We are in our 6th season! October 1st - opening night!

 Welcome to the first concert of our SIXTH season!

The summer has flown by like Endeavor on a 747, and suddenly it is not only fall, not only October, but the start of Classical Underground's sixth season.  Our heads are spinning but somehow a fine program has come together, with a distinctly eastern-European timbre.  

  

Musica Vitale 

Musica Vitale is a choral group devoted to unjustly neglected a cappella chamber music of the 19th and 20th centuries -- in our case, works by Georgy Sviridov and Sergei Rachmaninoff.   Something new to CU and sure to be a glorious sound!  

   
 

Rufus Choi 

Hometown pianist Rufus Choi's star has been rising since he won the first Jose Iturbi International Competition.  He makes his CU debut performing Haydn Variations and Ravel's  La Valse, evoking the decadence of turn-of-the-century Vienna.  

 

 Laszlo Mezo    

  

Returning to CU, Hungarian cellist Laszlo Mezo will perform the solo cello sonata of his compatriot composer, Zoltan Kodaly.         

  

            

Moni Simeonov                                   Georgi Slavchev     
 

 Pepron Pilibossian                                   Yoshika Misuda        

 

Offering more Ravel but of an entirely different color, CU faves Moni Simeonov (violin) and Pepi Pilibosian (piano) will play his Hungarian-themed Tzigane. Moni returns with pianist Georgi Slavchev and cellist Yoshika Masuda to perform a few movements from Ravel's ravishing Piano Trio. 

 

Ambroise Aubrun                               Anna Sarkisova 

With USC thus represented, we must offer some UCLA talent for balance!  Also making their CU debuts, violinist Ambroise Aubran and pianist Anna Sarkisova will play an excerpt of Brahms' Sonata #3 (which, stretching our eastern theme, debuted in Budapest with Brahms at the piano).  

As always - bring your spirits, food and drink for you and your friends to enjoy. Please RSVP via PayPal above. If you have problems with PayPal - don't want - email us right away! 

We are most grateful to our supportive friends at Steinway Piano Gallery West Hollywood 

for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument. 
On October 1st we will have CD213 - their newest C&A piano to the group of concert pianos.

        

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Classical Underground Showcase:    

   

TONY PRO        

We are proud to showcase “El Comico Divino”, a magnificent and important work by a great friend, LA artist Tony Pro. This masterful painting represents a mile-stone in Tony’s creative search, reconsiders the idea of Beauty and transforming it into an engaging and forceful visual statement.
 
It is enormously exhilarating to feel how LA is boiling with new ideas at the moment. With soul-searching questions about the future direction of the art world appearing almost daily from its various corners, our notorious LA gang  --  in a resurging realism of our time which I call NOVOREALISM -- is making itself heard and felt with ever-rising force.

  

Tony Pro "El Comoco Divino"

Over the summer, the venerable American Artist Magazine published a big article on our movement. My brothers-in-ART and ardent Undregrounders Jeremy Lipking, Tony Pro and myself just had an exciting three-hour presentation of our ideas at one of the year's most anticipated realist-artist's gatherings, The Weekend With The Masters. The Representational Art Conference held by California Lutheran University in just few weeks has invited us to discuss the same topic.

It is also exciting to see our East Coast brothers resolutely making Realism grounded in tradition a language of choice in expressing our modern thoughts, views and feelings. A perfect example is an "Empire" exhibition of new works by New York artist and friend Martin Wittfooth at the edgy, provocative and forward-looking Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City.

"Envisioning the familiar with the foreign, the paintings portray 'empire' as a dream in mythical repetition. The past becomes a painterly vision of a global psyche, lucid in theme, vibrant with tonality and color" - the gallery describes Martin's work.

The show runs through October 6, so don't miss it!

 

 

In ART we trust!   

CU “ALL-STAR” SEASON FINALE MONDAY APRIL 9 - Music & Arts in the Studio + Potluck Party

We are sold out!

 As our CU family is due to greatly expand in May, we are celebrating our last concert of the season a bit early, with a brilliant lineup of Classical Underground star performers.

