July 2018 – Repeat Performances

July 31, 2018

Music@Menlo – a whistle-stop in Hungary

The sixth main-stage concert in the Music@Menlo festival centered on the music of Budapest, the center of Hungarian culture. Held July 31 at the Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton, this program featured four composers who drew from the folk music of Hungary. “This music is incredibly nationalistic,” claimed our presenter, “the essence of the Hungarian spirit!” Bella Hristova and Nicholas Canellakis, two rising stars of the string world, opened the concert with Zoltán...

Categories: music

July 22, 2018

Sarah Cahill honored at Old First Church

Bay Area icon Sarah Cahill, a pianist who specializes in contemporary music, gave a recital and received a national prize this past Sunday, July 22, at Old First Church in San Francisco. The American Composers Forum Award was a welcome recognition, as Cahill has championed many living composers and even commissioned their works. Alongside that, she is a brilliant musician who has recorded numerous compositions for the piano, writes and produces a weekly radio show on new music, and produces...

Categories: music

July 15, 2018

Music@Menlo ushers in ambitious new season

Last Friday Music@Menlo opened their 15th season on the Peninsula with a lecture by Michael Parloff that linked the cities of London, Paris and St. Petersburg. That was an introduction to this year’s theme, “Creative Capitals,” a glimpse into how place fosters musical lineage and of how composers inspire and influence each other. Following that was Saturday’s first concert, a look at composers in London, and that was the first of an astounding seven programs. The four lectures, seven...

Categories: music

To sing a song that old was sung … Marin Shakes presents “Pericles”

Marin Shakespeare Company opened its third and final play of the season at the Forest Meadows Theater in Marin this past weekend. The seldom-produced Pericles, Prince of Tyre, was one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote and there are questions about whether the play was entirely written by England’s greatest playwright. Scholars more or less agree that the last half of the play was written by Shakespeare, and the first half possibly by a collaborator. The first verified production...

Categories: theater