E4 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
Small presses
but big books
In its first annual small
press book festival, Beyond
Baroque presents an after-
noon of Saturday work-
shops, performances and
readings throughout the
day. Local small presses will
be on hand, including co-
sponsor Vagabond Press,
Tia Chucha, Angel City
Press and the Los Angeles
Review of Books, as well as
the Culver City Historical
Society and Los Angeles
Poetry Society.
11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Sat-
urday. The Wende Museum
of Cold War, 10808 Culver
Blvd ., Culver City. Free.
The long road
to publication
Adam Popescu, a New
York Times contributor, will
share the path to getting his
novel “Nima” published; the
book is about a teen Sherpa
who flees a marriage and
finds herself assisting a
hiker on Mt. Everest. David
L. Ulin, a former Times book
editor, shares his experience
with “Ear to the Ground”
(cowritten with Paul
Kolsby), his satirical sendup
of 1990s Hollywood when an
earthquake prediction
resuscitates a dead-in-the-
water script. And I’ll be
talking about the journey of
“Neon Green,” which kicks
off with the arrival of a
spaceship in suburban
Chicago in 1994. All three
novels were published by
Los Angeles’ Unnamed
Press.
6:30 p.m-8 p.m. Tuesday.
Annenberg Beach House, 415
Pacific Coast Hwy. at Beach
House Way, Santa Monica.
Free.Why we should
eat less meat
Jonathan Safran Foer’s
“Eating Animals” took on
animal suffering in factory
farming. In his latest, “We
Are the Weather,” the au-
thor who broke out with the
2002 novel “Everything Is
Illuminated,” comes at the
same issue through the
prism of climate change.
Though he acknowledges
that our animal agriculture
practices are just one piece
of the puzzle, Foer lays outan argument for cutting
greenhouse gas emissions
by abstaining from meat for
the first two meals of the
day. At Scripps College, he’ll
be in conversation with
“The Big One” host and
KPCC science reporter
Jacob Margolis.
7 p.m.-8 p.m. Thursday.
Garrison Theater, Scripps
College, 241 E. 10th Street,
Claremont. Free.Moore’s own
take on her life
In 1996, Demi Moore
received an unprecedented
$12.5 million for her role in
“Striptease.” The salary
earned her the derisive
nickname “Gimme Moore”
in the press. In truth, Moore
was an early advocate for
equal pay in Hollywood. In
her memoir, “Inside Out,”
Moore writes about the
dissonance of being a high-
paid actress while working
through childhood trauma,
addiction and raising three
children. The actress, now
56, will open up about her
memoir at the Writers Guild
Theater.8 p.m. Thursday. Writers
Guild Theater, 135 South
Doheny Drive, Beverly
Hills. $20-$53.Time travel
for everybody
Annalee Newitz’s latest
novel, “The Future of An-
other Timeline,” involves a
teenage riot girl in 1992 and
an idealistic geology profes-
sor in 2022 battling against a
secret cabal of men who
hope to destroy time travel.
In this reality so close to our
own, time travel allows
anyone to jump into the
past and future, but the
cabal wants it only for the
elite. Michelle Tea (“Black
Wave”) praised the book as
“the mind-blowing punk
feminist sci-fi time traveling
thriller you’ve been waiting
for.” Newitz, who founded
the science fiction website
io9, will be in conversation
with Sean Carroll, Mind-
scape host, author and
professor of theoretical
physics at Caltech.
7:30 p.m. Thursday. Sky-
light Books, 1818 N. Ve rmont
Ave. Free.BOOK IT, L.A.
Persevering across realities
By Margaret Wappler
ACTRESSDemi Moore will open up about her
memoir “Inside Out” at the Writers Guild Theater.Jay L. ClendeninLos Angeles TimesThis week’s book events focus on strategies for survival, in
alternate realities, current realities and everything in be-
tween. Hollywood star Demi Moore divulges how to per-
severe in her memoir, “Inside Out.” Annalee Newitz’s novel,
“The Future of Another Timeline,” shows what a teenage
riot girl has to do to keep afloat in a man’s world. In “We Are
the Weather,” Jonathan Safran Foer suggests consuming
less meat as a way to ensure the planet keeps spinning. But
if we’re talking survival skills in publishing, then Beyond
Baroque’s Small Press Book Festival will offer sustenance. A
panel at the Annenberg Beach House shall provide, too: I’ll
join writers Adam Popescu and David L. Ulin to discuss how
to make the leap from journalism to novels.
