By Robert Mills Julian Lage reacts to a smooth guitar lick the way a father stares at a newborn child. There’s a pleasure and grace about his stage presence that cannot be mistaken. An intimate Friday night jazz show at Berkeley’s Freight and Salvage proved this. Lage, a former child prodigy who first performed publicly at […]
Music
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Transported to Louisiana with St. Mary & Co at Ashkenaz
By Robert Mills The award for busiest dance floor in Berkeley could easily go to Ashkenaz. In fact, the 38-year-old music and dance community center has claimed such designations in the past. Last Saturday the floor was particularly packed thanks to the zydeco stylings of Mark St. Mary and company – also recognized as “The Best […]
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Berkeley boy gets real in the Whole Foods parking lot
He’s a Berkeley High School alum (class of ’92), his fiancée also attended BHS, and his parents live in Berkeley. He drives a Prius and likes quinoa — and now a music video created by David Wittman, which has some fun at the expense of Whole Food-shopping healthfood nuts (like him), is going viral. In an interview […]
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Out in Berkeley: Tenor saxophonist Anton Schwartz
Anton Schwartz performing at Filoli. Photo: Matt May By Andrew Gilbert Though he moved to Seattle last year after more than a decade as an essential player on the Bay Area jazz scene, tenor saxophonist Anton Schwartz still finds plenty of opportunities to return to the East Bay. The fact that he owns a loft in […]
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In Berkeley: Maria Schneider’s intricate, ravishing style
Maria Schneider: performing in Berkeley next week By Andrew Gilbert If I were a gambling man, I’d put all my money on Maria Schneider. Over the past two decades, the composer and arranger has defied the longest odds, thriving as the leader of a 21-piece jazz orchestra stocked with a vivid cross-section of New York’s […]
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Out in Berkeley: Grupo Falso Baiano’s infectious grooves
Grupo Falso Baiano perform twice-monthly informal jam sessions in Berkeley's Casa de Cultura on San Pablo Avenue By Andrew Gilbert If the unseasonable weather has you longing for a tropical respite, the quickest route from Berkeley to Brazil runs right through Casa de Cultura on San Pablo Avenue. For the past few months the stellar […]
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Out in Berkeley: Bravura accordion player Petar Ralchev
By Andrew Gilbert Tenor saxophonist Al Cohn famously quipped that a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn’t. Once emblematic of squareness, the maligned accordion is ascendant these days, playing a key role in resurgent roots styles, while also championed by intrepid musicians unconcerned about old musical categories. In Balkan […]
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Out in Berkeley: reed expert Steven Lugerner
Steven Lugerner. Photo: John Rogers By Andrew Gilbert In a recent, much commented upon East Bay Express cover story, Rachel Swan detailed the various reasons why there’s a steady flow of jazz artists from the Bay Area’s relatively small pond to New York City’s teaming sea. One fish that Swan missed in her list of […]
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Berkeley school bands perform at Giants game
On Thursday this week, Berkeley Unified School District’s high-school and middle-school bands joined forces to perform the Star Spangled Banner at the San Francisco Giants baseball game. The excitement was more than palpable — holler and shouting alert. Watch the musicians in action at the 1.55-minute point in the video above (which comes courtesy of BUSD’s Mark […]
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Out in Berkeley: Berbers rising with Moh Alileche
Moh Alileche taught himself to play a mondol with homemade version created out of a one-gallon oil can By Andrew Gilbert Growing up in Algeria’s mountainous Kabylia region, Moh Alileche taught himself to play a homemade version of the country’s national instrument, the mondol, constructed out of a rectangular one-gallon Mobil oil can and a […]
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Out in Berkeley: Violinist Irene Sazer’s far-flung sounds
Berkeley violinist Irene Sazar explores melodies, rhythms and arrangements from all over the world By Andrew Gilbert Berkeley violinist Irene Sazer has worked with a mind-boggling array of artists, from Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles to Ali Akbar Khan, David Grisman and Bjork. In founding her own band, she wanted a vehicle to […]
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Sell-out at Yoshi’s raises funds for BUSD jazz programs
Longfellow Middle School jazz band plays at a sold-out Yoshi's. Photos: Alex Chiappetta Yoshi’s in Oakland, a legendary venue for the best in jazz, was packed on Monday night. The boisterous, enthusiastic crowd had come to hear the jazz bands from Longfellow and Willard middle schools. Fan — and mother of a baritone sax player […]
