Mark Swed, who is (perhaps wisely) ignoring our attempts to stir up trouble over his incoherent Jefferson Friedman review last week, is wild about the Michael Gordon/Richard Foreman opera What to Wear which is now playing a limited run at REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in beautiful downtown L.A..  A couple of snippets:

“What to Wear” — with dazzling, hard-hitting music by Michael Gordon and words, staging, design and equally hard-hitting and dazzling zaniness by Richard Foreman — is being called a rock opera.

It’s not. If it were, rock opera could, after the premiere of this arresting new hour of music theater at REDCAT on Wednesday night, be acknowledged as having finally come of age. 

And:

What to Wear” is scheduled for nine more performances. Ten times that number would be more like it.

Good piece in the Times this morning about the Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero who is said to be almost singlehandedly reviving the lost art of improvisation–at least in a classical framework.  Montero, who has never studied or played jazz, can apparently take any song she knows suggested at random and immediately turn it into a Bach or Mozart or Antonio Carlos Jobim improvisation, including the other night at Joe’s Pub a blistering take on Gloria Gaynor’s disco anthem “I Will Survive.”

There are some samples on her web site but I can’t get the registration thing to work.  Looks like a job for our ace webmaster Super Jeff.

And yes, Andrea, I am showing off my newfound restraint and maturity.