Meyer Sound Laboratories in Berkeley makes audio equipment, especially high-end speaker systems. The company has been doing this since 1979 and its clients include Cirque du Soleil and Celine Dion. Recently, though, Meyer Sound has moved into an interesting terrain which merges sound manipulation with visual art. Yesterday, I was visiting Helen Meyer, who runs the company with her husband John, (both pictured above) and Helen took me into an adjacent building which houses a new product entitled the "Libra Acoustic Image System." When I … [Read more...]

In these tough media times when the art of cultural criticism is being sidelined in favor of mass-eyeball-generating entertainment news and sports coverage, it's refreshing to come across The Omnivore, a UK-based website devoted to culling the best book, film and theatre reviews from the press. I'm particularly entranced by The Omnivore's Hatchet Job of the Year Award, which the aggregator is presenting to "the author of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months." The winner of the award, which is to be … [Read more...]

Michael Scott Moore, the writer who preceded me as chief theatre critic of SF Weekly (Mike gave up the post at the end of 2004 to move to Berlin and I held it from then until the fall of 2009) was taken hostage over the weekend in central Somalia. The author, who is currently based in Berlin and recently published a great book about the export of American surf culture around the world, was in Somalia researching a new book about Somali pirates. The Los Angeles Times has a story here. And here is The Huffington Post's story. I saw … [Read more...]

The Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University's newest building devoted to the arts, is going to be an exciting addition to the west coast music scene when it opens in January 2013. The Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson are producing a new piece in the space; world-class ensembles like the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra are jostling to perform there. And it'll certainly enrich students' performing experiences. I took a tour of the building site yesterday along with the head of Stanford Lively Arts, Jenny Bilfield, and a few other guests. It … [Read more...]

They might look like ants in the photograph I snapped on my iPhone from my faraway vantage point at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Hall last night, but the people standing on the stage are today's GIANTS OF CLASSICAL MUSIC, at least certain circles might think so. Three of the performers -- Bryce Dessner (guitar), Shara Worden (vocals and bass drum) and Owen Pallett (violin) -- are indie pop / underground New York art scene mavens. Their names are most closely associated with such modish rockers as Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens and Grizzly Bear. The … [Read more...]

A soiree devoted to people sharing their stories about Bay Area public transportation doesn't seem like it would be a hot ticket. But when MUNI Diaries, a web-based resource devoted to collecting and curating Bay Area residents' thoughts and images about MUNI, BART, CalTrans and the various other municipal transportation services in the region regularly packs in the crowds. Saturday night's event at The Elbo Room, a bar and dance club in the Mission District, was sold out and the line to get in at the door stretched down the block. If you … [Read more...]

Percussionist Andrew Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews of The Living Earth Show, a chamber music ensemble based in San Francisco, have embarked upon an unusual project -- to build quartertone instruments in order to play a piece by the composer Brian Ferneyhough. In today's guest blog post on 'lies like truth,' Myerson writes about his inspiration and process... When Travis Andrews and I learned that one of our favorite composers, Brian Ferneyhough, had composed a piece for our instrumentation – percussion and guitar – we … [Read more...]

I fell in love with the British baritone Christopher Maltman's voice when I was scouting around iTunes for a recoding of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel. That was about three years ago. I listened to many different artists'  samples of the song cycle and Maltman's was the one that spoke to me the most. Since then, I have devoured his recordings. Last night, at Herbst Theatre, I finally got to hear him live. Maltman sang a recital under the auspices of San Francisco Performances with pianist Malcolm Martineau. What a gig. The … [Read more...]

“Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.”                                                                    - William Shakespeare,                                                                      Antony & Cleopatra, Act 1 Scene 2 We all wish we had the power to predict what the world will look like in five, 10 or 50 years. As a sector currently undergoing turbulent change, the media industry is frantically shaking a cloud-filled crystal ball up and … [Read more...]

The atrium at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, CA, made for a fitting setting for The Intersection, an event which brought together thinkers and doers from a variety of disciplines to exchange ideas about social innovation. The lofty space was conceived by Pixar CEO Steve Jobs to be a place that would force employees from all parts of the organization to intersect with one another on a daily basis by virtue of its central location. All paths lead there, like veins and aorta to and from the heart. As such, the venue stood as a nice … [Read more...]