By Melina Paris, Music Columnist
AC Jazz Project’s latest CD with their new bandleader, Josiel Perez Hernandez, is on fire.
On Conga Buena, Josiel shows off just how good a fit he is with this Afro-Cuban jazz ensemble. The band will host a CD release party at the Catalina Jazz Club on Sept. 26 which is sure to be an exciting and intoxicating evening of impeccable musicianship.
By John Farrell, Curtain Call Writer
Carmenwas a crowd-pleaser when it opened the Los Angeles Opera’s 2013-2014 season on Sept. 21.
Maestro Placido Domingo, perhaps a little too old for the youthful Don Jose, led the orchestra from the pit (and got fabulous applause before every act). A new Carmen, Patricia Bardon, sang and danced her way though the opera, Don Jose was the handsome Brandon Jovanovich and Escamillo the refreshingly carefree toreador was Ildebrando D’Arcangelo.
The audience loved the sets and the gaily dressed chorus, and the swarm of children. They loved the flamenco dancing, the surprising (to some) transformation of a very tall soprano into an equally tall tenor. They were there for pleasure and loved every minute of the three-and-one-half hour work.
SAN PEDRO —The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, on Sept. 19, voted in favor of Port of Los Angeles staff’s recommendation to eliminate a never-used container fee created almost six years ago to help finance major rail, highway and bridge improvement projects.
The Infrastructure Cargo Fee, which would have varied from $6 to $18 per TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent container unit), would have been assessed on all loaded containers entering and leaving the port by truck or rail. The fee was formally approved in 2008 but never implemented.
The fee was added to the tariff – the port’s official schedule of rates, charges, rules and regulations – the same year the port was developing its Clean Truck Program and related channels to finance conversion of the private fleet of mostly older and more polluting drayage trucks that called at port terminals. The fee initially was established to help fund key infrastructure projects that would reduce traffic congestion, improve the flow of cargo and cut air pollution.
The fee was due to start in 2009 and expected to collectively raise $1.4 billion in order to secure matching state transportation funds for the design and construction of 17 specific highway and rail construction projects throughout the Harbor district. But when the economy began to slide into a deep recession, the port put the fee on hold and pursued other federal, state and regional grants to advance its projects.
The port secured 55 percent of more than $313 million needed to pay for four capital projects now being built or due to begin construction by January 2014. The port is funding the remaining 45 percent with its own revenues.
Port projects moving forward are the Berth 200 Railyard, the South Wilmington Grade Separation and two Interstate 110 interchanges. Of the remaining 13 projects that the fee was intended to support throughout the Harbor complex, only one other is exclusive to POLA and four are joint projects.
Two men were killed and two women were wounded at about 10 p.m. Sept. 20, in the 6500 block of Rose Avenue in Long Beach, officials said.
The four people were shot in the torso. Long Beach Police Department identified the two men killed as 26-year-old Sophon Kao and 24-year-old Jerry Chim, of Long Beach. The two women were in serious condition.
Police say the four were with a small group of friends celebrating a birthday, when a suspect on foot shot them.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call (800) 222-8477 or www.lacrimestoppers.org
LONG BEACH — Fire Station 12 opened Sept. 23, near Artesia Boulevard and Orange Avenue in Long Beach.
The station opened its new facility, replacing a 1920s building on the 6500 block of Gundry Avenue. The $10 million station is about 11,300 square feet in a 1.2 acre of land previously owned by the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency. It also has about 5,300-square-feet of an Emergency Resource Center to store supplies in case of disasters.
The station’s living quarters are connected by two parallel corridors so that firefighters have two direct paths to vehicles when responding to a call.
Station 12 can house eight people per shift. The station has three vehicles: a fire engine, rescue engine and paramedic van.
LONG BEACH — An officer-involved shooting took place at about 6 p.m. Oct. 21, on the 200 block of Park Avenue, within the BelmontHeights neighborhood of Long Beach.
Officials said armed suspect, 49-year-old Greg Treadway, was in violation of a restraining order from an ex-girlfriend, when he broke into a garage and retrieved the handgun. Treadway proceeded to point the gun at the Long Beach Police Department officer. The officer fired.
Treadway is in stable condition with a gunshot wound in the upper torso. The officer was not injured.
Treatway has been booked on attempted murder, assault against a police officer with a firearm, burglary, and violation of a restraining order.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office will conduct an investigation of the shooting
Details: (800) 222-8477; www.lacrimestoppers.org.
