Passion Musical

For the second year in a row, "Angels in America," the epic play about AIDS, gay life and Roy Cohn, won the Tony for best play in the annual ceremony honoring Broadway's best, held Sunday at the Gershwin Theatre in New York. This year's award went to part two, "Perestroika," of the Tony Kushner play, while last year's went to part one, "Millennium Approaches."

On Thursday morning, it was expected that classical music luminaries would be mourning the death of Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who had died only hours earlier at age 71 at his home in Modena, Italy, after battling pancreatic cancer. One of those luminaries was Plácido Domingo, managing director of Los Angeles Opera -- and, along with Pavarotti and José Carreras, one of the popular Three Tenors. Domingo, who heard the news while in rehearsal for Saturday's opening of L.A.

A semi-staged concert version of "Passion," starring Patti LuPone, Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald, was a success last summer for the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill. Now audiences in New York will get to see what the fuss was all about -- and so will television viewers across the nation.

KIM STOLZ isn't exactly a stranger to the camera. For two months last fall, her life played out on national television as she competed on "America's Next Top Model," gaining a following as a comfortably-out lesbian amid a group of often-overwrought wannabe models. In the end, the sharp-witted tomboy deflected the catty antics of her rivals with such wry aplomb that she captured one of the finalist spots on the hit Tyra Banks reality show.

"What this year's Tony Awards ceremony needs," says Broadway producer Richard Jay-Alexander, "is the theater's equivalent of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. A real fight-out fraught with tension that'll get people to tune in." There's only one category that might qualify among the 20 that will yield winners tonight on the 48th annual CBS telecast, and that is the race for one of the two top Tonys--best musical.

As the Tonys are handed out tonight, you might assume that whatever show wins the best Broadway musical trophy is bound to show up in L.A. sooner or later. So why hasn't Stephen Sondheim's "Passion" ever been staged here? Not only did it win the 1994 Tony for best musical, beating "Beauty and the Beast" (which played here for 17 months), but it's the most recent musical by America's most honored musical theater composer--a man whose L.A.

"Passion," the new Stephen Sondheim musical, features a character who is probably the most repulsive, obsessive and uningratiating woman ever to grace the Broadway musical stage. Yet she is arguably the most daring and personally felt character of any of Sondheim's shows--and one of the most troublesome.

The Tenebrae Responses by Tomas Luis de Victoria represent one of the peaks ofRenaissance Passion music, but the accompanying lessons from the Lamentations of Jeremiah are less well-known. Conductor Harry Christophers and his British chamber choir the Sixteen drew from both for their tightly knit, stunningly sung performance for the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary's College, Thursday at Precious Blood Church.

John Lithgow's new family concert extravaganza, "Farkle and Friends," at UCLA's Royce Hall on Sunday, was anything but a walk-through. It was more like a hop-, skip-, jump-, bounce- and dance-through as the "3rd Rock From the Sun" star romped onstage in his newest persona: children's entertainer.

Producer Mel Howard proposes an alternative to "Africa Oye," his pan-African music and dance revue. To see ritual music and dance in Central Africa, for example, he suggests: "Hire a Jeep. Drive 3,000 kilometers (about 1,700 miles) into the country. No motels along the way. Wait for someone to die. Then hope you get invited to the funeral." That, at least, would give you a taste of the show, opening Saturday at the Pantages Theatre. Attractions will include Peul acrobats from Guinea, Pygmy musicians from Northern Zaire, griots (the storytellers-poets-singers who are the keepers of history and culture in African societies)

A semi-staged concert version of "Passion," starring Patti LuPone, Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald, was a success last summer for the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill. Now audiences in New York will get to see what the fuss was all about -- and so will television viewers across the nation.

So you want be an artist but think the starving part is not for you? Advice is at hand. Writer Adele Slaughter and actor Jeff Kober have gathered tips for those who wish to make money off their creative pursuits. Their book, "Art That Pays: The Emerging Artist's Guide to Making a Living," which came out of a workshop series at CalArts, is a how-to compendium on surviving as an artist.

Protest songs aside, the relationship between music and politics has seldom been close, and for every Verdi (who campaigned for the unification of Italy) or Paderewski (who became prime minister of Poland), there have been rather more composers and performers who refused to burden their art with worldly concerns. It's not my business, they would say -- citing Wagner's racist rants as an example of what happens when musicians step beyond the boundaries of their expertise.

The 53-year-old diabetic with a weakened heart, a white, unkempt beard and several missing front teeth awakens in his $35-a-day room the size of a jail cell, cradling his electric guitar. He gets dressed and shambles a couple hundred feet down the street to a seedy BART plaza in the Mission district. He sits on a battery-powered amplifier, plugs in the guitar, puts a cardboard donation box on the ground and begins to play and sing.

Nonchalance is not an option when making your Carnegie Hall debut. Just ask 15-year-old Sarah Crespo-Szabo. "I'm so nervous my hands are shaking," the percussionist confides to a cellist moments before the Santa Monica High School Symphony walks onstage. Crespo-Szabo and her 78 orchestra mates had spent months preparing for this moment, and, typical teenagers, many wanted to seem blase.

Musical Passions--settings of the Gospel accounts of the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ--seem unlikely vehicles for popular success in a secular, post-modern age. After all, this venerable genre, which began in the 10th century, has survived outside liturgical use almost exclusively on the strength of just two works, the "St. Matthew Passion" and the "St. John Passion" by J. S. Bach.

So you want be an artist but think the starving part is not for you? Advice is at hand. Writer Adele Slaughter and actor Jeff Kober have gathered tips for those who wish to make money off their creative pursuits. Their book, "Art That Pays: The Emerging Artist's Guide to Making a Living," which came out of a workshop series at CalArts, is a how-to compendium on surviving as an artist.

When cellist Yo-Yo Ma was 25, he had an operation for scoliosis, a congenital curvature of the spine undoubtedly aggravated by playing the cello. Now, just turned 33, he looks back at the 10-day hospital stay from a somewhat surprising perspective. "In one way, it was a most wonderful thing to go through, because you think about what's important--you may come out being able to play the cello but if not, you realize you can still go on and lead a productive life.

The Tenebrae Responses by Tomas Luis de Victoria represent one of the peaks ofRenaissance Passion music, but the accompanying lessons from the Lamentations of Jeremiah are less well-known. Conductor Harry Christophers and his British chamber choir the Sixteen drew from both for their tightly knit, stunningly sung performance for the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary's College, Thursday at Precious Blood Church.

Columbia Records Chairman Don Ienner runs the No. 1 label in the music business--home to a diverse roster of stars that includes Bob Dylan, Los Super Seven, Offspring, Lauryn Hill, Bruce Springsteen and Lil' Bow Wow. In a business dominated by number-crunching suits and timid middle managers, the 49-year-old New York native stands out. Ienner's rivals characterize him as a fierce competitor who stops at nothing to get what he wants. His temper is legendary.