detail of Untitled (Pink Hydrangea), a watercolor by Ruth Asawa, currently on view at SFMOMA as part of the special exhibit Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
04 August 2025
01 August 2025
28 July 2025
Museum Monday 2025/30
detail of a Ming Dynasty vase showing scholars going to a gathering, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
26 July 2025
Another Opening, Another Show: August 2025
Here we are in pretty much the middle of summer, though we (the Bay Area) seem to be the only place in the country with cool temperatures & overcast skies (I am neither complaining nor boasting, just noting). But I'm already receiving messages about the year-end holidays (New Year's Eve cruises, fancy advent calendars, Christmas cards, new calendars. . . ), so, in case you hadn't noticed, time does continue to move on. As usual, this is a slowish time of year for live performances, though there are certainly some meaty offerings below, particularly the West Edge Opera Festival & the Piano Festival. Let's get to it.
Theatrical
At The Marsh Berkeley, Josh Kornbluth’s What Is To Be Done? Fighting Fascism and Depression, an improvisational work-in-progress written & performed by Kornbluth, has been extended through 22 August.
On 4 -5 August, as part of its Champagne Staged Reading series, Shotgun Players presents Glitter in the Glass by R Eric Thomas, directed by Elizabeth Carter, about "a Black artist whose time is running out to deliver on a grant – a piece of art set to replace a Confederate monument in Baltimore".
Golden Thread Productions, in partnership with Art2Action, presents The Return by Hanna Eady & Edward Mast, directed by Eady, in which a Palestinian & an Israeli Jew meet "in an auto-body shop in the mid-sized city Herzliya . . . and by the end of the play, both of their lives will be changed forever by the realities that surround them", & that's 7 to 24 August at The Garrett, on the fifth floor of the Toni Rembe Theater in downtown San Francisco.
The Exit Theater in San Francisco presents the SF Fringe Festival from 8 to 24 August; click here for the schedule & a list of the plays.
Brian Copeland performs The Waiting Period, his one-person show about the waiting period to buy a handgun while struggling with suicidal thoughts (developed with & directed by David Ford), at The Marsh Berkeley on 10 & 24 August.
Bard Theater presents Macboth (that's not a typo), a two-person adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy, with Alan Coyne & Em Ervolina as "ruthless thespians" going after one dream role, & you can see the bloody results at the Eclectic Box Theater in San Francisco on 14 - 16 August.
At The Marsh Berkeley on 16 & 23 August, Wayne Harris performs his Drapetomania, directed by David Ford, about Harris's US State Department-sponsored time in Palestine to conduct storytelling workshops & perform a piece about Martin Luther King Jr.
Actors Ensemble of Berkeley presents The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Jay Manley with Jane Goodwin, on weekends at the John Hinkel Park Amphitheater, beginning 16 August through Labor Day.
On 16 - 17 August, the Magic Theater presents a staged reading of For Honor by Lee Sankowich, with lyrics by Robin Bradford & score by William Beatty, a new musical about a group of young Jewish resistance fighters during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
On 18 August, the Magic Theater presents, as part of the Rainbow Zebra/Magic Theater Reading Extravaganza!, a reading of House of Glass by Michael Lynch, directed by Andrea Gordon.
Talking
As part of its Unscripted series, BroadwaySF presents An Evening with Robert B Reich, who will be discussing his new book, Coming Up Short: My Memoir of America (a copy of which is included with your ticket), & that's 13 August at the Golden Gate Theater.
Operatic
The annual West Edge Opera Festival takes place this month, with a truly stellar line-up: the world premiere of Dolores with music by Nicolás Lell Benavides & libretto by Marella Martin Koch, about the labor leader Dolores Huerta, focusing on what happened after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, & that's 2, 10, & 16 August (check here for my post on the preview performance West Edge presented in 2023); David & Jonathan, about the Biblical boyfriends, with music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier & a libretto by Father François Bretonneau, & that's 3, 9 & 16 August; & Alban Berg's Wozzeck, a modernist masterpiece, & that's 9, 14, & 17 August.
The Merola Grand Finale will be held at the Opera House on 16 August.
The Lamplighters present Gilbert & Sullivan's ever-popular HMS Pinafore on 2 - 3 August at the Lesher Center for the Art in Walnut Creek, 9 - 10 August at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 16 - 17 August at the Blue Shield Theatre at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.
