Tonight's free Jazz at LACMA is a truly special occasion. We'll be presenting the third annual L.A. Jazz Treasure Award to none other than Wayne Shorter. Shorter began his career in the 1950s as a member of (and composer for) Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, followed by a stint in the 1960s with the Miles Davis Quintet and later as a founder of the fusion group Weather Report. He is inarguably one of the all-time great jazz musicians. Here’s a clip of Shorter soloing with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in 1963:
Tonight at 6:30, curator Rita Gonzalez will lead a tour through Asco: Elite of the Obscure, which she co-organized. This is a great (free!) way to get insight into the exhibition, which just opened last week.
Asco, Cinearte 76 (detail), 1976, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library
Also just opened are two more exhibitions that are part of Pacific Standard Time—Maria Nordman FILMROOM: SMOKE, 1967–Present, which got a nice write-up on Culture Monster this week, and Edward Kienholz: “Five Car Stud” 1969–1972, Revisited. The Kienholz show, as you may have heard, has strong content that is both thought-provoking and, frankly, difficult to experience. That’s why every weekend that the show is open, we have educators in the gallery who are there to answer questions and engage in conversations.
We’ve been talking up our Saturday events all week on Unframed, so here’s one more reminder. At 4 pm in the Art Catalogues bookstore, artist Mungo Thomson will be in conversation with Piero Golia, discussing Thomson’s limited-edition artist book commissioned by LACMA.
As the sun goes down, things will really start to pick up with our annual Muse ’til Midnight event. As described in yesterday’s post, the collective dublab has gathered 25 DJs and performers to create music especially for different galleries on campus, including the modern and contemporary galleries and Tim Burton and Asco. You can see the full schedule here [pdf], and you can sample “Tim Burton” by Daedelus to give you a sense of what you might expect. (PS: open beer & wine bar.) Buy your tickets here.
On Sunday we launch a new theme for the weekly Andell Family Sundays: We Want Pie! Make art with your kids and tour the galleries together, for free. (Stay tuned for next week’s Sunday events, which will include KCRW’s Pie Contest!)
Sunday night, hear Mozart’s Duo in G major and Dohnanyi’s Serenade for String Trio as performed by Endre Balogh (violin), Steven Gordon (viola), and Dennis Karmazyn (cello) during our weekly free Sundays Live concert.
Scott Tennent