A posthumous album of
Leonard Cohen songs com-
pleted by his son and
friends, admirers and col-
laborators after his death in
2016, titled “Thanks for the
Dance,” is slated for released
on Nov. 22.
Adam Cohen, son and
latter-day producer of the
esteemed poet, singer and
songwriter, supervised the
creation of the new collec-
tion, which grew out of song
sketches his father left be-
hind with the request that
Adam bring them to comple-
tion.
Adam enlisted several
artists from disparate cor-
ners of the music world to
work on the album’s nine
tracks, including Beck, long-
time Cohen song interpreter
Jennifer Warnes, singers
Leslie Feist and Damien
Rice, producer-musician
Daniel Lanois, guitarist
Bryce Dessner of the Na-
tional, Arcade Fire bassist
Richard Reed, pianist
Dustin O’Halloran, Spanish
laud player Javier Mas, the
Cantus Dormus choir of
Berlin, the Shaar Hasho-
mayim choir and co-pro-
ducer Daniel Watson.
“In composing and ar-
ranging the music for his
words, we chose his most
characteristic musical sig-
natures, in this way keeping
him with us,” Adam Cohen
said in a statement. “Whatmoves me most about the al-
bum is the startled response
of those who have heard it.
‘Leonard lives!’ they say, one
after the other.”
Work is underway on vid-
eos for songs; the first, for
“The Goal,” can be viewed at
bit.ly/cohendancevideo.
Cohen recorded his vo-
cals for the subsequently
completed songs during the
period he was working on
the final album released dur-
ing his lifetime, “You Want It
Darker,” which came out
about seven weeks before his
death on Nov. 7, 2016, when
he was 82.
“You Want It Darker” re-
ceived near universal ac-
claim, scoring a 92 (out of a
possible 100) on the Meta-
critic.com aggregate review
site. The Telegraph (U.K.)
described it as “a bleak
masterpiece for hard times
from pop’s longest-serving
poet,” and Entertainment
Weekly lauded Cohen as “a
lion in winter, his lyrics heavy
with God and sex and death
and his legendary voice
scraped down to a subter-
ranean rumble.”
During an album release
event for that collection held
in Los Angeles at the Cana-
dian consulate about three
weeks before his death, Co-
hen playfully disputed a re-
cent interview in which he
had told a writer, “I’m ready
to die.” On second thought,
he told a small audience of
writers and well-wishers, “I
may have exaggerated.
“One is given to self-
dramatization from time to
time,” he said in the signa-
ture baritone rasp that de-
fined his later recordings
and live performances. “I in-
tend to live forever.”Hallelujah, it’s
a new Leonard
Cohen album
His song sketches
allowed son Adam to
finish ‘Thanks for the
Dance,’ out Nov. 22.
By Randy LewisSAN FRANCISCO —
Michael Tilson Thomas’
long goodbye has begun.
When he arrived as music
director at the San Fran-
cisco Symphony, shortly be-
fore turning 50, he was hailed
as a new guy for a new era
for an orchestra that seem-
ed to have lost touch with
the times and the Bagdad-
by-the-Bay spirit of the
city.
As Tilson Thomas enters
his last season a quarter-
century later, he’s proved
that all the hailing was war-
ranted.
Not that there are aren’t
problems as the city strug-
gles to maintain its bohemi-
an character amid a housing
crisis and in the aftermath of
the tech industry invasion.
But at least the longest-
serving music director has
made the symphony a
leader.
With his daring and
depth on display at Davies
Symphony Hall on Thurs-
day afternoon, Tilson
Thomas premiered John
Adams’ short “I Still Dance,”
a dazzler dedicated to the
conductor and his husband-
manager, Joshua Robison,
surely one of the most popu-
lar couples in their adopted
city.
The one who still dances
is Robison, a musician and
former gymnast who met
Tilson Thomas when both
were in junior high school in
the San Fernando Valley.
But it’s the youthful energy
of both men, now in their
mid-70s, that so impresses
Adams, the composer says
in the program note. The
piece lasts eight minutes (7
minutes and 55 seconds, if
you must). It begins with a
blast, and it doesn’t stop.
Adams joked in a conver-
sation with the pianist
Sarah Cahill before the pre-
miere that “I Still Dance” is
really a toccata with a disco
beat. There is a prominent
role for electric bass, which
Adams said he believes
should become a formal or-
chestral instrument. The
percussion section is exten-
sive and multicultural, in-
cluding a large Japanese
taiko drum and an African
djembe.
