CU colab: Ukraine Benefit Concert, May 1, 6:30 pm at Frost Auditorium

 FIXED LINK!

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Ukraine Benefit and Peace Message Through Art

Classical Underground is proud to collaborate with constellation of great organizations and friends such as venerable Jacaranda Music, Wende Museum of the Cold War,  Culver City Forward, Culver City Unified School District and  Culver City Artist Laureate Alexey Steele on organizing a Benefit Concert in support of Ukraine! Come join us   May 1, 6:30 pm at the magnificent Frost Auditorium in Culver City     for the special program that includes long time CU friends Pianist Inna Faliks, violinist Myroslava Khomik, pianist Steven Vanhauwaert as well as cellist Antonio Lysy, actor Alex Feldman and actor Cástulo Guerra   It's free to join with a seat reservation For tickets, go here: https://www.showtix4u.com/event-details/64240

Leonid Steele "The Land" 1968

Dear CU family,   With all that we had to live through since 2020 it was impossible to even imagine what 2022 would bring. Yet, what we now witness can only be compared to a distorted horror night mare in a slow motion.   I was born in Kiev. My father, Leonid Steele was a unique artist with the most significant part of his rich creative life spent in Ukraine. He was perhaps the highest profile Ukrainian artist of the 50s, 60s and 70s to ever reside in the US. Leonid Steele survived the infamous "golodomor" of 1933 and as a Red Army soldier was gravely wounded during the First Siege of his home town Kharkiv in 1941. It is impossible to comprehend that my Dad's city of youth is now under siege again, only now by the grandson's of those same Red Army soldiers. Survivor of war, Leonid Steele believed all his life in two things - Peace and People. He believed that all great art is about it and that this is the most vital role of true art. He created amazing and powerful in their deeply humanistic expression images of Ukrainian people and his iconic works are now the anthem to the people whom he knew so well, loved so much and portrayed so compellingly.   We have to advance Peace even in the darkest hour of horrible war. For this we launched the website   WWW.PEACEFORUKRAINE.ORG it is showing Leonid Steele's Ukrainian Themed Works and dedicated to art and artists raising their voice and their art for peace

Leonid Steele "Did Vakulo" 1959

The staggering devastation in Ukraine is just as criminal as it is reason defying.    Early UN estimates indicate that nearly three in 10 people in Ukraine need life-saving humanitarian assistance.    Large sections of residential areas in major cities are destroyed. Astounding five million people had to flee the country as refugees while additional seven million are internally displaced. They need urgent help with basic needs.    With all limitations we can all do something. In the recent weeks many of you were sending their good wishes an asking how they could help.   Here is How Come May 1 and/or Donate

The May 1 Benefit Concert is a fundraising for the awesome charity Direct Relief. Founded in 1948, Direct Relief has deployed more than 250 tons of medical aid to Ukraine since the war broke out. The organization is working with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health and other groups in the region to provide requested medical aid — from field medic backpacks to oxygen concentrators — while preparing to offer longer-term aid to people displaced or affected by the war. With Direct Relief your donation goes to those in need on the ground and distributed by local organizations.   This war shall stop!   ***

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CU program at Music at the Wende: December 6th, 2019 with Live Streaming

Between Revolutions:

Human Triumph over Tragedy in the Soviet Experiment

Classical Underground is extremely excited and honored to be invited by a very unique, growing and prestigious museum in Culver City - The Wende Museum - the institution preserving the Cold War artifacts and cultural history - to curate our program at their popular Music at the Wende Series!

Friday, December 6, 2019
7 p.m.: Museum tour and reception
8 p.m.: Concert
Address: The Wende Museum.  10808 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90230
The event is now at capacity. To join the waitlist, please email info@wendemuseum.org

GREAT NEWS: if you are not able to attend, you can still watch it! The performance will be live-streamed via Museum's Facebook page, starting at 8 p.m. on Friday evening at:  https://www.facebook.com/wendemuseum/

Classical Undergrounds presents a performance of Soviet-period instrumental and vocal music, including works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Matvey Blanter, Vadim Kozin, Alexander Vertinsky, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Rodion Shchedrin.

Featured Musicians:
The Hollywood Piano Trio: Inna Faliks, piano; Roberto Cani, violin; Eric Byers, cello
Evgeny Tonkha, cello
Inna Faliks, piano
Timur, tenor
Jane Lin, piano
Space is limited.  For more information on the event please go to: http://wendemuseum.org/programs/music-wende-classical-underground-presents-between-revolutions-human-triumph-over-tragedy-s

Supported by the Music at the Wende Donor Group and the Steinway Piano Gallery Los Angeles.

