September 2008 – Repeat Performances

September 30, 2008

Völs Quartet at Berkeley City Club

Lively concert in lovely hall Last Tuesday Berkeley Chamber Performances inaugurated a new season with the Völs String Quartet at the sumptuous Julia Morgan-designed Berkeley City Club. The program wandered through the twentieth century with satisfying variety. Two seasoned performers teamed up with two more youthful for a sound that was both mature and delectably energetic. La Oracion del Torero by Joaquin Turina opened and closed enigmatically. The quartet...

Categories: music

September 25, 2008

San Francisco Opera’s ’Die Tote Stadt’

To live and die in Bruges Bruges is where the young couple, Paul and Marie, lived and walked during their short and happy life together. Once Marie dies, her spouse’s grief overwhelms him, not merely his life but also their apartment, the city—its canals and streets—transforming into “the dead city” of Die Tote Stadt. The opera, composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold to a libretto by the composer and his father, takes this psychological phenomenon—an...

Categories: opera

September 14, 2008

An Interview with SF Opera’s Kip Cranna, Part 2

This is the second half of an interview with San Francisco Opera’s Musical Administrator, Kip Cranna. Post: How would you describe the current general director’s taste and interests? Cranna: David is a fascinating guy He has probably commissioned more American opera than any other general director. He has over thirty titles to his credit. Of the current projects he’s looking at there are some very fairly out there concepts....

Categories: opera

September 13, 2008

Mark Morris’ ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Cal Performances

What would Mark Morris be without irony? And what is Shakespeare without words? Both of those questions are answered in part by the Mark Morris Dance Group’s performance of Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare, which was presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall this past weekend. Not to say the Morris Romeo & Juliet lacked humor and whimsy. There were many touches of that in the production—especially the sets. Comprised of three trompe l’oeil...

Categories: dance

September 7, 2008

An Interview with SF Opera’s Kip Cranna, Part 1

How SF Opera Organizes its Season An Interview with SFO’s Musical Administrator Kip Cranna A historian by background, Kip Cranna organizes the opera house’s complicated schedules. He was recently awarded the prestigious SF Opera Award and given the title of Director of Musical Administration. In this first part of the interview he talks about his work at SFO and reveals some of the ways in which the company construct a season. The second part of the interview...

Categories: opera

September 3, 2008

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival

The SF Electronic Music Festival kicked off its ninth season last Wednesday at Project Artaud’s Florida Street theater. Partnered with the ODC dance collective, the festival this year marks a new collaboration with SFSound, a group of high caliber musicians who specialize in extemporaneous extended technique electronically amplified contemporary music. That is to say, they blow softly and carry a big woofer. Staffed entirely by volunteers, the festival showed off 15 very different takes on...

Categories: music