fun stuff I may or may not get to: June 2012

I thought May would be a quieter month when I could catch up on everything; I was wrong.

The Berkeley Early Music Festival is well underway so I'll just point you to their schedule here. I thought I would have all this posted before the festival started; such is life. . . .

You still have time to take advantage of Ojai North, presented by Cal Performances in Berkeley. (OK, technically, it's Ojai North!, but I'm going to drop the exclamation mark from now on, because it's just too jazz-hands for me). The wonderful pianist Leif Ove Andsnes is this year's artistic director. The series opens Monday 11 June with a free performance at 5:00 PM in the Faculty Glade (near Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus) of Inuksuit by John Luther Adams. Then on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, there are two concerts per night, one at 7:00 and one at 9:30. Check out the exciting line-up here. Tickets are a steal at $10 - $20 each. And I'm kicking myself for having scheduled over most of that week long ago. Since I try not to make the same mistake twice, I've already marked off 10 - 16 June 2013 for next year's Ojai North (Mark Morris will be the artistic director).

The San Francisco Opera returns, closing out its season with Verdi's Attila, a new production of The Magic Flute (with Nathan Gunn as Papageno), and, at long last, the company premiere of John Adams's modern classic, Nixon in China. The three run in repertory from 8 June to 8 July; check here for more information.

San Francisco Symphony closes out its centennial season with three powerhouse concerts: Yuja Wang playing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, along with the Sibelius 3 and Faure's Pavane, 14 - 17 June; Michelle DeYoung and Alan Held perform Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, along with Jeremy Denk playing the Liszt Piano Concerto No 1, 21 - 23 June; and the Beethoven 9, along with Ligeti's Lux Aeterna and Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, 27 - 30 June; Michael Tilson Thomas conducts all three concerts.

Wild Rumpus New Music Collective has a concert of fresh new music by Nomi Epstein, Florent Ghys, Jenny Olivia Johnson, Dan VanHassel, and Yao Chen; 8 June at ODC Dance Commons, Studio B.

Garden of Memory returns to welcome the summer solstice with an awesome array of performers; 21 June from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.

Jack Curtis Dubowsky's Harvey Milk Cantata receives its world premiere on 22 June at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, performed by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco. There are two performances that night, one at 7:00 and one at 9:00; Jack will give a pre-concert talk at 6:15. More information and tickets here.

Aurora Theater closes out its season with Salomania, a world premiere written and directed by Mark Jackson, about the trials of Maud Allan. 15 June to 22 July.

Cutting Ball Theater presents Risk Is This . . . , its annual festival of new (or newly translated) and experimental plays in staged readings. The line-up includes Christopher Chen's Aulis, an adaptation of Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis; Anthony Clarvoe's GIZMO, an adaptation of Capek's RUR; and Paul Walsh's new translations of Strindberg's five chamber plays. 8 June - 14 July, and details can be found here.

The American Conservatory Theater presents Kander and Ebb's much-praised musical, The Scottsboro Boys, 21 June - 15 July. I've been keenly interested in seeing this ever since it was announced, but my attempt to buy a ticket on-line the other day led me to quit ACT's site in disgust and ponder how much I really wanted to go. In the first place, they have exactly one weeknight 7:00 show, on a day I can't make, and since the thought of working all day and then having to kill 3+ hours around Union Square before the show even starts is enough to make me drive a red-hot spike into my forehead, I have to find a Saturday or Sunday when I'm not already occupied. So I actually found a day, because I still really wanted to see this show, and then I realized that ACT's site doesn't let you pick your own seat. Their arbitrary and mysterious system had thrown up one that looked pretty good, however, and I was going to proceed when I realized I had missed the step where you enter a discount code (use the code BOYS before 15 June for $50 orchestra/$40 mezzanine seats), and the seat was just too expensive for me without the code. So I emptied my cart of that seat, went back to the beginning, entered my code, and instead of receiving the same seat was offered a much inferior one way off to a side. Apparently in the two minutes between transactions the first seat suddenly was no longer "the best seat available." Also, in my experience, musicals at ACT tend to be crudely and brutally amplified, so I'm taking a chance no matter where I sit. Anyway, I'm still pondering this one. It really shouldn't be this difficult and inconvenient to give theaters my money, and there are certainly plenty of other takers.

This one is squeaking into June under the wire, since it starts 30 June and runs through 22 July: Shotgun Players present Truffaldino Says No! The ticket was cheap, the times are convenient, and the box office is extremely helpful. ACT should ask them for guidance.