CLASSICAL UNDERGROUND SHOWCASE: 

the 1958 masterpiece of Soviet Art by Leonid Steele

Leonid M. Steele  "Boiler Revetting Worker: The Wood Grouse",

1958 oil on canvas, 53 x 39 ins

My father Leonid Steele was an important master of the Socialist Realism period in Russian art, a 1953 graduate of the famed Repin Academy in Leningrad, one of the pioneers of the “severe style” and a great embodiment of Russia's venerable cultural tradition of “going to the people." Like his cultural forebears, “peopolists”(“narodniki”) and the artists of the "peredvizhnik" movement, he believed that the people from the far reaches of society, far away villages and factories, are the best and most important source for the serious Art. He also believed that these very same people also are the ones who need the exposure to Art the most. He believed the vitality and necessity of Art shows itself in the clearest way in such context.

A child of the devastating Civil War being born in the middle of it in 1921 in Ukraine,  the survivor of infamous “golodomor” of 1933 in Ukraine, the survivor of peritonitis while in the Red Army in 1939 and then after barely recovering, survivor of the severe air bomb concussion during the First Siege of Kharkov in 1941 he saw the unfathomable suffering, like many in his great generation. Yet, despite it and perhaps because of it, he was the insuppressible believer in humanity. He believed that his art was there to help others to survive and to overcome the same way he was able to. He believed it was his duty as an artist to stand witness to and for his work to be an evidence of human dignity and noble value in midst of dehumanizing world of never ending tragedy.

This belief resulted in my dad's continuous journeys away from big cities in his quest for true characters and subjects. This quest fueled his remarkable oeuvre with humanistic representations of his era, and became a foundation for his iconic masterpieces of epic multi-figure paintings.

Dad’s 1958 painting “Wood Grouse. Boiler Riveting Worker (Gluhar)” is depicting a worker with the heavy rivet gun in a deafening noise inside enclosed iron boiler without any ear protection with the expression at once vulnerable, determined and condemned. It is one of his most powerful visual testimonies to the insuppressible strength of his people who persevered over anything the brutal system threw their way the testimony to the triumph of the people and of their art.

Between Revolutions: Human Triumph over Tragedy in Soviet Experiment

When we look at the historic artforms and expressions, it is important to understand their context for deeper appreciation of their experience and meaning. The unique academic environment of the Wende Museum of Cold War offers a rare opportunity to examine and experience the art of the former USSR while surrounded by the rare presentation of authentic artifacts which witnessed history that produced this art.  

The Experiment

There were a lot of tragedies throughout long human history marked by human greed for power that spares no cost and knows no limits.

The Soviet experiment driven by genuine idealism of the entire generation of the intelligencia in the Russian empire coupled with catastrophic corruption of its failed system, that would rather die than break its habit of usurping power, led to a collapse that no-one saw coming with the human cost no-one could have fathom. 

Jubilation of the revolution was quickly followed by the horrors of waves of terror surpassing anything in French Revolution which inspired its instigators and eventually swallowing most of them.

The Tragedy

The cost to society turned staggering.

Red Terror September 1918 - February 1922 Including political campaign of “decossakization” approximately 150 000 victims based not on any perceived offense but solely based on belonging to the unwanted social class - members of old nobility, lawyers, professors - summarily executed, mass atrocities, starvation and first political concentration camps.

- Civil War 1918 - 1922 - 8 million perished.

- Famine of 1932-1933 including Golodomor in Ukraine, starvation on Don River and Kazakhstan, part of “liquidation of kulak as class” political campaign - class targeted genocide and forced collectivization - 7 million. 

- Great Purge 1936 - 1938 – the mass repressions within rank and file of the Communist Party and Red Army, continuous political campaigns of “Kulak liquidation as class” and Militant Godless League campaign of state atheism - 1.2 million executed and died in the Gulag system of political concentration camps.

- Great Patriotic War (Eastern Front of the WWII) - 35 million dead, compare to 5.1 million for Germany.

51 million 350 thousand people - this is the extent of human tragedy after Russian Revolution until the next revolution of 1991.

The culture and the entire civilization were shaped and defined by this scale of tragedy. Hyperinflations, starvations, redenominations of currencies, abandonment of any concept of individual guilt or responsibility for either persecuted or persecuting had become the norm for decades.