Though a New Englander
who attended Harvard, Ad-
ams’ whole career has been
in the Bay Area. The San
Francisco Symphony gave
him his first orchestral com-
mission in 1981, and he has
had a close relationship with
it ever since, including hav-
ing run a new music series.
He and Tilson Thomas go
back almost that far, to
when the conductor pre-
miered the orchestral ver-
sion of “Shaker Loops” in
1983 with the American
Composers Orchestra in
New York.
There will be a whole sea-
son to consider Tilson
Thomas’ San Francisco suc-
cess. Thursday’s program
included a revelatory per-
formance of Rachmaninoff ’s
Fourth Piano Concerto with
the outstanding Russian so-
loist Daniil Trifonov and a
magisterial account of Schu-
mann’s “Rhenish” Sym-
phony.But can we please talk
about us, about L.A., for a
moment? What was striking
to an Angeleno about this
concert was just how much
Tilson Thomas represented
a longtime syzygy between
the San Francisco orchestra
and the Los Angeles Phil-
harmonic. This, of course, is
a conversation about as
liked in a town with a sense of
cultural primacy as calling it
Frisco.
To San Francisco’s last-
ing credit, the L.A. Phil
would not be the orchestra it
is today without a helping
hand from its northern
counterpart. L.A.'s previous
president and chief execu-
tive, Deborah Borda, and its
current chief operating offi-
cer, Chad Smith, got their
starts at the San Francisco
Symphony. The late André
Previn said that the single
most important influence
on him as conductor was
studying with the legendary
Pierre Monteux when he was
music director in San Fran-
cisco.Our part in all this,
though, is crucial. Tilson
Thomas has made no bones
about L.A. having shaped
him as a musician, and look
who is succeeding him: Esa-
Pekka Salonen. However
connected to the Bay Area,
Adams has been the L.A.
Phil’s creative consultant for
the last decade and written
some of his biggest pieces for
the orchestra, including his
most recent major orches-
tral piece, the piano con-
certo “Must the Devil Have
all the Good Tunes?”
“I Still Dance” has got
good tunes too, and they
come in a joyous rush. Ad-
ams has done this before in
short pieces that pack a
punch. His fanfare and most
popular piece, “Short Ride
in a Fast Machine,” is the
model, and it just happened
to have been written for
Tilson Thomas, who pre-
miered it 1986 with the Pitts-
burgh Symphony. The sev-
en-minute “Lollapalooza,”
of which Tilson Thomas
gave the American premierehis first season in San Fran-
cisco, is another. “I Still
Dance” is more sophis-
ticated than Adams’ other
short knockouts. You can’t
possibly get it all in one hear-
ing. Winds swirl unpre-
dictably. The strings chug
and swoop. The brass inter-
rupt as they underpin. There
is a great tuba part. I didn’t
catch much electric bass or
exotic percussion, but that
might have been my seat
close to the orchestra or the
Davies acoustics.
What couldn’t be missed
was the jazz influence or the
marvelous shifting tone col-
ors. You don’t know where
you’re going, and you don’t
expect to end up in the lumi-
nous glow that seems to say
this is a dance that will go on
in the upper reaches long af-
ter any of us are still dancing.
This is a lingering that
mattered. Program notes al-
ways tell us that Rachmani-
noff was influenced by jazz in
this concerto. He had been
at the premiere of “Rhap-
sody in Blue.” He was anEllington fan. Yet that al-
most always gets lost in the
orchestra part, as it does in
Trifonov’s award-winning
recent recording with the
Philadelphia Orchestra
under Yannick Nézet-
Séguin. Previn, an accom-
plished jazz musician in his
own right, may have been
the one exception in his re-
cording with Vladimir
Ashkenazy and the London
Symphony Orchestra.
As was Previn, Tilson
Thomas is a great Gerswhin
conductor, and he brought
exactly the same synco-
pated attention to detail to
the concerto that he did with
the Adams. Finally, Rach-
maninoff rocked. Trifonov’s
smoky way with the slow
movement was swoonable,
and throughout he played
like an arresting virtuoso
making it up on the spot.
Tilson Thomas comes
“home” in December when
he Trifonov will turn to
Tchaikovsky’s First Piano
Concerto with the L.A. Phil.
Mark your calendars.MUSIC REVIEW
Michael Tilson Thomas begins farewell
He launches his final
season with San
Francisco Symphony
with a special, new
John Adams piece.
MARK SWED
MUSIC CRITIC
ON THE PODIUM, Michael Tilson Thomas leads San Francisco Symphony, as he has for a quarter-century. He’ll depart at season’s end.Grittani Creative