You've heard of talking books. But how about singing books? Well, they're around, at UCLA's Hammer Museum, courtesy of the Sing Your Favorite Book series, an experiment in space and sound developed by resident musician and “sound curator” Jessica Catron, who just couldn't turn down the chance to “explore literature with both sides of the brain.” Created in conjunction with the exhibition “Ed Ruscha: On the Road,” a selection of Ruscha's paintings and drawings inspired by novelist Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation classic, “Sing Your Favorite Book” is the aural equivalent of Ruscha's art — essentially an interpretation of one medium by another. In an interesting circular journey, literature becomes art becomes literature becomes music/sound. In past performances, L.A. musician Jessica Basta sang excerpts from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and guitarist Jeremy Drake sang passages from Karl Marx’s Das Capital, a work that, he said, absolutely lent itself to song, as, being intended for the working class, it was really “good old-fashioned folk music.” This week's program features the fab jazz vocalist Christine Tavares singing selections from David Mas Matsumoto's Epitaph for a Peach.

Fri., Aug. 19, 1:30 p.m., 2011

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