For the persecuted it was irrelevant whether any wrong was committed against the soviet state, it was decided for them by the persecutors for whom in tern it was not an individual choice, but rather the duty to a state to enforce the current political campaign. Participating in persecuting of someone was perceived by many as the best rout not to be persecuted themselves in midst of dreadful anticipation who is to be declared “an enemy of the people” next.   As the old Soviet galley humor joke would say: “a question at the NKVD (KGB predecessor) interrogation - what did you do in the years of party line wiggling? The answer – I was duly wiggling along with the party line.” People became survivors. It is very difficult to ever judge people who are forced to face survival.

The life for those who did not die or escape became the life among KGB snitches and rats eagerly willing to betray their neighbor on the also unseen scale.

Those were the conditions in which life had to somehow persist and the humanity proved itself more resilient than the unfathomable terror. In a world of double talk and double think the opportunity for people to cry and to laugh genuinely had become the force of resistance. The affirmation of human dignity became the essence of survival.

This was the meaning and the role of art within the contextual conditions of Soviet Experiment.

Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.

—Martin Latsis, Red Terror Magazine, 1918

To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.

       - Grigory Zinoviev, 1918

Essential to organise a reinforced guard of selected and reliable people, to carry out a campaign of ruthless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and whiteguards; suspects to be shut up in a detention camp outside the city." Lenin, August 1918

The Triumph

The Classical Underground program and Showcase at the Wende Museum are dedicated to the triumph of those who perished innocently and survived with dignity.

CU at the Wende Museum: December 6th, 2019

Between Revolutions:

Human Triumph over Tragedy in the Soviet Experiment

at the Wende Museum
Friday, December 6, 2019
7 p.m.: Museum tour and reception
8 p.m.: Concert
Address: 10808 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90230



Classical Undergrounds presents a performance of Soviet-period instrumental and vocal music, including works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Matvey Blanter, Vadim Kozin, Alexander Vertinsky, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Rodion Shchedrin.


Featured Musicians:
The Hollywood Piano Trio: Inna Faliks, piano; Roberto Cani, violin; Eric Byers , cello
Evgeny Tonkha, cello
Inna Faliks, piano
Timur, tenor
Jane Lin, piano
Free admission.  Space is limited.  Please RSVP at the Wende Museum's website http://wendemuseum.org/programs/music-wende-classical-underground-presents-between-revolutions-human-triumph-over-tragedy-s


In ART we trust!

Music at the Wende

Music at the Wende is a free concert series in which esteemed musical organizations present programs inspired by the Wende’s collection and mission. Launched in October 2018, Music at the Wende is thrilled to announce its second season, with concerts from October 2019 through April 2020.
Series supported by the Music at the Wende Donor Group.

All concerts are free. Concerts begin at 8 p.m. and are preceded by a museum tour and reception at 7 p.m.

Limit 2 tickets per RSVP. 

RSVP for Dec 17th - CU Holiday Event

Online reservations are now closed. We can accept cash at the door.

December Holiday Night!  

this coming Monday, the 17th @ 8 p.m.   

Toy Drive and a Holiday Potluck

Music & Arts in the Studio  

@ Alexey Steele Grand Atelier 

   

Special thanks to our unwavering founding patron  

Rand Resources, LLC.  

   

  

 

The winter holiday spirit is in the studio!  Come and join us for a great holiday program!

CU regular Georgi Slavchev will perform six new piano pieces by prominent film and game composer Penka Kouneva featured on their new CD, Invisible Lifeline:  The Invisible Lifeline, Another Failure, A Shipwreck of Our Plans, Nocturnal, Day of Wrath, and Farewell to E.

Our dear friend and distinguished pianist Eduardo Delgado returns to CU fresh from performing in Argentina, Thailand, China and Japan, with the Bach-Siloti arrangement of the Organ Prelude in G minor and the 3rd and 4th Ballades of Chopin.

Clarinetist James Hodges is returning to play the divine Clarinet Concerto #1 by Carl Maria von Weber, accompanied by pianist Mary Au.

And the stupendously adventurous tenor Timur Bekbosunov makes an all-too-rare appearance along with the equally audacious and acclaimed pianist Mark Robson in a surprise performance that is sure to beguile us. 

                              

                         

Classical Underground is proud to be part of Carson community and this year it is our special joy to have our Annual Holiday Season Toy Drive to benefit Carson Sheriff's Department Gang Diversion Team (GDT), one of the most recognized such programs in the nation.  The amazing GDT team members headed by department veteran Deputy Fred Noya will deliver toys directly to Carson families in need.     

Carson City Sheriff

CU SHOWCASE 

Michael Klein's solo show at Maxwell Alexander Gallery 

   

Michael Klein "Contemplation" Oil 12"x 16"

It is always a great pleasure to see new works by one of my favorite Contemporary Realist painters, Michael Klein. It is certainly even more exciting to see them in person at his latest solo show at Maxwell Alexander Gallery. 

