Free Eleos Music GALA Concert at Westlake Village at 2pm Saturday, June 29, 2013

If anyone is looking for a music teacher or an excellent music education program, coming to Eleos Music's free Gala concert this Saturday at 2pm in Westlake Village will be a good start.  Families, including children, are welcome.  There will be a reception after the concert.

I am happy to share my own personal experience with the Eleos Music program for the past 4 years.  I should also mention that I do not personally benefit from attracting more students to this music program, but this program may be perfect for some families reading this blog :)

My children have been studying what I consider to be "Colburn-in-one-teacher" with Alexander Michael Tseitlin (Sasha) who, together with his wife, founded Eleos Music with the goal of providing the type of music education they wish they had with the music curriculum that they have put together!  

Eleos Music has two main campuses - one in WLA and the other in Conejo Valley.  All the string instruments, including guitar,and piano as well as voice, music history and theory (including listening and taking music dictation) and composition are taught.  My son, age 11, plays both the piano and violin and takes a one-hour lesson each week and learns both instruments at almost the same level.  My daughter, age 10, plays the piano and celloand takes 45-minute lessons.  Both have progressed to the Foundations level, learning instrumental techniques, music theory, composition and music dictation, with informal recitals every 6-weeks.

We are very pleased with the music program and I often recommend this compact and somewhat accelerated program to families looking for an excellent music program which you can check out at www.eleosmusic.com.

Students can study at both recreational enjoyment level and more seriously up to the proficiency and advanced (MA-equivalent) levels. My son has attended weekend music retreats in San Diego with private lessons with Mr. Tseitlin Sr.  Graduates of the proficiency program should easily qualify for college music scholarships as they would be able to play the concert and competition-level repertoire.  Next year, some Eleos students, including my son, will be participating at the International Music Festival in Germany.  Non-Eleos students can audition to qualify to attend this music festival too.  I don't know the exact pieces played by other soloists and guest soloists on Saturday, but my son will be playing Messenet's Meditation on the violin.

If anyone is interested in coming to see the dress rehearsals earlier, letme know since I will be there all day from 9am for the soloists' recordings and rehearsals to the the full orchestral rehearsal.

EVENT:  Free Gala Concert featuring soloists, ensembles and orchestra.

All welcome, especially families who want to check out the quality of music studied, learned and played at Eleos Music and to meet with faculty. The youngest students are around 5 years old, but some precocious learners have started piano earlier at 4.

Location:  Saturday June 29th at Westminster Presbyterian Church at
Westlake Village

Address:  Westlake Village, 32111 Watergate Road, Westlake Village,
CA 91361

2:00 PM - Concert
3:30 PM - Reception

Below is the press release from Eleos Music regarding the Gala concert and
Eleos Music..

============== press release from Eleos Music============

Eleos Music

Eleos Music Studios
P.O. Box 1268
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
www.eleosmusic.com
office@eleosmusic.com

(310) 285-8202

Rebecca Tseitlin, Marketing Director
cell: (805) 444-3485

Gala Concert

Eleos Music is a program designed to provide excellent and accessible
Classical music education. Our students are performers, composers, and
artists from the early to pre-professional years. The annual Gala Concert
celebrates the work our students have done throughout the year, and is a
free event open to the general public. The event draws students and
their families (between 80 and 140 attendees) as well as a number of
outside attendees and press. Guest artists often come to perform as well.
Eleos Music has two locations; one in West LA and one in Thousand Oaks.

The Gala Concert program includes:

3 orchestras
A 60-member choir
A selection of soloists
Guest Artists

The concert repertoire includes compositions by Schubert, Mozart, Vivaldi,
and Popper.  We expect to have prominent members of the LA classical
community present as well.

Who We Are

Eleos Music has 2 campuses in the Los Angeles area in Conejo Valley and West Los Angeles. We provide our high class of  classical music education in areas local to families. We strive to bring excellence in music education in an environment where students can thrive. Our students quickly become well-rounded, intelligent, and masterful musicians. Our students perform at our monthly recitals, are seated in top local orchestras, and demonstrate extraordinary musicianship.

Eleos Music faculty members are selected from today’s most promising
artists and musicians, and are extensively trained inhouse. This creates
one of the most unique elements of the Eleos Music program: continuity in
teaching content, style, and results.

Eleos Music closely partners with the California Institute of Music in San
Diego, and IMF Germany (an annual music festival in Germany).

