Best Musical Heads

Comments (0) By Mary Beth Crain Thursday, Oct 4 2012

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The Getty Center

1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049

Category: Museums

Region: Out of Town

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Warning: Don't run to the Getty Museum's current exhibition "Messerschmidt and Modernity" if you think it's all about the WWII German fighter plane. That aircraft was named for its chief designer, Willy Messerschmitt. This exhibition features the "astoundingly modern" series of so-called Character Heads by 18th-century German baroque artist-sculptor Franz Xavier Messerschmidt. In conjunction with "Messerschmidt and Modernity," the Calder Quartet, an ensemble known for pushing the edge of the musical envelope, performs a program of the tried and true, and the untried and new, which somehow ties in with the strange and captivating Messerschmidt ethos. Works by Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert and Webern share the stage with the premieres of three short works, inspired by Messerschmidt's Character Heads, by L.A.-based film composers Bear McCreary, Don Davis and Mark Mothersbaugh. "We will explore Messerschmidt through works in which European classicism is pushed beyond its boundaries," says Calder violinist Andrew Bulbrook, who also describes the new compositions as "brief musical snapshots of three of the works by a master portrait artist." Getty Museum, Harold M. Williams Auditorium, 1200 Getty Center Drive; Fri., Oct. 5, 7 p.m.; $20, $15 students & seniors. (310) 440-7330, getty.edu.
Sat., Sept. 29, 7 p.m., 2012