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Gustavo Dudamel with the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles in October 2012

When her son Jacob was barely a year old, Teresa Esquivel noticed that music powerfully affected his demeanor. Certain tunes would even make him cry. In particular, if Pokémon was on, Jigglypuff's leitmotif would reduce him to wails, even if Jacob hadn't been previously focused on the TV.

Jacob's parents live in South Central L.A. — Teresa works at the DMV, husband Peter at a motorcycle shop. Now that the shop is more established, things are better, but when the family was just starting out, Peter Esquivel says private lessons for his music-obsessed son would have been out of reach.

Until, that is, the family discovered Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. The organization provides free music instruction to kids in underserved areas of the city, with the motto "Social Change Through Music."

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James Bartlett

Hollywood Bowl sign on Saturday

See also:
*More articles about the Hollywood Bowl
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*10 Annoying Things About Summer in L.A.

Tickets for the Hollywood Bowl went on general sale to the public Saturday morning at 10 a.m., and for Alisha Staten, Gwen Corben, Sheila Tunnel and their cohorts, this meant their "one night, once a year affair" had started on Friday "in the evening" -- the exact time a secret. Coming from Pomona, Fontana, Downtown LA and other places, the dozen had set out their recliners, opened a bottle of wine and enjoyed the evening.

"I'm always number one in the line, and they're two and three," said Gwen, miffed that "unknowns" -- a couple who kept very much to themselves -- had beaten them to it this year. There's not much controversy here, though some recalled four years ago when security guards and high temper mixed when late arrivals accidentally got called up first:

"We had never been ghetto before, but this time the shit hit the fan," Gwen added.

A warm night had made sleeping in their chairs bearable, and it was an outdoor "party" until the 2 a.m. "lights off," when the Bowl goes dark and it's generally accepted that festivities end. "That's a great time, because the deer come out," said Gwen.

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Floppy-haired conductor Gustavo Dudamel made an appearance on Sesame Street last week to teach Elmo a musical thing or two about a musical thing or two -- including the definition of the word stupendous. You know what would be truly stupendous? For the affable maestro to show up on some other TV shows. He's got a killer mane and facial expressions that rival an early-'90s Jim Carrey, so finding other spots shouldn't be tough.

Here are five we'd love to see:

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There's not much talk about music education these days.

With all the budget crises, education cuts and Republican candidates --  none of whom seem terribly supportive of the arts -- you couldn't be blamed for thinking music programs aren't exactly a social priority right now.

So you might be surprised to learn that, despite all the austerity, music education is undergoing a major revolution -- perhaps its most important in generations, as chronicled in the new book Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music.

Fans of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's high-visibility music director, Gustavo Dudamel, probably know much of the story already. The curly-haired conductor whose face adorns nearly every bus and street-lamp in Los Angeles County is the most famous product of Venezuela's El Sistema, the far-reaching network of youth orchestras and local music schools -- hundreds of them -- that has already provided 700,000 young, mostly poor Venezuelans with a comprehensive music education.

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Courtesy 1301PE Gallery

A still from Modern Times, Forever, which might be the longest film ever made

Pacific Standard Time's performance-art festival continues through this weekend, but there are a few great exhibitions to see as well. One in Chinatown is almost therapeutic, while another, on Wilshire, seems low-key at first but becomes more and more ominous.

5. SoCal's greatest, most boring composer
John Cage, the composer who believed silence could be music and boredom could be beautiful, graduated from Los Angeles High School and went to Pomona College, so it's no surprise PST would single him out as a symbol of SoCal's specialness. Friday at SCI-Arc, four performances by contemporary California artists and composers will explore Cage's influence. Re:Composition; SCI-Arc, 960 E. Third St., dwntwn.; Fri., Jan. 27, 8 p.m. (213) 613-2200, k-pst.org.

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Shannon Cottrell

Yoshiki on stage with X Japan at The Wiltern, 2010.

There's a special treat in store for fans of X Japan planning to watch Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards. This year, the annual award show will feature a theme song composed by none other than the seminal Japanese rock band's founder and drummer, Yoshiki.

Yoshiki got a call about the gig while he was touring in Asia last fall, and the offer became official when he returned to L.A. at the end of November. He spent about ten days thinking about what he was going to do for the piece, "a few days" to compose it and two weeks to record.

The theme song, which was recorded in Japan and Los Angeles, features a 35-piece string section and several percussionists. Yoshiki played drums, piano, bass and guitar on the track.

"During the holiday season, it was so hard to get together musicians," he says over the phone.

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The Lyris Quartet performs Gorecki with Jacaranda Saturday and Sunday

It happened during a pledge drive in 1992. After encouraging her listeners to grab a glass of wine, light some candles and just relax, KCRW host Ruth Seymour played a recently released recording of the then-obscure composer Henryk Górecki's "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs."

No one could have predicted what happened next.

Instead of flipping the dial to the other public radio station, people actually listened (count me firmly in the camp of those whose shameless NPR-hopping during pledge drive season would have caused one to miss such a treat).

Who knows how much cash KCRW managed to raise -- but there is no doubt this was Górecki's best pledge drive ever. "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" went straight-up viral. A full decade before sneezing pandas and Auto-Tune made it big on the Internet, the Polish composer's quasi-minimalist Third Symphony sold over a million copies and found itself in the top-ten on the U.K.'s mainstream charts.

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Star Foreman

Damien Elwood, left, with Angie Engelbart, front, and Shabnam Kalbasi

"All you really need to know about Carmen is, one, she's a Gypsy. And two, she's a slut," the singer says before beginning.

It's standing room only at the bar, where a staging of the French opera is taking place. Yes, that's right. Opera. At a bar. Specifically, the Room 5 Lounge atop a restaurant on Beverly Boulevard.

The Bizet with booze comes to Los Angeles -- by way of Brooklyn -- courtesy of the grassroots program Opera on Tap, which aims to bring to the masses the world's snootiest art form.

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Cult soul singer Evie Sands in the 1960s; Sands is performing at Viva Cantina this Sunday.

With the impending shutdown of the 405, everyone's unsure of what to do this weekend. Quoth a friend: "Should I leave? Should I stay? And if I stay, what should I do?"

Have no fear, we've got you covered. Here's a list of our top picks for the weekend, sorted by neighborhood -- so you can slowly amble over to your destination on foot. If you're more intrepid, dust off your bike, and there are no limits to where you can go. Dare to see that movie downtown -- after all, it's only a subway ride away.

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It's a scorching hot day, and the Hollywood Bowl staff has only a few days left to prepare for the new season. Despite the last-minute scurrying, the scene in production director Paul Geller's office is calm, even if his iPhone rings with different tones every few minutes. Geller oversees the magic place where every band, singer or soloist wants to be -- the stage -- although he can't control everything, even after 41 years on the job.

"We had a fox come onstage once, right in the middle of a performance. It sat down behind the pianist for 20 minutes, like it was listening to the music, then walked away. A family of six raccoons hung out to listen on one of the arches once, and skunks passing through the seats produce a 'wave' of people, too."

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