March 2008 – Repeat Performances

March 30, 2008

Amor Cubano at La Peña

In a Bottle, a Tube and a Small Packet “Fidel only talks to Raúl, Hugo and me.” So claims Barbarita Perales, the inventor (and sole distributor) of Amor Cubano, the love potion in a bottle, a tube and a small packet. Maceo Cabrera Estevez, the inventor of Barbarita, brought her fiery but pragmatically entrepreneurial Cuban alter ego to La Peña this past weekend to perform a live infomercial on the virtues of Amor Cubano. Sidling through the audience in a low-cut,...

Categories: theater

March 14, 2008

Oakland East Bay Symphony’s ’Notes from Persia’

Reaching across great divides Before the start of the second half of Friday night’s Oakland East Bay Symphony concert, Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan stepped to the microphone to comment, “We need to come together face to face, rather than listen to what our governments tell us to think about each other.” His remarks met with enthusiastic applause and verified the political intent of the program, in case anyone had mistaken it for a purely cultural...

Categories: music

March 8, 2008

San Francisco Ballet dances Jerome Robbins

Spanning a creative lifetime Thursday, March 6, San Francisco Ballet opened its fourth program of the 2008 season with three Jerome Robbins pieces that spanned the choreographer’s lifetime: his first choreographic masterpiece, Fancy...

Categories: dance

March 5, 2008

Sarah Cahill at Berkeley Arts Festival

Sarah Cahill gives moving piano tribute to Ornstein in Berkeley premiere Well-known pianist and radio show host Sarah Cahill played a program dedicated to the later works of Leo Ornstein at Berkeley Arts Festival’s new temporary digs, on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley. Most of the material at the Friday, Mar. 5 concert has never before been performed, and the concert coincides with Cahill’s soon-to-be-released CD of Ornstein’s later works. Ornstein’s life...

Categories: music