By Greggory Moore
In Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, Robert De Niro plays Rupert Pupkin, a delusional comic manqué who kidnaps late-night talk-show host Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis), pledging to release him only after Pupkin gets a stand-up set on Langford’s show. Pupkin’s ploy works to perfection, and after serving two years and nine months of a six-year prison sentence—during which time he wrote his autobiography for a $1 million advance—Pupkin is given his own talk show. The film ends with slow zoom-in on Pupkin as he basks in endless cheers of welcome from his adoring fans.
Whether or not you can see something Pupkinesque happening behind Matthew Cordle’s eyes, it’s easy enough to spot in his actions. If we take Cordle at his word, the motivating force behind his three-and-a-half-minute video confession that he drunkenly and homicidally piloted his car into oncoming traffic is to stop others from doing the same.
By John Farrell, Curtain Call Writer
Nothing much happens inThe Weir, Conor McPherson’s extraordinary play that opened, Sept. 20, at Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro.
Except for the drinking, whisky, Guinness, and the delightful, witty and revealing talk, there is almost no action. It doesn’t matter. You are on intimate terms with the five lovely people who are in Brendan’s pub on a wet and stormy evening in the immediate past, and all you need is a Guinness (which you can get at the theater) to settle down and enjoy yourself.
Brendan is Cylan Brown, Jack is Bert Pigg, Jim is David Graham, Finbar is Don Schlossman and Valerie is Kristina Teves.
The evening starts with an Irish fairy story and then a ghost story. As the whisky begins to flow the stories become more personal and revealing, passionately describing experiences and regrets of the five very ordinary and extraordinary lives: four old friends and the female newcomer. Nothing is shocking in this modern word, but interesting and timeless. All five actors speak with fine Irish accents, and the pub, designed by Chris Beyries, is an intimate space, with a fire and a few tables, the audience sitting around the two open sides, as cozy as can be. You come to know these five people, become part of their lives, and wish you could tell a story, too.
Director Stephanie Coltrin lets her fine cast tell those stories without interfering with them. Together they have put together a play of subtle brilliance, affecting and moving, as real as anything you’ll see on the stage, and so simple, telling its story with the wild wind as background. You’ll come away, with or without that beer, deeply moved and wondering at the still-powerful lure of plain storytelling.
Tickets are $27, $24 for seniors and $20 for students. Performances are at 8 p.m. Sept. 27 and 28, and Oct. 2, 3, 11, 12, 17, 18, and 19, with an additional show at 2 p.m. Oct. 13.
Details:(310) 512-6030;www.littlefishtheatre.org
Venue: Little Fish Theatre
Location: 777 Centre St., San Pedro
By John Farrell, Curtain Call Writer
If the Kentwood Players gets any more ambitious, it is going to have to move to a bigger theater.
It did manage Leonard Bernstein’sCandidein the Westchester Theater recently, and other musicals as well. But its most recent productions just about overflows the small theater.
Little Shop of Horrorshas been done elsewhere recently, and more productions are planned. It has been done better, but it has never been done with such energy, such a huge cast (and by huge we mean even by big theater standards) or with such audacity.
The Long Beach city attorney recently sent out a memo citing questions “from several parties” that raises constitutional questions about the 1994 Campaign Reform Act.
The questions are about whether large amounts of campaign contributions from state campaign accounts could be flipped to a local Long Beach campaign account.
“For example,” the letter states, “the question has arisen as to whether a person who currently has campaign funds remaining from a state elected office can transfer those funds directly into the controlled committee account for a City of Long Beach election without regard to the City’s current campaign contribution limitations. .
Long Beach has had a strict campaign finance reform act since the voters approved it in 1994. Contributions are limited to $750 per contributor and fundraising can’t happen sooner than 12 months before the election. Special interests can give up to $3,600 to state campaigns.
If money raised for a state assembly or state senate campaign is allowed to be flipped into a local campaign account then there will be no more limits on how much can be contributed at one time to a campaign for mayor or city council.
The city attorney’s letter also stated that the Fair Political Practices Commission will also be consulted with regard to these matters. The outside legal opinion will be released directly to the City Clerk.
A copy of the letter can be found at http://lbcityattorneyletter_campaigns
Real people. Real news. Random Lengths is the Los Angeles harbor area's remaining independently owned progressive news magazine. We cover news in Carson, Wilmington, Long Beach, Lomita, Torrance, Rancho Palos Verdes and San Pedro.
Contact us: letters@randomlengthsnews.com
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