We are so fortunate to have Eduardo Delgado as a frequent guest, for there is no finer performer anywhere of the Argentinian repertoire -- on this occasion works by Carlos Guastavino, Alberto Ginastera, and Eduardo's show-stopping favorite, "Adios Nonino," by Astor Piazzolla.  

Eduardo Delgado  

With hands that remarkably resemble the great master's own 12-note spanners -- and not forgetting a musical lineage of the highest Russian tradition that he is in turn passing on through his International Piano Academy in Freiburg -- Jura Margulis is uniquely gifted for playing the virtuoso repertoire of Sergei Rachmaninoff.  For CU, he will perform a selection of Rachmaninoff's op. 23 and op. 32 Preludes, the height of late Romanticism from the dawn of the 20th century.

 

  

 

Jura Margulis

Returning to CU after too long an absence, crowd favorite violinist Moni Simeonov will perform Brahms along with CU newcomer Jiayi Shi on piano, a frequent partner of Moni's great teacher Midori.

  

   
 Moni Simeonov

                Jiayi Shi 

In February we were delighted by the CU debuts of pianist/composer Anna Drubich and the terrific cellist Evgeny Tonkha.  Joined by violinist Elicia Silverstein, they cap the season with a deliciously diverse pair of trios from Mozart and Piazzolla.  

   

 

Evgeny Tonkha, cello          Elicia Silverstein , violin       Anna Drubich, piano    

                 

As always - bring your spirits, food and drink for you and your friends to enjoy.  Please RSVP via Paypal above. If you have problems with Paypal - email us right away.

  

  

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We are most grateful to our supportive friends at

Steinway Piano Gallery West Hollywood 

for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument.  

        

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Classical Underground Showcase:    

   

JOHN ASARO      

It is an honor and a privilege to showcase one of California's legendary realist painters, John Asaro. It is hard to overstate the importance of this unique artist to a resurgence of California Realism, as well as to the development of an entire new generation of today's leading California figurative painters to whom he served as inspiration, encouragement and an example in contrast to the largely aesthetically hostile art scene of a seemingly long gone "modernist domination" past.

  

John Asaro

 51 x 72 in

In the trajectory that saw one of the Golden State's eminent artists transforming from a long career in "genre scenes" into what the artist describes as "figure portrait arrangements," it seams that John's deep interest in exploring the coloristic effects of an intense California sun transformed into an equally intense desire to "re-construct" the figure out of a violent clash of bold colors and gestural lines, stark flat almost electric backgrounds, and the tonally rendered forms of human flesh through a shear force of a dynamic brushwork.

John's work stands as a great example of the enduring powers of Realism as a human visual language, as well as the boundless possibilities this remarkable language presents to an ever-restless mind.

   

In ART we trust!    

Classical Underground February 9, 2012

Classical Underground December 19, 2011

Click on the photo to view more pictures from our December event!

Our February CU is on Thursday - Feb 9 - sold out!

February Night
next Thursday (as rare exception), the 9th @ 8 p.m.   

                                                         
Russian Encore!

Our February Classical Underground will be on THURSDAY, (this time) Feb. 9...  why should Mondays have all the fun?!! And once again we have a nearly all Russian-performer program, with some wonderful new guests from out of country, favorite old friends of CU as well as the premiere of a brand new work.    

We are very happy to have Alexander Kobrin, first prize winner of the Van Cliburn and Busoni piano competitions as well as a prize winner of the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, making his first appearance at Classical Underground.  Alexander will perform Beethoven's 32 Variations in C, and will be joined by the outstanding cellist and CU fave Boris Andrianov for the Beethoven Cello Sonata #4 and the Benjamin Britten Cello Sonata.    

  

Alexander Kobrin                              Boris Andrianov  

Making their first appearance at CU, the young Russian cello virtuoso Evgeny Tonkha and pianist and composer Anna Drubich will premier Anna's "Intro Version" as well as perform works by Stravinsky and the most esteemed living Russian composer, Rodion Shchedrin.  

