Younis Raza

August 19, 2017

West Edge finishes its summer opera festival

From fluff to frozen in West Oakland. Experts at reinvention, the West Edge Opera has returned for a summer festival in an industrial wasteland in West Oakland, the abandoned facilities of Pacific Pipe Company.  This resilient opera company, formerly Berkeley Opera, has inhabited a series of venues over the last ten years, most recently at West Oakland’s abandoned train station for two startling and brilliant summers. Dealing with the freedoms and rigors...

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Categories: opera

July 24, 2017

French horn makes a splash at Music@Menlo

Deep feeling and smooth expression An evening of explosive playing and heavenly sonorities made for another special evening at Music@Menlo, the Peninsula’s prized music festival. Last Monday, July 24, they held their fourth main concert in a series of seven, “In Joachim’s Orbit,” featuring chamber music at the height of German Romanticism. After three concerts devoted to the development of violin writing, here they widened their...

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Categories: music

July 21, 2017

“Castle Happy” at Altarena Playhouse

Finding one’s way to “Happy” An unlikely plot with a frothy delivery powered a new musical opera at the Altarena Playhouse last weekend in Alameda. What was most unlikely about that plot was its likely truth, but I’ll try to avoid spoilers. Bay Area composer Jeff Dunn and librettist John Freed concocted Castle Happy to bring a moment to life when Hollywood legends frolicked in the Hearst Castle. Their setting was 1938, when Bette...

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Categories: theater

July 9, 2017

Festival Orchestra in Mendocino – opening the Big Top

A festival on the edge of the Pacific Cross-pollination was the perfect theme for the Festival Orchestra’s opening night on Sunday, July 9, in the Big Tent on the Mendocino Headlands. The Mendocino Music Festival is currently celebrating its 31st season, and opened Saturday with two concerts: a famed classical quartet and an a cappella group whose polished arrangements are widely used. On Sunday this multi-genre festival returned partway back to...

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Categories: music

July 3, 2017

Top 2017 Bay Area Summer Music Festivals

Taking it on the road – classical and beyond It’s that time again – Summer Music Festivals – and the Bay Area is popping. Here is our short list for summer fun. Coming right up is the Mendocino Music Festival, which opens with a bang with a dinner and Zydeco dance party this Friday, July 7, and then segues into three events on Saturday, July 8. There is a free orchestra rehearsal in the morning for the Sunday concert...

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Categories: music