Van Dyke Parks News

Groundbreaking experimental cellist and multimedia artist Cellista soon will be launching a national tour of her 'Transfigurations' multimedia work album and book, co-authored with the philosopher Dr. Frank Seeburger.

Sofia Bolt, the psych-pop project of guitaristvocalist Amélie Rousseaux, is sharing an advance stream of her debut album Waves, out this Friday on Loantaka Records. Hype Machine premiered the stream today, praising the record's 'warm-toned and lyrically honest songs.'

Ahead of her new 'Transfigurations' album, groundbreaking experimental cellist and multidisciplinary artist Cellista presents 'Look Homeward, Angel', a cutting edge genre-bending track featuring the lyrics and rhymes of hip hop artist DEM ONE (a.k.a. Demone Carter) and beautiful soprano vocals by Melissa Wimbish. As a stage poem, 'Transfigurations' is a multi-media work that includes dance, poetry, original classical compositions, noise and sound textures.

BRIC, the leading presenter of free cultural programming in Brooklyn, is pleased to announce the lineup and sponsors for its 41st annual BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. With 29 performances (June 4 - August 10), the Festival launches a new season for the pioneering NYC arts-and-media organization. With new leadership at the institution's helm, BRIC is recommitting itself to presenting programming that is reflective of Brooklyn's eclecticism and diversity, and this season will feature a wide array of free, world-class performances at the beautiful Prospect Park Bandshell. 

Sofia Bolt, the project of guitarist/vocalist Amélie Rousseaux, is thrilled to announce her debut album Waves, due out June 28 on Loantaka Records. Rousseaux began releasing music as Sofia Bolt in her native France, winning acclaim for her early EPs from Rolling Stone and Noisey. In 2017, following a breakup, she relocated to Los Angeles and began recording music with a wide-ranging cast of collaborators, including the legendary songwriter/composer/arranger Van Dyke Parks, La Luz drummer Marian Li-Pino, and Angel Olsen bassist Emily Elhaj. The psychedelic pop songs they created became Waves.

The San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association(KPAA) is pleased to present Kronos Festival 2019, Kronos' fifth annual, three-day music festival, at SFJAZZ Center on May 30-June 1. Kronos Festival 2019 will highlight the voices of singers, storytellers, and activists over three evening concerts, a Saturday morning family concert and Kronos Labs, free public events that are new this year. Kronos has long collaborated with vocal artists, including in its recent Grammy Award­-winning album Landfall (Nonesuch Records) with Laurie Anderson and its new album Placeless (Kirkelig Kulturverksted) with Iranian singers Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat.

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Patrick Park is set to return with a new full-length, Here/Gone, due out April 26, 2019. For Here/Gone, Park tapped producer Rob Schnapf (Beck, Kurt Vile, Elliott Smith) for the first time since 2007's acclaimed Everyone's in Everyone, and the pair distilled Park's introspective folk songs to classic voice and guitar combinations highlighted with string arrangements by Bobby Halvorson (Van Dyke Parks) and occasional guest vocals from Warpaint's Emily Kokal. With the sparse production allowing Park's lyrics to remain front-and-center, the tracks on Here/Gone materialize as letters to his newborn son and aural reckonings with the brevity of life. The album's first single “Everything Falls Apart,” which is out today, explores the human tendency to focus on appearances rather than substance, yet approaches the subject from a hopeful, as opposed to nihilistic, perspective.

The University of Washington has announced the complete roster of artists who have been selected as Creative Research Fellows as part of its first three-year Creative Fellowships Initiative. Funded by a $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the interdisciplinary initiative will advance the field of performing arts by supporting artists in the development of new works and by integrating the performing arts disciplines into a broader context academically, artistically, and socially.

Sofia Bolt is the musical alias of Parisian Amélie Rousseaux, whose songs have been described by Rolling Stone France as 'recalling the energy and surprise of musicians like PJ Harvey and Cat Power.' In 2017, Rousseaux relocated to Los Angeles, where she began working with a wide cast of collaborators including legendary songwriter Van Dyke Parks, Grammy-nominated producer Itai Shapira, Emily Elhaj (bassist of Angel Olsen's band), and La Luz drummer Marian Li Pino, recording the songs that would make up her American debut album Waves. Today she shares the first of those songs, 'Get Out Of My Head,' with a video that premiered on Gorilla Vs. Bear, who called the track a 'blistering, sardonic kiss-off to an ex-lover.'

