Royce Hall Scheduling

Laurie Anderson! Philip Glass! David Sedaris! Bill T. Jones! It looks, largely, like more of the same next season at UCLA Performing Arts (“UCLA’s Next Season Offers Quirkier, Edgier Fare,” by Hugh Hart, May 25).

The fact that the university’s new arts czar, an Englishman with an “edge,” is parading so many of the same faces that his predecessor did across the Royce Hall stage suggests these name artists are the truly reliable currency in the field. (OK, Sonic Youth at Royce will avoid a night of bad acoustics at the Palladium, but there’s no mosh pit.)

Should we continue to call this comfortably predictable programming “art”? Wherever I find myself in this big, old and (at one time) diversified country, I can always swing by a Gap, catch a Spalding Gray chat and grab a latte at Starbucks before calling it another corporate evening.

TOM CROCKER

Los Angeles

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What, no more Early Music series at UCLA’s Royce Hall? Two of the most glorious concerts we have ever experienced were under that umbrella: an October 1998 Hesperion concert with Jordi Savall and a December 1999 Praetorious Christmas concert with Paul McCreesh.

Where in Los Angeles are such large-scale international touring groups going to perform now? The way you effectively kill an art form is to pretend it doesn’t exist.

SUSAN BROWN

MARK TALLEY

Claremont