Choral
A cappella group Naturally 7 performs at the SF Jazz Center on 9 - 10 August.
See also the San Francisco Choral Society's performance of the Brahms Requiem under Orchestral.
Vocalists
On 7 August at the Toni Rembe Theater, The Transgender District & Opera Parallèle present the fourth annual Expansive, featuring transgender & non-binary classical artists, this year featuring baritone Lucia Lucas along with pianist Taylor Chan, bass baritone Wilford Kelly, & host Afrika America.
Festival Opera presents American Song Cycles, a program featuring Julia Seeholzer’s Portraits of Disquiet & Jake Heggie's monodrama At the Statue of Venus, both featuring soprano Carrie Hennessey & pianist Daniel Lockert, & that's 24 August at the Piedmont Center for the Arts.
Orchestral
On 16 August in Davies Hall, the San Francisco Choral Society presents the Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem.
On 16 August, Sixto F Montesinos Jr leads the SF Pride Band at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco in a program including Descarga by Jorge Sosa, Tricycle by Andrew Boysen Jr, Tango & Chandé by Victoriano Valencia, & Los Caminos de Langerke by Rubén Darío Gómez.
Chamber Music
On 10 August, the Berkeley Hillside Club Concert series will present Alexi Kenney (violin), Tanya Tomkins (cello), & Audrey Vardanega (piano) performing Schumann’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Opus 110, along with other selections to be announced.
Instrumental
On 1 August at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, you can hear the Harp Immersive Closing Recital.
The San Francisco International Piano Festival, founded & led by pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, arrives for its 8th season, which will extend from 21 to 31 August, with a focus on the music of Ravel in his 150th birth year; check here for a full list of concerts & master classes.
Early / Baroque Music
Jeffrey Thomas leads the American Bach Soloists in the San Francisco Bach Festival at the Conservatory of Music from 4 to 10 August; there are five concerts featuring a variety of instrumental works by Bach & other baroque composers, as well as lectures & master classes, & you can find the details here.
On 12 August at The Conservatory at One Sansome in downtown San Francisco, Philharmonia Baroque is offering the second in a new series, Coffee Concerts: Freshly Brewed Baroque, featuring works by Bach, Handel, & Telemann performed by Elizabeth Blumenstock (violin), Stephen Schultz (flute), Corey Jamason (harpsichord), & Elisabeth Reed (cello); the concert begins at 11:00 AM & runs until noon & is free & open to the public.
Country / Jazz / Blues
The Sun Ra Arkestra will perform at the SF Jazz Center over four nights, with a different focus each time: on 31 July, Cosmic Space Jazz, on 1 August, Big Band Swing, & 2 August, Marshall Allen 101 Salute (Allen himself will not be performing), & 3 August, Space Is The Place; the Arkestra is currently led on tour by saxophonist Knoel Scott, but continues Sun Ra's mission of "blending big band swing, free jazz, cosmic philosophy, and Afro-futurist pageantry into a transcendent live experience".
Jack Everly conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Dolly Parton’s Threads: My Songs In Symphony, an "innovative multimedia symphonic experience featuring Dolly on screen, leading audiences in a visual-musical journey of her songs, her life, and her stories", & that's 1 August at Davies Hall (Parton does not appear in person at the show).
BroadwaySF presents Jesus "Aguaje" Ramos & The Buena Vista Orchestra at the Golden Gate Theater on 14 August.
Taj Mahal performs at the SF Jazz Center from 14 to 17 August.
Art Means Painting
Bay Area Then, a retrospective of 1990s Bay Area artists, opens at the YBCA on 1 August & runs through 25 January 2026.
At the Asian Art Museum, Yuan Goang-Ming: Everyday War, a powerful exhibit by the Taiwanese video artist, closes on 4 August, & New Japanese Clay, featuring contemporary Japanese ceramics, opens on 15 August.
Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread, the first North American survey of the Korean fiber artist, opens at BAM/PFA on 6 August.
Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art at the Legion of Honor closes on 17 August.
Cinematic
On 1 August at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, you can experience An Evening With Francis Ford Coppola and Megalopolis Screening; after a screening of the 2024 film, the famed director will "lead an interactive conversation about the future of humanity, along with a live audience Q&A".
CatVideoFest 2025 will be held at the Roxie in San Francisco on 2 August; this event tends to sell out, so move quickly if you're interested in getting a ticket.