AlternaJazz (Sparks & Shadows) today announced the upcoming release of a new album from singer-songwriter and multi-faceted artist Raya Yarbrough, 'North of Sunset, West of Vine.' The twelve song record will be available on CD through Amazon, and from all major digital retailers Friday, Oct. 5, 2018.

Inara George presents Eleni Mandell's Song Club - Music and conversation with some of Los Angeles' best songwriters, including Bhi Bhiman, Inara George, John Goldman, Eleni Mandell, Richard Moore, Van Dyke Parks, Bella Porter, Fred Tackett, Mike Viola and Wendy Wang, moderated by John Horn (KPCC's "The Frame").

Alonzo King LINES Ballet, the San Francisco-based, internationally celebrated contemporary ballet company, culminates its 35th Anniversary season with a world premiere ballet featuring live music performed by the Grammy Award-winning Kronos Quartet.

Dent May is taking his latest album Across The Multiverse on the road again. His summer North American tour kicks off with a show on June 28 in San Francisco with Michael Rault and will continue on across the continent and back over the next month with support from fellow Los Angeles songwriter Shannon Lay.

The San Francisco-based, Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet / Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) presents its fourth annual hometown music festival Kronos Festival 2018. With six concerts over three days, Kronos Festival 2018 illustrates one of the group's central artistic tenets: collaboration. After Kronos performed at NPR Music's 10th anniversary concert last month, NPR Music's Tom Huizenga wrote, 'Collaboration. It's in the DNA of the intrepid Kronos Quartet, which some 40 years ago began working with composers around the globe to spotlight new music.'

Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) is proud to announce the fourth group of composers for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Launched in 2015, Kronos' Fifty for the Future is an exciting partnership with Carnegie Hall and others to create 50 new works - by 25 women and 25 men - expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. Each year, ten composers are announced. As ever, scores, parts, recordings, videos, and other learning materials for the compositions will be offered free of charge online at kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future. 

iLe (Ileana Cabra Joglar) is a Puerto Rican singer, composer and vocalist who spent a decade touring Latin America with her brothers in the popular band Calle 13. Now, as successful solo artist she comes to Los Angeles performing music from her recent album that combines alt-rock with traditional boleros. Gaby Moreno, who sings the theme song for the series opening intro of Disney's first Latina princess Elena of Avalor, moved to the US from Guatemala after high school and now calls Los Angeles her home. Her guitar and bluesy vocals move easily between pop, soul, and classic Latin sounds. Both boast a Latin Grammy win and will serve up their unique blend of cultures onstage as part of the Music Knows No Borders series at VPAC (The Soraya) on Saturday, November 18 at 8pm.

Kronos Quartet, tenor Rinde Eckert, and Vietnamese musician V n- hn V are bringing Jonathan Berger's acclaimed monodrama My Lai to BAM's 2017 Next Wave Festival for the work's East Coast premiere. Four performances will take place in the BAM Harvey Theater, Wednesday, September 27 through Saturday, September 30 (7:30 pm).

On Today, July 27, at 8:00 p.m., the Skirball Cultural Center launches its twenty-first season of Sunset Concerts with American Tune Featuring Sean Watkins & Friends: A Singer-Songwriter Celebration of Paul Simon, featuring the Grammy-winning musician and songwriter Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek, Watkins Family Hour, Works Progress Administration) and friends Cary Brothers, Gaby Moreno, Joey Ryan, The Bee Eaters, plus other special guests.

On Thursday, July 27, at 8:00 p.m., the Skirball Cultural Center launches its twenty-first season of Sunset Concerts with American Tune Featuring Sean Watkins & Friends: A Singer-Songwriter Celebration of Paul Simon, featuring the Grammy-winning musician and songwriter Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek, Watkins Family Hour, Works Progress Administration) and friends Cary Brothers, Gaby Moreno, Joey Ryan, The Bee Eaters, plus other special guests.

They Call Us Monsters goes behind the walls of the Compound, a high-security facility where Los Angeles houses its most violent juvenile criminals. To their advocates, they're kids. To the system, they're adults.