In his new body of work, Michael continues his attention to an intriguing and thought-provoking subject: the Spanish mustangs that have been roaming the East Coast for the past 450 years, abandoned by early explorers of the Americas. "Day after day, as history has unfolded around them, several herds of wild horses have been roving the shore aimlessly," says Michael.

Depicting a parallel world with a different perception of time is a unique mark of Michael's works that we can see in the ethereal, time-suspending qualities of his widely admired still lifes. Whether in his still lifes, portraits or wild horses series, Michael continues to find unexpected representations for such a contemplative and evocative theme.

Michael's solo show is a not to be missed event if you are interested in developments in the contemporary representational art movement.

  

*****

 As always - bring your spirits, food and drink for you and your friends to enjoy.   

 

Please RSVP via Paypal through our website by clicking on the button above.  

  

******

We are most grateful to our supportive friends at

 Steinway Piano Gallery Los Angeles  

for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument

   

   

 

    We are grateful for a continuous support of our founding patron 

RAND RESOURCES, LLC.

   

CU is a non-profit event that is run by the 501(c3) organization Artward Initiative. Your RSVP contribution covers only a segment of the actual hard costs of making it happen.     

In Art we Trust!

*******

Artward Initiative, 501 (c)3 non-profit organization 

20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
Doors open at 7 p.m. No assigned seats - first come-first served. Potluck. Entrance from the parking lot.  Free parking.   

 

 

    **********

RSVP for October 15th CU - Music and Arts at the studio

Online RSVPs are now closed. 

  

October Night!  

this coming Monday, the 15th @ 8 p.m. 

Music & Arts in the Studio  

@ Alexey Steele Grand Atelier 

   

Special thanks to our unwavering founding patron
Rand Resources, LLC.      

  

Our 11th season opener brings an overflowing fall bounty of musical and artistic delights! 

The distinguished Portuguese pianist Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro makes a welcome return to CU with Liszt's Petrarch Sonata #123 and Hungarian Rhapsody #12, and Portuguese composer José Vianna da Motta's Barcarolle and Portuguese Scene Op. #2: Chula do Douro. 

Two sopranos make their CU debuts this evening.  Born in Argentina and now living in L.A., Camila Lima inherited a beautiful singing voice from her famous tenor father, Luis Lima.  Accompanied by pianist Manuel Arellano, Camila will perform "Regnava nel silenzio" from Donizetti 's "Lucia di 

Lammermoor," and "Me llaman la primorosa" from the Zarzuela "El barbero de Sevilla" by Nieto y Giménez.  

Soprano Anastasia Malliaras appears in a duo with her guitar partner Aaron Haas, performing The Divan of Moses Ibn-Ezra by Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco, and Siete Canciónes Populares Españolas by Manuel de Falla. 

Congratulations to the not new to CU but newly married Duo Smirnov! Anton and Angelika (née Fuchs) will perform the delightfully energetic and entertaining "Sketches" by Russian composer Valery Gavrilin. 

CU favorite saxophonist Chika Inoue will perform the Kapustin Saxophone Concerto, accompanied by Anton Smirnov. 

And the reliably wonderful cellist Evgeny Tonkha promises a surprise addition to the program.

                               

                         

Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro         

CU SHOWCASE 

 CARL DOBSKY

Classical Underground is thrilled to showcase a vibrantly strong voice in contemporary figurative art.  Carl's works are striking figurative sagas, filled with narrative drama and witty commentary on a corrupt hedonistic society, oblivious to the dangers it unleashed.  

Carl's complex figurative compositions are rare and important as they bring smart and deadpan contemporary interpretation of classical legacy particularly of the Baroque period.  

Dobsky is the head instructor at Safehouse Atelier in Los Angeles. He has exhibited throughout the U.S. and in Europe. His work can be found in 

both private and public collections including the New Britain Museum of Art and the Seven Bridges Foundation. 

His work has been featured in numerous publications including Hi Fructose Magazine and Huffington Post. He is represented by John Pence Gallery in San Francisco.   

 

Carl Dobsky "Birds of Paradise" Oil on Linen. 60" X 84" 

*** 

Classical Underground Special Showcase: 

Victor Wilde and Bohemian Society SS19 Manifest Collection 

It is a special pleasure to showcase throughout the evening the work of long time Undergrounder and interdisciplinary visionary Victor Wilde with his international progressive post-punk fashion and lifestyle label Bohemian Society.  