Jack Everly conducts the San Francisco Symphony in a live performance of Mark Knopfler's score for the much-loved film The Princess Bride, on 2 - 3 August at Davies Hall.
On 13 - 14 August at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, you can see Divine in one of his great roles, Francine Fishpaw, the beleaguered star of John Waters's Polyester (presented in Odorama).
Tsai Ming-liang in Person at BAM/PFA features the Taiwanese director, along with actor Lee Kang-sheng. discussing his own films as well as some that have influenced him, & the series runs 14 to 31 August.
On 17 August, director Afshin Hashemi will be in person at the Roxie in San Francisco for a showing of his film Sea Boys & a Q&A (presented by Diaspora Arts Connection).
The Orinda Theater's Classic Movie Matinee for this month (held as usual on the last Tuesday – 26 August) will be Swing Time, with Astaire & Rogers.
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The Roxie in San Francisco will be showing a new 35mm print of Fellini's 8 1/2, struck from the original camera negative, so the film vs digital purists will want to check it out (despite technical issues that render some of the subtitles unreadably white-on-white), & the showings are 29 - 31 August & 1 September.
25 July 2025
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21 July 2025
Museum Monday 2025/29
detail of a Sketch for Perseus on Pegasus Slaying Medusa by John Singer Sargent, now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
18 July 2025
14 July 2025
Museum Monday 2025/28
detail of Dragons, an ink-&-color-on-paper scroll work attributed to Chen Rong, now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
11 July 2025
07 July 2025
04 July 2025
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30 June 2025
Museum Monday 2025/26
detail of Untitled (Cross and Circles), pieced by Warren Wise & quilted by Willia Ete Graham, currently on display at BAM/PFA as part of Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California
27 June 2025
25 June 2025
Orinda Theater Classic Movie Matinee: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T
The Castro Theater renovations are stretching on, so when the SF Silent Film Festival announced that this year's edition, slated for November, will be at the Orinda Theater, I went to check it out.
Last year's substitute location, the Palace of Fine Arts, though lovely, was in a tricky location for most people, particularly non-drivers (I realized I couldn't go to the first or last movies of the day, as getting to & from the venue took so much time). There were also very few food options, though the Festival did bring in some food trucks. The Orinda Theater, it turns out, is a very brief & convenient walk from the Orinda BART station; you don't even have to cross a street! (I have to change trains to get there from where I live, & it's supposed to be a timed transfer but hahaha, I usually have to wait ten to fifteen minutes for the transfer train but it's still easier than the Palace) There's food available in the theater itself, & their popcorn is like what we used to get at the Castro, before the new owners wrecked the snack bar, & there are lots of different restaurants immediately around the theater, with the usual options (Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese, bistro, Greek, pizza, hamburgers). The main auditorium of the theater is quite large, & the whole building is period-appropriate Art Deco-ish. I think it's a good choice. My one concern is about the restrooms. I felt that at the Castro they should have stuck some port-a-potties outside, & they'll need to do the same here. That's one thing I'll give the Palace of Fine Arts – the interior of their theater is pretty non-descript, but they had generous restroom arrangements.
When I took my little field trip to scout the theater, I was only able to walk around outside & in the general vicinity. But I learned they have a Classic Movie Matinee the last Tuesday of every month. The selection for June was The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T, which I had never seen. I had a vague sense that Dr Seuss was connected to it. Indeed he was! He came up with the story, wrote the script, & wrote the lyrics (it's a musical). It was such a box-office bomb that he turned his back on Hollywood, & vice versa. But in the way of such things, what the movie-going public of 1953 couldn't stomach was very much to the taste of a smaller but vociferous group of fans who came across it on TV, & a cult was born.
The movie was produced by Stanley Kramer, & the combination of Stanley Kramer & Dr Seuss is not even the most improbable thing about this movie. It concerns a boy, Bartholomew Collins, who takes piano lessons from the acerbic Dr Terwilliger, who berates him for not practicing enough. There's also the boy's widowed mother, & a friendly plumber. The boy falls asleep & most of the movie is an Oz-like (referring to the 1939 film, not the books) dream that reflects the boy's life & worries back in distorted (but maybe basically accurate) form.
