Circle two dates on your calendar this month: September 13 and 26 as The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts will offer two ‘one time only’ streamed not to be missed musical events.

First up is Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone, live from Florence Italy.  Felder has made stage history with his one man shows celebrating Leonard Bernstein, Franz Liszt, Irving Berlin, Beethoven and other masters of music.  Gershwin Alone tells the story of America’s great composter and features his best-known songs (written with his brother Ira) from “The Man I Love,” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” through the hits from An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess to a complete performance of Rhapsody in Blue.  Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone has had over 3,000 performances worldwide. The second event is the U.S. premiere of the Wise Children production of Romantics Anonymous, live streamed from UK’s Bristol Old Vic theatre. The play with book and direction by Emma Rice, was scheduled to open at the Wallis earlier this season.  Romantics is an unusual love story of shy candymaker Angélique and the manager of a struggling chocolate factory, Jean-René.  Based on the film Les Émotifs Anonymes, The London Times raved, “A sweetly funny, gorgeously tender musical rom-com.”

Tickets sales from both productions will benefit The Wallis. Purchases include the live stream plus a week of extended viewing. Click here for tickets.

Museums and galleries may be closed but you can still view world class sculpture in the wonderfully tranquil and sylvan Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA.

Spanning more than five acres in the northern corner of UCLA’s campus, the Sculpture Garden is one of the most renowned outdoor sculpture installations in the country. With over 70 sculptures by artists such as Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, August Rodin, David Smith, Henri Matisse, Miró, Noguchi, Voulkos and more.

Firmly committed to the idea that works of art are most thoroughly enjoyed as part of everyday life, the Sculpture Garden was dedicated in 1967 by UCLA’s third chancellor, Franklin D. Murphy. Murphy worked with UCLA’s supervising architect, Ralph D. Cornell, to create an edifying environment that fosters the learning process. As a result of their vision, the Sculpture Garden transformed an area of north campus into a park-like setting for some of the finest sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The garden features the distinctive flora of Southern California amidst the pleasant informality of a modern American campus, rolling across three distinctive areas: a formal plaza paved in brick, a walkway formed by a triple row of South African coral trees, and an informal sloping lawn cut with curving textured pathways.

For a printable map for the Sculpture Garden and map of UCLA grounds, click here.

The Norton Simon Museum from home has assembled an exciting collection of their online resources, featuring collection videos, art making activities, educational resources,  and more, so you can continue to experience the Museum while they are temporarily closed. They have also created several new features, such as: Meditative Moments, this is a collection of short mindfulness excercises designed to encourage thougotful contemplation of the Museums artworks; Impressions, featuring essays on the care and interpretation of the collection; and Dispatches from the Conservation Studio, highlighting the varied projects let by the conservator.

Visitors to the Norton Simon from home site can watch lectures, podcasts and videos to learn more about the museum’s collection, exhibitions and the history of the institution. One of the featured videos, Morisot’s In a Villa at the Seaside is part of a series celebrating the lives and careers of women artists.  The video features the French artist Berthe Morison whose daringly sketchlike In a Villa at the Seaside is a highlight of the Museum’s Impressionist galleries. Children and adults alike will enjoy the opportunity to engage with the Museum from home with art projects and coloring sheets inspired by the Museum’s collection.  Print out  their activity sheets to experiment with different materials and techniques or fill in coloring sheets based on artworks in the collection, making them uniquely your own.

The museum is continually adding to the Musuem from Home so check back regularly here.

During this year which has felt like we’ve been perpetually stuck in the off-season and everyone has been forced to communicate with the world through a small rectangle on a computer, tablet, or phone, it feels like a time of equalization. But through that humble rectangle, mediocre connectivity speeds, poor lighting, and crappy audio, there are those who excel at adaptation. Many stars of the LA Opera are such folks, and they are making that rectangle pop at LAO At Home.  At first I was unsure about what it would be like to watch Living Room Recitals without the dynamic audio or the intricate costumes that contribute to the grandeur of the opera. But experiencing the stripped down talent of each performer  feels like a peek into the practice required for the enormous stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. And while there is something humanizing about being relegated to the rectangle, all doubt disappears the moment these people begin to perform.

While connecting your device to a good sound system or using  headphones is definitely the way to go, the passion and energy comes through regardless, and we are able to see that talent can still shine, especially now from the comfort of their living rooms to ours. Side note: LA Opera also offers really fun Zoom video conference backgrounds to change things up. If you decide to sing Aida to your co-workers, they take no responsibility. Things can look deceptively easy inside the rectangle.

For more details, click here.