History

Eleos Music was founded by a husband and wife team, Alexander and Rebecca Tseitlin. They founded their organization in 2007 in the locations of their own private studios (Conejo Valley, West Los Angeles, and Santa Clarita). Rebecca Tseitlin is a respected orchestral, chamber, and soloing musician from Thousand Oaks. Alexander Tseitlin is from a Russian family with a long and rich musical heritage that reaches back to the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and Moscow University. Alexander and Rebecca authored their own comprehensive music curriculum which seamlessly integrates instrumental technique, musicianship, and music history. Their goal is to train a new generation of young musicians with a thorough grasp of music as a whole, who can perform, teach, and enjoy music for their lifetimes. They are committed to a high level of training and to providing
an encouraging environment for students to grow and learn. They have also developed a teacher training program which trains eligible students to teach others through the Eleos curriculum. Their faculty has grown to include two professors, one pedagogue, and three teaching assistants; a formidable faculty with which they are able to effectively develop a strong student body.

George Balanchine and Los Angeles Ballet's Balanchine Red Festival at UCLA Royce Hall this Sunday June 9 at 2pm

"We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is one of the great arts. Like the music of great musicians, it can be enjoyed and understood without any verbal introduction or explanation ... The important thing in ballet is that movement itself, as it is sound which is important in a symphony. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle, not the story is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye — and the audience, in its turn, must train itself to see what is performed upon the stage. It is the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician. If the illusion fails, the ballet fails, no matter how well a program note tells the audience that it has succeeded."

So writes the foremost contemporary choreographer George Balanchine!   He was not only a gifted ballet dancer himself, debuting as a cupid at age 10 in Sleeping Beauty with Mariinsky Ballet Theatre, but he was a son of a composer and studied both the piano and music composition.  Read more about his background at this link, where this quote and the one below come from:  http://www.nycballet.com/explore/our-history/george-balanchine.aspx  

"He began studying the piano at the age of five and following his graduation in 1921, from the Imperial Ballet School (the St. Petersburg academy where he had started his dance studies at the age of nine), he enrolled in the state's Conservatory of Music, where he studied piano and musical theory, including composition, harmony and counterpoint, for three years. Such extensive musical training made it possible for Balanchine as a choreographer to communicate with a composer of such stature as Igor Stravinsky; the training also gave Balanchine the ability to reduce orchestral scores on the piano, an invaluable aid in translating music into dance. ...  Igor Stravinsky, once described their association on one particular ballet as follows:

Balustrade, the ballet that George Balanchine and Pavel Tchelitchew made of the Violin Concerto, was one of the most satisfactory visualizations of any of my works. Balanchine composed the choreography as he listened to my recording, and I could actually observe him conceiving gesture, movement, combination, composition. The result was a series of dialogues perfectly complimentary to and coordinated with the dialogues of the music." Hofmannsthal once said to Strauss: "Ballet is perhaps the only form of art which permits real, intimate collaboration between two people gifted with visual imagination."

For a short video of the two of them in discussion and view short excerpts from two versions of Balustrade, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CV9vtFpbgo

For a list of Balanchine's works and more personal details on his life, see this Wiki entry:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Balanchine

If you would like to see Balanchine's dance choreography performed, these youtube videos will illuminate the ideas quoted above.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/HC3zW-K8AV91o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FixT33wXqk8  Diana Vishneva - Vyacheslav Samurov - "Rubies"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud8zVcHPnuM Selections from Agon with music by Stravinsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm_xxKPliwM La Valse with music by Ravel (rare entire ballet)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FGRUjhVujg&list=PLBADED5419348EBC0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnJUtKBoQrc&playnext=1&list=PLBADED5419348EBC0&feature=results_main

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN_YZ72hT34&list=PLBADED5419348EBC0&index=15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p93LUjOODfw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhzDZnrIlSE&list=PLBADED5419348EBC0 (amazing technique)

If you are in Los Angeles, come and join us on Sunday June 9 at UCLA's ROYCE HALL on our fieldtrip to see Los Angeles Ballet perform Balanchine Red Festival showcasing these three dances:

La Valse - A waltz of frenetic energy with a hint of doom.

Agon - Twelve dancers in black and white in a contest of dance.

Rubies - The embodiment of the gem's elegance and appeal.

