Josef Woodard

A rousing performance by the Schoenberg Quartet from the Netherlands launched another season, another round of contemporary musical provocations courtesy of Monday Evening Concerts. This season began with a profound bang at L.A. County Museum of Art's Bing Theater. This was an evening of powerful, uncompromising music played with conviction and the kind of clarity that lays bare the soul beneath the notes.

A rousing performance by the Schoenberg Quartet from the Netherlands launched another season, another round of contemporary musical provocations courtesy of Monday Evening Concerts. This season began with a profound bang at L.A. County Museum of Art's Bing Theater. This was an evening of powerful, uncompromising music played with conviction and the kind of clarity that lays bare the soul beneath the notes.

Flowers and Then Some: Watercolorist Timberly Dunn, showing at the Buenaventura Gallery through Feb. 5, has a pleasant, soft touch in her dealings with flowers and other things found in nature, reviewer Josef Woodard notes in his Sights column Sunday. Big, Big Band: Expect improvisation and genre mixing when avant-garde jazz musician Vinny Golia brings his band of 31 musicians to Ventura High School at 8 p.m. Saturday.

Thank you for Josef Woodard's interview with Elmer Bernstein, David Raksin, Laurence Rosenthal and Leonard Rosenman ("Scoring Some More Respect," June 14). Respect begins at home, however. One shudders to think of the editorial hatchet-job that was performed to cram the ideas of these four illustrious composers into a two-page article. Each of them merits more than that space in his own right, and The Times is long overdue in this regard. JANE BROCKMAN Santa Monica

Josef Woodard's remark that the Budapest Festival Orchestra program of Aug. 27 was reserved for "strictly Slavic repertory" was incorrect ("Budapest Orchestra Explores Its Heritage," Aug. 29). Only Antonin Dvorak's Slavonic Dance was of Slavic origin. The Hungarian compositions by Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly have their roots in the Hungarian mode of expression. Hungarians are not of Slavic descent; their music and language has its own origin. FRANK J. PLASH San Bernardino

Such a pretentious piece by Josef Woodard in Ventura County Life for Oct. 13, on the architecture of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Most American prisons have more outward appeal. But, of course, the Thousand Oaks City Council could have gotten a prefab design for $29.95. You have to spend the real dough to create an abortion. GILBERT S. BAHN Moorpark

As an ardent supporter of both the Monday Evening Concerts and the Green Umbrella performances, I would like to add a contrary voice to the generous review of "Cezanne's Doubt" given in your pages April 15 by Josef Woodard. What he calls "hypnotic" I call "tedious." What he refers to as "mesmerizing" I call "boring." Indeed, the work seemed to me to epitomize empty pretension at its worst, musically speaking. And the video projection accompanying the music matched it in vacuity and lack of interest.

Bravo to Laura and Eduard Schmieder and their distinguished advisory board for launching such energetic and much-needed projects as the International Laureates Chamber Music Festival and Young Artists International ("Taking Young Musicians to the Next Stage," by Josef Woodard, July 26). Helping "novice artists with management, competitions, financial assistance and other administrative functions" is something commendable for talented young musicians entering the very difficult world of classical music.

Virginia native Jason Mraz's hard-to-describe stew of pop, folk, and hip-hop impulses caught many ears with the release of his 2002 debut album, "Waiting for My Rocket to Come." He's an odd mixture of indie-poppish singer-songwriter sincerity and jam-happy rocking, all spiced by the nerdiness of his musical theater background. With a live album released last year and follow-up studio album nearly in the can, Mraz continues to make the live rounds, stopping at the Ventura Theater on Saturday.

Folk singer John McCutcheon has more than songs up his sleeve, bringing an array of instruments and family-friendly storytelling to his performances. The Ventura-based "Performances to Grow On" series brings McCutcheon to the picturesque Church of Religious Science on Saturday for an evening of song singing and tale spinning. Joining McCutcheon, who has three Grammy nominations and nearly 30 albums to his credit, are the New York-based Chapin Sisters.

Josef Woodard should have done his homework on Ernst Krenek before stating that my husband is "a German who landed in Southern California" ("Divergent Samples of 20th Century Music," May 23). Krenek is very much an Austrian, not a German. He was born Aug. 23, 1900, in Vienna, where he spent most of his life until his immigration to America in 1938. More than any composer of that time, he wrote many fierce articles, all published in the Wiener Zeitung, against German Nazism and their Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.