January 2017 – Repeat Performances

January 30, 2017

Earplay opens new season

The colors of air Earplay, the Bay Area’s premiere contemporary ensemble, performed a fiercely intelligent concert at Herbst Theater last Monday, Jan. 30. This is their 32nd year – and it is hard to believe they have been commissioning and playing edgy music for 32 years – in a season titled “Air, Wind, Water.” Each of the three concerts includes works by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, whose work is masterful in its colors and...

Categories: music

January 22, 2017

“Don Pasquale” in Alameda

When life mimics opera The Island City Opera, now in its third season, brought an accomplished production to Alameda last Sunday, January 22, held at the imposing Elks Lodge Ballroom, where oak thrones and red velvets and elk horns create a space that encourages the suspension of disbelief. And that was perfect for Don Pasquale, a comic opera tossed off by Gaetano Donizetti in just 11 days in 1842 but considered to be at the top of the buffa...

Categories: opera

January 21, 2017

West Edge Opera launches its new “Snapshot” series

The Bay Area is an idyllic place, blessed with sublime weather and inhabited by courageous and talented people. The courageous part showed up at the Women’s March in Oakland on Saturday morning. The sublimely and musically talented showed...

Categories: opera

January 11, 2017

Pacifica Quartet at Menlo-Atherton

Beyond technique: finding the narrative A passionate performance was rooted in deep interpretation last Wednesday, Jan. 11 at the Center for the Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton. The Pacifica Quartet, one of the top string quartets of our time, picked three gems of the repertoire for their concert, any one of which would have been the anchor of a normal program. Hosted by Music@Menlo’s Winter Series, (an expansion of their three-week-long summer festival),...

Categories: music

Bill Irwin dancing to Samuel Beckett

There’s no doubt that the audience loves Bill Irwin. All he has to do is pull on a pair of baggy pants and the audience cheers. There’s also no doubt that Bill Irwin loves Samuel Beckett. These two premises serve as the basis for On...

Categories: theater