Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Save the Date - December 14th - our holiday event
Music & Art + potluck party
Save the date!
and our annual Toy Drive
Monday, December 14, 2015
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!
We look forward to seeing you soon!
In ART we trust!
Monday, November 9, 2015
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
We are in the 9th season! October 12th @ 8 p.m.
We are sold out!
9th Season
Opener
9th Season
Opener
this coming Monday,
October 12 @ 8 p.m.
October 12 @ 8 p.m.
Music & Arts in the Studio
(and Potluck Party)
The most sensational debut in the eight years of Classical
Underground belongs to soprano Delaram Kamareh singing a challenging
program of virtuosic coloratura arias last December, which she
dispatched with captivating vocal flair and the charismatic stage
presence of a born star. A short time later she stole the show as the
pyrotechnic soloist in Tan Dun's "The Water Passion" at Disney Hall.
We are delighted to have Delaram back at CU to perform an aria that
should be a knockout: Zerbinetta's "Großmächtige Prinzessin" from
Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss, accompanied by Mitsuko Morikawa
on piano. Not to be missed!
Delaram's CU debut youtube link: https://youtu.be/KC9u16_O65o
Pianist Eduardo Delgado will bring his lifetime of keyboard wisdom to the ultimate Beethoven piano sonata, Op. 111.
And
that's just one of the delights on this wonderful opening program.
Violinist Moni Simeonov and pianist Pepi Pilibossian will perform Ralph
Vaughn Williams' ever-popular "The Lark Ascending," in the piano
version of its premiere in 1920.
Pianist Eduardo Delgado will bring his lifetime of keyboard wisdom to the ultimate Beethoven piano sonata, Op. 111.
Guitarists
Bryan Fasola and Donovan Butez of the Los Angeles Duo will perform
classic and contemporary pieces, La Valse d'Amélie by Yann
Tiersen, Arabesque No. 1 by Claude Debussy, and Donovan's own
work, Emergency Room.
And our resident piano virtuoso Harout Senekerimian will perform Scriabin's Fantasie in b minor, op. 28.
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 SOLD OUT!
******
We are most grateful to our supportive friends at
for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument
Model D386.
Model D386.
"Pink English Roses" 12"x15" oil on linen
on loan from Maxwell Alexander Gallery
on loan from Maxwell Alexander Gallery
Classical Underground is proud to showcase the work of one of the leading figures in serious contemporary realism - Michael Klein.
It's a rare treat to see the works of this superb artist on the West Coast, so when the Maxwell Alexander Gallery of Culver City assembled a sizable collection of his recent still lifes for a show, it was an opportunity not to be missed.
In his work, Michael steps much beyond just the scene in front of him - he uses his subject matter as the starting point in a personal and complex visual expression. Much like in any great work of ART, it is not the scene that affects us in Michael's works, but the experience brought up by the aesthetics of its presentation and by the level of its execution.
Michael's thoughtfully arranged harmonies balanced just enough by well-decided contrasts, a sensation of space between the shapes of his objects, the delicate transition of colors -- all together bring the poetic feel surrounding Michael's work, delivering a magic sensation and a mood of underlying lament. His good, "in-its-place" use of impasto, and the combination of decision and spontaneity in well-measured alla prima passages within a multilayered paint world, create an optical feast for an engaged viewer.
Michael's elegant, fluid and exciting use of paint fully and authentically informed by a cool-headed visual decision making are remarkably rare and welcomed qualities in the field saturated with track-loads of "photo finish" attempting fare on one side, and sloppy trick-chasing on the other.
In his paintings, life just slowed down to remain still, and this is a kind of still life that is very hard to come by. The trembling petals of a flower or wet scales of a fish are transformed into elegies in paint by Michael's work.
Michael Klein's works are sophisticated expressions of a tall order. This is why they will always find themselves at home next to the most sophisticated and highest ART expressions of any style and of any time.
in ART we trust!
The doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. Unassigned seating. Potluck. Directions and address are below:
405 South to the Harbor 110 South towards San Pedro; Exit Torrance Blvd., Turn Left at the Stop sign; Turn Left on Torrance Blvd /next light/; Continue pass Figueroa Ave, pass Carson Town Center North; 200 yards before next light /which is Main street/ make Left into a driveway to a large parking lot and proceed to your right. Please note that the gate next to CU will be closed for safety. The entrance is from the parking lot. The building is on the corer of Main and Torrance. 20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
405 South to the Harbor 110 South towards San Pedro; Exit Torrance Blvd., Turn Left at the Stop sign; Turn Left on Torrance Blvd /next light/; Continue pass Figueroa Ave, pass Carson Town Center North; 200 yards before next light /which is Main street/ make Left into a driveway to a large parking lot and proceed to your right. Please note that the gate next to CU will be closed for safety. The entrance is from the parking lot. The building is on the corer of Main and Torrance. 20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Season's Finale this coming Monday, June 1st @ 8 p.m.
on line reservations are now closed
Season's Finale
this coming Monday,
June 1st @ 8 p.m.
