December 2011

Riveting performance of Harrison A work of modern tone clusters and ancient tuning filled UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on Thursday, Dec. 8, with Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto, the centerpiece of a concert by the Berkeley Symphony. Alternating meditative and brutal, pianist Sarah Cahill performed a striking rendition that brought the audience to their feet. ...

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Categories: music

Mixing new and old, Brentano Quartet foments a reverent rebellion Musical and poetic fragments draw us inside the creative process, a gestation rich in possibility. And when those fragments are from great composers, they possess a lure like the greatest unsolved mathematical problems. The Brentano String Quartet celebrated its twentieth anniversary by asking six contemporary composers to write new fragments based on six unfinished works. San Francisco Performances...

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School may have been in session last Saturday morning at Berkeley’s St. John’s Presbyterian Church, but the students clapped long and hard, something rarely heard just a few blocks north at UC Berkeley. The lecturer, musicologist and composer Robert Greenberg, was assisted by the formidable Alexander String Quartet, which sat onstage to give musical illustrations throughout the lecture before playing their concert. And the “returning students” were an...

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Categories: music