Igor Stravinsky

In the Getty's shiny large catalog for the Pacific Standard Time festival, Igor Stravinsky's name is a mere footnote. He is added to a list of émigré artists, and even there he comes after novelist Thomas Mann and philosopher-critic Theodor Adorno. He meant more. When Stravinsky arrived in Los Angeles from Europe in 1940 — having just married his longtime mistress, Vera Sudeikin — he was 58 and the world's most famous composer. He became an American citizen in 1945 and remained here until 1969, when he moved to New York (where he died in 1972)

In the Getty's shiny large catalog for the Pacific Standard Time festival, Igor Stravinsky's name is a mere footnote. He is added to a list of émigré artists, and even there he comes after novelist Thomas Mann and philosopher-critic Theodor Adorno. He meant more. When Stravinsky arrived in Los Angeles from Europe in 1940 — having just married his longtime mistress, Vera Sudeikin — he was 58 and the world's most famous composer. He became an American citizen in 1945 and remained here until 1969, when he moved to New York (where he died in 1972)

It's a period romance between two well-known figures. Now take that idea, crumple it up and throw it away. " Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" ignores its genre's expectations — fitting for two such potent, avant-garde personages. All sentimentality and politeness toward these revered subjects is tossed aside. Under Jan Kounen's direction, they are living, breathing people with undeniable flaws. Their affair is passionate but illicit, conducted as the composer and his family live under the stylish parasol of the couture designer's charity.

When the 65th Ojai Music Festival opens on June 9, one of the main attractions will be the stage itself. Libbey Bowl, the festival's quaint and rustic home for more than half a century, has undergone a $4-million makeover. Its historic wooden clamshell, weakened by rot and termites, has been replaced by a concrete-and-steel structure designed by Ojai architect David Bury; seating and sight lines have been improved; and the cramped backstage has been expanded. "Even with all the changes we've tried to keep the original character," says Jeff Haydon, the festival's executive director, noting that the latest shell echoes its predecessor's familiar arched design.

In this handsome coffee-table collection, with family photos aplenty, Igor Stravinsky sidekick Robert Craft serves as loving editor of what turns out to be a portrait of the composer's dedicated wife Vera. Anyone curious about her more illustrious husband will be disappointed: Only a dozen brief letters bear his signature. Even the most trivial correspondence is included ("Letter received--All is well--Vera"). Vera's running diary lists the Stravinskys' famous dining and partying companions.

Wherever Igor Stravinsky went during most of his 20-plus years in Los Angeles, he was flanked by Robert Craft, musician, journalist, cultural translator and dutiful aide de camp for the great composer. Craft conducted many of the composer's later premieres, published books about him and attended to logistics in the life of the legend. In short, he was a right-hand man.

In 1949, a 26-year-old New York conductor boarded a train for Los Angeles to take a job as musical assistant to Igor Stravinsky. Robert Craft soon became part of the household on Wetherly Drive, serving as the famous composer's close collaborator, mouthpiece, alter ego and surrogate son. He remained by Stravinsky's side for the rest of the composer's life and then looked after Stravinsky's widow, Vera, for the rest of hers.

Ever since black music broke out of the bordellos of New Orleans and Kansas City at the beginning of the century and blazed its way into the consciousness of classical musicians, composers have been trying to marry the disparate traditions of European concert music and jazz. Among the early experimenters was Igor Stravinsky, who in 1918 pored over some published ragtime numbers that his friend conductor Ernest Ansermet brought him from America.

Re "Works of Art," letter, Jan. 5: I'll grant Doug Raleigh Picasso's "Guernica" and James Joyce's "Ulysses" for art and literature. As for music, Igor Stravinsky, himself, gives us the answer. While composing "Le Sacre du Printemps," he attended a performance of Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire." Afterward he stated, "Everything I know is wrong." THOMAS KITTREDGE Palm Springs

A federal judge today barred publication of a biography of Igor Stravinsky, ruling that it drew too heavily from copyrighted quotes of the late composer. In a preliminary order, U.S. District Judge Pierre N. Leval granted a request from longtime Stravinsky aide Robert Craft that he enjoin Macmillan Inc. from publishing "Firebird," a 337-page biography by John Kobler. Craft wrote or co-wrote 15 books on Stravinsky, including four books of his interviews with the composer.