   

Evgeny Tonkha                                           Anna Drubich   

And for the tasty palate cleanser between cello courses, the Croatian bass-baritone Boris Martinovich will sign some Rossini accompanied by CU regular Kanae Matsumoto on piano. 

                                        

   

Boris Martinovich                                  Kanae Matsumoto  

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

 

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We are most grateful to our supportive friends at

Steinway Piano Gallery West Hollywood 

for graciously providing us with their incomparable instrument.  

        

To RSVP use this link to paypal.  We are sold out!

Classical Underground is thrilled to Showcase  

   

a spectacular exhibition    

"The Epic & the Exotic: 19th Century Academic Realism  from the Dahesh Museum of Art"      

now at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art  

at Pepperdine University   
as well as its direct connection to ART of our Day.

  

William Adolphe Bouguereau (1885) 

Young Girl Going to the Spring 63 1/8 x 28 7/8 in    

  

I heard gloating is not good, but time and again we are being reminded that nowhere else in the nation is the "off the beaten track" alternative contemporary ART process as vibrant as it is in LA. Case in point - the rare and important visionary exhibition of one of the nation's most unique collections of 19th century academic ART at a museum whose prime expertise is contemporary ART.

  

Yes, there are some wonderful exhibitions of superb ART around the nation, yet this show is special and thoroughly unique in its rare intimacy, getting to the very heart of a vibrant artistic conversation that we are witnessing currently around the nation and in LA and which burns with brilliant intensity completely under the radar of the "official" art establishment.

  

As the show generated tremendous buzz and excitement among many artists in Southern California, the museum director Michael Zakian invited a group of somewhat notorious LA figurative painters to discuss the relevance of 19th century academic ART in a special article for the fabulous Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine. What do you know, most of them including myself turned out to be die-hard Classical Underground painters, so it appeared only natural to have this subversive bunch, selected for the article, to highlight the show with their -- or rather our -- current work.

  

 

Adrian Gottlieb    

The Airforce Subject   oil on linen 

  

  

Jeremy Lipking      

Ma Lo oil on linen 20 x 16in 

  

  

  

Tony Pro    

"il comico divino" oil on linen 40 X 30 in  

   

  

Kate Sammons

Venus de Milo charcoal on paper 25 x 36 in  

and me 

     

Alexey Steele  

Madonna Of The Storm oil 80 x 36in   

  

Through works of good friends Adrian Gottlieb, Jeremy Lipking, Tony Pro and Kate Sammons it is quite exciting to see how our group represents the wide artistic force and creative talent of our day, each in their own unique way building upon rigorous and powerful visual and philosophical principles developed by the academic tradition, way beyond any specific "look" and based on wide-ranging aesthetic preferences, helping build the vibrant and truly diverse contemporary ART not of decades past, but of our day.

    

  

In ART we trust!    

 

About the performers at the Feb 9 program

Alexander Kobrin is a winner of several int'l piano competitions such as the Van Cliburn Int'l Piano Competition, Busoni Int'l Piano Competition. A faculty member on the Int'l Keyboard Festival in Mannes School of Music in NYC, and at the Schwob School of Music, Columbus State University.

Boris Andrianov, CU favorite, one of the most gifted Russian musicians of his generation, winner of the bronze medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition and Russian laureate at the International Rostropovich Competition in Paris.

Boris Martinovich, Croatian Bass-Baritone who has appeared in the major opera houses of the U.S. and Europe.

Kanae Matsumoto, is active as a soloist and a collaborative pianist, having performed many recital halls in Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and the United States.

Evgeny Tonkha is one today’s most talented Russian cellists.Among his achievements are the 1st Prize and the Golden Medal at the 12th International Cello Competition in the Czech Republic, the Special Jury Prize at the 13th International Tchaikovsky Competition, and prizes for the best performance of contemporary music.

Anna Drubich studied piano with Eliso Virssaladze in Moscow, and is an accomplished film and television composer, currently studying at USC in the prestigious film scoring program.