The Best Los Angeles Concerts: Dec. 22-29, 2024

In contrast to his engagement at Hollywood’s intimate Catalina Jazz Club back in June, tonight Arturo Sandoval will be performing a program of jingling, jiving holiday favorites with a big band at the 2,265-capacity Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Cuban American jazz great is most renowned for his sublime trumpet skills, but is also a virtuoso pianist, timbalero and composer with a passion that reaches back to playing in a provincial village band in his native Cuba. Mentored by former bandmate Dizzy Gillespie, who helped him defect in 1989, Sandoval’s career has since spanned Latin jazz with the likes of Tito Puente and Paquito D’Rivera; Cuban music in Miami and classical work in Europe. This special holiday show comes just two weeks after he received the Kennedy Center Honor for his lifetime contribution to American culture. With this stunning venue decorated for its Deck the Hall holiday concert series, there’ll be no better place for a jazzy seasonal celebration.

If you’re seeking an EDM Christmas Eve, head to Hollywood’s expansive Academy LA, where San Diego DJ/producer Ookay will enjoy a state-of-the-art sound system and astonishing lighting. Over the past 15 years, Chula Vista-raised Abraham Laguna, aka Ookay has steadily made a name for trap and house hits, including 2016’s “Thief” and Marshmello/Noah Cyrus collab “Stay Forever” the following year. Remixes of Steve Aoki, Tony Junior, and Congorock cuts have only furthered his weighty rep, as did the treatment he did with Diplo of Avicii’s “You Make Me Okay” ten years ago. Ookay’s sound has traversed multiple phases – house, trap, dubstep, pop, and even metal – but he really started to forge a singular signature with ambitious second album Very Special!, which he debuted at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival in 2022. A very personal passion project, Very Special! also inspired Ookay to radically revamp his live presentation which, helmed by a true performer, far transcends typical DJ sets (wait and see!). Free entry with RSVP.

LA’s Quiet Riot are an easy-to-sing-along-with, guilty-pleasure heavy metal band well suited to the holiday season. The first metal band to top America’s mainstream album chart with 1983’s ten-million-selling Metal Health, propelled by a cover of Slade classic “Cum on Feel the Noize,” the ever-changing quartet couldn’t repeat the feat with follow-up Condition Critical despite (rather desperately) once again including a Slade song (“Mama Weer All Crazee Now”). But even that album was a Platinum-certified seller and Quiet Riot are often credited with kicking down the door for the 1980s Sunset Strip-centered hair metal explosion. While both vocalist Kevin DuBrow and drummer Frankie Banali from the band’s ‘80s heyday lineup are now sadly deceased, the current QR incarnation features bassist Rudy Sarzo from that era, longtime on-again/off-again guitarist Alex Grossi, Danzig drummer Johnny Kelly, and an extremely able frontman in the charismatic Jizzy Pearl, co-founder of former Whisky A Go Go house band Love/Hate. Tickets at Ticketweb.

Comprising two brothers based in Berlin, arguably the world’s electronic music capital, Two Lanes marries minimalist beats, old school synths, and acoustic piano with arresting results. Classically trained Leo provides the piano factor of their distinctive equation, citing Bach, Debussy and Schumann among his influences; with Rafael’s long fascination with electronic music responsible for Two Lanes’ highly evolved sound design and production. While not a mainstream name, the duo boasts streams approaching nine figures, with a string of EPs since 2019 culminating with their debut full-length, Duality, last year. The album’s 12 tracks of chill, ambient electronic and melodic techno are unusually intricate, dramatic and emotive, rich in minor key meditations and unhurried breaths that often speak as loudly and profoundly as the music around them. Gorgeously soothing and hugely atmospheric, Two Lanes can be a stabilizing soundtrack for our hectic lives, for late-night headphone ruminations, or just plain escape into something more beautiful and sonically poetic than the everyday. Tickets at Etix.

Although Dramarama formed in New Jersey, they’ve been LA-based since relocating west following the regional and then national success of their second and still best-known single, “Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You).” With its unchanging, anguished beat and insistent guitars, the song details the demise of singer John Easdale’s marriage, but its imploring eagerness to please has made it a romantic anthem for nearly forty years. Not initially successful upon its 1985 release, “Anything, Anything” was championed by legendary LA DJ Rodney Bingenheimer on KROQ and was one of that station’s most requested songs at the time (and today, of all time). It became more popular still after appearing on  the 1988 movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and was re-released that same year. Still boasting three original members, Dramarama is not just a nostalgia act, having released two albums since reuniting in 2003 following an appearance on VH1’s Bands Reunited. Tickets at AXS.

Riding high on their first GRAMMY win last year, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band will fill the compact Mint with its signature take on traditional New Orleans jazz. Ironically, it was dwindling interest in brass band music in the late 1970s that allowed DDBB to evolve their sound to incorporate bebop and funk without worrying about losing gigs (which were almost nonexistent anyway). This very stylistic freedom helped the Dirty Dozen reinvigorate the Big Easy brass scene in the ‘80s with its famously exuberant club and funeral parade performances. Somehow, the Dozen (actually a septet today) simultaneously moved further and further from the traditional Crescent City sound while also inspiring a resurgence in brass band music in Louisiana and beyond, including earning fanbases in Europe and Japan. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band has appeared on recordings by everyone from Elvis Costello to Modest Mouse and, though without a new album since 2012, remains truly something to behold on stage. Tickets at Dice.

