Younis Raza – Page 42 – Repeat Performances

June 14, 2011

Ojai Festival comes to Berkeley

Upshaw and Aussies promise… Ojai North! came to Berkeley the week of June 13 in a new partnership between the Southern California music festival and Cal Performances. Monday’s concert at Zellerbach held jazz/classical fusions by festival artistic director Maria Schneider. I got to hear Tuesday’s concert, the...

Categories: music

May 21, 2011

Two gems—a clear win for West Bay Opera

They say that love will have its day. But it won’t have it at West Bay Opera, where love was the clear loser in two short operas. Brilliant direction, strong voices, and real acting kept the audience enthralled Friday night, May 21 for the opening of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve at Palo Alto’s Lucie Stern Theatre. And the simple sets and effective lighting polished the...

Categories: opera

May 14, 2011

Trimpin at Stanford

A cycle of sound and memory... Trimpin, the single-named kinetic sculptor, just finished a year of residency at Stanford, courtesy of Stanford Lively Arts. Along with his work with students and with the electronic...

Categories: music

May 3, 2011

Woodwinds in the Berkeley City Club

Quinteto Latino, a woodwind quintet established by Armando Castellano to promote the music of Mexican composers, played a wide-ranging set May 3 at the Berkeley City Club. The home of Berkeley Chamber Performances, this quirky and elegant Julia Morgan-designed residence hall—where concrete structural elements arch into refined force diagrams like the bones and articulation of some exotic creature—creates a...

Categories: music

April 15, 2011

Oakland Symphony at the Paramount

Success at the Paramount The Oakland East Bay Symphony filled Oakland’s Paramount Theatre with a big sound that suited its Art Deco excess,...

Categories: music

April 3, 2011

Apples and Oranges in the South Bay

Carducci and Harlem Quartets—two voyages of discovery Two brilliant young quartets graced the peninsula Sunday, April 3, each with programs that reveled in the old and wandered into the new. And, in uncanny resemblance, each warmed up with an early Beethoven quartet. The Carducci Quartet arrived from the United Kingdom for an afternoon at Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium, opening with Beethoven’s String Quartet in...

Categories: music