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 »

Wajatta in November 2019
Extended Biography

When beat-boxer/comedian/musician Reggie Watts and electronic music artist/DJ/producer John Tejada first joined forces as Wajatta, the results were hailed as “a surprising and winning new collaboration” (NPR) and “in league with Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle’s classic house” (Los Angeles Times). Coming from different worlds, but sharing a passion for the rich history of electronic dance music, Watts and Tejada bring out the best in each other’s formidable skill sets. It’s a cosmic collision of funk-infused techno and soul-steeped vocal acrobatics, equaling and at times surpassing the brilliance of their solo work.

Wajatta (a mashup of the artists’ last names, pronounced wa-HA-ta) began in the most fitting of places: an underground warehouse party in 2016, where John was playing a late-night DJ set and Reggie, a long-time fan of John’s propulsive techno productions, was in the audience. From there a friendship blossomed, formed over strong coffee, similar backgrounds (John was born in Austria and raised in Los Angeles; Reggie moved at a young age from Germany to Montana and later Seattle) and similar interests: ‘80s sci-fi films, old-school hip-hop.

When they began making music together, the chemistry was immediate. In their very first session at John’s home studio in Los Angeles, they completed three tracks. “It was pretty instantaneous,” Reggie agrees. “What he played me was really fun and sparked a lot of possibilities in my head.”

Their initial collaborations resulted in the acclaimed 2018 debut album, Casual High Technology, that seamlessly married Reggie’s mix of beat-boxing, scat-singing and multi-octave, R&B-inspired crooning with John’s nimble, harmonically rich forays into house, techno, hip-hop and beyond. Since that release, the two friends have squeezed more recording sessions into their demanding schedules, continuing to find new inspiration in one another’s talents. 

The best of those sessions are now part of a second full-length, Don’t Let Get You Down, due for release on Brainfeeder on February 28, 2020. As thrilling as Casual High Technology was, Don’t Let Get You Down is a major leap forward, a reflection of the way John and Reggie’s partnership has grown deeper and more intuitive.

They build most tracks from scratch, bouncing ideas off one another from initial spark to finished product. It’s all done in person: “We never just share files,” John notes. They also try to keep their sessions as spontaneous as possible, in a neverending quest to, as Reggie puts it, “capture the freshness.” As a result, Don’t Let Get You Down’s 11 tracks crackle with the energy of fresh ideas captured at the moment of inspiration. It’s electronic music made organically, from two masters at the top of their respective games.

That organic approach extends to their live shows, at which Tejada rebuilds the duo’s tracks on his samplers and synths, while the multi-octave Watts conjures vocal symphonies out of little more than a loop station and a delay pedal. Besides a number of concerts in Los Angeles, they’ve performed a handful of shows around the U.S. — San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Taos — as well as high-profile events and festivals such as Movement in Detroit, MUTEK in Montreal, CRSSD Festival in San Diego, two Dirtybird shows (BBQ in 2018 and Campout in 2019), and a live studio session for KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic.

On Don’t Let Get You Down’s final track, “All I Need Is You,” listeners can get a taste of one of Wajatta’s most unique concerts. The fully improvised song was part of a spontaneously created 90-minute performance for Club Something at The Sweat Spot, an L.A. dance studio run by choreographer Ryan Heffington (Sia, Spike Jonze, FKA Twigs). It’s a six-minute snapshot of the improvisational brilliance that lies at the heart of everything Wajatta does — an approach summed up in Reggie’s off-the-cuff one-liner near the track’s end: “We’re making everything here for you from scratch — just to ensure maximum freshness.”

Watts can currently be seen nightly as the bandleader for CBS’s The Late Late Show With James Corden. He first burst into the American audience’s lives as the co-host of IFC’s groundbreaking variety series Comedy Bang! Bang! Over his 15-year career as a solo performer, he’s honed a unique style that blurs the lines between music and comedy, as is evident in his 9-minute TED Talk in 2012, as well as multiple comedy specials for both Comedy Central and Netflix, and at the invitation of Jack White, the record Reggie Watts Live at Third Man Records. Everything he does is 100% improvised — most notably, the multi-layered music tracks he builds on the fly, looping his beat-boxed rhythms and soulful vocals into spontaneous musical inventions that are funky, hypnotic and often hilarious. See updates at https://www.instagram.com/reggiewatts.

In Wajatta, Reggie infuses those same techniques into John’s sinuous sounds, creating a refreshingly playful take on electronic music — one in which it’s often hard to separate the machines from the human voice. “There’s a lot of stuff happening that you may not realize is Reggie,” John explains. Though he’s a big fan of Reggie’s uncanny beat-boxing skills, John prefers to disguise those effects among the pulses and patters of his analog synths and vintage drum machines. “It’s cool for it to be like, ‘I didn’t know that was his voice.’”

John, for his part, has been at the vanguard of West Coast techno since 1994, releasing a succession of acclaimed albums, singles and EPs for such prestigious labels as Kompakt, Poker Flat, Cocoon, Plug Research and his own long-running imprint, Palette Recordings. Among his best-known tracks are the moody, mesmeric “Farther and Fainter” (from his 2011 Kompakt full-length Parabolas) and the 2005 underground banger, “Sweat (On the Walls)” — now a staple of Wajatta’s high-energy live shows, where Reggie delivers witty, freestyle riffs on the track’s original spoken-word vocals. See updates at https://www.instagram.com/johntejadaofficial.

