89.3 KPCC | Events

The Master Musicians of Jajouka
February 06, 2009 8:00PM
Hailing from a small ancient village in the foothills of Morocco's Rif Mountains, the Master Musicians of Jajouka have performed their enthralling, trance-inducing music for thousands of years. Described by Mick Jagger as "one of the most musically inspiring groups in the world," the Jajoukas were originally discovered by William Burroughs and Paul Bowles in the 1950s, and introduced to the Western world by the late Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, who recorded their otherworldly sounds on a pilgrimage to Jajouka in 1968. Newsweek described their music as "an evocation of sustained ecstasy … chaotic, cacophonous, sometimes at war with itself" and "utterly intoxicating."

Royce Hall

Werner Herzog
February 20, 2009 8:00PM
One of cinema's most visionary, enigmatic and controversial directors, German film auteur Werner Herzog creates extreme, larger than life narratives that often blur the boundaries of reality and fiction. His eccentric, over-the-top characters -from actor Klaus Kinski's maniacal conquistador in the 1972 classic "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" to the doomed "grizzly bear expert" in the 2005 documentary Grizzly Man-are often quixotic outsiders who test the limits of humanity with ill-advised hubris.

Following a fascinating discussion with Herzog moderated by Paul Höldengraber, director of public programs at the New York Public Library.

Royce Hall

The Klezmatics
March 05, 2009
Founded in 1986 as the result of a Village Voice ad, this freewheeling group of musicians from New York's East Village have become world-renowned klezmer superstars, perpetually reinventing and revitalizing this traditional genre to create exuberantly modern dance music. With their irresistibly eclectic mix of gospel, punk, Arab, African and Balkan rhythms steeped in Eastern European Jewish traditions, the ensemble has garnered numerous accolades, including a 2006 Grammy for Wonder Wheel (created from the never recorded lyrics of folk icon Woody Guthrie), and has collaborated with a diverse list of luminaries including Arlo Guthrie, Itzhak Perlman, Ben Folds Five, Chava Alberstein, and the late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. "(They)aren't just the best band in the klezmer vanguard... they rank among the best bands on the planet. Jewish traditional music is just the starting point for songs that jump, rock and swing-sometimes all at the same time" [Time Out, New York].

Royce Hall

Dan Zanes Celebrates L.A.!
March 14, 2009 - March 15, 2009
Get ready to sing and dance with wild abandon when the all-ages folk hero Dan Zanes returns to UCLA Live in a very special concert celebrating the sounds and colors of Los Angeles. A 2007 Grammy Award winner for "Best Musical Album for Children," Zanes, his Brooklyn-based band, and his eclectic special guests create a rollicking "Woodstock for Kids," where sea shanties, American traditional songs, West Indian folk music, and fiddle tunes collide with soulful originals in a spirit of rock and roll. Traversing the myriad cultures of this diverse and vibrant city - from East L.A. and Malibu to Koreatown and South Central- the concert will celebrate the "indigenous" music of L.A. in its many forms and variations, from hip-hop to classic Disney tunes. The audience is invited to "sing along with gusto" before things heat up and ultimately dissolve into a rollicking dance party.

Royce Hall

Hoipolloi
March 27, 2009 - March 29, 2009
In association with WebPlay My Uncle Arly
By Shôn Dale-Jones and David Farmer
Shôn Dale-Jones, director
West Coast Premiere
One of Britain's favorite writers, Edward Lear has delighted generations of children and adults alike with his deliciously silly and brilliant nonsense verse. Now, Hoipolloi invites audiences on a journey into Lear's weird and wonderfully witty imagination as he embarks on an adventure towards the great Gromboolian plain. Inspired by his life, poems and illustrations, My Uncle Arly is an inventive and engaging production full of music, song and clowning that delves deep into Lear's Victorian sense of humor. Filled with some of his best-loved characters, the show creates a stupendously mad and gloriously giggly world where easels become birds, hats fly and where we meet the pobble who has no toes and the dong with the luminous nose. "Bursting at the seams with theatrical energy and full to the brim with visual wit. Utterly brilliant" [Sunday Herald].

WebPlay is an international arts education charity that aims to inspire and enhance the learning and creativity of children, linking classrooms around the world through drama and technology. Since 2000, they have brought some of the U.K.'s leading children's companies to Los Angeles.

