May 2008 – Page 2 – Repeat Performances

May 10, 2008

Oakland Opera Presents Ellington’s ‘Queenie Pie’

With a creamy smooth trumpet rising over the exotic beat and slightly moody sound, giving over to the close couple dance of flute and bass and followed by an ultra-cool sax solo, the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra swung into the big band sound of Duke Ellington in the Oakland Opera Theater’s ebullient production of Queenie Pie, the jazz master’s only opera. ...

Categories: opera

May 9, 2008

San Francisco Symphony Brahms Festival

Brahms Festival a knock-out at Davies Symphony Hall Ah, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. There is a reason Brahms is elevated as one of Western Music’s masters--his truths are human truths. His delicacy has a restraint born of love and his grandeur speaks of the inevitability of time. And the deep sadness and arresting beauty of his themes? Perhaps it derives from a fin de siècle view of life’s hopes wedded to mortality. The San Francisco Symphony has dedicated...

Categories: music

May 6, 2008

Mihaela Ursuleasa at Herbst Theatre

San Francisco Performances presents legendary pianist in concert Lightning struck from a clear sky Tuesday night, May 6, at San Francisco's Herbst Theater, as thunder rolled from the keyboard of young piano sensation Mihaela Ursuleasa. I was stunned to hear such fierce and passionate playing. A demanding program of Medtner, Schumann and Rachmaninoff was all one could ask for, as the pianist flowed from tender opening to ferocious...

Categories: music

May 2, 2008

’The Little Prince’ at Cal Performances

High flying with Saint-Exupéry A scrim of aerogrammes falling from the sky shades the middle of an enormous round portal like the window of an old fashioned ship, which in turn frames the front of the stage. A man enters dressed as an aviator from between the World Wars. He is followed and surrounded by children in striped pajamas and nightgowns, slippers on their feet. Addressing them, he begins his story of how when he was a child the pictures he drew were never...

Categories: opera