With influences ranging from Detroit techno to Chicago house, Marvin Gaye to Mantronix, Wajatta’s sound is both familiar and wholly original — and, like all great dance music, ultimately life-affirming, as Reggie vocalizes, sometimes without words, the joyful energy of his and John’s funky, shape-shifting productions. “That’s the great thing about working with John,” Reggie says with an infectious grin. “He’s so steeped in the history of this music. I just pick up on that and run with it.”

On April 11, 2018, the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts announced its 2018 Artist Project Grants recipients. Among the ten recipients, Fulcrum Arts was awarded a $40,000 grant for its ambitious Lawrence English project Sirens, which will launch during its A×S Festival starting November 2, 2018. In fact, Sirens will be the highlight of Fulcrum Arts’ 10-day biennial festival. English will create a site-specific installation utilizing some of the remaining 160 civil defense sirens – the original role of their sound was as an agent for alert and protection from WWII through the Cold War – that are scattered across Los Angeles. Reappropriating the sirens for the project, the artist will employ sound as a means to create a spatial mapping, reconfiguring Los Angeles’s geographic, political and historical landscapes. 

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Tilted Field, in association with VS. Theatre Company, is proud to present the world premiere of Giovanni Adams’ new play Love is a Dirty Word, opening in Los Angeles on Saturday, June 17th at 8:00pm. The solo work, performed by Adams, with musical accompaniment by Arturo Lopez, is about a young man finding redemption when he is deemed too dirty to love. This autobiographical piece is rooted in Mr. Adams’ experience as a black, queer, Christian man crossing lines of identity, affinity and ideology. Love is a Dirty Word was developed and directed by Becca Wolff (No Static at All, Outstanding Solo Show, 2015 NY Fringe Festival). The play will run through Saturday, July 15, 2017 at VS. Theatre on Pico. Read the rest of this entry »

After the sold-out and award-winning success of The Day Shall Declare It in 2015, Wilderness returns to the Los Angeles Arts District to remount its immersive, site-specific theatre experience, opening Tuesday, May 10, 2016 and running through Sunday, June 19, 2016. [UPDATE: The show has been extended thru July 31st by popular demand!] The internationally acclaimed physical theatre piece weaves together dynamic movement with a collage of American labor literature from Tennessee Williams and Studs Terkel, exploring the concept of work in America: what it does for us – and what it does to us. Developed and co-directed by Annie Saunders and Sophie Bortolussi (Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More), The Day Shall Declare It will run for a limited time, to audiences of only thirty people per show. The intimate performances will run six nights a week. The 2016 version sees the addition of “The Paradise,” an exclusive pop-up bar with live music curated by Vagrant Bartenders. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Idly Bent presents the World Premiere of award winning Director-Playwright Reed Arnold’s new play, All Is Fair (or Oblivion Wrought), at the Dorie Theatre in Hollywood, CA, opening on Friday, April 8th for eleven performances through Sunday, April 24, 2016. This funny and thought-provoking play grapples with the thornier side of the emotions and ethics of love. All is Fair stars Arnold, Sarah Elizabeth Johnston, Michael Minto, and Ross Gallo. The play is written and directed by Arnold; set design is by Brian Cole; lighting design is by Rebecca Raines; and Zachary Zarvos is the stage manager.  Read the rest of this entry »

Based in Los Angeles, the internationally recognized Tremaine Dance Convention and Competition celebrates 35 years of inspiring young dancers with its continuing 2015-2016 National Tour across the United States, a star-studded 35th Annual Convention Gala Event and National Finals this summer in Orlando, a new book expected in June 2016, and the upcoming Behind the Curtain documentary scheduled for completion in 2017. Led by legendary and very busy choreographer/dance educator/performer Joe Tremaine, one of the most influential dance personalities in the country today, the innovative annual convention includes master dance classes with professional teachers/choreographers and competitive opportunities in approximately 24 U.S. cities for over 50,000 dancers each year from across the United States and around the world. Tremaine is well-known in the industry for performing, choreographing, and/or teaching dance to scores of celebrities including Paula Abdul, Christina Applegate, Cher, Helen Hunt, Gene Kelly, and Diana Ross, to name just a few.

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Angel City Chorale (ACC), the acclaimed Los Angeles choir led by Artistic Director Sue Fink, will kickoff the holidays with its festive annual winter concert and sing-along, which takes place the first weekend in December at the Wilshire United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. This year’s 22nd edition, Sing Joy, will entertain audiences over two very special nights on Saturday, December 5, and
 Sunday, December 6, 2015. The concert will feature seasonal favorites that echo the diversity of Los Angeles with selections from African, Jewish, Middle Eastern, South American, British, as well as American holiday traditions. Audiences will also get the chance to join in with the choir on familiar carols. Read the rest of this entry »

In response to increasing concerns about the future of the planet due to global warming, Los Angeles artists and arts organizations are uniting for VisionLA ’15 Climate Action Arts Festival, a citywide climate-focused arts festival celebrating the power of art to make change. Happening throughout the greater Los Angeles area from Monday, November 30 to Friday, December 11, 2015, VisionLA ‘15 aims to stimulate a creative response to the climate crisis through arts engagement. The Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary festival has been timed to coincide with the United Nations 21st Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris and is inspired by the concurrent ArtCOP21, a Paris-wide arts festival expressing support for a strong international climate treaty and positive, sustainable change. Read the rest of this entry »