music

Now in his 70’s, composer Terry Riley remains a musical adventurer. Friday night Nov. 6, he helped cook up a late night “happening” at the Berkeley Art Museum. Told to bring sleeping bags or pillows to the $5 concert, we sat or lay on the concrete floor. I gazed up at the concrete rectilinear forms jutting out into space—some forms fanciful, others a little ominous, as support columns have recently been added along one side. Berkeley Pianist and local celebrity Sarah Cahill was asked...

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A celebration of diversity Classical musicians can’t always express their darker impulses with the “grunge” such impulses deserve. But a concert by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at Herbst Theater Nov. 1 had several darkly expressive candidates. Three of the four pieces on their Made to Order program had been commissioned by the SFCMP and two of them were World premieres. Despite a descent into the world of extended techniques, the material was often...

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Musicians soar, Halloween costumes and all Violist Nils Bultmann was fearless and tender in Bloch’s Suite Hébraïque for viola and orchestra Saturday night on the UC Campus. But the setting was a little unusual. A policeman, a surgeon...

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A concert of  John Adams, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák had intriguing parallels. Finnish-born Osmo Vänskä, currently music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, guest conducted the San...

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Kicking the tires The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra inaugurated their fall season Thursday, Oct. 15, at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, and perhaps in deference to the gala dinner afterwards, many wore their finery, sprinkling the hall with gowns and tuxes. A buzz of excitement surrounded the induction of conductor Joana Carneiro, who follows Maestro Kent Nagano. The Berkeley Symphony signaled their on-going commitment to contemporary composers and the choice of one whose...

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A view from the top—contemporary mainstays Morton Feldman is a musician’s musician. By this I do not mean that he is concerned with a theoretical approach, or that he references great works of the past. Rather, he is the opposite: he is so “in the moment” with his sound, and his process is so direct, that those steeped in form are thunderstruck by his immediacy. Performing one of his works, each slow, full note engenders the next, so the performer becomes part of the...

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