Lines Ballet at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Tracings of light on a screen, which is gray like an overcast sky but golden as if shielding sunlight. The light is a dream or the muted ramblings of light behind the eyelid of a closed eye, so intimate as to be subconscious. Two bodies move through the space in dreamlike movement. One body folds into another, curling around. A sudden collapse. A slithering on the floor. A stuttering. Around the figures rises a watery sound from the sax. Pebbly, like small rocks churning in a rapid...

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Lines Ballet’s ‘The Steady Articulation of Perserverance’

Tracings of light on a screen, which is gray like an overcast sky but golden as if shielding sunlight. The light is a dream or the muted ramblings of light behind the eyelid of a closed eye, so intimate as to be subconscious. Two bodies move through the space in dreamlike movement. One body folds into another, curling around. A sudden collapse. A slithering on the floor. A stuttering. Around the figures rises a watery sound from the sax. Pebbly, like small rocks churning in a rapid...

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Joshua Bell with San Francisco Symphony

Joshua Bell in superlative appearance with SF Symphony A confluence of great conducting, brilliant playing and unusual programming made for a top-notch concert last Thursday at Davies Symphony Hall. Fabio Luisi led the S. F. Symphony in a program of Richard Strauss’ Don Juan, Franz Schmidt’s Symphony No. 4 in C major, and two of the great works for violin and orchestra performed by famed artist Joshua Bell. Luisi, conductor of the Vienna Symphony and...

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Earplay Salutes Elliott Carter

“American Tapestry,” opened Earplay’s  24th season Oct. 20 at Herbst Theater, featuring the works of five living American composers. Guest bassoonist Rufus Olivier brought depth, humor and technical wizardry to tether the experimental music. Balanced by cello, violin and piano in Jennifer Higdon’s Dark Wood, named for bassoon, his abrupt notes, squat polyps of sound, interleaved off-beats of piano and plucked cello. Higdon moved between this perky mix and more sustained...

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Measure for Measure at UC Berkeley

Problem solving ... Measure for Measure is considered a “problem” play: that is to say, not only one that does not fall neatly into tragedy or comedy but also one in which a problem is solved. In this case, the problem of punishing human desire and the probity of mercy. It’s a play whose problems are solved indirectly, however, so that the ethics questioned are never completely addressed, and the playwright steals off like a thief down an alley, leaving us...

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SF Contemporary Music Players at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Struck, plucked, scraped shakes things up at Yerba Buena “Struck, plucked, scraped & shaken”  broke new ground in the fertile area of contemporary percussion music. Last Tuesday the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts hosted the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players for a twenty-first century program performed by five percussionists, harp, bass, and voice. Two of the composers were in attendance, and joined mezzo soprano...

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