A recurring theme of the more twee side of indie music is nostalgic escape into the wide-eyed, responsibility-free wonder of childhood. LA’s Paper Idol, an indie-dance outfit that marries nu-disco, art pop and indie rock, devoted 2021’s Mania Days EP to the death of boyish delusions and debut album The Playground continued the theme the following year. “The Playground is about missing the purity of childhood,” said Paper Idol main man Matan KG. “We often forget there was a time when we were just ‘being,’ soaking up the world around us with no ego, no care in the world.” Championed by local station KCRW and tastemakers including Billboard and Under the Radar, Paper Idol has collabed with Yung Bae and German house legend Wankelmut while also forging their own signature blend of get-up-and-move grooves with deceptively deep messaging. Live, they’re a hybrid electronic band featuring co-founder Adam Rochelle on keys and drummer Victor Singer. Tickets at Dice.

While Guns N’ Roses would become the subgenre’s sole mainstream fixture, the LA sleaze metal scene – a grittier take on often bubblegummy hair metal – also spawned some briefly prominent exponents including Faster Pussycat and LA Guns. Aptly taking their name from a bawdy Russ Meyer flick, Faster Pussycat were right up there with Gn’R after both formed in 1985, landing on the cover of the first-ever Screamer Magazine, in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II documentary  and on tours with Kiss, Mötley Crüe and Alice Cooper. Sure enough, their 1989 sophomore album, Wake Me When It’s Over achieved Gold status stateside and further wild road adventures ensued. With interest in Sunset Strip rawk fading, Faster Pussycat split in 1993 but returned eight years later and have a convoluted, often internally acrimonious history since. Today’s incarnation, featuring original vocalist Taime Downe and longtime members Danny Nordahl (bass) and Chad Stewart (drums), returns to sleaze metal’s spiritual home tonight. Tickets at Ticketweb.

It’s little surprise that LA-born singer-songwriter Donavon Frankenreiter has found his largest audience in Australia, where his first three albums all charted in the Top 30. Frankenreiter is a former pro surfer whose soft rock has a breezy, coastal and gently nomadic aura apt to Aussies’ love of the ocean and outdoors. Originally a protégé of fellow ex-surfing pro Jack Johnson, who produced and released his eponymous 2004 debut album, Frankenreiter has since gone it alone with his own Lost Highway label. Relatively quiet lately, he returned in September with his ninth album, Get Outta Your Mind. Marking twenty years since his debut, it’s another collection of laid-back grooves, lived-in lyrics, and croakingly heartfelt vocals anchored by the standout “All I Ever Wanted.” The alternate version, Get Outta Your Mind (with Friends) is recommended for its compelling duets with Ben Harper, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Ziggy Alberts, Trevor Hall and, especially, with Colbie Caillat. Tickets at AXS.

Alex’s Bar will make a relatively cozy setting for a band that has traveled the globe performing its singular blend of retro Cambodian pop and psychedelic rock. Fronted by Chhom Nimol, a bona fide star back in Cambodia, LA’s Dengue Fever is both preserving a once-fashionable sound almost lost forever during the Khmer Rouge’s “killing fields” rampage of the late 1970s while also lending it their own Western rock twist. In last year’s Ting Mong, their eighth album and first in eight years, the sextet once again makes the exotic accessible, opening the ear to their otherworldly creations through familiar conventions. While Nimol’s gorgeous vocals are entirely in the Khmer tongue, the sheer singular beauty of her tremulous, gently percussive voice as an instrument transcends words and cultures. And this time Dengue Fever shook things up a bit by giving co-founding guitarist Zac Holtzman a turn on the mic on the English-language romantic lament “Great on Paper.” Tickets at Dice.

As the heartbeat of both Galaxie 500 and then Luna, vocalist/guitarist Dean Wareham has had an enormous impact on what we today term indie rock. The New Zealand-born Wareham formed Galaxie 500 with two fellow Harvard grads in 1987 before founding the poppier Luna upon his ’91 departure. Originally something of an indie supergroup, also featuring former Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski and ex-Chills bassist Justin Harwood, Luna continued where Galaxie had left off, only with their laconic, Lou Reed-ish vocals and minimalist arrangements (relatively) sped up and benefiting from more focused melodies. Career high watermark Bewitched, released in 1994, snuck sour lyrical themes into dreamy Trojan Horse melodies enlivened by the arrival of second guitarist Sean Eden and a stylistically appropriate guest appearance from Velvet Underground six-string legend Sterling Morrison. Reunited in 2015 after a decade of inactivity, Wareham is joined by his bassist wife Britta Phillips and fellow longtime cohorts Eden and drummer Lee Wall. Tickets at Ticketmaster.

Danish-born LA producer/DJ Morten Breum, who performs as simply Morten, is credited alongside David Guetta with creating “future rave.” Mixing dubstep and deep progressive house, his aptly titled 2009 debut, Drop! went platinum and topped the charts back in Denmark, followed by a string of singles featuring guests including Juliette Lewis, Mr. Vegas, Steve Aoki and ODA. Alongside close friend Guetta, Morten has been exploring future rave for the past five years, essentially trying to seamlessly blend the huge hooks and energy of big-room EDM with the more futuristic elements of techno and the emotions of trance and future house. Following their 2020 New Rave EP, the duo paraded their fresh, all-embracing sound two years later on the Future Rave U.S. tour and an 18-week residency at Balearic Islands superclub Hï Ibiza. Kick off your New Year’s celebrations early at this Insomniac event, with doors at 10pm and just $25 General Admission at Ticketweb.