CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 14, 2013 | Steve Lopez
It's a short ride from L.A.'s skid row to Hollywood, but throw in a detour and a few bumps and the journey can take six months, as it did for my friend Nathaniel Ayers. The Juilliard-trained musician had been ensconced in the same downtown apartment for seven years, but things weren't working out, and it was time to move on. That was his landlord's opinion and mine, too. But Mr. Ayers insisted he was staying put, end of discussion. His apartment was his sanctuary, and few people were allowed into his space for inspections or anything else.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 15, 2011 | Steve Lopez
I picked him up at 10:30 Monday morning. He was waiting on the sidewalk outside his apartment with a cello, a violin, a guitar, a trumpet, a walking stick and a backpack full of music. "Good morning, Mr. Ayers. " "Good morning, Mr. Lopez. " When Nathaniel Ayers and I go places together, I'm the driver. But he's the talent, as they say, so in a sense, I'm just along for the ride. Such was the case as we headed off to the Foshay Learning Center , a K-12 school near Western Avenue and Exposition Boulevard, where Mr. Ayers was slated to perform.
ENTERTAINMENT
August 28, 2009 | MARK SWED, MUSIC CRITIC
At the Bard College Music Festival last weekend in New York, the college's president and festival director, Leon Botstein, made a striking remark about Richard Wagner and his cronies. "If we used our standards of normalcy on the 19th century," he said during a panel discussion about Wagner and the Jewish question, "historians wouldn't be left with much worth remembering." I thought about that Tuesday at the Hollywood Bowl. Yo-Yo Ma played Dvorak's Cello Concerto and my guest was another cellist, Nathaniel Ayers, whose story Steve Lopez has told meaningfully in this newspaper and in his book "The Soloist."
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 12, 2009 | STEVE LOPEZ
He was so eager to make the trip, he called several times to make sure it hadn't been canceled. "Mr. Lopez, is the pickup still at 9 a.m?" "Yes, Mr. Ayers. I'll see you in the morning." When I pulled up, he was standing on the sidewalk playing a skid row reveille on his trumpet. He had a small overnight bag and five more instruments -- cello, violin, French horn, clarinet and flute, meaning he had made the difficult decision to leave several other instruments home.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 26, 2009 | Cristy Lytal
In the credits of "The Soloist," Sean Daly is identified as the "hand of Nathaniel Ayers." Played by Jamie Foxx in the film, the character of Ayers is based on the homeless schizophrenic musician who inspired a series of columns by the Los Angeles Times' Steve Lopez. "A lot of people say, 'Oh, your hand's in the movie?' " says Daly. "And I say, 'No, Jamie Foxx and I have two very different-looking hands.'
OPINION
May 17, 2008
Re "Sunday service tugs at agnostic," May 11 I find it stunningly beautiful that a man may reach a point at which, influenced by a single event or perhaps a confluence of events, he is able to hear the voice that has always been calling. Who is to say that a homeless violinist is not God's angel? The potential effect of Steve Lopez's friendship with Nathaniel Ayers is beyond calculation. Robert Spalding San Diego