It's a period romance between two well-known figures. Now take that idea, crumple it up and throw it away. " Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" ignores its genre's expectations — fitting for two such potent, avant-garde personages. All sentimentality and politeness toward these revered subjects is tossed aside. Under Jan Kounen's direction, they are living, breathing people with undeniable flaws. Their affair is passionate but illicit, conducted as the composer and his family live under the stylish parasol of the couture designer's charity.

Capsule reviews are by Kenneth Turan (K.Tu.), Betsy Sharkey (B.S.) and other reviewers. Compiled by Anthony Miller. Openings FRIDAY The A-Team Former Special Forces soldiers attempt to clear their names after being set up for a crime they didn't commit. With Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson and Gerald McRaney. Screenplay by Skip Woods, Joe Carnahan and Brian Bloom.

In his list of works, Stravinsky's short fairy-tale opera, "The Nightingale" ("Le Rossignol"), follows almost directly on the heels of his great string of early Russian ballets. With "The Firebird," "Petrushka" and "The Rite of Spring" already to his credit, "The Nightingale" had the potential to be Stravinsky's "Nutcracker," one of his most popular works. Instead, this operatic evocation of a songbird in ancient China is the composer's ugly duckling, seldom performed and little recorded.

Never in the history of English usage has "et cetera" seemed less a vague addendum or afterthought and more the central issue or main subject than in Michael Sakamoto's theater piece "The Rite of Spring, Etc." at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

In 1949, a 26-year-old New York conductor boarded a train for Los Angeles to take a job as musical assistant to Igor Stravinsky. Robert Craft soon became part of the household on Wetherly Drive, serving as the famous composer's close collaborator, mouthpiece, alter ego and surrogate son. He remained by Stravinsky's side for the rest of the composer's life and then looked after Stravinsky's widow, Vera, for the rest of hers.

The 20th century has barely passed, but the urge to sum it up is strong. When it comes to assessing its music and music makers, the early returns are beginning to come in, and Igor Stravinsky shows all the signs of being crowned the composer of the era. He was actually a child of the 19th century, born near Russia's St. Petersburg in 1882.

Editor: Is there any hope you coulld simply declare by fiat that this letter is the consummation of all color cover registration / book-review-orientation / lookalike letters, ban any such future letters, and finally move on to some controversy with import --like how to decide whether Hilburn's latest review of X was fair, a matter that will certainly concern future musicologists long after such other lesser musicians of the 20th century...

Martin Bernheimer's Beckmesser Awards are one of the highlights of my musical year, but his Curiouser and Curiouser Award to the U.S Postal Service for issuing a 22-cent stamp honoring Jerome Kern and a 2-center for Igor Stravinsky should actually have been a sotto voce cheer ("The Beckmesser Awards of 1985," Dec. 29). The 2-cent stamp issued to honor Stravinsky is the first to honor a foreign-born composer, one who not only chose to be born abroad but who also chose to be buried on foreign soil, in Venice, though he did have U.S. citizenship.

Accept it or not, Igor Stravinsky has been crowned king of the century. He was the 20th century's most famous composer, and there can be no question that he dominates music at the beginning of the 21st. In America, in fact, the new year and new century is beginning with major Stravinsky festivals on both coasts as well as in the country's center. Kansas City, Mo., is in the midst of a citywide Stravinsky festival lasting nearly three months.

Frank Sinatra does not need rock 'n' roll to guarantee his place in musical history ("Hall, or Nothing at All," by Robert Hilburn, July 2). Whooping it up for his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame merely shows the near total meaninglessness of the rubric "rock" today. This desperation to inject real talent into an increasingly dismal rock scene shows how desperate Hilburn is to find anything worth writing about in the current pop music. The monster Hilburn helped create has come back to bore him to death.