Los Angeles Times - 05.03.2020

CALENDAR

D THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020:: LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR

E

He wants more

than ‘Roxanne’

Arizona Zervas cashes

in on his smash hit

streaming single. Now

he’s turning pro. E3

Comics...................E6-7

What’s on TV..........E8

For the 1912 election

between Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Theodore

Roosevelt and Republican incumbent William Howard Taft,

Charles Ives wrote a song for high tenor and three pianos,

“Vote for Names! Names! Names!” One piano incessantly

bangs out the same dissonant chord, while the other two pia-

nos repeat hollow phrases. These represent the candidates,

each with his “hot air slogan.”

The singer is the disillusioned voter who can’t figure out

the best way to vote. “I say,” the tenor announces, “just walk

right in and grab a ballot with eyes shut, and walk right out

again!”

Little has changed 108 years later. It wasn’t quite so easy to

walk right into many overcrowded L.A. polling places, and

the trend is toward ballots not being something you actually

can grab. Still, with each political season, Ives becomes ever

more instructive, and whether or not intentional, the Los

Angeles Philharmonic happens to be startlingly on the case.

After conducting a rare cycle of Ives’ four symphonies,

Gustavo Dudamel now begins the orchestra’s audacious

Power to the People! festival, which he is co-curating with

Herbie Hancock. Over the next month, the L.A. Phil will

spotlight protest art, or at least the subject of the people’s

will. You can even register to vote at a

GUSTAVO DUDAMELconducts Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question” last week as the L.A. Phil plays off-stage at Disney Hall.

Mel MelconLos Angeles Times

The Ives of March

Dudamel brings the power with an early 20th century firebrand

BYMARKSWEDMUSIC CRITIC>>>

[SeeL.A. Phil,E4]

Last week, organizers an-

nounced that the Korea

Times Music Festival at the

Hollywood Bowl was being

postponed “due to current

travel restrictions in Asia”

over fears of COVID-19, the

strain of coronavirus that has

swept across Asia, Europe

and the Middle East and

spread to the U.S. too. While

few U.S. concerts have been

affected yet, it’s clear that the

virus will hit the live music in-

dustry in some way here.

As acts cancel major

shows across Asia, and with

the start of the spring-sum-

mer festival season just

weeks away, artists, booking

agents and promoters are

warily eyeing the disease’s

spread. It’s mainly affected

the Asian concert business

for the time being, but it

could be a severe blow if and

when the virus spreads more

widely in the U.S.

“It’s so hard to tell. This

was going to be one of the

busiest summers ever for fes-

tivals and stadium shows, so

any disruption is going to

have an impact,” said Dave

Brooks, senior director of live

and touring for Billboard. “If

there are cancellations, and if

it’s a down year for the indus-

try, [top concert promoters]

Live Nation and AEG could

probably weather it, but it

could be a death knell for

some independent promot-

ers.”

So far, there have only

been about 11 confirmed U.S.

deaths, including one in Cali-

fornia , but officials do expect

the virus to spread more

widely in the coming weeks.

At least 51 people in Califor-

nia have been diagnosed with

the virus, and both Los Ange-

les, San Francisco, Orange

County have declared health

emergencies.

Vir us

fears

disrupt

concert

plans

With festival season

fast approaching, the

live music industry

faces fans’ concerns.

By August Brown

[SeeConcerts, E5]

In Alex Garland’s new FX

on Hulu series “Devs,”

Sonoya Mizuno plays Lily, a

coding drone working in en-

cryption at Amaya, a giant

tech campus planted in a

redwood forest a shuttle-bus

drive from San Francisco.

Her boyfriend, Sergei (Karl

Glusman), is a budding ge-

nius in quantum computing,

and after he demonstrates

an algorithm that can

crudely predict the behavior

of a nematode, he is drafted

by his lank-haired, bearded

boss, Forest (Nick Offer-

man), into a project called

Devs. (Alison Pill, as Katie, is

Forest’s right hand, or per-

TELEVISION REVIEW

‘Devs’ asks the big questions

SONOYA MIZUNO, left,plays a coding drone whose boyfriend disappears into the

secretive development lab run by Nick Offerman in Alex Garland’s “Devs.”

Raymond LiuFX

Alex Garland’s Silicon

Valley-set sci-fi

thriller may make you

want to watch it twice.

ROBERT LLOYD

TELEVISION CRITIC

[See‘Devs,’E2]

The New
York Times
just de-
buted its
new media
critic, Ben
Smith, with
the head-
line “Why
the Success of the Times
May Be Bad News for
Journalism” and I for one
am very worried.
Not for journalism, for
the New York Times.
It’s certainly a provoca-
tive headline — Ben Smith,
most recently editor of the
news site BuzzFeed, has just
joined the staff of the New
York Times and his first
column is a criticism of his
new employer?!? How
counterintuitive! How cou-
rageous! Even “Morning
Joe” was impressed enough
to ask if Smith had
managed to get fired on his

very first day.

Why, it might even be

considered a “hot take,” if

Smith was not so famously

anti-hot-take that he once

pulled two columns from

BuzzFeed because, as he

said in a Tweet, “We are

trying not to do hot takes.”

(After near-universal out-

rage — both posts were

critical of BuzzFeed adver-

tisers — Smith apologized,

reinstated the posts and

later admitted he had bow-

ed to advertiser pressure.)

Hot, his new media take

might have been. Coura-

geous, however, not so

much. “Isn’t it terrible that

we’re so amazing no one else

can even hope to compete?”

is not a promising start for a

media commentator.

After introducing him-

self via ironic meet-cute —

at BuzzFeed, Smith was

once so sure that he was

part of a digital emergence

N.Y. Times too

powerful? Please

MARY McNAMARA

[SeeMedia,E2]