Business
Column: 60 years ago in Los Angeles, piano virtuoso Glenn Gould revolutionized the music industry by ending his concert career
On the evening of April 10, 1964 — that is, 60 years ago Wednesday — the Canadian virtuoso Glenn Gould stepped away from the piano at the end of his concert at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles and revolutionized the recording industry.
There was no announcement at that landmark moment in L.A.; only the ensuing circumstance would tell the story. For the Wilshire Ebell recital marked the end of the 31-year-old star’s performing career. He would never play another note in public.
He was the first — and possibly the only — classical musician to shun public performances entirely. Henceforth, his entire output would be heard only via records and videos.
Dial twiddling … is an interpretive act.
— Glenn Gould grants listeners the right to manipulate recorded sound
Gould was then a world-famous exponent of the music of J.S. Bach. His debut recording on Columbia, released in 1956, was an electrifying performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which had been consigned to academic obscurity.
The album was a monster hit and established Gould’s worldwide reputation. In a doleful irony, his digital rerecording of the piece, taken at a more stately tempo and with other changes, would be the last Gould album released by Columbia before his untimely death at age 50 in 1982.
At the time Gould shifted to a recording-only career, his fellow artists doubted that he would stand by his decision. As late as 1971, Arthur Rubinstein told him, “You will come back to it, you know.” Gould replied, “If this is a bet, maestro, you will lose it.”
Gould demonstrated that recording technology need not come between artists and their listeners; in fact, it could enhance their relationship. His fans, of which I am one, find themselves in a uniquely intimate connection with the artist, in part because his astonishing technique and superb musical intelligence comes through so vividly in his recordings.
Gould in effect turned the economics of the music industry upside-down. Rather than seeing records as marketing adjuncts to concert tours, he showed that recordings could be the principal point of contact — in his case, the only point — between musicians and their fans.
Gould became the chief herald of the new era of digital recording, and of the power it gave artists — and audiences — to reconfigure even the most familiar classical warhorses to their individual tastes.
He foresaw that new technologies — including those not yet invented — could put creative decisions in listeners’ hands, allowing them to adjust the tempi and mixes of recorded pieces in the home, adjust the sound mix to individual preference and even splice a section from one conductor’s performance of a familiar piece into another’s. “Dial twiddling,” he wrote, “is an interpretive act.”
Recording could rescue whole musical genres from oblivion; Gould pointed out that recordings were a major factor in the postwar restoration of baroque music, especially on original instruments, to the marketplace.
“This repertoire — with its contrapuntal extravaganzas, its antiphonal balances, its espousal of instruments that chuff and wheeze and speak directly to a microphone — was made for stereo,” he wrote. Only after that pre-classical repertoire established its popularity in records did it find its way to the concert stage.
Gould was not exactly a pioneer in what his longtime producer, Andrew Kazdin, termed “creative lying.” The most famous early case involved a 1952 recording of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” in which the aging soprano Kirsten Flagstad was unable to hit a high C.
The producer, Walter Legge, called on his wife, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, to record the note, which was dubbed in. The subterfuge was made public only years later.
Before Gould, such splices, inserts, dubbings and other tools of the recording engineers were generally seen as remedies for brief mistakes, sometimes of a single note. But he used them to fashion something new.
In 1966 he wrote of overcoming his dissatisfaction with two takes of a fugue from Book 1 of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, one take he considered “rather pompous” and the other overly jubilant — and both “monotonous.”
He solved the problem by using the first for the fugue’s opening and conclusion, and splicing in the second for the midsection, producing a version “far superior to anything we could at the time have done in the studio.”
Gould’s decision to abandon public recitals was brewing for years, possibly since the launch of his international performing career, which began in January 1955 with concerts in Washington and New York and would carry him across the U.S. and to Europe.
He had always detested traveling except by train, but hated even more what he saw as a “blood sport” pitting performer against audience. He saw concerts as “the frantic pursuit of a succession of daily events, momentary, ephemeral,” forcing performers to “calcify” their interpretations so they could be repeated over and over.
The recording studio, he felt, afforded artists the opportunity to perfect their vision of a piece in splendid isolation, and to rectify any flaws — and not only technical mistakes — in post-production.
