7 Days In Arts

Saturday

Tonight, West Coast Jewish Theatre launches Clifford Odets’ “Rocket to the Moon” at the Pacific Resident Theatre. Set in the 1930s, the love triangle centers on an unhappily married dentist, the secretary he falls in love with and the older man who has everything but youth on his side. A special fund-raising performance hosted by Monty Hall and honoring Arthur Hiller, Rocky Kalish and Leslie Martinson will be held June 6.

8 p.m. (Thurs.-Sat.), 3 p.m. (Sun.) $20-$23.50. 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. (310) 822-8392. June 6 Fund raiser, 2:30 p.m. $100. (310) 828-1296.

Sunday

Amid the weekend’s barbecues, take time out this evening
to remember. KCET airs the “National Memorial Day Concert,” hosted by actor and
veteran Ossie Davis. Musical performances will feature bluegrass singer Alison
Krauss, Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas and country star Brad Paisley.
Violinist Joshua Bell and Tony Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell will perform
with the National Symphony Orchestra. A documentary about the building of the
new World War II Memorial follows the broadcast. 8 p.m. KCET. “>www.milkenarchive.org

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Tuesday

Architecturally inspired music is the thematic centerpiece for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s and the Getty’s collaborative project, “Building Music.” A two-day symposium on the subject is flanked by individual lectures, as well as a concert series of music informed by the architecture of the Getty and Walt Disney Concert Hall, and older works motivated by architecture of the past. Today, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group presents Green Umbrella Concert, featuring four pieces, including Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel.”

8 p.m. $15-$40. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. (323) 850-2000.

Wednesday

The Los Angeles Conservancy revives Old Hollywood again this year with their “Last Remaining Seats” film series. First in their lineup is the classic cross-dressing comedy, “Some Like It Hot,” screening at the historic Los Angeles Theatre this evening. Barring scheduling conflicts, Tony Curtis will reminisce about the movie and his career with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Makiewicz.

8 p.m. $16-$18. 615 S. Broadway, Los Angeles. (213) 430-4219.

Thursday

Literary flavor of the moment, “The Sleeping Father” by Matthew Sharpe, (please, Dan Brown is so five-minutes-ago) gets the full book tour treatment, stopping in our fair city this evening. The novel people are “very excited” about centers on an American Jewish family in crises: the titular paterfamilias has fallen into a coma after unknowingly mixing two kinds of antidepressants. He awakens to find his daughter considering conversion to Catholicism and suicide alternately, and his son lost in his own way. Book Soup hosts a signing with the author.

7 p.m. 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (310) 659-3110.

Friday

P.C. (and worthy) event of the week: “Perspectives 2004”
at the ArcLight runs today through June 6. Subtitled, “When You Look at Me, What
Do You See?” the series presents films that depict the lives of the
developmentally disabled. Among the movies being screened will be Ira Wohl’s
“Best Man: ‘Best Boy’ and All of Us Twenty Years Later,” which revisits Philly,
Wohl’s cousin and the subject of his Oscar-winning documentary “Best Boy.”
$10-$15. 6360 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 464-4226. Or, for something on
the spiritual side, attend a new monthly Friday night service led by Rabbi Naomi
Levy. Nashuva, which means “we will return,” combines new Shabbat melodies, a
live band, meditation and joyful singing. 6:45 p.m. Westwood Hills
Congregational Church, 1989 Westwood Blvd.