Its origins date to 1960s music contests. Relaunched 20 years ago, the convention is being held Wednesday-Sunday this week in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park.
Music
Local rock band to play new music about life of sci-fi legend Octavia Butler at the Ivy Room this weekend
East Bay rock band Skip the Needle’s new EP explores Butler’s experience growing up in Pasadena before she became the author of the dystopian masterpiece ‘Parable of the Sower’ and other science fiction classics.
Berkeley-raised guitarist returns for Hillside Club gig celebrating sublime new duo album
Will Bernard, a Berkeley High alum long based in Brooklyn, released the album ‘Sky’ last week with clarinetist and vocalist Beth Custer, a longtime creative foil who inspires his most telegraphic lyricism.
Babette’s back patio is West Berkeley’s newest music venue
The restaurant, moved from BAMPFA to San Pablo Avenue last year, is now dishing up music during a Wednesday night concert series.
A Berkeley High algebra lesson gave her band the X-factor
The Shelley Doty X-Tet plays Freight & Salvage Saturday. Doty (class of ‘84) says X is the undetermined variable that gives the audience, and band, a special experience.
West Berkeley dance party will kick off new African diaspora performance series
The ‘Sacred Turn Up’ on Saturday will transform West Berkeley’s Ciel Creative Space into “an immersive Black art experience and party.” For organizers Tiffany Austin and Kenya Moses, it’s just the beginning.
Remembering Earl Scheelar, jazz cornetist and Berkeley bandleader for nearly 6 decades
Scheelar had an eloquent and distinctive style inspired by the city of New Orleans. He played cornet, clarinet, banjo, sax, tuba, baritone horn and country fiddle, and he sang.
Song about the Berkeley Rose Garden will become a short film
Composer Alexis Harte’s song ‘Your Rose Garden’ draws from his youth in Berkeley. Now the song is being made into a film, and he wants your family photos of the garden and Codornices Park.
A jazz prince will play a free concert on Fourth Street this Saturday
Smith Dobson V, part of a musical clan that goes back at least four generations, will play outside Peet’s Saturday afternoon.
Group that sparked statewide revival of Mexican roots music is coming to Berkeley Sunday
Eugene Rodriguez and the Los Cenzontles ensemble will play at Freight & Salvage with the Veracruz son jarocho group Mono Blanco and Kiki Valera.
Jazz musician David Murray returns to Berkeley, where he first played sax at church in 1965
Fifty-eight years after a pastor at the Missionary Church of God in Christ urged him to play sax for the first time, Murray will perform at the Back Room on Friday.
Vitamin Em’s free downtown concert on Saturday will support Berkeley’s unhoused residents
The Civic Center Park concert benefitting the Dorothy Day House will include songs inspired by Lizzo, and by a gifted musician who became addicted to heroin and died in the Tenderloin.