Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guide
Datebook is the San Francisco Chronicle’s guide to arts & entertainment in the Bay Area, combining award-winning news with a curated events calendar.
Berkeley Symphony on the hunt for new music director
Nov 20, 2024 · Joseph Young is stepping down from his role as music director of Berkeley Symphony at the end of the 2024-25 season, after six years on the job.. Young is only the orchestra’s fourth music director in its half-century history. His appointment at the beginning of the 2019-20 concert season was a surprise, since he initially made his way to the symphony to step in for an ill colleague.
Four years before Grateful Dead’s birth, lyricist Robert Hunter was ...
Oct 9, 2024 · The concepts of “lost” and “found” take on a different meaning when glimpsed through the cosmic prism of the Grateful Dead. Recognized today as one of history’s seminal rock groups, the band and its timeless lyrics and epic live jams have birthed a fan base of Deadheads that’s remained utterly devoted to the group for 59 years and counting.
Where to enjoy Handel’s ‘Messiah’ this holiday season
Nov 27, 2024 · Editor's note: This story has been updated with concerts for the 2024 season. Every year around December, the same set of cultural rituals gets repeated, depending on your performing art of choice. For ballet fans it’s “The Nutcracker” that marks the holiday season, for theatergoers it’s “A Christmas Carol,” and for classical music lovers, nothing says Christmas like performances ...
Mary Zimmerman’s imagination is unparalleled. Her ... - Datebook
Oct 15, 2024 · Q: Tell me more about how your “Magic Flute” hybridizes opera and theater. A: The tunes and the harmonies are the same, but the music has to be rather radically rearranged, since we have five instruments — a typical orchestra for this might be 60. Many of the singers have a couple of years thinking they were going to be opera singers but then became musical (theater) singers and actors.
Review: Familial dysfunction soars in ‘Cult of Love’ - Datebook
Feb 2, 2024 · Review: Familial dysfunction soars in ‘Cult of Love’ Most families dread the holiday season. The Dahls in Berkeley Repertory’s latest drama, written by “Russian Doll” co-creator Leslye Headland, are no different.
Review: A surprising and riveting fourth novel closes out Southern ...
Oct 18, 2024 · The Southern Reach Trilogy was a huge success for VanderMeer. But it also, and purposefully so, left many questions unanswered. That is where “Absolution” comes in: It acts first and foremost as a stand-alone, but also as a new way to enter the trilogy.
The hidden struggles behind S.F. Opera’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’
Oct 16, 2024 · Richard Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” is well known for the challenges it presents for singers, particularly those in the title roles. In any generation, only a few dramatic sopranos and heldentenors have had the right voice types and sheer stamina for this long and complex opera about doomed lovers.
Review: S.F. Opera taps into the transcendent power of ... - Datebook
Oct 20, 2024 · Review: S.F. Opera taps into the transcendent power of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ Richard Wagner’s epic of love and death comes to glorious life in a dramatically sung production led by Music Director Eun Sun Kim.
A sweet celebration of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, still moving
Jan 24, 2024 · For a guy who’s never stopped moving, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has put down a vast and world-shaping web of musical roots. A master of folk blues and various fingerstyle and flatpicking guitar idioms, he’s the direct link between American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, with whom he apprenticed and toured as a teenager in the early 1950s, and the legendary Bob Dylan, whose early sound ...