Pauline Adamek
Three performances only! Marking its first collaboration with Center Theatre Group (CTG), the superb MUSE/IQUE orchestra – led by Artistic & Music Director Rachael Worby – launches its 2024 season mid March with three concerts at the Mark Taper Forum.
Performances:
Friday evening, March 15, 2024 at 7:30pm
Saturday Matinee, March 16, 2024 at 2:30pm
Sunday evening, March 17, 2024 at 7:30pm
Center Theatre Group / Mark Taper Forum, 135 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
From the press release:
MUSE/IQUE’s 2024 season, themed Make Some Noise: Music and Stories of American Defiance and Hope, opens at the Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center, with Magic Hour in Los Angeles: America’s Cultural Renaissance of 1974, a first-time association with CTG.
The program presents music of 1974: Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Eagles, Los Lobos, Bill Withers, Jerry Goldsmith, Los Lobos, Linda Ronstadt, and Marvin Gaye, as well as the movie themes from The Godfather Part II (Academy Award Best Picture 1974), Chinatown and The Way We Were.
Remember – in 1974, several important movies such as Nashville, Jaws and Shampoo were in production and George Lucas had finished his first draft of Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.
In 1973-1974, Saturday nights on CBS was the greatest line up in television programming history: “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Bob Newhart,” and “The Carol Burnett Show.” In 1974, Tandem Productions (Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin) had completely hit its stride as “All in the Family” was in the middle of its five years as the number one show in the nation (it was in the top ten for seven of years its nine-year run).
Magic Hour in Los Angeles is partially inspired by the best-selling Ronald Brownstein book, Rock Me on the Water, which explores the year Los Angeles transformed movies, music, television, theatre, and American life, exerting more influence over pop culture than any other city in America. With an explosion of creative and artistic innovation, Los Angeles in 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on radical social change and demanding civil rights, and a political order rooted in the status quo.
MUSE/IQUE Artistic and Music Director Rachael Worby said, “When artists and thinkers make loud choices and take bold stances, they teach us that nothing is impossible. Here in Los Angeles in 1974 there was remarkable creativity in film, television, and popular music that changed our country – and our program is a celebration of the people, the stories and the music that changed the culture.”
Joining Worby and the MUSE/IQUE orchestra onstage are guest performers the DC6 Singers Collective, Javier Almaráz, LaVance Colley, and Rachel Gonzalez.
Magic Hour in Los Angeles is presented in partnership with Center Theatre Group. CTG:FWD programming at the Mark Taper Forum is made possible through the generous support of the S. Mark Taper Foundation. Additional funding is provided by gifts to the Artistic Director Discretionary Fund.