Friday, March 27 at 7:30pm; Saturday, March 28 at 1pm & 7:30pm; Sunday, March 29 at 1pm

Freud Playhouse

David Roussève / REALITY
April 01, 2009 - March 05, 2009
SAUDADE
One of this country's "most inspired and inspiring dance makers" [San Francisco Chronicle], L.A.'s own David Roussève and his outstanding company return to UCLA with another piece of shattering dance theater. Named after the Portuguese expression "saudade," which is used to convey the longing, wistfulness and nostalgia inherent in the Portuguese blues music, Fado, this evening length work is an ode to the idea of "bittersweet." Buoyed by mystical images of flight, the night sky and the deep southern bayou, and grounded in folklore, historical fact and personal experience, Saudade is a mosaic of character monologues told from a uniquely southern, African American perspective-the stories of oppressed people finding a reason to go on in a harsh everyday reality. Atmospheric lighting, video projections and contemporary and traditional Fado recordings serve as the subtext for this ambitious and evocative work.

Wednesday-Saturday, April 1-4 at 8pm; Sunday April 5 at 7pm

Freud Playhouse

Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider
April 04, 2009 8:00PM
The Silent City Tour
Performing works from their upcoming recording, The Silent City, Iranian musician and composer Kayhan Kalhor and members of the genre-bending string quartet Brooklyn Rider create a boundless musical exploration, both ancient and contemporary, bridging traditions between Persia and the West. Last seen as part of UCLA's sold-out Masters of Persian Music concert, Kalhor is widely recognized as one of the most masterful and innovative instrumentalists and composers in Persian music. A virtuoso on the Iranian spike fiddle known as the kamancheh, the Grammy-nominated artist repeatedly forges new musical paths collaborating with numerous artists such as the Kronos Quartet, Indian sitar master Shujaat Husain Khan and Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project. New York's intrepid Brooklyn Rider is renowned for illuminating music in new ways through its fervently adventurous repertoire and raw and edgy performance style. Communicating on a thrilling new wavelength, Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider offer a fresh and impassioned take on ancient Persian improvisations and beyond.

Royce Hall

Organica
April 05, 2009 7:00PM
10th Anniversary
Christoph Bull, organist

With special guests Norton Wisdom, I-Chin Feinblatt, Lili Haydn, Paulist Choristers of California, Richard Martinez and Robert Woolsey
Since 1999, award-winning German organist Christoph Bull has navigated this innovative concert series through fresh and exciting new terrain, performing unique and versatile programs ranging from traditional to trance, Bach to the Beatles. Accompanied by improvisatory and multi-media elements, Bull and special guests celebrate the 10th anniversary of organica in a concert that demonstrates the spellbinding versatility and creative expanse of this grand instrument and bridges the gap between traditional and contemporary popular music in thrilling ways.

Royce Hall

Sing Sing
May 07, 2009 8:00PM
Created by multi-award-winning musician David Bridie from the Australian band Not Drowning Waving, Sing Sing - a Papua New Guinea expression for "large musical gathering" - brings together some of the most important indigenous artists from the Oceania region around Australia for a rousing celebration of traditional and contemporary music and dance. From the highlands of West Papua and the forests and coral atolls of Papua New Guinea to the vast deserts of Australia, the region boasts a plethora of vibrant musical and cultural traditions that are rarely experienced outside their native lands. Sing Sing offers a unique journey through the physical and cultural landscape of urban and grass roots village life in these areas with a thrilling visual show and an exhilarating mix of traditional and contemporary sounds-from the haunting melodies of bamboo flutes to the upbeat rhythms of a string band.

Royce Hall

Goran Bregovic Wedding and Funeral Orchestra
June 19, 2009 - June 20, 2009
West Coast Debut

With a lively ensemble that includes a Serbian gypsy band, a 12-piece classical string orchestra, a 15-man choir, an electric guitarist and rock drummer, and one gypsy and two Bulgarian female vocalists, Goran Bregovic & his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra are perhaps the largest, most diverse and most irresistible world music group to hit the Royce Hall stage. A household name in his native Balkans for more than three decades as a film composer and rock musician, Bregovic has been broadening his appeal around the world with his ecstatic, eclectic and charismatic style of gypsy dance music. The Spanish paper El Pais described the group as "one of the most beautiful symphonies of Old World Europe … [Bregovic] creates the most breath-taking music on this continent … intense, vigorous, colorful, passionate, exotic, fascinating."

Friday-Saturday, June 19-20 at 8pm

Royce Hall