April 13, 2024 • 2:14 pm 0
Wreath — for Franz Schubert is the latest creation from one of the world’s most-sought-after composers. “I am most grateful to the great Danish String Quartet for giving me the time and encouragement to realize and develop this new path in my work,” Adès writes in the freshly completed score.
My program notes for the Cal Performances performance in April 2024 can be found here.
Filed under: Cal Performances, chamber music, commissions, Danish String Quartet, Schubert, Thomas Adès
February 19, 2024 • 7:15 pm Comments Off on <i>Bark of Millions</i>: Fantasy and Mystery, Rooted in Queerness
My essay on Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s latest epic, Bark of Millions, for Cal Performances:
“All we do is sing songs,” says Taylor Mac about Bark of Millions, the new show he and composer Matt Ray have created together with their team of like-minded collaborators. “But there’s something about the ritual of song after song after song inspired by different queer people from world history that is really liberating” …
Filed under: American music, Cal Performances, theater
November 11, 2023 • 9:26 am Comments Off on Takács Quartet Plays Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Haydn, and Beethoven
Cal Performances presents the Takács Quartet in a program Sunday afternoon 12 November at 3pm including the world premiere of Flow by the California-based violist and composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama (shown above discussing her music), along with Haydn’s Sunrise Quartet and the second of Beethoven’s Op. 59 Razumovsky quartets.
My program notes include an introduction to Flow :
The string quartet, according to composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama, “is considered a ‘perfect’ ensemble. It inspires delicacy, sensitivity and adventure. The core range is smaller than that of the piano, yet its timbre allows for beauteous interplay.” For the first of its two Cal Performances appearances this season, the Takács Quartet presents the world premiere of Ngwenyama’s debut in the genre, which the ensemble commissioned “because of our admiration for her as a virtuosic violist and performer who understands the dramatic and sonorous possibilities of a string quartet.”
Filed under: Cal Performances, commissions, string quartet
March 11, 2023 • 8:00 am Comments Off on William Kentridge at Berkeley
A centerpiece of the current Cal Performances season has been a campus-wide residency with the artist William Kentridge, which culminates on 17 March the U.S. premiere of SIBYL. Here’s my essay on the making of this unclassifiable new work and its place in Kentridge’s oeuvre:
William Kentridge’s SIBYL: The Reassurance of Uncertainty
“There will be no epiphany.” “Wait again for better gods.” “You will be dreamt by a jackal.” “Heaven is talking in a foreign tongue.”
The oracular messages that course through SIBYL, the most recent performance work by the towering South African artist William Kentridge, tease with tantalizing ambiguity. They seem to wryly provoke an irresistible urge to twist whatever information is at hand into interpretations best suited to our desires….
Filed under: Cal Performances, essay, William Kentridge
April 28, 2022 • 12:56 pm Comments Off on Danish Quartet: Doppelgänger II
Friday night brings the second installment in the Danish Quartet’s ongoing Doppelgänger Project at Cal Performances, with the world premiere of Finnish composer Lotta Wennaköski’s Pige, her response to Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet. Here’s the introduction I wrote to this program (click on tab “about the performance”).
Filed under: Cal Performances, Danish String Quartet, Schubert
December 4, 2020 • 10:31 am Comments Off on Dover Quartet at Cal Performances
While preparing to write program notes for the upcoming stream from Cal Performances — a concert by the Dover Quartet that premieres on 10 December — I got to submerge myself in some glorious string quartets. Along with Haydn’s Op. 76, No. 2 (“Die Quinten”) and Dvořák’s magnificent Op. 106, the Dovers will perform an early work from the years while György Ligeti was still in Budapest (Métamorphoses nocturnes).
Here’s a look at the Ligeti, with score included:
Filed under: Cal Performances, Ligeti, string quartet
September 18, 2019 • 9:41 am Comments Off on Reframing the Image: A Contemporary Lens on Robert Mapplethorpe’s Provocative Art
Later this month, Cal Performances will present Triptych — a meditation on the legacy of Robert Mapplethorpe 30 years after his death that was composed by Bryce Dessner to a libretto by korde arrington tuttle. Here’s the article on this hybrid theatrical work I wrote for Cal Performances:
In this age of selfies, promiscuously disseminated Snapchat sexting, and Instagram—the omnipresent reflection of our image-saturated, disposable culture—it almost defies belief that an exhibition of photographs was once the flashpoint for the culture wars that continue to divide America…
Filed under: art exhibition, Bryce Dessner, Cal Performances, Patti Smith, photography
March 16, 2019 • 10:36 am Comments Off on World Premiere of Dreamers
If you can’t make the world premiere of Dreamers this weekend by composer Jimmy López and playwright Nilo Cruz, don’t miss the live stream of Sunday afternoon’s concert (3pm West Coast time). Esa-Pekka Salonen is the conductor.
For more background, here’s my preview of a work that could not be more timely.
Filed under: Cal Performances, Jimmy López, new music
February 6, 2019 • 7:10 am Comments Off on Dreamers at Cal Performances
My story on a major upcoming new premiere by Jimmy López in collaboration with Nilo Cruz has been posted here.
Music Makes the Dream Reality:
A New Oratorio Inspired by the Immigrant Experience
It has been a few years since composer Jimmy López and playwright Nilo Cruz first conceived their latest collaboration, the oratorio Dreamers. But the message behind this musical-dramatic reflection on the challenges faced by undocumented immigrants seems to become more pressingly relevant every day. The work, which was commissioned by Cal Performances and receives its highly anticipated world premiere March 17 in Zellerbach Hall, pays homage to the experiences of Berkeley students who were brought to the United States as children and now face uncertain legal status.
Filed under: Cal Performances, Jimmy López, Nilo Cruz
October 7, 2018 • 9:04 pm Comments Off on Within and Without: Addressing Citizenship through Artistic Engagement
Cal Performances at Berkeley has an especially compelling season lined up and is genuinely engaged with issues critical to our time — including the premiere of a new work commissioned by composer Jimmy López and writer-playwright Nilo Cruz. Here’s my preview:
Filed under: Cal Performances, Jimmy López, Uncategorized
Arts & Culture Stories from NPR
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 