Younis Raza

Celebrating 30 years of music, Kohl Mansion mines the gold Burlingame’s Kohl Mansion, arguably the best place to hear chamber music in the Bay Area, has been hosting a concert series for thirty years, and this year’s programs have gone all out to mark this anniversary. On Sunday, December 15, they held a Holiday Gala with three extraordinary opera singers titled, “A Night at the Opera.” ...

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String textures—from Hungarian shock to Brahmsian awe At their December 9 concert, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble emphasized the unlikely breadth of string writing with moods that ranged from nostalgic to sarcastic. Like the facility of emotion in black and white photography, which deals in texture rather than color, strings are freighted with feeling in the right hands, perhaps because they have the densest overlap of vibrations of any tonal...

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Of shadows and shenanigans A program of the elegiac and the electric filled Berkeley’s First Congregational Church last Friday, November 22. Celebrated violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg led the New Century Chamber Orchestra in their fall concert series, “Legacies and Concertos,” and soloed in two dramatic works. This was the culmination of Michael Daugherty’s residency as composer, featuring the premiere of his Fallingwater for...

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Maestro Michael Morgan pirouetted through a complex program last Friday, November 8, as he celebrated the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s 25th anniversary and led them in two bicentennial salutes. Downtown Broadway’s art deco masterpiece, the Paramount, filled its 3000 seats with an audience poised to celebrate the opening of the season. ...

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Artists have always had to work at promotion to be recognized, a skill set that comes in handy if they attempt the perilous leap from performer to manager. British-born...

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Categories: music