June 1st @ 8 p.m.
Music & Arts in the Studio
(and Potluck Party)
For our season finale, dear friend and superhero piano virtuoso
Jura Margulis is back in town with a prodigious set, including his own
piano solo arrangement of the Toccata & Passacaglia from
Shostakovich's Symphony #8, Valse Caprice #6 from the Schubert-Liszt
Soirées de Vienne, and Scriabin's Poeme Op. 72 - Vers la Flamme.
Violinist Leonard Chong returns to CU with his cellist brother
Erick Chong in tow to perform the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, a
virtuosic transcription by Norwegian composer and violinist Johan
Halvorsen of one of Handel's harpsichord suites.
Classical saxophonist Chika Inoue and flautist Dr. Rik Noyce will
team up for Epitaphe by French composer Charles Koechlin, who isn't
often heard today despite his prolific output and influence on many
composers as varied as Poulenc and Cole Porter. Chika and Rik will also
take a jazzier turn through Chick Corea's classic Spain.
The delightful soprano Jennifer Lindsay makes her long-anticipated
return to CU singing the lyrical and emotional fireworks of Violeta's
aria E Strano...Ah, fors e lui...Sempre Libera from
Verdi's tragic opera La Traviata. And then to ease us into our
off-season break, Summertime from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, accompanied
by Mary Au on piano.
As always - bring your spirits, food and drink for you and your friends to enjoy.
******
We are most grateful to our supportive friends at
for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument
Model D.
Model D.
******
Classical Underground Showcase
"Aurora," 24"x36,""
Reconciling two important aesthetic impulses, Form and Color, was for a very long time one of the most exciting areas of refined representational art as well as one of its most hotly debated topics.
At the last CU showcase, we explored the influence of the emerging strong California figure school on the venerable California plein air tradition.For our second installment on the subject, we are fortunate to showcase the new work by one of the best living American figurative painters, Adrian Gottlieb. Within the classical representational vernacular he mastered, the human figure remains the highest and most complex expression of Form. Effectively depicting it with elusive and complicated outdoor lighting is crucial in order to achieve the authentic experience, as well as the specific mood, and requires a remarkable degree of artistic prowess.
Processing the great California plein air tradition of California's leading figure painters is uniquely important in attaining such rare ability. In his recent paintings Adrian is exploring new levels of coloristic subtleties that greatly advance their impact.
Effectively combining the expressive potentials of both Form and Color was long considered the holy grail by generations of representational masters. It is remarkable and exciting to see the cutting edge California artists today writing a new chapter in this quest.
in ART we trust!
The doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. Unassigned seating. Directions and address are below:
405 South to the Harbor 110 South towards San Pedro; Exit Torrance Blvd., Turn Left at the Stop sign; Turn Left on Torrance Blvd /next light/; Continue pass Figueroa Ave, pass Carson Town Center North; 200 yards before next light /which is Main street/ make Left into a driveway to a large parking lot and proceed to your right. Please note that the gate next to CU will be closed for safety. The entrance is from the parking lot. The building is on the corer of Main and Torrance. 20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
405 South to the Harbor 110 South towards San Pedro; Exit Torrance Blvd., Turn Left at the Stop sign; Turn Left on Torrance Blvd /next light/; Continue pass Figueroa Ave, pass Carson Town Center North; 200 yards before next light /which is Main street/ make Left into a driveway to a large parking lot and proceed to your right. Please note that the gate next to CU will be closed for safety. The entrance is from the parking lot. The building is on the corer of Main and Torrance. 20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
April 27th Music and Art in the Studio
April Night
this coming Monday,
April 27th @ 8 p.m.
April 27th @ 8 p.m.
Music & Arts in the Studio
(and Potluck Party)
Our program this Monday, April 27 falls on the 100th anniversary
of the death of the mystical, romantic Chopin of Russia, Alexander
Scriabin. In tribute, CSUN piano professor Dmitry Rachmanov will
perform Scriabin's Piano Sonata #5 as well as some of his shorter gems.
We are happy to welcome LA Phil cellist Tao Ni, making his CU
debut with veteran Harout Senekeremian on piano. They will perform Robert Schumann's delightful Five Pieces in Folk Style Op.102 and David Popper's Elfentaze Op.39
Our good friend cellist Evgeny Tonkha returns to CU with a new
friend, pianist Anastasya Terenkova on piano. An international soloist
and chamber musician, Anastasya's impressive musical pedigree began at
the famed Gnessin School in Moscow and continued at the Paris
Conservatoire.