Even while he was still giving concerts, Gould was known as an unreliable booking, prone to last-minute cancellations — he skipped a 1964 concert in Chicago three times before finally showing up. (It was his final public performance other than the Los Angeles recital.)
Indeed, when Leonard Bernstein came out on stage alone at the start of a performance with the New York Philharmonic on April 8, 1962, he felt constrained to notify the audience, “Don’t be frightened — Mr. Gould is here.”
The event became the most famous of Gould’s performing career. Bernstein’s purpose was to disavow Gould’s “unorthodox” interpretation of their program piece, Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, though he said Gould was so important a musical thinker that he would perform it to Gould’s specified tempi anyway.
(Bernstein later revealed that when Gould visited him at his New York apartment before the performance, his appearance was so slovenly — another personal quirk — that his then-wife, Felicia Montealegre, pulled him into the bathroom to shampoo his matted hair and give it a trim. Moviegoers might recognize Montealegre as the character portrayed by Carey Mulligan in the 2023 Bernstein biopic “Maestro.”)
Gould’s onstage behavior tended to provoke controversy. He slouched at the piano, left leg crossed over the right, seated on an ancient piano chair that his father had built, which placed him so low that he almost had to stretch his hands higher to reach the keyboard.
During a concerto performance, when not actually playing he waved his hands about as though conducting the piece, enraging music critics accustomed to a more solemn bearing from tuxedo-clad soloists. Ever willing in his earlier years to critique himself with a self-effacing grin, he referred in a 1959 documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to “the justifiable complaints that I sometimes hear about my platform manner.”
As it happens, some of those tics transferred themselves to his recordings. On many albums one can hear the creaking of his chair, or a “hiccup” in some notes produced by the tight keyboard action he demanded from his pianos to produce the percussive, almost harpsichord-like sound that was his hallmark. Above all, there is his humming and singing audible in the background.
Columbia technicians spent years trying to suppress these artifacts in post-production, without notable success. In another 1959 CBC documentary, Columbia recording director Howard Scott is seen pleading with Gould before a take of Bach’s Italian Concerto for “a straight piano solo, without vocal obbligato.” A hearing of the recording proves that he didn’t get it.
But those were all part of the Gould mystique, accepted and appreciated by his listeners as though they brought them face-to-face with the artist himself. When they were heard on a Gould take, Kazdin reported, “Glenn always greeted them as one would long-lost friends.”
The influence Gould exerted on his fellow artists and the recording industry generally is incalculable. Columbia and its successors have never let the Gould library go out of print; with every advance in technology, the company remasters the recordings (most recently in 2015) and they always sell.
It’s as if by forswearing the evanescent experience of real-life performing, Glenn Gould gave himself eternal fame. And it happened in Los Angeles, where he ended one chapter of his career so he could embark on the next.
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Californians are feeling more pain at the pump than any other state as the conflict with Iran pushes up prices.
Spencer Shearer was filling up his Nissan Sentra on Friday morning at the Chevron station in Brentwood near San Vicente and Montana avenues and paying a rate higher than almost anywhere else in the country: $5.55 per gallon.
“It sucks,” Shearer said as he watched his bill on the pump click toward $50.
With the continued conflict in and around Iran, gas prices are rising. In the Los Angeles area and a few places around the San Francisco Bay Area, the cost of gas has cracked $5-per-gallon again and is even tipping toward $6 in a few places.
The spreading conflict in the Persian Gulf has had a predictable but unwelcome impact on California drivers. Californians usually pay far more for gas than people in other states.
Its pole position on prices is continuing with the latest surge.
The average cost of a gallon of regular gas in California is the most expensive in the country at $4.91, up 6% from a week ago and 11% from a month ago, according to AAA. The nationwide average is $3.32 per gallon.
The conflict with Iran has strangled movement through the Persian Gulf and catapulted the price of a barrel of oil.
The prices in California are higher than in other states because of higher taxes and stricter requirements for cleaner, more expensive gas that pollutes less. This has been a festering issue not only for the industry but also for consumers.
Fuel marketers, gas station owners and some voters have blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s policies.
Gas prices at a Shell station on Foothill Boulevard.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Newsom told regulators in 2021 to stop issuing fracking permits and phase out oil extraction by 2045. He also signed a bill allowing local governments to block the construction of oil and gas wells. He seemed to ease his stance last year and signed a bill allowing up to 2,000 new oil wells per year through 2036 in Kern County, which produces about three-fourths of the state’s crude oil.
