What we’re about
This group is for people who appreciate music and other forms of art beyond the mainstream, with a particular focus on the avant-garde or otherwise odd. Free Jazz, Musique Concrete, Atonality, Noise Music, Outsider Art, Surrealism, Dada, Junk Art, ...you name it! Not all events will necessarily be "weird", but simply off the beaten mainstream path.
This is intended to be an oasis from crass commercial banalities.
I'll post events that interest me, but I am also interested in hearing from artists, musicians, and other creative types about their events that I can share with members. Post your events and ideas in the "Discussions" section. I want this group to also be a vehicle that helps support artists and organizations that are doing interesting creative work.
The only requests are that we keep things friendly and civilized and free from partisan politics.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- "Deux Femmes" - OCMA Exhibit of Leonora Carrington & Leonor FiniOrange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA
Cross-posted with So Cal Explorers
We recently watched a presentation and documentary film at the Philosophical Research Society on Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.
The Orange County Museum of Art has an exhibit, "Deux Femmes" (Two Women), featuring her work, along with that of Argentine-Italian artist Leonor Fini (both actually disavowed the label "surrealist").
(Honorable mention to Remedios Varo, another great artist and kindred spirit, who also relocated to Mexico and was a friend of Carrington's)
Date: Sunday, January 12, 12:00
Lunch at the museum's cafe Verdant at 12:00 followed by gallery visitVenue: Orange County Museum of Art
3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa, CA 92626Tickets: Tickets are free, but you must order in advance. Donations are appreciated.
https://10670.blackbaudhosting.com/10670/ticketsDeux Femmes (September 12, 2024 – February 23, 2025)
Deux Femmes brings together a collection of work by artist Leonor Fini (b. 1907, Buenos Aires, Argentina; d. 1996, Paris, France) and Leonora Carrington (b. 1917, Clayton Green, England; d. 2011, Mexico City, Mexico), each of whom emphasize metamorphosis and transformation as a source of power. Both artists lived in Paris in the 1930s and 1940s, engaging with ideas inherent in Surrealism— an international literary and artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary. Deux Femmes celebrates the enduring legacy of Fini and Carrington, emphasizing how both artists used self-representation in an imaginative and defiant way, embracing duality and multiplicity of identities.“Although I was attracted to the ideas of the surrealists, I don't like being boxed in as a surrealist today. I prefer to be a feminist. André Breton and the men in the group were very sexist, they only wanted us as crazy and sensual muses to entertain them, to serve them. Besides, my clock didn't stop at that moment, I only lived with (Max) Ernst for three years and I don't like being constrained as if I were a fool. “I have not lived under the spell of Ernst: I was born with my vocation and my works are mine alone.”
— Leonora Carrington“I always imagined I would have a life very different from the one that was imagined for me, but I understood from a very early time that I would have to revolt in order to make that life. Now I am convinced that in any creativity there exists this element of revolt.”
— Leonor Fini"Rogomelec" by Leonor Fini
Article: 8 Female Surrealists Who Are Not Frida Kahlo: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-8-female-surrealists-who-are-not-frida-kahlo
Deux Femmes is organized by OCMA’s Curatorial Department with support from the entire OCMA staff.
- FREE CONCERT: COREY FOGEL AT ZEBULONZebulon, Los Angeles, CA
On Jan 12th Corey Fogel – artist, composer, and percussionist – conducts a very large ensemble through an extended piece of intersecting, anti-tonal, rhythmic vignettes and micro improvisations. Come expand your listening palette at this free show! Corey Fogel has performed at the Angel City Jazz Festival in 2021
Date: Sun, Jan 12, 8:00 PM
Venue: Zebulon
2478 Fletcher Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90039, USA
https://zebulon.la/
Doors open at 7:00 & they have a cafe that serves food.FREE SHOW, but you must RSVP here:
https://dice.fm/event/q2k8vp-corey-fogel-12th-jan-zebulon-los-angeles-ticketsAbout
Corey Fogel website: https://coreyfogel.com/biography
Corey Fogel (b 1977) is a composer, drummer, and artist based in Los Angeles. He works across genre and medium to explore many facets of improvisation. He approaches sounds, textiles, collaborators, gestures, and objects as viable materials for spontaneous, strategized, time-based experimental performance, often incorporating sculpture, video, music traditions, theatricality, and ritual.
Fogel performs and composes in many rock, jazz, noise, folk, and chamber music capacities. He can be heard on over one hundred recordings as a percussionist. His compositions range from collaborative media scores to aleatoric ensemble compositions which use a combination of traditional and novel notation. For two decades, he has worked with alternative music notation, creating innovative and novel systems that encode and visualize the behaviors that comprise musicians’ improvisational vocabulary. His scores use digital design techniques to represent sonic trajectories, relational dynamics, and situationism in space. Once an exclusive transaction between composer and performer, this work has grown into site-specific, immersive mural paintings for an expanded audience. This creative activity became the subject of his doctoral dissertation, entitled Graphic Score On Trial - The Utility and Emergence of a Transciplinary Linguistic.