Pianist Anna Sarkisova is returning to CU with a violinist Yueun Kim, who is making her CU debut with Brahms Sonata No. 3.
Pianist Anna Sarkisova is returning to CU with a violinist Yueun Kim, who is making her CU debut with Brahms Sonata No. 3.
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
for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument
Model D.
"The Grunion Hunters" oil on board 36" x 48"
Figure and Color
Classical Underground is very happy to present the esteemed California plein air painter and passionate Undergrounder Stephen Mirich's new work "The Grunion Hunters". It is significant in a number of ways.
There are two great trends in California's serious contemporary representational art: a historically strong plein-air tradition, and a relatively recent classical figure movement.
California experience informs both venerable branches of the representational school. The strength of color tradition of the California plein air school informs the classical understanding of figure, while strong contemporary figurative representation influences the plein air approach, signifying the exciting phenomenon of this specifically Californian artistic "knowledge spill-over." Both trends inform each other, making them expand their boundaries and turning California today into the hotbed of a new representational movement.
The doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. Unassigned seating. Directions and address are below:Stephen's new work is an exciting example of such vibrant interaction. While successfully reconciling difficult coloristic problems, it ventures into capturing multiple figures embedded in moonlight.
in ART we trust!
405 South to the Harbor 110 South towards San Pedro; Exit Torrance Blvd., Turn Left at the Stop sign; Turn Left on Torrance Blvd /next light/; Continue pass Figueroa Ave, pass Carson Town Center North; 200 yards before next light /which is Main street/ make Left into a driveway to a large parking lot and proceed to your right. Please note that the gate next to CU will be closed for safety. The entrance is from the parking lot. The building is on the corer of Main and Torrance. 20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Save the date: April 27th!
Our March event
Music & Art in the Studio
Save the date!
Monday, April 27th, 2015
Look for the email invitation next week,
or check back our website at that time
March 23rd: The Argus Quartet
***
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
March 23rd Music & Art in the Studio
March Night
this coming Monday,
March 23rd @ 8 p.m.
March 23rd @ 8 p.m.
Music & Arts in the Studio
(and Potluck Party)
For our March program we are pleased to present for the first time the LA-based Argus Quartet (featuring Jason Issokson and Clara Kim - violins, Diane Wade - viola, and Joann Whang - cello), who
champion contemporary works in additional to traditional repertoire.
They will play a new quartet by Grammy-nominee Eric Guinevan and
commissioned for them thanks to a grant from Chamber Music America.
Pianist Danny Holt
returns to CU with some Brahms Intermezzi and a work by LA classical
and jazz composer Mike Garson (known also as a longtime pianist with
David Bowie as well as No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails and Smashing
Pumpkins).
One of the most delightful CU debuts from last season was
soprano Jennifer Lindsay, who returns with Arias from Gounod's Faust and
Verdi's La Traviata, accompanied by Mary Au.
Mary will also accompany violinist Xika Huang in Schubert's violin sonata.
Many are familiar
with Marc-Andre Hamelin as one of the premiere performers of highly
virtuosic piano repertoire, but he is undeservedly less well-known as a
composer himself. Our "resident" virtuoso Harout Senekeremian is out
to do something about that and will play Hamelin's Variations on a
Theme of Paganini, as well as some preludes by Alexander Scriabin.
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
for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument
Model D.
Model D.
George Carlson is one of the preeminent American representational artists of our time. Throughout his illustrious career, George has epitomized a kind of true Master rarely seen these days.
George possesses a unique Form Sense. This rare trained ability to grasp the dimensional subject in his mind opens the possibility to express form through various mediums. This is what gave the great Old Masters of Renaissance like Leonardo and Michelangelo their astonishing versatility.
Armed with such a sense, and not being limited to one particular technique or niche that many other even good artists might be exploiting their entire lives, George has left an equally important mark on both representational sculpture and painting.
Much like with giants of the Renaissance, the key to this seamless transition is a mastery of a very particular kind of dimension-focused figure drawing. This is the secret to the unique and brilliant universality of his artistic perception that allows him to transfer his vast visual knowledge across different medium platforms, creating important contemporary works in all of them.
The doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. Unassigned seating. Directions and address are below:We are deeply honored to showcase this truly great living American Master.Thank you to our good CU friends and artists Dan Pinkham and Tom Redfield for lending us George's magnificent works from their collections.
in ART we trust!
