Tom Teicholz is an award winning journalist and best-selling author who has created content for Forbes.com, Los Angeles Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, museums and non-profits.
Who Killed Orchestral Music?
JOHN MAUCERI, founding director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, is a composer, arranger, writer, and educator who has conducted the world’s major opera companies and symphony orchestras. For 18 years, Mauceri worked closely with Leonard Bernstein on many of Bernstein’s premieres. He has championed the work of composers banned by Hitler, in particular those who found refuge in Hollywood, and has written about and performed music from opera, musical theater, and music composed for film. His ne...
Wynton Marsalis And Georgian-American Friendship Makes Hamptons Swing
On a recent Saturday night, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performed at the Southampton Arts Center as part of the Hamptons Jazz Fest to celebrate 30 years of Independence for the Republic of Georgia and to honor thirty years of Georgian-American friendship; and, like all things Georgian and all things Wynton, it exceeded all expectations.
There were speeches by Joe Diamond, General Manager of the Southampton Arts Center and Claes Brondal, co-founder of the Hamptons ...
Bob Dylan And Elvis Stay True
In the last few weeks, I’ve had two cultural experiences that I’m still trying to get my head around: Bob Dylan on his ‘Rough and Ready Ways” Tour and Baz Luhrmann's “Elvis.” Each, in their singular way, speaks to the struggle for authenticity in one’s art.
Bob Dylan, who recently turned 81, performed three nights at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. I attended the first night’s performance: Dylan spent most of the night behind the piano, occasionally venturing beside his piano to sing, play...
The Power Of Peter Fetterman’s Photos
The Power of Photography by Peter Fetterman (ACC ART BOOKS $45) is a perfect Father’s Day gift – in fact, for me, this will be my gift of choice for birthdays and other present-bearing occasions.
Fetterman, the long-time impresario of The Peter Fetterman Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, has suffered the difficulties of a business dependent on the purchase and sale of artworks, along with the changing tastes of collectors as generational, societal, and economic shifts have occurred...
Of Arms, The Man And The Metaverse
Arma Virumque Cano, I sing of arms and the man. Thus begins the first line of Virgil’s epic Latin poem, The Aeneid, which came to mind as I sat down to write about one of the most fascinating and extraordinary experiences I’ve recently had.
Late one afternoon, I found myself in Downtown LA, standing in a large high-ceilinged room surrounded by a selection of rare items from the largest private collection of arms and armor that holds, according to its owners, more than 6,000 objects across 50 ...
Steve Leder Wants You To Have The Last Word
Have you thought about any final words you want to leave your loved ones to remember you by after you’ve gone? My guess is that even if you have, like me, you’ve haven’t committed those thoughts to paper. Well, Steve Leder thinks you should and he has authored a new book, For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story (Avery), to help you do so.
In Steve Leder’s last book, the best-selling The Beauty of What Remains, Leder wrote about contemplating, preparing for, and...
Seeing A Forest for the Trees
“A Forest for the Trees” is a multi-media installation that, like much of artist Glenn Kaino’s work, is conceptual, collaborative, has a moral and ethical dimension, and is a political call to action. The exhibition also brings together a novel marriage of sponsors: Presented by The Atlantic magazine and Superblue (a showcase for experiential art), the exhibition is sponsored by Mastercard.
Set in a 28,000 square foot warehouse in LA’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, “A Forest for the Trees,” is ...
San Diego’s Photo Gem
Although San Diego is less than three hours south of where I live, I visit there less than I would have imagined, mostly for lack of reasons to do so.
However, a recent invitation to visit the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in Balboa Park in San Diego introduced me to a gem I had not appreciated before.
First, a few words about the Museum. The Museum grew out of a local group of photography enthusiasts who, beginning in 1972, operated the Center for Photography, a museum without walls. In...
Dale Franzen: Bringing The World Back Into Tune
Opera singer, Institution builder, Arts Administrator, Fundraiser, Theater Producer, Tony Winner, advocate for women’s stories. You would not be wrong to imagine this as the dream team of players needed for a successful production at an arts venue. Or we could just be talking about Dale Franzen.
Franzen is the Tony-winning lead producer on Hadestown (now playing in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson through May 29; and then at the Segerstrom Center for The Arts in Costa Mesa, CA, August 9 to 21, 202...
Three Art Exhibits To See Right Now In New York
On a recent visit to New York, I saw three art exhibitions I highly recommend: Faith Ringgold: American People, on view at the New Museum through June 5, 2022; The Hare with the Amber Eyes at the Jewish Museum, on view through May 15, 2022; and Hilary Pecis: Warmly at the Rachel Uffner Gallery through May 14.
Faith Ringgold: American People is a must-see show. Ringgold is a 91-year-old Black artist known popularly for her children’s books such as Tar Beach (which she adapted from her artworks...
‘Hadestown’ Marks A Return To Los Angeles
Hadestown, the many-Tony-award-winning musical, which retells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice (and Hades and Persephone) in a modern-day New Orleans-like setting (with some steampunk flourishes), has arrived in LA, at the Ahmanson through May 29, 2022 (and then again at the Segerstrom Center for The Arts in Costa Mesa, CA, August 9 to 21).
Hadestown has much to recommend it, and if the crowd the night I attended is any indicator, it has a great appeal to a young and diverse audience.
The mu...
Julian Schnabel vs. Death At Pace Gallery Los Angeles
“All art is optimistic because it contains a denial of death” —Julian Schnabel.
Recently, Pace Gallery celebrated the opening of their new Los Angeles flagship outpost, a partnership with Kayne Griffin, in their 15,000 square foot space on South La Brea, a former 1940s auto showroom whose building is now ivy-covered. The opening exhibition, “For Esmé – with Love and Squalor” presents 13 recent paintings on velvet by Julian Schnabel as well as a large sculpture in the gallery courtyard on whic...
Seven Paintings: Tobi Kahn At The Phillips Collection
In 1985, The Guggenheim Museum in New York mounted an exhibition of contemporary young artists, called “New Horizons in American Art” that included the work of Tobi Kahn. Kahn’s featured paintings were abstractions of landscapes, the images anchored in black artist-made frames, the palette dark, the paint applied thickly and worked strenuously, the effect serious and, at times, somber. In many ways, that exhibition established Kahn as an artist worth watching and following.
Now, a whole caree...
Everything Rises For Jennifer Koh And Davone Tines
Last night, I attended a performance, Everything Rises at Royce Hall presented by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (CAP UCLA), co-created and featuring Grammy-winning classical violinist Jennifer Koh and Bass-Baritone Davóne Tines with music by Ken Ueno. It had premiered the night before at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s St. Anthony’s Chapel.
Everything Rises is a work of such originality and, at the same time, a so deeply personal exploration of identity by both...
The Real London Of Leon Kossoff
Leon Kossoff, one of the leading figures in Post-World War Two figurative art in Britain passed away in 2019. LA Louver in Venice, CA is now exhibiting the largest gallery show and first posthumous survey of Kossoff’s work, Leon Kossoff: A Life In Painting (on view until April 9, 2022). Organized in collaboration with Annely Juda Fine Art in London and Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York, the show was curated by Andrea Rose, the former Director of Visual Arts at the British Council.
Kossoff is ...