Fogel’s works have been presented at Machine Project, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Human Resources, Los Angeles; Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles; The Wulf, Los Angeles; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca, REDCAT; Los Angeles; and New Music for Strings Festival: Reykjavik. His performance work was also included in J. Paul Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival and West of Rome’s Trespass Parade. Corey was awarded The California Community Foundation 2014 Fellowship in Visual Arts. He recently earned his Ph.D. in UC Irvine's Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) program.
Recent collaborations include: Julia Holter, Tashi Wada, Phil Minton, Patty Waters, Abigail Levine, Simone Forti, Judith Berkson, Yoshi Wada, Michael Winter, Robert Blatt, Maya Dunietz, John Butcher, John Russell, Todd Barton, Misha Marks, Brian Allen, Alexander Bruck, Patrick Shiroishi, Haley Fohr, Liz Glynn, Chris Speed, Mark Dresser, Kathleen Kim, Ezra Buchla, Tony Malaby, Devin Hoff, John Dieterich, Carlin Wing, Sam Mickens.
This is a 21+ event
Presented by Zebulon. - Stray Dog + The Bad Sleep Well - Akira Kurosawa Double FeatureThe Frida Cinema, Santa Ana, CA
We've seen Kurosawa's "High and Low" and "Rashomon". Experience a double feature of Akira Kurosawa's crime films "Stray Dog" and "The Bad Sleep Well"!
Date: Tuesday, January 14, 6:00 pm
Venue: The Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100 · Santa Ana, CANo dinner before, due to the start time. Meet in the theater or in front 5:45.
Tickets: $13.00
https://thefridacinema.org/movies/stray-dog-the-bad-sleep-well-double-feature/About the films:
"Stray Dog" Trailer
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% positive rating"The Bad Sleep Well" Trailer
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% positive ratingIn Stray Dog, rookie cop Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) loses his pistol to a pickpocket during a sweltering Tokyo heatwave and embarks on a relentless pursuit to recover it. Teaming up with seasoned detective Sato (Takashi Shimura), Murakami uncovers a connection between the stolen gun and a series of violent crimes. As the investigation progresses, the parallels between Murakami and the desperate criminal they chase blur, reflecting the struggles of a society grappling with poverty and moral decay. Combining gritty realism with profound humanism, Stray Dog is a masterful examination of guilt, redemption, and the thin line between law and lawlessness.
Kurosawa took on Hamlet in the guise of the hyper-stylish corporate noir. The Bad Sleep Well follows Koichi Nishi (Mifune), a seemingly loyal employee who marries his boss’s disabled daughter, Yoshiko, to infiltrate a corrupt company responsible for his father’s tragic death. As Nishi uncovers the depths of the company’s greed and malfeasance, his meticulously crafted plan begins to unravel under the weight of human frailty and unforeseen complications. With its noir-inspired aesthetic, sharp critique of postwar corporate Japan, and a chilling sense of inevitability, the film is a powerful exploration of morality, justice, and the personal cost of vengeance.
- DOCUMENTARY: SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETATLumiere Music Hall, Beverly Hills, CA
Rescheduled to next Wednesday due to LA fires. I contacted Lumiere through their Instagram and they switched my ticket.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is a 2024 documentary film directed by Johan Grimonprez about the Cold War episode that led American musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba
Date: Wednesday, January 15, 7:30 pm
Venue: Lumiere Cinema
9036 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211
(Wilshire & Doheny)Tickets: $15.50 total
https://lumierecinemala.com/film-soundtrack-to-a-coup-d-etat/Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 98% positive rating
Trailer: https://youtu.be/_RwLdIiZk_8?si=86ypWi_NTO-NIAHc
Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln: Freedom Now Suite
About:
United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.To retain control over the riches of what used to be Belgian Congo, King Baudouin of Belgium finds an ally in the Eisenhower administration, which fears losing access to one of the world’s biggest supplies of Uranium, a mineral vital for the creation of atomic bombs. Congo takes center stage to both the Cold War and the scheme for control of the UN. The US State Department swings into action: Jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong is dispatched to win the hearts and minds of Africa. Unwittingly, Armstrong becomes a smokescreen to divert attention from Africa’s first post-colonial coup, leading to the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected leader. Malcolm X stands up in open support of Lumumba and his efforts to create a United States of Africa while also reframing the freedom struggle of African Americans as one not for civil rights but for human rights, aiming to bring his case before the UN.
As Black jazz ambassadors are performing unaware amidst covert CIA operatives, the likes of Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Melba Liston face a painful dilemma: how to represent a country where segregation is still the law of the land.
“A case study of decolonization, neo-imperialism, cultural exploitation, and political murder…I don’t think I’ve seen a better movie all year.”
– J. Hoberman, Film Comment“A bravura cinematic essay that intertwines jazz, history, and the taste of a spy thriller…what Grimonprez creates here is a mind-blowingly rich tapestry of research, music, and the jazziest history lesson imaginable.”
– Tomris Laffly, Harper’s BazaarDirector: Johan Grimonprez Run Time: 150 min. Format: Digital Release Year: 2024 Language: French, Dutch, Russian with English subtitles
Starring: Abbey Lincoln, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Max Roach, Nina Simone, Patrice Lumumba
Screenwriters: Daan Milius, Johan Grimonprez
