven.

In a music instruction room, 9-year-old Eric Liang of Fullerton scrunches his face for a flicker of a moment as he plays a composition for the violin by Fritz Kreisler. The problem isn't his playing or the music. From the classroom on the other side of the wall comes the thundering of drums. In a much larger room where Ballet I is under way, three young girls do their steps while facing a broad mirror.

A crowd of construction workers, some sporting T-shirts reading "I Built the Colburn School of Performing Arts 1997-1998," sat on the dust-filled steps of the facility's new 416-seat auditorium a month before seats--and students--were scheduled to arrive. Munching on chicken-and-pesto sandwiches provided by their hosts, they peered intently at the stage. Out walked 12-year-old Cynthia Gong, Timothy Braun, also 12, and 11-year-old Eugenia Chang, wearing hard hats of their own.

Richard D. Colburn, a wealthy businessman whose own dreams of being a professional musician fueled his generous and lifelong commitment to music and music education, died Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 92. "He'd been very tired the last few days," said his daughter, Carol Colburn Hogel. "But, still, this was unexpected."

Colburn exec: Miguel Angel Corzo, president of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a former director of the Getty Conservation Institute in L.A., has been named president of the Colburn School in downtown L.A. Beginning in July, he will oversee both the Colburn School of Performing Arts and the Colburn Conservatory of Music.

Armadillo phone number--The wrong phone number appeared in the music listings in Sunday's Calendar for the Armadillo String Quartet, performing Wednesday at the Colburn School. The information phone number is: (310) 446-6358.

Before conducting the Colburn Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday night, across the street from the newly renamed Colburn Way (one block of 2nd Street), the renowned British conductor Neville Marriner was handed the Richard D. Colburn Award in a small ceremony on stage. Marriner was the first music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which Richard D. Colburn, Los Angeles' legendary music benefactor, helped bankroll. The concert was presented by the Colburn School in honor of the centenary of its founder, who died at 92 in 2004.

"It's a completely new experience," said Matthew Zuber, a 21-year-old bassoonist studying at the Colburn School. "I've never done an opera before. " He was referring to his participation -- along with 21 other young musicians at the downtown conservatory -- in a new collaboration between Colburn and Los Angeles Opera's Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program. That union gets its first showcase this weekend, when the combined forces present two one-act operas: Ernst Krenek's "The Secret Kingdom" and Viktor Ullmann's "The Emperor of Atlantis.

Nigel Armstrong, a 21-year-old recent graduate of L.A.'s Colburn School, has made the violin finals in classical music's equivalent of the Olympics — the quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia that's best known stateside for Van Cliburn's triumph during the inaugural running in 1958. Americans celebrated it as a victory over the Soviets on their own turf during those Cold War days, and Cliburn, a pianist from Texas, returned to a ticker tape parade on Manhattan's Broadway and lionization on the cover of Time magazine.

Arts patron Anne Bass never intended to become a filmmaker, but somehow she ended up directing and producing "Dancing Across Borders," a documentary she presented in Beverly Hills on Tuesday. The screening benefited Center Dance Arts, which supports the performance series and educational programs of "Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center." "I fell into it sideways," Bass said, explaining that she originally hired a director to string together the footage of Sokvannara (Sy)

In Chicago they build things right -- and that goes for dance companies. In January, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago displayed its artistic vitality in Los Angeles with its splendid staging of Frederick Ashton's postwar masterpiece "Cinderella" at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. And now Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the next offering of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center, also augurs well. From humble beginnings in 1977 as a jazz-dance ensemble, the troupe of 17 virtuoso dancers has surged to international prominence on its high-quality delivery of eclectic, sophisticated European choreography.

A snail shell . . . a smooth paving stone . . . a sardine can. These are among the unorthodox instruments English composer Frank Denyer uses in his music. On Monday night at the Colburn School's Zipper Hall, the new-music series Monday Evening Concerts presents the premiere of Denyer's "Out of the Shattered Shadows 2," along with the U.S. premieres of his "Hanged Fiddler" and "Woman, Viola and Crow." "I'm looking for a tone of voice with little rhetoric," Denyer, 67, said recently over breakfast in Little Tokyo, understating the deep intimacy of a sound world created by such things as mango seeds, bones and even moth cocoons.

The Colburn School of Performing Arts salutes the Sweet Strings program ("Inner-City Kids Need Violins," Voices, Oct. 21). The instructor mentioned, who originally offered to teach for free in the program, is full-time Colburn School teacher Chan Ho Yun, and we strongly support his efforts. The Colburn School has donated string instruments to the program and will continue to do so whenever possible. The commentary mentions the "really expensive" lessons at Colburn, but I want to point out that we pay well-deserved professional salaries to our faculty and also offer broad need-based scholarships based on generous income-based qualifications.

The Britten year in Los Angeles has begun with a bang. This weekend, you can hear Britten in Walt Disney Concert Hall, at Jacaranda in Santa Monica -- and most of all, in the Colburn School's Zipper Hall where the ever-on-the-move sparkplug James Conlon is presiding over an extraordinary marathon of songs and opera that rarely get a live hearing in this country. For starters Thursday night, in a setting that imaginatively re-invents the format of an art song recital, there was a long “prelude” of often stark songs by Benjamin Britten and others by his teachers Frank Bridge and John Ireland and his foremost predecessor in English opera, Henry Purcell.

Monday Evening Concerts Where: Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School, downtown L.A. When: 8 p.m. Monday Price: $27 Also: "Meet the Composer: Frank Denyer," 11 a.m. Sun., Goethe-Institut; $5. Contact: (310) 836-6632, www.mondayeveningconcerts.org

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