As a result of the policies that seem aimed at punishing oil producers, California has seen a steady decline in crude oil production, making it more reliant on oil and gasoline supplies outside the state.
In 2024, only 23% of the crude oil refined in the state was pumped in California, with 13% from Alaska and 63% from elsewhere in the world, including about 30% from the Middle East, according to the Western States Petroleum Assn.
The primary reason gas prices in California are high is that refinery closures are reducing local supply while demand has remained high, said Zachary Leary, chief lobbyist at the Western States Petroleum Assn.
“Geopolitical events … show and highlight how fragile it is here in California,” he said.
California’s special gasoline blends are increasingly imported from overseas and can require more than a month to transport, he added.
Supply bottlenecks have been exacerbated by recent refinery closures, including the Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington in October and the idling and planned closure of the Valero refinery in Benicia, which reduced refining capacity in the state by close to 20%.
It is hard to predict how long this spike in prices will stay, said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
“We don’t know whether the war will widen or end quickly,” said Borenstein. “Those things will drive the price of crude.”
At the Brentwood gas station, product manager Conner Uretsky, 30, waited as his partner refueled her Toyota Prius ahead of a trip to Palm Springs. Lately, he said, surging fuel costs have made him think twice about going on road trips.
Uretsky, who moved to Los Angeles from the East Coast about six years ago, said he was initially shocked by the region’s high cost of living.
“Gas prices are crazy,” he said.
Paula, a writer who declined to share her last name, said she was “furious” at President Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran, as well as his recent actions in Venezuela and threats against Greenland and Cuba.
“If you look at who’s paying for this war, we are,” she said, pointing to the fuel price flip sign as she waited for her Volvo hybrid SUV to refuel.
Shearer says he has to be more careful with his gas budget. The business analyst tries to find the least expensive gas near his home in Los Angeles. Still, he’s gotten used to California’s high prices.
“It feels almost normal to be paying this amount,” he said.
Times staff writer Laurence Darmiento contributed to this report.
Pop Mart, the Chinese toymaker known for its collectible Labubu dolls, reportedly plans to open a new office building in Culver City as it seeks to expand its North American presence.
The 22,000-square-foot office will serve as Pop Mart’s new U.S. headquarters, according to real estate data provider CoStar, which earlier reported the deal.
Pop Mart, founded in 2010 in Beijing, is credited with fueling the frenzy over “blind boxes” — small, collectible toys sold in packaging that keeps the exact figure inside a surprise until it is unsealed.
The toymaker, which is publicly traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has nearly 600 physical stores across 18 countries, according to its September 2025 half-year financial report.
Much of its recent growth has concentrated in the U.S. In the first half of last year, the company opened 40 new stores, including 19 in the Americas. In Southern California, it now has stores in Westfield Century City, Glendale Galleria, and Westfield UTC Mall in La Jolla.
The office building Pop Mart is moving into, named “Slash,” features leaning glass windows and a distinguishable jagged design. The 1999 building was designed by the Los Angeles architect Eric Owen Moss.
Pop Mart’s decision to root itself in L.A.’s Westside comes amid Culver City’s transformation from a sleepy suburb known for being the home to Sony Pictures Studios — to an urban hub, driven, in part, by the Expo Line station that opened in 2012.
Ikea recently announced plans to open a 40,000-square-foot store in Culver City’s historic Helms Bakery complex — its first in L.A.’s Westside — later this spring.
Big tech has played an important role in Culver City’s recent evolution. Recent additions include Apple, which has opened a studio and has been building a larger office campus; Amazon, which in 2022 unveiled a massive virtual production stage, and Tiktok, which in 2020 opened a five-floor office featuring a content creation studio. Pinterest has a new office in Culver City as of last month, according to the company’s LinkedIn account.
Business
After Warner Bros. merger, changes are coming to the historic Paramount lot. Here’s what to expect
With Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. expected to saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, Paramount executives are looking to do away with redundant assets including real estate — and there is a lot of that.
Chief in the public’s imagination are their historic studios in Burbank and Hollywood, where legendary films and television show have been made for generations and continue to operate year-round.
