Music gift suggestions
For your holiday giving. Think local. Who could use a little more? Still recovering from the pandemic — everybody! The Jazz Bakery. School music and arts programs (pay for another teacher). Jacaranda. Santa Monica symphony. The Ruskin Group Theater is moving next year and their new setup is awesome, but expensive. Grab naming rights to a theater seat, or an entire theater. Use your imagination, for a gift that won’t be forgotten. Support the arts!
Highly recommended:
Tonight! — Frida & Diego, LA Opera — Fresh on the heels of excellent stagings of chestnuts The Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni, LA Opera gives us a new production devoted to our favorite fun couple. Perhaps because of their proximity to LA, and our large Latin population, they have held a special place in our art hearts. Also, Hollywood loves a chaotic tale of love and hate, from a pair of mismatched geniuses. A Day of the Dead ghost story from Grammy Award-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, resident Conductor Lina González-Granados commands a cast packed with international talent. I can’t wait to see it, but holiday travel means I won’t be able to give a personal comment before it leaves. But I wouldn’t miss this one for anything. Sun 2 p.m., Thurs, Wed 7:30 p.m., Sun 2 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, LA $34-324.
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band — Bruuuuuuuuuuuce! Mon, Wed 7:30 p.m., Kia Forum, Inglewood, $99-6,000.
The Hot Club of Los Angeles — Looking for something different? But really good? And on a Monday? Every Monday? They’ll even be there Christmas night — “Hot Club’s brand of virtuoso, Django-style 1930s gypsy swing jazz is found nowhere else and even if it were, it couldn’t possibly be this good. These guys are masters, individually and collectively. You will find it hard to stop smiling all night.” Mon 9 p.m., Cinema Bar, Culver City, no cover.
Next Thurs — Mehta, Mahler, Seong-jin Cho — We’re so fortunate, with maestro Gustavo Dudamel loving and mastering the works of the great Gustav Mahler, that we also have a renowned former music director who occasionally graces us with his interpretations. Win, win. Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho has become an LA Phil favorite, for all the right reasons, and all his romantic tendencies are perfectly matched to Schuman’s emotional Piano concerto, the only one he wrote. After intermission fasten your seat belts for the first symphony Mahler unleashed on the world, such a sonically powerful examination of no less than life and death that you might think he thought he had only one shot, but thankfully it was only the beginning. If you are a donor (and why aren’t you?), this is one of six rehearsals you are given privy to, no extra charge, and with Zubin Mehta holding forth on his beloved Mahler, that’s a rare treat. Thurs 7:30 p.m., donor rehearsal 19 a.m., Walt Disney Concert Hall, LA, $79-244.
Recommended:
Tony Gilkyson — I just love Tony Gilkyson, for more than his family. His sister is enduring cult favorite Eliza Gilkyson, both musically emerging from the Santa Fe home of folkie-songwriter dad Terry, immortal for The Bare Necessities. Tony was an early LA punk staple, with Lone Justice, then stepped perfectly into the big guitar strap of (temporarily) departing Billy Zoom in X, for almost a decade, but he knows more about guitar strings than just to bash and over-amplify them, and his best performance moments now are often quietly virtuosic. You will be entertained. Fri 9 p.m., Cinema Bar, Culver City, free.
Toledo Diamond – Unique, riveting, first class act. There’s nothing like it, it is high performance art and great decadent fun. Degeneracy is rarely so well disciplined. Toledo may have his trademark ciggy, but it’s the band that really smokes! Sun 9:30 p.m., Harvelle’s, Santa Monica, $12.
Samara Joy, A Joyful Holiday – I’ve yet to catch this marvelous jazz vocalist live and I hope to, like Amy Winehouse she’s a stylistic throwback totally informed by her predecessors, but concerts of holiday songs are not my thing, especially for a trek all the way out to Northridge. But like Patti LaBelle singing the alphabet on Sesame Street, I’m sure she will be quite a present. Wed, next Thurs, 8 p.m., The Soraya, Northridge, $39-119.
Coming Attractions: Frida & Diego, La Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 12/9; Toledo Diamond, Harvelle’s, 12/10, 17, 24; Hot Club Of Los Angeles, Cinema Bar, 12/11, 18, 25; Mehta, Mahler, Seong-jin Cho, Disney Hall, 12/7, 8, 9, 10; Led Zepagain, Roxy Theater, 12/9; Chris Isaak, Orpheum, 12/12; Mehta, Beethoven Symphonies, Disney Hall, 12/14, 15, 16, 17; Manhattan Transfer, Final Farewell Concert, Disney Hall, 12/15; Queens Of The Stone Age, Kia Forum, 12/16; Rachel & Vilray, Troubadour, 12/18; X, Roxy Theater, 12/19, 20; Billy Gibbons & Friends, Troubadour, 12/19. 20, 21; Rick Shea, Tony Gilkyson, Cinema Bar, 12/28
