Why is it so often the case that the most stimulating and beautiful works of art and the most creative and smart artists go relatively unappreciated while the people who do things that are altogether less inspiring reap wild favor and applause? I'm thinking about this today in light of Mark Jackson's bracing-taut production of Max Frisch's The Arsonists (trans. Alistair Beaton) currently playing to two-thirds-full houses at The Aurora Theatre in Berkeley. Every seat should be filled every performance during the run with someone … [Read more...]

For a while now, I've been questioning the usefulness of the standard categories under which most arts coverage is organized in the media. You know -- the "music", "theatre", "movies", "dance", "visual art"...headings. Oh, and let's not forget "multimedia" -- that weird catchall descriptor that so many sites (including my own) have for putting stuff that doesn't comfortably fit in anywhere else. The fact is that arts experiences rarely fit comfortably into this framework -- and in fact probably never have. Opera is as much music as it is … [Read more...]

It’s fascinating to see how amateur artists are forming the backbone of some of the most ambitious, site-specific cultural happenings in the Bay Area these days. The Bay Area has a ready source of people who make art simply for the love of it rather than for a living, and who also possess a healthy spirit of experimentation. These qualities greatly facilitate the mounting of large-cast, non-mainstream productions. Prominent upcoming examples include Lisa Bielawa’s Airfield Broadcast which will involve hundreds of musicians at Crissy … [Read more...]

Pianist Lara Downes commands my respect because she is not only a brilliant musician, but she is also a wonderful programmer, educationist and creative thinker. Last night at Yoshi's in San Francisco, Downes launched her new Artist Sessions series, in which the pianist invites musical guests to join her on stage for conversation about their work interspersed by music. The series launched with a soiree revolving around the release of Downes' luminous new Exiles Cafe recording on the Steinway & Sons label and involved guest … [Read more...]

For all the proselytize-ing I do around the vocal arts on my weekly public radio and podcast series about the voice, VoiceBox, there are times when I wish that people wouldn't sing. Or, rather, I wish they would pay closer attention to the context in which they are lifting their voices in song. I bring this up the morning after a rather strange event I participated in last night as an oboist in the orchestra that contributed as a guest group to the 25th anniversary concert of a Bay Area-based choral organization called Singers Marin. I'm … [Read more...]

Lots going on. A few thoughts about a few things: 1. The Exploratorium: San Francisco's eclectic interactive museum devoted to the meeting point between science and art recently opened its massive new digs on the waterfront with a flourish of parties and special events. I attended a "Friends and Family" Day at The Exploratorium last week and was happy to wander around the cavernous space engaging with all kinds of interesting installations demonstrating how various natural and manmade phenomena work. The museum is a mishmash of old … [Read more...]

It's unusual that a theatrical production which throws so many jumbled staging ideas at the audience should yield moments of truth and emotional impact. But Mark Wing-Davey's production of Pericles at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre does just this, in spite of the fact that I couldn't make head or tail of half of of the staging ideas and that the play itself (which has been jaggedly edited for Berkeley Rep's two hour version) is not remotely to be counted among Shakespeare's finest. The production is a melee of different cultural idioms. … [Read more...]

Campo Santo is one of those uncommon theatre companies that exists in the professional space, producing often high quality work, while at the same time remaining intimately connected with and entrenched in its community. In so doing, Campo Santo lifts the much maligned term "community theatre" out of the swamp of disdain and makes it sound worthy of its name. All theatre should aspire to be community theatre, ultimately. Campo Santo's latest world premiere -- The River -- by Culture Clash's Richard Montoya and directed by company stalwart … [Read more...]

Forced Entertainment's Quizoola is one of the most strangely compelling pieces of theatre I've witnessed of late. The show, if you can call it that, is barely a piece of theatre in the traditional sense. Nothing much happened. Half of it was improvised. It lasted 24 hours. And I didn't go to a venue to witness it; I watched the show as a web stream, online, on and off throughout the marathon performance. The piece, which is more commonly performed in a six-hour version, was produced as part of the SPILL Festival of Performance, in The Pit … [Read more...]

Of the many singing experiences I've had to date, the one I participated in last night at Stanford's Memorial Church was among the most visceral, and is likely to be an experience I remember with fondness for a long, long time. I was part of the ensemble involved in Stanford music scholar Jesse Rodin's Digital Josquin Project. The Project revolved around a series of workshops and final concert in which we performed late works by the 15th - 16th century Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez behind a specially commissioned music lectern … [Read more...]