All Bohemian Society collections are visual and message driven objects of kinetic and performance art, which made our collaborations with Victor over the years quite natural.   

Bohemian Society just had the distinct honor to be chosen as the Grand Finale of LA Fashion Week at the Petersen Museum with its SS19 collection called Manifest, and it's a special privilege for me to collaborate with Victor again on it.  Using the runway of LA Fashion Week as public art, I will unveil a new peace campaign designed by my newly founded company Sculptoglyph.  

Enjoy our unique camaraderie of art forms that shall and will affect our deeply troubled world.

*****

 As always - bring your spirits, food and drink for you and your friends to enjoy.   

 

Please RSVP via Paypal at the top of this invitation. 

   

******

We are most grateful to our supportive friends at

 Steinway Piano Gallery Los Angeles  

for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument

   

   

    We are grateful for a continuous support of our founding patron 

RAND RESOURCES, LLC.

 

In Art we Trust!

*******

20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
Doors open at 7 p.m. No assigned seats - first come-first served. Potluck. Entrance from the parking lot.  Free parking.   

 

CU: Save the date October 15th

Come celebrate our 11th year

of culture in the City of Carson! 

Music & Art + potluck party  

Save the date!  

 

Monday, October 15th, 2018    

Look for the email invitation next week,  

or check back our website at that time 

www.classicalunderground.com 

    

 

                           

Please also check your bulk folder, as many of you reported that you are not getting our emails.  We email everyone on the list!

Sponsored by:  

 

 

in ART we trust!

   

RSVP now for Season Finale - June 4th CU!

Online RSVP are now closed. You can pay at the door. 

  

Season Finale!   

this coming Monday, June 4th @ 8 p.m. 

Music & Arts in the Studio  

@ Alexey Steele Grand Atelier 

   

Special thanks to our unwavering founding patron
Rand Resources, LLC.      

  

Our 10th season wouldn't feel complete without the return of our great friend Jura Margulis, who has been here to close each season with a bang.  Displaying dual facets of his pianistic artistry, Jura brings us the baroque elegance of Scarlatti sonatas and the late Russian romanticism of Rachmaninoff preludes.

The delightful City of Angels Saxophone Quartet is back (after an illness cancellation a few months ago) with an original sax quartet, Ciudades (Sarajevo, Montevideo, Addis Ababa) by Guillermo Lago, plus a jazzy arrangement of "Dziekuje," a Dave Brubeck piece in the style of Chopin. Yes, Chopin on 4 saxophones!

For a more traditional take on Chopin, CU favorite Anton Smirnov will tackle the Ballade #1 in g minor on our mighty Steinway D.

And we welcome in his Classical Underground debut the distinguished Armenian cellist Sergey Kosemyan. A student of the Paris Conservatoire and master classes with Rostropovich, Sergey has performed as soloist with orchestras in Armenia and around Europe, and more recently with orchestras and ensembles in Mexico before moving to Los Angeles. He will perform together with the pianist Anna  Markosyan a few exciting pieces from Tchaikovsky to Arutunyan to Bloch.

                               

       

CU SHOWCASE
Jeremy Lipking 

Jeremy Lipking "Above Timberline" oil on linen 36" x 18"

Classical Underground is proud to showcase a masterful painting by Jeremy Lipking.  

One of the greatest painters of our generation and a long time Undergrounder  returns to CU showcasing his work "Above Timberline." 

It is an utter joy to witness the continuous development of Jeremy's extraordinary talent. He invariably pushes the expressive possibilities of the painting medium with his exceptional hyper-understanding of tonal subtleties, manifested in the delicate color transitions within all parts of the value range, and superbly shaped into clear harmonies and compositional masses.   

In "Above Timberline,"  Jeremy has truly put a woman on a pedestal as this painting depicts Jeremy's good friend, the talented painter Chantelle Dinkel, a Swiss Canadian artist  of authentic and strong individuality.

In Jeremy's new works we see magnificent examples of exciting  developments in the use of 21st century realism as a tool of deeply personal contemporary artistic search, and as part of the multi - threaded tapestry within a newly pluralistic and rich contemporary expression.

*****

 As always - bring your spirits, food and drink for you and your friends to enjoy.   

Please RSVP via Paypal at the top of the announcement. 

  

******

We are most grateful to our supportive friends at

Steinway Piano Gallery Los Angeles

for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument

 

 

    We are grateful for a continuous support of our founding patron 

RAND RESOURCES, LLC.

In Art we Trust! 

*******

20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
Doors open at 7 p.m. No assigned seats - first come-first served. Potluck. Entrance from the parking lot.  Free parking.