A Hard-to-Beatle Benefit!

UCLA Organist Christoph Bull Unites with Action Painter Norton Wisdom for John Lennon Tribute

‘Get back to where you once belonged” go some lyrics from a Beatles song. Apply them to the Villa Aurora’s 1928 Artcraft theater organ, which is currently under restoration for its December 2010 return. UCLA organist Christoph Bull will perform at a Beatles-themed benefit concert at ‘John Lennon Tribute: A Happening,’ to take place on Tuesday, December 8 at the Villa on Paseo Miramar. Proceeds will go toward the organ’s restoration. Bull and artist Norton Wisdom, billed as an ‘action painter,’ will pay tribute to late musician Lennon, one of the Beatles and one of the most important songwriters of all time. Lennon was fatally shot 29 years before the date of the Villa’s event. Among the 29 selections from Lennon’s Beatles and solo songbooks are: ‘In My Life,’ ‘Norwegian Wood,’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Imagine.’ Bull, who hails from Manheim, Germany, has been the university organist and organ professor at UCLA since 2002. He is also the principal organist at First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica. He has performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Royce Hall, the Whisky a Go Go and the Viper Room. He has also opened in concert for pop singer Cindy Lauper, and has worked with funk legends George Clinton and Bootsy Collins of Parliament Funkadelic. Since 1979, the artist Wisdom has worked as a performance painter with musical ensembles, spontaneously painting images at the Monterey Jazz Fest 2005, the Winter Olympics 2002, the opening of the Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas, and with Cirque Du Soleil, Las Vegas. The Santa Barbara Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum, San Diego Museum, Skirball Cultural Center, and Orange County Museum of Art are among the California institutions, where he has contributed his art. Guests of honor at the benefit will include Mechthild Borries-Knopp, the Villa Aurora’s executive director, and the organ builders currently working to restore the Villa’s organ in time for its comeback concert: Ed Burnside, Ken Kukuk and Greg Rister (recently featured in the October 22 article ‘A New Life for Villa’s Organ,’ at the PalisadesPost.com archives). Attendance at the event is a tax-deductible contribution that will help Villa Aurora restore an instrument played by Hanns Eisler, Bruno Walter, and Ernst Toch and which accompanied films screened for Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger and their guests, among whom were Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin, and Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Contact: 310-454-4231 or e-mail infola@villa-aurora.org.