John Tejada, a frequent guest on Touched Music compilations, hatched the idea of turning the final project for his CalArts “Advanced Electronic Music Production” class into a compilation album for the established label. John Tejada Presents Future Stars features 15 of Tejada’s students at their best, as well as an exclusive original track by Tejada himself called “NYC83,” which imagines an alternative of a classic b-boy breakin’ tune. Established as a non-profit, the record label benefits Macmillan Cancer Support in the UK among others. Touched Music will release Future Stars digitally on Friday, May 15, 2020, with 100-limited edition CDs to follow shortly after. The best way to support the charity—and the only way to procure the beautiful physical CD—is to purchase from Bandcamp. The release will also be available on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Bleep and many other platforms.

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The latest project of the Rebel Babel Ensemble is a universal tribute to hip hop pioneer DJ Premier. The transcultural international big band, perhaps the world’s largest (currently boasting over 11,000 members from sixteen countries), unleashed “Tribute to DJ Premier,” its herculean video “gift” to Preemo and the world, on the legend’s birthday, March 21, 2020. For this particular orchestration and video project, Rebel Babel and its conductor and co-founder Łukasz “L.U.C.” Rostkowski arranged samples from DJ Premier’s work for a jazz big band collaboration that was recorded in eight European and U.S. cities with just under 100 musicians involved. Read the rest of this entry »

The Montalbán, a theatre in Hollywood with a rich history (celebrating three anniversaries in 2019, read more about that below), announced its June screening schedule for its popular Rooftop Movies at The Montalbán. In addition, the venue is also rolling out a new creative curation initiative: weekly themed “Binge Weeks” for the rest of the season. The curation team is programming movies within designated themes that will screen each week including “Bad Ass Denzel,” “Sci-Fi Classics,” “Wild and Crazy Guy!,” “Loaded Weapon 1,” and various series such as “Director Series: Pedro Almodovar.” Read the rest of this entry »

Mount Wilson Observatory – the scientific marvel above Pasadena, atop Mount Wilson – is pleased to announce the second date in its Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome six-month series, to take place on Sunday, June 2, 2019. The performances are presented inside the iconic vaulted dome of the 100-inch telescope. A season of musical adventures thoughtfully curated by Artistic Director Cécilia Tsan are offered on the first Sunday of each month through October. The June concert program will feature oboe quartets by Mozart and Britten plus a string trio by Beethoven with Leslie Reed on oboe, Roger Wilkie on violin, Alma Fernandez on viola, and Ms. Tsan on cello. Read the rest of this entry »

Mount Wilson Observatory –  the scientific marvel above Pasadena, atop Mount Wilson – is pleased to announce the third season of its Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome, which will take place on the first Sunday of each month, inside the iconic vaulted dome of the 100-inch Hooker telescope. A wide range of musical adventures, thoughtfully curated by Artistic Director Cécilia Tsan, will be presented in this acoustically remarkable venue during the six-month run of the 2019 season, which concludes on October 6^th. See the Concert Series schedule and line-up below. Poised for rediscovery, the grounds of the legendary observatory— founded in 1904 by astrophysical pioneer George Ellery Hale—are open for free to the public year round. Read the rest of this entry »

The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past is the latest album by Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and composer Yann Novak, and his second for Touch. It considers the relationships between memory, time, and context through four vibrantly constructed tracks that push Novak’s work in a new direction while simultaneously exploring his sonic past. The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past is composed as a quadriptych – a single gesture broken into four parts – that meditates on the inevitable progression of time, our relationship to the past, and our distortion of the past through the imperfections of memory. The album will be released February 23, 2018 on the London-based label Touch. Available digitally and on CD, the physical version will be packaged in a gatefold sleeve as a limited edition of 500.

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Award-winning pianist and composer Peter Manning Robinson will enthrall audiences with a stunning aural and visual art experience at his The Refractor Piano™ Concert on Thursday, April 28, 2016 at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station. Performing live with his invention, The Refractor Piano™, Robinson is pioneering a new music form: “refracted music.” Without using prerecorded tracks, triggered samples, external sounds, or MIDI instruments, the Emmy and multiple BMI award-winning composer creates a vast spectrum of new sounds with just a refracted, acoustic piano. In a sense, Robinson plays inside the refractions generated by his newly created instrument. His innovative compositions, rooted in classical and jazz traditions combined with improvisation and acoustic refraction, produce a truly original and transcendent live music experience.  Read the rest of this entry »

Arts organization Create:Fixate (C:F) presents Branching Out on Saturday, November 7, 2015. C:F will also be branching out into a new location, holding this installment of the highly anticipated ongoing event series at Werkartz, a new multidisciplinary arts complex in LA’s Chinatown. For over a decade, C:F has established its unique signature blend of presenting vibrant visual art and music in an immersive cultural experience. These one-night-only events feature top emerging talent from around the globe, with an emphasis on the local talent of Los Angeles. Find Your Grind Foundation is a major supporter of the event. The excitement begins at 4:00pm with a three-hour gallery preview. The main event starts at 7:00pm and closes at 1:30am. Read the rest of this entry »

Following his highly acclaimed album The Predicting Machine and a slew of pop-infused 12-inch singles, LA-based electronic musician John Tejada returns with a new full-length album, Signs Under Test, which drops in the U.S. on Tuesday, February 3, 2015 (Monday 2/2 for other parts of the world). The intimate album is a personal auditory experience, which brings listeners in close to details and idiosyncracies on 11 expertly crafted new tracks. With Signs Under Test, the studio wizard digs deeper into his synthesizers, unearthing dreamy tracks that rank among Tejada’s most accomplished work-to-date. The Austrian-born, Los Angeles-based artist, well-known in international electronic music circles, has been releasing his subtle, melodic techno for 20 years on some of the world’s most respected labels, as well as his own Palette Recordings. Read the rest of this entry »

Pasadena Arts Council (PAC) is proud to announce AxS Festival 2014 | Curiosity, in diverse venues throughout the greater Pasadena area from Friday, September 19, 2014, through Sunday, October 5, 2014. AxS [ak-sis], produced by Pasadena Arts Council in partnership with numerous Pasadena arts and science institutions, is a two-week+ citywide festival spanning three weekends that explores the nexus of artistic and scientific inquiry, promoting experimentation and cross-fertilization between these disciplines. Programming is saturated with innovative visual art, theatre, dance, music, photography, history, science, literature, film, and architecture. The 2014 theme, Curiosity, was inspired by the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-built Mars Rover, “Curiosity,” which is currently exploring the Martian surface some 50 million miles above us. The goal for the festival is to create audience experiences that bridge the boundary between art and science. Many events are free.  Read the rest of this entry »