405 South to the Harbor 110 South towards San Pedro; Exit Torrance Blvd., Turn Left at the Stop sign; Turn Left on Torrance Blvd /next light/; Continue pass Figueroa Ave, pass Carson Town Center North; 200 yards before next light /which is Main street/ make Left into a driveway to a large parking lot and proceed to your right. Please note that the gate next to CU will be closed for safety. The entrance is from the parking lot. The building is on the corer of Main and Torrance. 20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Save the Date: March 23rd
Our March event
Music & Art in the Studio
Save the date!
Monday, March 23rd, 2015
Look for the email invitation next week,
or check back our website at that time
February 16th: Tara Davison performing
*** 
after the last event: with Martha Argerich
***
Please check your bulk folder, as many of you reported that you are not getting our emails. We email everyone on the list!
We look forward to seeing you soon!
In ART we trust!
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
February 16th Music and Art in the Studio
Online reservations are now closed.
February Night
this coming Monday,
February 16th @ 8 p.m.
February 16th @ 8 p.m.
Music & Arts in the Studio
(and Potluck Party)
In honor of the day after
the day after Valentine's Day, we have a hyper-romantic February
program featuring a double-dose of Brahms, a hefty serving of
Rachmaninoff, and some lovely transcriptions for voice and guitar.
With it's volcanic opening
and surging, irresistible themes, young Brahms' Piano Sonata #2 is a
touchstone of the romantic piano repertoire, and a perfect showpiece
for UCLA's resident piano prof Inna Faliks.
Almost 40 years later came the Brahms Clarinet Trio, which
he wrote after being so inspired by the playing of the virtuoso Richard
Mühlfield that he came out of "retirement" in 1891 to compose for and
perform with him. Clarinetist Benjamin Mitchell will be joined by pianist Brendan White and cellist Michael Kaufman (Mühlfeld Trio).
The talents of piano maestro Mikhail Korzhev are so vast that they
must be shared amongst USC, Cal State Fullerton and Chapman College.
He will make his long overdue CU debut with Rachmaninoff's Sonata #2.
Those who stuck around for the CU "after-party" last time around
were treated to the luscious sound of Tara Davison singing and
accompanying herself on classical guitar. Now she returns to perform
for everyone with Villa-Lobos' Cantilena from the Bachianas Brasleiras,
plus her own transcriptions of songs by the mid-nineteenth-century
mezzo/composer/salon queen Pauline Viardot.
As always - bring your spirits, food and drink for you and your friends to enjoy.
******
We are most grateful to our supportive friends at
for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument Model D - CD345.
Ignat
Ignatov is one of the most talented and dedicated artists of the newly
emerging American figurative realism generation. In this very specific
approach to ART it takes phenomenal effort to develop a phenomenal
talent. The vast effort required to polish such talent to a level of
serious artistic capability will not be necessarily supported by
existing markets, which tend to favor easily digestible "commercial"
fair. Certainly this enormous effort is not supported by the current
post-modernist establishment. Elite artists like Ignat are pursuing a
level of artistic perfection of which few are aware. This is why they
push and expand the boundaries of human perceptional capabilities. This
is why they make ART. Even the original modernists would be proud of
what those few do now.
Basing their effort on classical tradition, they are making the next evolutionary step in aesthetic and perceptional development. I call this next step Novorealism. Some people call the period we are all part of Post-Contemporary.
As evident in his figurative works' dedication to ever increasing artistic ability, it is just as important to note Ignat's drive to put his expanding visual powers in service of the cause he believes in deeply. An ardent dog lover, he creates deeply heartfelt, poignant and compelling images of dogs in need of rescue. Here is where heart, mind and hand come together to give another evidence of Humanity. Go, Iggy!
Basing their effort on classical tradition, they are making the next evolutionary step in aesthetic and perceptional development. I call this next step Novorealism. Some people call the period we are all part of Post-Contemporary.
As evident in his figurative works' dedication to ever increasing artistic ability, it is just as important to note Ignat's drive to put his expanding visual powers in service of the cause he believes in deeply. An ardent dog lover, he creates deeply heartfelt, poignant and compelling images of dogs in need of rescue. Here is where heart, mind and hand come together to give another evidence of Humanity. Go, Iggy!
Ignat Ignatov
*******
405 South to the Harbor 110 South towards San Pedro; Exit Torrance Blvd., Turn Left at the Stop sign; Turn Left on Torrance Blvd /next light/; Continue pass Figueroa Ave, pass Carson Town Center North; 200 yards before next light /which is Main street/ make Left into a driveway to a large parking lot and proceed to your right. Please note that the gate next to CU will be closed for safety. The entrance is from the parking lot. The building is on the corer of Main and Torrance. 20795 Main St. Carson, Ca 90745
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