Live Jazz

It's a place I haven't tried yet - Red White & Bluezz on the corner of Raymond and Green. I've got no excuse, it's been there long enough for me to have made a visit. My neighbor Bill even works there and he's about had it with me. Apparently I need to get on down.

The reviews on Yelp.com are mixed, but they mostly lean toward pretty darn good. What do you think? Anybody been there? Tell me if Bill works in a nice club where a lady might appear without damaging her reputation, or if he's just trying to get me to lose my money in some lousy gin joint.

Apropos of nothing, John and I left town during the Rose Bowl festivities. The pics are up at Overdog.

From Pandemonium to Pasquale

When LizBeth Lucca, artistic director of the Repertory Opera Company, invited me to photograph a dress rehearsal of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, I was glad to go. The Repertory Opera Company is the group I enjoyed so much last April when they performed Music in the Mansion at the Fenyes Mansion of the Pasadena Museum of History.

Last Sunday night was the first dress rehearsal for Don Pasquale, which opens this Thursday at 8PM at the Neighborhood Church of Pasadena (details here). If you've never been to a first dress rehearsal the chaos might shock you. But I felt right at home amid the inevitable wardrobe malfunctions, missed entrances and forgotten lines. After all, the purpose of a dress rehearsal is to iron out the kinks.

The singing, though, was something else altogether. Above, soprano Keiko Clark sings the role of Norina. Thursday night she'll be singing with, among others, Conrad Immel as Don Pasquale. I know from my stage experience that by then the lights will be in place, entrances will be perfectly timed, and the performers will be as comfortable in their parts as Michael Phelps is in the water.

Director Lucca, a trained singer and actor herself, teaches an acting class for opera singers and prides herself on a company with acting chops. Even in rehearsal, the comic moments had me laughing out loud. In the short time I was there, the kinks got smoother and smoother, and the excitement of opening night filled the air like music.

Paseo, Simply

At Paseo Colorado (or simply the Paseo) a couple of weeks ago, this construction surrounded the movie theatre. I like it because it's all symmetry and angles. Simple, but complicated.

As open-air malls go the Paseo's pretty nice. Frankly, the only thing I don't like about it is the parking. The lot itself is okay, but every time I've had a question or problem (okay, twice) I've been told to call the office. I get voice-mail. I leave a message. No one calls me back. Simple.

Water Use

It was still hot at around 6:00 Sunday evening when John and I arrived at Paseo Colorado to catch dinner and a movie. These kids were loving the heat.

There are two fountains at the Paseo. I don't shop there often, but it seems every time I'm there I find children enjoying this one. That's a fine use of resources.

One Hobbit Marathon

Followers of this blog know I'm behind in my reading of the 200 page manual that came with my camera. (It came on disk but I printed it out because otherwise I would never read it.) Night photography is a project I'm embarking on slowly. One reason for that is with the little digital cameras you need a tripod at night and it's awkward to carry to restaurants and theatres. Another reason is I don't get out much.

Last night our good friends Ed and Linda took us to the delicious Sushi Roku at One Colorado. After dinner we stepped out onto the plaza to discover upturned faces of all ages gazing at the wall above Crate & Barrel. They were enraptured with the beginnings of an all-night marathon of Peter Jackson's the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The showing began at 8:30 with plans to go all night followed by a "sunrise Hobbit breakfast," all free. My first thought when I heard that was they could offer breakfast free because most of the crowd wouldn't make it all night. But people had brought pillows and sleeping bags, and those are three excellent movies.

Night photography with these little digital cameras means the shutter stays open for a long time. I'll learn how to control that myself but right now I'm learning the automatic settings. I like the ghosty feet in the foreground of this shot. But if you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can tell the people watching the film stayed pretty still.

Climb This

This is something you don't see every day in your neighborhood. Well, I don't. It's a climbing wall, delivered to your home for your party! The teen equivalent of a bounce house!

This one comes from Gold Rush Mobile Rock Climbing. (I couldn't load their website, www.goldrushmobilerockclimbing.com, but found info here. Head on over and get started with the liability paperwork!)

Many thanks to these nice fellas for letting me take pictures.

Intimate Opera

Okay, right off: no ghosts. Nor did I sneak a photo last night (because, as Letty from Ararat mentioned in yesterday's comments, I'm a piker). This is the salon at the Fenyes Mansion where, 100 years ago, Eva Scott Fenyes held entertainments, and where last night a more modern group of Pasadenans (Pasadenyites?) were entertained by the outstanding Repertory Opera Company.

I'm not a qualified opera critic, but I'm qualified to know when I've enjoyed myself, and I had a wonderful time at Music in the Mansion. I've seen/heard the LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which is truly grand. But to hear Puccini's "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" sung in the intimacy of a room like the Fenyes salon is a rare experience. A powerful voice quickly fills a room like that, then it has to go somewhere. So it fills the listener, brimming up through the body and pushing out through the tear ducts.

And if the Puccini doesn't get you, Rossini's Cat Duet will.

They're going to have two more concerts: May 6th (take your mom for Mother's Day) and June 3rd (what the heck? take Dad).

At intermission, we ate chocolates and sipped champagne while mingling with the performers and other audience members in the dining room. The chandeliers glowed. The mansion was briefly ours.

Update: per Jeannette Bovard, Media Consultant at Pasadena Museum of History: "Information from the Collections Department at the Museum states that the owl was stuffed by Dr. Adalbert Fenyes. One of his many hobbies was ornithology."

Music in the Mansion

The Fenyes Mansion at the Pasadena Museum of History looks so bright in the sun it'll make you squint. I was nosing around on their website, and did you know they're going to have opera singers? In the mansion? That's so intimate. And so—I don't know—rich.

It's called Music in the Mansion: Timeless Treasures, and the first of three concerts is Tuesday, April 8th. (Go here and scroll down.) You still have time to call for reservations at 626-577-1660, ext. 10.

If opera's not your thing, there's other stuff to do at the PM of H: wander the gardens, browse the museum exhibits, tour the Fenyes Mansion.

My favorite thing about the mansion: almost all the furnishings are original, down to the lace curtains imported by the original owner more than 100 years ago. That's not only rich, it's rare. And so—I don't know—intimate.

Apéritif

The Pasadena Symphony, conductor Jorge Mester and pianist Howard Shelley staged an "open, working rehearsal of music by Mozart" Friday night for Art Night.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the Pasadena Civic Auditorium but it was okay to shoot in the lobby, where this video presentation showed the rehearsal going on inside. I was disappointed, but I contented myself to photograph a particular lamp above the stairwell twenty or thirty times when I discovered I could hear the orchestra especially well while standing beneath it.

If that was a rehearsal, surely a performance will transport me higher than the stairs.

Art's Big Night Out

Everybody was out last night for Art Night. Pasadena was lit up and showing off with free museum entry, art exhibits and performances all over town. At Paseo Colorado (above), folks turned out to hear Carl "Sonny" Leyland and his swinging trio at the Pasadena Jazz Institute.

Art Night is part of Pasadena Art Weekend, sponsored by the Arts & Culture Commission. Events continue today with Art Talk at the Boston Court Performing Arts Complex and Sunday with Art Market at One Colorado. It's a biannual event, so if you missed it you get another shot at it this fall.

(Goodness. There's a link for everything, isn't there? I'm exhausted.)

As Palm Axis predicted in yesterday's comments, I had trouble getting folks to let me take pictures of the art itself. But I got a couple of good (legal) ones. I'm loading new software today and hope to have those up soon.