It’s 1:30 on a Friday afternoon and the city is buzzing outside on Wilshire Boulevard. While people everywhere are rushing to finish their work weeks, those inside the UCLA Hammer Museum are bustling as if the work week has just begun. Five short days remain until the deadline for the installation of the museum’s upcoming […]
Author Archives: Angela Shawn-Chi Lu
Brotherly love
When it comes to performing on stage, Sérgio Assad is practically joined at the hip with his younger brother Odair. The world-renowned guitar duo from Brazil has performed with Yo-Yo Ma for crowds of up to 30,000, but without his brother at his side, Sérgio has found it difficult to play even for a small […]
Rockin' the suburbs
For any band, having Kurt Cobain as an avid fan would definitely have come in handy. For the cult metal band The Melvins, that led to a record deal in 1993 with Atlantic Records. The Melvins were eventually deemed the “Godfathers of Grunge” after grunge bands that had made it big in the popular music […]
Medical school studentsperform for patients, elderly
Science majors are often stereotyped as bookworms, devoid of any kind of creativity. The volunteer organization, Heart Sounds and MEDleys however, has shown the contrary since its inception four years ago. Every other week, the small group of medical students converge to rehearse music which they eventually perform for patients at the UCLA hospital and […]
It’s Electric: Osseus Labyrint
In the past, performing duo Hannah Sim and Mark Steger of Osseus Labyrint have hung upside-down like bats from a bridge over the L.A. River and imitated pachyderms and slugs on stage. Their UCLA Live performances from now through Nov. 21 of “Modern Prometheus LLC” at New Deal Studios in Marina del Rey will certainly […]
Digging up the golden age
With his starlit gaze and sweet, smooth voice, Max Raabe is a modern-day Rudy Vallee. On stage, the tall and slender baritone’s seductiveness is further accentuated by the elegant 1920s style tuxedo he wears. But the baritone also has a surprisingly offbeat sense of humor. “Once I sat on a chair and left to go […]
The Sorcerer
Unfortunately, Hermeto Pascoal, the father figure of Brazilian jazz, doesn’t speak any English. Could a translator’s words accurately convey his personality? They didn’t have to. The 68-year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who Miles Davis once called “the world’s most impressive musician” can communicate better with music instead. Over the phone in New York about a week […]