Falling James

Emily Wells; Credit: Res

Music Pick: Emily Wells Fills in the Blanks

Falling James
Emily Wells is a singer whose music ranges freely across a variety of genres. On the Texas native’s new album, This World Is Too ____ for You, she smears dramatic washes of violin over such evocative chamber-music passages as “Hymn for the New World.” Wells intones airily over an electro-pop backing on enigmatic tracks “Remind Me to Remember” and “Stay Up.”...
Claude Fontaine; Credit: B+

Music Pick: Claude Fontaine

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Claude Fontaine is based in Los Angeles, but her music has a cosmopolitan sound that draws simultaneously from several regions around the world. About half of her new record is rooted in reggae rhythms laid down by legendary Jamaican guitarist Tony Chin. But much of the album is pumped up by Brazilian-style Tropicália, bossa nova and brasileira, which is then overlaid with a 1960s yé-yé veneer....
Emanuel Ax; Credit: Lisa Marie Mazzucco

GoLA Pick: Emanuel Ax With L.A. Phil

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Emanuel Ax's performances this week with L.A. Phil summarize the scope of the orchestra's ambitious 100th-anniversary season. On the one hand, the veteran Ukrainian-American pianist's rendition of Mozart's delicately airy Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat, K. 482, should emphasize yet again that there is nothing quite like the melodious grandeur of hearing L.A. Philharmonic perform traditional classical-music pieces in this acoustically marvelous room....
Kelley O'Connor; Credit: Kristina Choe Jacinth

GoLA Pick: Jaime Martín Conducts LACO

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Jaime Martín has been designated as LACO's next music director. Although the Spanish conductor-flutist doesn't officially begin his position with the orchestra until next fall during the 2019-20 season, he presides over an interesting program this weekend. Mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor is featured in the West Coast premiere of Voy a Dormir, a song cycle that LACO co-commissioned from composer Bryce Dessner, who plays guitar with The National....
Janeane Garofalo; Credit: Courtesy of the artist

GoLA Pick: Janeane Garofalo

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Janeane Garofalo is an irrepressible comedic force who all too rarely performs a solo set in town these days. What often seems to be wildly rambling digression about the vagaries of her personal life and sharp-eyed observations about pop culture are mixed in with more pointedly acidic observations about our current political climate — she should have a field day mining the Trump administration's ongoing treachery and cruelty to immigrants for subject matter....
Robert deMaine; Credit: Mathew Imaging

GoLA Pick: L.A. Phil’s Chamber-Music Obscurities

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The weekends are generally when L.A. Philharmonic presents its most dramatic and large-scale orchestral performances, but Tuesday nights at Disney Hall are becoming a thing in their own right, in a more stripped-down and artistically daring way. In addition to hosting its radical new-music series Green Umbrella on various Tuesdays throughout the season, L.A. Phil also uses the night for intimate chamber-music performances....
Savannah Pope; Credit: Aliice Black

Savannah Pope Vivisects Rock & Roll in Order to Save It

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There is plenty of hard-rocking noise on Savannah Pope's debut album, Atlantis. Pope revealed the potential of her fiery, powerhouse vocals with her old L.A. glam-rock band SpaceCream, but she demonstrates wider musical range and more ambitious — and sometimes quite bizarre — subject matter on the new record....
Quintron; Credit: Rush Jagoe

Book of the Month: Quintron Keeps in Constant Motion With His Memoir Europa My Mirror

Falling James
Musician-inventor-writer Quintron makes it clear early on that his road memoir Europa My Mirror (Goner Records) won't be some romanticized whitewash about the wonders of traveling. "We played every night, and for the most part it was great, but I won't bore you with the details of good nights," he writes. "Broken down on the side of the road with no clothes and a dull spear is where all worthwhile tales begin, and that is where I will start this one."...
Jaime Hernandez; Credit: Fantagraphics Books

GoLA Pick: Jaime Hernandez

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jaime hernandez, love and rockets, mario hernandez, gilbert hernandez, locas, hopey, maggie, is this how you see me, comic book, skylight books, la weekly gola pick, books, reading, graphic novel...
In the Penal Colony; Credit: Courtesy of Long Beach Opera

GoLA Pick: Long Beach Opera's In the Penal Colony

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Long Beach Opera revives composer Philip Glass and librettist Rudolph Wurlitzer's darkly lulling and contemplative 2000 operatic adaptation of the Franz Kafka short story "In the Penal Colony," in which a visitor (tenor Doug Jones) to an island prison encounters an officer (Zeffin Quinn Hollis) who is so enamored by a machine used for executions that he overlooks his own humanity....