April 2014 – Repeat Performances

April 28, 2014

Festival Opera pays tribute to Holocaust Day

Chamber opera explores the scars of survival in moving program… Last Monday in Walnut Creek, a star-studded cast of seven singers and 13 musicians joined together to honor Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance for the six million Jews who died in Hitler’s concentration camps. Festival Opera staged two chamber operas on April 28 at the Unitarian Universalist Church, one deeply felt and one darkly humorous. In Another Sunrise,...

Categories: opera

April 24, 2014

Aurora Theater presents “The Letters”

Two people alone onstage for eighty minutes. Sound like a recipe for tedium? Not if the play is John W. Lowell’s The Letters, now at Aurora Theatre. The production grips you at the start and holds...

Categories: theater

April 13, 2014

Berkeley Symphony Chamber at Piedmont Center for the Arts

Big names in a cozy hall… The fifth and last “Berkeley Symphony & Friends” chamber music concert was held at the Piedmont Center for the Arts last Sunday, Apr. 13, starring three very accomplished musicians. Violinist Rene Mandel, the Executive Director of the Berkeley Symphony, forsook pen for bow to party with Peter Wyrick, the Associate Principal Cellist of the SF Symphony, along with virtuoso German pianist Markus Pawlik, recently...

Categories: music

April 12, 2014

“Made in North America,” from the SF Bay Area Chamber Chorus

Eager chorus in tricky program The SF Bay Area Chamber Chorus (sometimes known as the BACC) gave its spring concert last Saturday, April 12, at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. Their program, “Made in North America,” spanned the a cappella music of Mexico, the United States and Canada, organized into five groupings with lively introductions by Music Director Anthony Pasqua. The arrangements included many short solos, chances for...

Categories: music

April 5, 2014

Cahill, Greenberg and Alexander String Quartet at SFJazz Center

Mozart in the morning The Alexander String Quartet and musicologist Robert Greenberg regularly team up for an always-popular treat, mixing engaging lecture with fine performances. But last Saturday’s lecture/concert at the SFJazz Center had some extra pizzazz. Local legend Sarah Cahill anchored the group in two Mozart piano quartets. As a sought-after concert pianist and a long-time advocate for contemporary music (and many works have been composed for her),...

Categories: music

April 4, 2014

San Francisco Ballet presents Ratmansky’s exhilarating Shostakovich Trilogy

...

Categories: dance