Wednesday night's repertory performance by the UCI Etude Ensemble was both a showcase for the 17-member troupe and something of a love letter to choreographer and group founder Donald McKayle. He  recently retired from UC Irvine, where has been professor of dance since 1989.
 
McKayle's career as first a dancer and then choreographer for film, TV, Broadway and modern dance companies spans a seven-decade stretch to the late 1940s. Among his endeavors was the founding of the Etude Ensemble in 1995. In its 15th season, the ensemble continues to function as the school's resident chamber performance group, dancing McKayle's work exclusively. 
 
The hourlong program, held in a performance studio in the William J. Gillespie Performance Studios hall, focused on four pieces from McKayle, choreographed over a nearly half-century span from 1959 to 2005. They were tied together by thematic threads woven from black experience in America. Two -- 2004's "Midnight Dancer" and 2005's "My Soul Has Grown Deep Like the Rivers" -- are rooted in poems from Langston Hughes, and in introducing the first piece, McKayle spoke movingly of having known Hughes briefly from work in the Committee for the Negro in the Arts, an endeavor that stemmed from the Harlem Renaissance movement.
 
McKayle's choreography in these pieces, deftly on display by the ensemble, showcased the power of harnessed movement. For instance, in all the pieces, arms were flung out, not just with joyous abandon but with lyrical intent, expressiveness designed to convey a challenged culture, but also an aspirational one.
 

Plácido Domingo's traveling singing competition/road show Operalia kicked off Sunday on the most storied opera stage in the event's 18-year history.

Twenty young singers followed one another at hallowed La Scala during the first round in the operatic hotbed of Milan. The annual event gravitates to cities with ongoing ties to Domingo — Los Angles hosted in 2000 and 2004. This year Domingo is celebrating his 40th anniversary with La Scala and is singing the title role in Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra," and so Operalia has landed here.

Sophisticated Milan may be blasé about many things, but along with design and soccer, opera is not one of them. Domingo's presence in town is a local happening, and it is hard not to bump into his image touting Operalia ... quite literally in the case of the advertisement placards dangling from the ceilings inside subway cars.

As to the competition itself, it's a three-round elimination contest. Forty young singers from around the world -- including five from the United States -- began singing arias on Sunday and will keep at it through Monday, just them on the stage, with a piano for accompaniment and a 15-judge panel constituting the audience in the six-tiered hall. After the first round, 20 semi-finalists sing Tuesday and then on May 2 the final 10 contestants will choose an aria and sing it, though this time in front of a discerning La Scala audience of up to 3,000 and with Domingo conducting the Filharmonica della Scala.

The top male and female singers each win $30,000, with as many as six prizes awarded in all for first, second and third places if the judges find that many singers they like. Beyond the prize money, competitors receive a hearing in front of a judging panel consisting of artistic directors from such opera heavyweight towns as Vienna and London and such companies as Bayreuth in Germany and the Met in New York. From the extensive scribbling going on Sunday, it seemed likely that some judges weren't just tallying scores but making notes on casting decisions for upcoming seasons.

One perk that seems in place is that more than 15 Operalia winners have been cast by Domingo-led L.A. Opera, including major up and comers such as soprano Elizabeth Futral, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and tenor Rolando Villazón.

Matthew Morrison, the centerpiece of "Glee," is more than just TV's latest heartthrob (though female audiences definitely seem to feel he has that working for him!). In a story in Sunday's Calender section you can find all about the rising 31-year-old star.

Broadway mavens have long appreciated Morrison's skill set of singing, acting and dancing (on the TV show his nickname is "Triple Threat").

With "Glee" returning to Fox on Tuesday, we thought we'd revisit some of Morrison's memorable stage turns.

Most recently Morrison performed a number from a Broadway show he wasn't in but would have been great at. During the Mel Brooks' segment during December's "Kennedy Center Honors," Morrison offered up a terrific take on the comic ode "Springtime For Hitler." In the video above, watch, especially, Morrison's extension on his side kicks when the line of dancers forms and the athleticism he shows in doing a to-the-floor split that he then bounces back up from.

The Pacific Symphony's 10th annual American Composer Festival kicks into gear this week with three programs in Orange County. This year's theme is "The Greatest Generation," and the programs draw from music that reflects the Great Depression  and World War II.

As usual, the festival broadens out to other mediums beyond music; this time around, it broadens out to other generations, too. Three students from the Film & Conservancy at the Orange County High School of the Arts have created documentary shorts that harvest the recollections of people of "The Greatest Generation" era.

Watch Lauren Morales' documentary above and you'll find the students' stories in my article Sunday's Arts & Books section here. And click here for more student videos.

-- Christopher Smith

Related story:

Composer Michael Daugherty hears the sounds of America

The dominant theme in the 2010 musical performance landscape is the Frederic Chopin bicentennial. More than 2,000 worldwide events will honor the beloved Polish composer and his elegiac piano scores. Chopin festivals abound seemingly everywhere: London, Rome, Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv, New York, Miami, Tucson — well, you get the landscape.

