Black Cedar Trio at Berkeley’s Arthouse

A curious trio explores a path less trod… Consisting of flute, cello and guitar, the Black Cedar Trio brought their atypical sound palette to an equally unusual subject, contemporary music from the Pacific Rim, at downtown Berkeley’s Subterranean Arthouse last Saturday, July 13. The Black Cypress Trio began as a duet between flutist Kris Palmer and guitarist Steve Lin, naming themselves for the African blackwood of wooden flute and the cedar used...

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Goat Hall’s “Fresh Voices” in San Francisco

Fresh and in the Mission. Who says opera has to be stuffy? Goat Hall Productions, in its thirteenth year of “Fresh Voices” programs, tweaked the noses of the earnest with three delightful short operas last weekend at San Francisco’s Community Music Center. During the program, titled Mischief and Mayhem, a music educator, medieval Italian Plague survivors, and “Quark Sisters” from a parallel universe took turns regaling the...

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Cosi Fan Tutte in SF

Faith and pheromones at the Opera House. Hijinks and low cunning filled the stage of the San Francisco Opera last Saturday night for one of the most delightful endeavors of the...

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Silicon Valley Music Festival

A musical frolic in the South Bay One of the most seriously experimental—and fun—concerts I’ve heard in a while took place in an out-of-the-way church east of San Jose. Last Tuesday, June 18, the Alum Rock Methodist chapel held the opening of the Silicon Valley Music Festival, marking the second year of a new South Bay venture. ...

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Ojai North! at UC Berkeley

Each June, Ojai, CA is a scene of intense music making as musicians and composers gather for the West Coast’s longest-running festival of contemporary music. In the Bay Area we are fortunate that for the last three years Ojai’s four-day festival was followed by a partnership with Cal Performances (renamed Ojai North!) for a second complete run in Berkeley. This year, choreographer Mark Morris (famed here for his Hard Nut), assumed the rotating mantle of Artistic...

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