{"id":1090,"date":"2009-08-21T13:47:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T20:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/08\/classical-underground-vs-the-philistines.html"},"modified":"2009-08-21T13:47:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T20:47:00","slug":"classical-underground-vs-the-philistines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/08\/classical-underground-vs-the-philistines.html","title":{"rendered":"Classical Underground Vs. The Philistines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/So8anTtX0aI\/AAAAAAAAAYA\/VpE8FDQT9Do\/s1600-h\/studio.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/So8anTtX0aI\/AAAAAAAAAYA\/VpE8FDQT9Do\/s400\/studio.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/a>IN my decade and a half writing about artists and cultural figures, i never met anyone as passionate, committed and outright insane for art as a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alexeysteele.com\/\">lexey steele<\/a>, a soviet born painter who runs a monthly &#8220;classical underground&#8221; series in his artists loft. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment\/news\/arts\/la-ca-classical-underground23-2009aug23,0,2392687.story?page=1\">here&#8217;s<\/a> my piece.)<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>but at first, i thought the whole thing might be a joke &#8212; that alexey, who comes on a little bit like borat (check <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WBhT1cUXfE4\">this<\/a> out) might be putting me on. &#8220;i am overloaded!!&#8221; he shouted when i came to see him in an elaborate loft not far from LAX one night. he was wearing a fedora, reeking of sweat, and holding a hammer which he gestured with widly as he made points about art, malevich, the marketplace, and within a minute or two, the power grid was overloaded too: the fan and all the lights in his loft suddenly shut off.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>a few minutes later, power restored, he runs off to get us some glasses and a bottle of the excellent angel city beer. cue broken glass. &#8220;sonofabitch!&#8221; i hear from the next room.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>besides some fascinating (and overheated) conversations, alexey also showed me one of the most memorable classical concerts i&#8217;ve ever seen &#8212; a chamber music show that included the first bach cello suite and a prokofiev piano sonata, in a casual warehouse space with near-perfect acoustics. my only hope is that the exposure my times piece brings does not change what alexey and his co-conspirators have labored to offer.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Photo credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alexeysteele.com\/\">HighArtForever<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IN my decade and a half writing about artists and cultural figures, i never met anyone as passionate, committed and outright insane for art as alexey steele, a soviet born painter who runs a monthly &#8220;classical underground&#8221; series in his artists loft. (here&#8217;s my piece.) but at first, i thought the whole thing might be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80,54,30,477],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-chamber-music","7":"category-classical-music","8":"category-los-angeles","9":"category-russian","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}