Choreographer Mark Morris makes his Bay Area conducting debut. Illustration: Tom Bachtell When concertgoers attend Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in the Zellerbach Hall tomorrow night, the opening performance of this year’s Cal Performances season, they’ll encounter famed choreographer Mark Morris in the novel role of conductor. They’ll also catch the first sight of the […]
Music
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Roseanna Vitro interprets Randy Newman’s songbook
Roseanna Vitro: singing Randy Newman's songbook at the Jazzschool The idea seems so obvious it’s hard to explain why no one beat Roseanna Vitro to the project, but her recent album “Sail Away” is the first featuring a jazz singer applying her acute interpretive skills to Randy Newman’s vast and vivid songbook. A veteran improviser […]
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Local Hero, the latest Berkeley band, issue their first EP
Local Hero (left to right): Bassist Jojo Brandel, lead singer and guitarist Alex MacKay and drummer Leo Grossman. Bassist Max Hirtz-Wolf not shown Local Hero, an aspiring Berkeley group, has just released their first extended play album, The Aldgate, with five tracks. Three of the group are connected with Berkeley High while the fourth attends […]
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Berkeley High’s Kehlani Parrish performs in AGT finals
Poplyfe: lead singer Kehlani Parrish (center) is a Junior at Berkeley High School Kehlani Parrish, a 16-year-old Berkeley High junior, performed Tuesday night with her band Poplyfe in the finals of this season’s NBC show America’s Got Talent. After a stunning run-up to the show’s finals in Las Vegas, Poplyfe got mixed reviews from the judges […]
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Baez joins Aya Omac for ‘memorable night’ at Ashkenaz
Joan Baez (center) with her son, Gabriel Harris and Marianne Aya Omac. Photo: Richard Nagler Richard Nagler sent in the following report and the photo above: “Joan Baez performed at Ashkenaz last night to a sell-out crowd. Joan was the guest artist for the extraordinary American debut of singer-songwriter Marianne Aya Omac who stunned the […]
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Enough with the clichés: Berkeley embraces old-timers
Thomas Maupin and his grandson Daniel Rothwell on banjo Bashing Berkeley is a finely honed reflex in the national media, with just about any story offering lazy journalists a chance to dust off tired clichés about the People’s Republic of Bezerkleystan. A closer look reveals a community where a passion for progressive causes is matched […]
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Berkeley High Junior wows judges on America’s Got Talent
Update, 11.40pm: PopLyfe made it to the finals in tonight’s America’s Got Talent show. Kehlani Parrish, a Berkeley High Junior, received an outpouring of praise from all three America’s Got Talent judges last night, along with her band PopLyfe, who performed a foot-tapping medlée of Jackson Five songs on the show’s semi-final season episode. Parrish […]
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Out in Berkeley: From Brazil, a street party, a songstress
A Brazilian street party on Sunday at BrasArte on San Pablo Avenue will celebrate the Lavagem No one is likely to mistake Berkeley for Salvador de Bahia, the northeastern Brazilian city famous as the heartland of Afro-Brazilian culture. But on Sunday, at least for a day, San Pablo Avenue will resound to the thundering pulse […]
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Birdland Jazz finds a new home at Café Yesterday
Birdland Jazz logo. Photos: Eric Arnold Late last year Michael Parayno, the founder of arguably the hippest garage jazz club and barbecue joint in town, was having some serious run-ins with the city — as first reported on Berkeleyside. Parayno was operating a very popular supper club, then called the Multi Culti Grill and Birdland […]
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World music comes to Telegraph at LastSundaysFest
Telegraph Avenue will be transformed into a stage for world music on Sunday A three block stretch of Telegraph Avenue will be transformed Sunday into an international music festival featuring live indie bands, chamber orchestras, and jazz ensembles. It’s the third annual LastSundaysFest, Telegraph Avenue’s street party, done in a way that only Telegraph can […]
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Out in Berkeley: Mawungira Enharira transports
Mawungira Enharira has sparked interest in traditional Shona culture More recent atrocities may have pushed the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe out of the news, but the devastation wrought by the iron-fisted Robert Mugabe and his kleptocratic ZANU-PF party continues apace. During a decade of incomprehensible hardship, the spirit of Zimbabwe’s people has been […]
Posted inBusiness
More than 30 years of ‘thinking sound’ in Berkeley
Meyer Sound factory off Heinz Avenue. Photos: Meyer Sound By Robert Mills Sound is life at the Meyer Sound facility on San Pablo. The 32-year-old Berkeley business continues to churn out professional sound products for concert halls, churches and traveling bands from around the world. “We’re a family-run company, privately owned still,” said Helen Meyer, executive […]