 We will be having picnic lunch from 12noon, attend a talk about Balanchine at 1pm if you wish, and then see the show at 2pm.  Contact me at reallykf@gmail.com for details on this special and very affordable fieldtrip.  Limited tickets available and first come, first served :)

This Saturday June 8 at Getty Center - Renaissance Family Festival

One of our greatest delights of living in Los Angeles is enjoying the periodic family festivals at both the Getty Villa and Getty Center.  For the same parking cost of $15 for the day, you can enjoy special art workshops and special dance, music, drama, or story-telling performances related to the theme of the family festivals which is usually inspired by one of the special exhibits.  It does get more crowded, but well worth a visit on these special days.  Don't forget your address book if you wish to have your own specially-created "wish you were here" postcards sent by Getty Center to any part of the world :)

Little known is the fact I learned from a security staff near the taxi stand:  the first hour of parking is free.  You can drop off passengers inside the parking structure.  According to the link below, if you wish to visit both the Getty Villa and Getty Center on the same day, you can now "pay once, park twice" with your $15 parking.  I haven't tried that myself, so find out what parking evidence you need for the second museum.  Remember that Getty Center is closed on Mondays and Getty Villa is closed on Tuesdays.  Parking after 5pm is $10 and Getty Center is open till 9pm on Saturday and Sundays.  Getty Villa always closes at 5pm.

Check changes in visiting hours and parking policy at:
http://www.getty.edu/visit/hours/index.html#parking

This Saturday's festival is inspired by the exhibit on "The Gardens of the Renaissance."  In addition to their permanent exhibits, these are their current exhibits and their closing dates.  Enjoy your family day of  fun learning there this Saturday!

		Gardens of the Renaissance May 28–August 11, 2013
		In Focus: Ed Ruscha April 9–September 29, 2013
		Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940–1990 April 9–July 21, 2013
		Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto March 26–August 25, 2013
		Looking East: Rubens's Encounter with Asia March 5–June 9, 2013
		The Life of Art: Context, Collecting, and Display February 7, 2012–Ongoing

	Brigid's Daughter

Family Festival Celebrating Gardens of the Renaissance

Date: Saturday, June 8, 2013
Time: 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Admission: Free; no reservations required.

Celebrate the Gardens of the Renaissance in this free daylong family festival. Create a garden of your very own or fashion a floral wreath at one the interactive workshops. Delight in the sounds of madrigals from the 15th and 16th centuries or listen to tales of distant kingdoms with renowned storytellers.

Ad Hoc Consort

COURTYARD STAGE

Ad Hoc Consort
10:30–11:15 a.m. and 2:30–3:15 p.m.
The Ad Hoc Consort is an eclectic group of musicians that enjoy playing and performing music from the Renaissance and medieval periods on instruments from those eras. Recorders, krumhorns, sackbuts, viols, shawms, and serpents make up what you'll see. Come experience the true sounds of the English Renaissance! 

Brigid's Daughter
Noon–12:45 p.m. and 3:45–4:30 p.m. 
Brigid's Daughters features Colleen Russell, Stephanie Molen, and friends. Dressed in beautiful Italian gowns, these performers set to entertain and delight you with music written in the Renaissance era in six different languages. 

	Country Garden Dancers

Country Garden Dancers
1:15–2:00 p.m. and 5:00–5:45 p.m.
A high-energy troop of English country dancers performs leaps and lifts in a swirling flash of color and sound. Join these lively lads and lasses in a step or two. 

MUSEUM LECTURE HALL

Flower Fairies: A Bouquet of Tales
1:00–1:45 p.m. and 3:30–4:15 p.m.
Storyteller David Prather employs a flowering humor, cultivated wit, and budding audience participation to bring flower-centric stories to full bloom! 


WORKSHOPS
10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

Garden of Crafted Delights with Asuka Hisa (Museum Courtyard)
Create a Renaissance garden full of original floral and vegetal works of art in this site-specific participatory workshop. 

Floral Frames (Museum Courtyard) 
Use floral-pattern paper, botanic stencils, and tissue paper to create flowers to decorate a frame to display your postcard-sized art. 

Postcards (GRI Lawn) 
Create your own work of art using rubber stamps with floral patterns. We will mail your postcard anywhere in the world! 

Renaissance Wreath with Marianne Sadowski (Museum Courtyard)
Create a beautiful wreath adorned with fresh flowers and then parade around the festival grounds in all your glory.