March 2017 – Repeat Performances

March 31, 2017

Oakland Symphony- a powerhouse performance

Michael Morgan hits a home run Last Friday, March 31, the deep stage of Oakland’s Paramount Theater was filled with the Oakland Symphony, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, and St. Mary’s College Chamber Singers and Glee Club. They had partnered to bring out the depth and power of Anton Bruckner’s Te Deum. Programmed to balance that heartfelt prayer was a work of big bones and simple themes, and an audience favorite (and it was actually the...

Categories: music

March 19, 2017

New Century joins Chanticleer in Marin

Of silken strings and lush voices. For their spring concert, the expressive strings of New Century Chamber Orchestra joined forces with the exquisite vocals of Chanticleer for a “trip” to Paris, stretching from Ravel’s lush songs to Satie’s austere Gymnopédie and from Gershwin’s early jazz to classic French cabaret. These two groups are each at the top of their form, and a number of contemporary composers have...

Categories: music

March 10, 2017

A.C.T. presents Annie Baker’s “John”

A quietude of kindness In these days of energetic acting, high-speed dialog, and dazzlingly complicated plots, playwright Annie Baker’s John is a marvel of tender realism. The three-hour play at A.C.T.’s The Strand is paced like a snail on Quaaludes. But...

Categories: theater

March 3, 2017

Gloriously tilting at windmills – opera in Alameda

Mad or divinely inspired? Social commentary or tragedy? Those treacherous mires were balanced and carefully unanswered in the opera Don Quichotte by Island City Opera of Alameda, which opened this past Friday in a production that was rich, colorful and energetic. Loosely based on Miguel de Cervantes’ seminal novel, Don Quixote, the 1910 opera by French composer Jules Massenet takes a very French Romantic view of an early seventeenth century Spanish classic and, in the...

Categories: opera