music

  Oakland Symphony Season Finale Michael Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony closed their season May 14 on an uplifting note. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its “Ode to Joy,” filled Oakland’s Paramount Theater with a paean to brotherhood. Morgan enriched that theme by opening with a song cycle by Jake Heggie based on...

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At 79 years old, jazz legend Sonny Rollins plays with stamina, lungpower, and intellectual flexibility seldom seen or heard by horn players of any age. Backed by an all-star band consisting of Bobby Broom (guitar), Bob Cranshaw (bass), Kobie Watkins (drums), and Victor See-Yuen (percussion), his performance for Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall on May 13 was a privilege of indescribable proportions. The evening’s concert consisted of six tunes, beginning with the new Patanjali...

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A tip of the hat to Stravinsky The New York Philharmonic held a three-week Igor Stravinsky festival this month, with eight different programs under the baton of Valery Gergiev, acclaimed general director of the Mariinsky Theatre and principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. It has been a high point of the Philharmonic’s season. And one of the high points of that festival was Oedipus Rex, arguably Stravinsky’s most popular neoclassical endeavor,...

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Freedom from constraint… The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players ended their season last week with a program titled “His Own Space of Freedom,” with a demonstration at ODC April 25 and a performance at Herbst Theater the next evening. Philippe Hurel’s Figures libres pits constraint against freedom. A jazzy array of rhythmic figures—reminiscent of bebop improvisation—found common ground between the grouped instruments. Bass clarinet, oboe and...

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Jazz Improv and 20th century composers—a divisive subject Alex Ross, author of the best selling “The Rest is Noise,” came to Herbst Theater Saturday morning to read selections from his book and explicate a century of modern music. The book is brilliant. The 90-minute...

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Glorious Russian Mass in Oakland Sanctuary On Saturday, April 24, ninety voices filled the sanctuary of Oakland’s newly built Christ the Light Cathedral by Lake Merritt. The Pacific Boychoir, a world-renowned choir that makes its home in Berkeley, is also celebrating their recent Grammy for Best Choral Performance, a product of their collaboration with the SF Symphony in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Three years ago choral director Kevin Fox decided to recreate Sergei...

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