DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Fancy yourself the next Nigel Lythgoe or Bruno Tonioli? If you’ve got an eye for contemporary dance, The A.W.A.R.D. Show! gives you the chance to participate in an alternative “So You Think You Can Dance”-style competition at REDCAT. Each night from Jan. 13-15 at 8:30 p.m., four regional dance artists will present their work, followed by a conversation between the performers and the audience, and a vote to advance one company to the final round. The whole shebang climaxes on Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. when the finalists perform and a panel of judges and the audience choose a winner. Your vote counts! At 631 W. Second St., (213) 237-2800 or redcat.org.
• National Public Radio first hit the airwaves in April 1971 with live coverage of the Senate hearings on the Vietnam War. A month later it debuted its weekday newsmagazine “All Things Considered.” That program and NPR are still going strong as the independent, self-supporting media organization turns 40 this year. So what does the future hold for middle-aged public radio? The Aloud series welcomes Susan Stamberg, an NPR special correspondent, and Geneva Overholser, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, to the Central Library on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at 7 p.m., to discuss how public radio might respond to an ever-shifting media landscape. At 630 W. Fifth St., (213) 228-7025 or aloudla.org.
• René Pape has a reputation, and you’ve got one night only to hear him live up to it. The dude (our word) known as “the greatest operatic bass in the world” appears Saturday, Jan. 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The German singer has won raves at every major opera house in the world and returns to L.A. Opera (his company debut was in Verdi’s Requiem in 2007) to perform a program of German lieder. That is, songs composed to German poems of high literary standing, mostly in the 19th century, and arranged for a single voice and piano. Pape’s recital will feature some of the most celebrated lieder from Schubert, Schumann and Wolf, accompanied by pianist Brian Zeger. At 135 S. Grand Ave., (213) 972-8001 or laopera.com.
• Can you say “Wurlitzer Weekend” three times, fast? The Los Angeles Theatre Organ Society kicks off a celebration of the world’s first synthesizers on Friday, Jan. 14, at 8 p.m., at the Orpheum Theater with a screening of the 1927 silent comedy Her Wild Oat accompanied by organist Bob Salisbury. He’ll be playing the movie palace’s “Mighty Wurlitzer” (one of only three original theater pipe organs still in Southern California) while silent film star Colleen Moore plays a waitress who sows her oats on a wild, rollicking ride into high society. At 832 S. Broadway, (888) 528-6722 or latos.org.
• Was there a deadly curse on 19th century Germanic composers? Bohemia-born Gustav Mahler thought so because both Beethoven and Schubert had died before completing their tenths. Thus, he conspired to trick the reaper by not titling his ninth symphonic work a “symphony,” but rather The Song of the Earth. The L.A. Philharmonic takes on the horse-by-any-other-name-is-still-a-symphony with another passionate Gustav(o) at the reigns — Dudamel — at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday, Jan. 13, at 8 p.m. Additional performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony are Jan. 14-15. Alas, the reaper wasn’t fooled and Mahler died before he could finish his next, actual tenth, symphony. At 111 S. Grand Ave., musiccenter.org.
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