2018—Music to brighten a year

Bay Area music made a strong showing in 2018. The arts are subtle but solid, a rock we can cling to despite a year when divisive voices and dire predictions roiled our society.  Pointing the way through political differences, music is an art form of discourse, a place where every voice matters, where each of us tries to speak our truth in beauty and in harmony. That strong showing is not so surprising when one recalls that small lights burn...

Continue reading

Berkeley Symphony opens the season with virtuosity

Ming Luke nails an “audition” A sophisticated Berkeley audience stood to applaud conductor Ming Luke, violinist Benjamin Beilman and the Berkeley Symphony last Thursday, Oct. 4, in a work that was as severely modern as it was technically jaw-dropping. That work, Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. Crafted of harmonics and fierce call-and-responses, the concerto’s architecture and virtuosity were as unexpected as they were challenging....

Continue reading