Look further and there’s a lot of supreme stuff to go out and experience in the coming year. Locally, of course, the main event is Los Angeles Opera’s “Ring Cycle” in May and June. And the Los Angeles Philharmonic heads out this spring for an eight-city national tour — highlighted by stops in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York — to showcase the orchestra elsewhere for the first time under music director Gustavo Dudamel.

For those eager to travel the musical landscape elsewhere, click here for an article by Christopher Smith in Arts & Books, a bucket list, a go-and-do of highlights in the U.S. and around the world.

The circus coming to town hasn’t been big news for decades, but there was an interesting wrinkle Wednesday, given where Cirque Du Soleil chose to pitch its tent in Orange County for a January run. Following a two-month stint in Santa Monica, the company’s new production "Kooza" arrived in Irvine, setting up shop at what is likely Southern California’s least known, yet arguably fastest-growing public entertainment space: the Orange County Great Park.
 
During the last two years, Great Park operators have quietly transformed a 22-acre sliver of their  landscape adjacent to the 5 Freeway into a relatively unremarked upon beehive of grass-roots entertainment.
 
At a time when public entertainment venues are, at best, holding their own, and, at worst, on the wane, the Great Park’s calendar is burgeoning. The budget supporting events has ballooned to $2 million annually and the site now features a mix of permanent and temporary doings, most of them -- "Kooza" excluded -- free to everyone who comes by. Among the offerings:
 

Thursday night was a win-win for Los Angeles.

A dressed-to-the-nines audience, dappled with civic movers and shakers, eschewed the Dodgers' thrilling conclusion and instead experienced Gustavo Dudamel’s thrilling beginning at Walt Disney Concert Hall as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Both, as it turned out, were celebratory moments to savor.

At 7:18  p.m. the 28-year old Venezuelan launched into “City Noir,” John Adams’ filmic, jazz-inflected 35-minute paean to Los Angeles commissioned by the Philharmonic.

The bright, sensual presentation of the piece drew a sustained standing ovation, not always the treatment audiences afford contemporary classical music. It also earned Dudamel an embrace and several hugs from composer Adams, who seemed very pleased with his work’s world premiere performance.

After the intermission, Dudamel dipped into Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. The orchestra rendered a stately, burnished reading that again brought listeners to their feet after the final crescendo sounded at 9:18 p.m. Dudamel came out for five bows, which he took not from the podium but among his orchestra. Under a cascading shower of magenta and silver foil confetti, he then made the universal signal for “Let’s go get a drink,” and the evening morphed into a party outside on a closed-down Grand Avenue.

The concert was broadcast live on KUSC-FM and simulcast on video screens to hundreds who had spread picnic blankets throughout the Music Center plaza and took seats inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The concert will be shown Oct. 21 on PBS' "Great Performances."

-- Christopher Smith

Photo: Dudamel conducting at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho.

Photos: Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic

Panorama: On the red carpet at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Panorama: Taking in the Dudamel concert from out of doors

Even across town from the Hollywood Bowl, Gustavo Dudamel was the focus of attention. On the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, baritone Thomas Hampson led into the final encore of his 24-Lieder and American song recital thanking the audience for coming “even if you came because you couldn’t get into Dudamel.”

That got a laugh while Hampson said, slightly shaking his head and with an admiring grin, "Placido, James Conlon and Dudamel … Los Angeles has it going.”

-- Christopher Smith

It’s nothing new for contemporary singers to dig into the depths of the American Songbook for material. But what Thomas Hampson is up to might be considered a full-blown archeological excavation by comparison.

The seminal baritone, who is in recital Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, isn’t just paying homage to the usual luminaries like Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Instead, since 2005, Hampson has been touring with a vocal program that draws on his ongoing “Song of America” project, an endeavor that led the Library of Congress to appoint him as a special advisor and to team up with him in presenting the earliest American music that plumbs the nation’s classical roots, even before it was a nation.

In this program, Hampson will take his audience back as far as we can go: Included is “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free,” a song that most musical scholars agree is the earliest secular composition by an American. Written in 1759 by Francis Hopkinson, who would subsequently be one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the piece was published in 1788 in a collection dedicated to George Washington, a friend of the author.

“My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” was written when Hopkinson was 21. The lyrics are derived from a poem called “Love and Innocence” by the 17th century Irish poet Thomas Parnell. The ballad is less than 1 ½ minutes long and rooted in pastoral imagery, with the singer reflecting on his “blest” state in terms of birds, streams and “breathing gales.”

A showcase of more than 20 sketches written by the classic English comedy troupe Monty Python opens Wednesday for a two-week run at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre."An Evening Without Monty Python" has Python founder Eric Idle orchestraing and five actors, including "Frasier" actress Jane Leeves, performing material that hasn't been seen live at an L.A. venue in almost 30 years, ever since the comedy sextet played four raucous nights at the Hollywood Bowl in 1982.

It's all part of a round of events on both coasts and on television tied to Monty Python's 40th anniversary. To read more, click here for my Calendar story. And to whet your appetite, here's a video of one of the classic elements that will be staged, the famous dead-parrot sketch.

-- Christopher Smith