February 2018 – Page 2 – Repeat Performances

February 9, 2018

Oakland Symphony Pride

Creating inclusion and community The Maestro of the Oakland Symphony took a courageous stand last Friday, Feb. 9 at the Paramount Theater. In a program titled “Pride & Prejudice: Notes from LGBTQ,” Michael Morgan gave voice to an often invisible population (except at the Pride parades), our own gays and lesbians. Each year Morgan programs a concert highlighting one facet of our diverse East Bay, and over the last ten years his “Notes from…” series has featured composers...

Categories: music

“Rap on Race” redux: Spectrum Dance Theater takes on James Baldwin and Margaret Mead

In 1971 anthropologist Margaret Mead and writer James Baldwin met to talk about race. Their conversation took place over two and a half days and was released in audio only. Actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith has used the tapes of this conversation over the past 30-plus years, in the classroom and on stage, its text morphing into various theatrical forms. In a recent version, the choreographer Donald Byrd used Deavere Smith’s version of the text as part of an 85-minute dance–theater...

Categories: dance

February 4, 2018

Circa at Cal Performances

Defying genres and gravity Thirteen performers cast a spell of darkness and dislocation last Saturday at Zellerbach Hall, where Cal Performances invited a group to do what they called “blurring boundaries.” Defying the usual artistic genres, Circa, an Australian circus troupe, joined forces with two opera singers, director Yaron Lifschitz and composer Quincy Grant to reinvent Claudio Monteverdi’s early opera, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Written in 1639, and based...

Categories: dance, opera

February 2, 2018

More marriage and merriment à la Gilbert and Sullivan: The Lamplighters present “The Gondoliers”

Charming, silly and entertaining, The Gondoliers is undeniably Gilbert and Sullivan, but it’s also one of its creators’ sweetest operettas. It only glimpses into the world of topsy-turvy – the nonsensical world in which logic was set against itself to cause sorrow among the young, only to be resolved and lifted into joy with the same backwards logic. Topsy-turvy was the world that earmarked the Victorian sensibility of the author and composer and assured their success and their...

Categories: opera

February 1, 2018

Berkeley Symphony explores French themes

Wandering towards musical truths Last Thursday, Feb 1, the Berkeley Symphony was led by guest conductor Keitaro Harada in a concert of French themes and composers. Beginning with the luminous visions of Fauré and ending with the stormy emotions of Berlioz, this was a concert of potent themes, but it wasn’t entirely successful. After their regular conductor Joana Carneiro announced that she was pregnant again and could not travel to Berkeley from her home in Lisbon, the orchestra...

Categories: music