“Both of these studios are in the core [30-mile zone,] the inner circle of where Hollywood talent wants to be,” entertainment property broker Nicole Mihalka of CBRE said. “It’s very prime real estate.”
When Sony and Apollo were bidding for Paramount in early 2024, their plan was to sell the Paramount property, but there is no indication that Paramount would part with its namesake lot.
For now, Paramount’s plan is to keep both studios operating with each studio releasing about 15 films a year, but the goal is to eventually consolidate most of the studio operations around the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank in order to to eliminate redundancies with the Paramount lot on Melrose Avenue, people close to Chief Executive David Ellison said.
A view of the Warner Bros. Studios water tower Feb. 23, 2026, in Burbank.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Paramount would not look to raze its celebrated studio lot — the oldest operating film studio in Los Angeles — because of various restrictions on historic buildings there. Paramount also has a relatively new post-production facility on site and will likely need to the studio space.
Instead, the plan would be to lease out space for film productions, including those from combined Paramount-HBO streaming operations. Ellison also is considering plans to develop other parts of the 65-acre site for possible retail use, as well as renting space for commercial offices.
The studios’ combined property holdings are vast, and real estate data provider CoStar estimates they have about 12 million square feet of overlapping uses, including their studio campuses, offices and long-term leases in such film centers as Burbank, Hollywood and New York.
Century-old Paramount Pictures Studios is awash in Hollywood history — think Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond desperately trying to enter its famous gate in “Sunset Boulevard,” and other classics such as “The Godfather,” “Titanic” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
The lot, however, is a congested warren of stages, offices, trailers and support facilities such as woodworking mills that date to the early 20th century. The layout is byzantine in part because Paramount bought the former rival RKO studio lot from Desilu Productions to create the lot known today.
Warner Bros. occupies 11 million square feet and owns 14 properties totaling 9.5 million square feet, largely in the United States and United Kingdom, CoStar said. About 3 million square feet of that commercial property is in the Los Angeles area.
The firm’s portfolio also includes the sprawling Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden complex in the U.K. and Turner Broadcasting System headquarters in Atlanta.
Paramount Skydance occupies 8 million square feet and owns 14 properties totaling 2.1 million square feet, according to CoStar. In addition to its Hollywood campus, Paramount’s holdings include prominent buildings in New York such as the Ed Sullivan Theater and CBS Broadcast Center.
Warner Bros. operates a 3-million-square-foot lot in Burbank with more than 30 soundstages — along with space for building sets and backlot areas — where famous movies including “Casablanca” and television shows such as “Friends” were filmed. Paramount’s 1.2-million-square-foot Melrose campus anchors a broader network of owned and leased production space, CoStar said.
Paramount’s lot is already cleared for more development. More than a decade ago, Paramount secured city approval to add 1.4 million square feet to its headquarters and some adjacent properties owned by the company.
The redevelopment plan, valued at $700 million in 2016, underwent years of environmental review and public outreach with neighbors and local business owners.
The plan would allow for construction of up to 1.9 million square feet of new stage, production office, support, office, and retail uses, and the removal of up to 537,600 square feet of existing stage, production office, support, office, and retail uses, for a net increase of nearly 1.4 million square feet.
The proposal preserves elements of the past by focusing future development on specific portions of the lot along Melrose and limited areas in the production core, architecture firm Rios said.
The Warner Bros. and Paramount lots “are two of the most prime pieces of real estate in the country,” Mihalka said. “These are legacy assets with a lot of potential to be [tourist] attractions in addition to working studios.”
Hollywood is still reeling from previous mergers, in addition to a sharp pullback in film and television production locally as filmmakers chase tax credits offered overseas and in other states, including New York and New Jersey.
Last year, lawmakers boosted the annual amount allocated to the state’s film and TV tax credit program and expanded the criteria for eligible projects in an attempt to lure production back to California. So far, more than 100 film and TV projects have been awarded tax credits under the revamped program.
The benefits have been slow to materialize, but Mihalka predicts that the tax credits and desirability of working close to home will lead to more studio use in the Los Angeles area, including at Warner Bros. and Paramount.
“These are such prime locations that we’ll see show runners and talent push back on having shows located out of state and insist on being here,” she said. “I think you’re going to see more positive movement here.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
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