Before we saw the movie, though, we were treated to selected short subjects, old-school-movie-going-style. There was a newsreel from the 1960s (President Johnson was calling for a national day of prayers & recollection over America's racial strife – the never-ending story). There were some astutely chosen cartoons: a Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies adaptation of Seuss's Horton Hatches the Egg, a Puppetoons short of Seuss's The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, &, to tie in with the piano theme, a short of a very young Liberace (billed as "Walter Liberace") playing the Tiger Rag while the camera occasionally cut to two young women standing around the piano, grinning at us vacantly & bopping uneasily. Then film critic & program curator Matías Bombal came out, wearing a dazzling robe that turned out to be one of the original costumes for Dr Terwilliger, to introduce the film. His comments were pleasantly chatty but to the point, giving us a brief history of the film & its troubles & eventual emergence into the select company of cult classics. He also told us that we were about to see a new restoration, with the Technicolor at its most resplendent.
The movie is indeed fantastic to look at, & utterly bizarre. Hollywood gets slated a lot for its lack of originality, but sometimes it produces something so strange you have to wonder what they were thinking (well, what the money people were thinking; the creative people were just being creative). Dr Terwilliger hates all musical instruments that aren't pianos, & has a dungeon in which he keeps them & their players, leading to an extended & wonderful musical number, with many Seussian-style instruments played by greenish, mostly shirtless male dancers, that seems like a collaboration between Busby Berkeley & Bosch. The Doctor has invented a gigantic piano that will be played simultaneously by Bartholomew & 499 other boys (500 boys, ten fingers each, hence Dr T's 5,000 fingers). This musical triumph will somehow ensure the success of Dr Terwilliger's "happy fingers" institute as well as the continued devotion to the doctor of Bart's widowed mother. I'll stop the plot summary there, because while the plot is entertaining enough, the look of the film is what really grabs the attention.
The colors are saturated & glowing. I recollect lots of dark purples, golden shades of orange, teetering skyscrapers, curved scarlet ladders that go nowhere, pickle juice that sparkles in its pale green. The musical numbers are quite delightful; it's too bad that after the initial previews the studio cut several of them (if you're making a crazy musical, there's no point in trimming it back to half crazy). Seuss's lyrics are, as you might expect, clever & witty, & the music by Frederick Hollander & Morris Stoloff is catchy & charming (despite its financial failure, the movie was remembered at Oscar time with a nomination for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture; it lost to Alfred Newman for Call Me Madam).
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The movie is also very well cast. Tommy Rettig as Bartholomew manages the tricky task of representing what is supposed to be a "typical American boy" while not being repulsive (usually that type, particularly from the mid-century – think of any Disney live-action show from the 1950s or 1960s – just creeps me out, but Rettig is very appealing). Hans Conried is menacing but amusing, even a bit endearing, as Dr Terwilliger. Peter Lind Hayes is both dry & warm as the plumber, Mr Zabladowski, & Mary Healy is winsome as the widowed mother. But it's the whole look of the film, the wildness of its conceptions, the wit of its performance, that really carry the day.
A friend of mine who had seen the movie many years ago & was less entertained than I was texted to me, "Aren't you supposed to be able to read all sorts of Freudian & Cold War subtext into it?" Yes indeed, I can certainly see that. There's a lot of mid-century-movie-Freudianism about the boy & his mother (who is pretty much the only woman in the entire film) & his search for a father figure (the plumber rather than Dr Terwilliger). I have to say, for 1950s Hollywood Freud the handling is fairly light, certainly when compared to some of Hitchcock's films. And for the Cold War, there is the fight against a somewhat ludicrous but genuinely threatening authoritarian, one who stifles dissent & insists on having his rules obeyed endlessly & automatically, as well as a device that switches the balance of power & which gets referred to as "atomic". But I would be surprised if there weren't also theories about a queer (male) subtext: the dreams of our all-American lad seem to involve more partly nude men than you usually see in a 1950s musical, he seems very determined to have his mother marry the plumber, mostly so he & his new Dad can have a homosocial relationship (fishing together, like something out of The Wind in the Willows), &, as mentioned, the only female around is the boy's mother. And of course the whole impetus of the film is about expressing your individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist, & unaccepting authority.
I'm not thrilled that the rebellion takes the form of refusing to practice the piano. The value of music is too obvious to need my insistence, & you get there by practicing. The suggestion that "normal" children, particularly boys, don't like practicing piano is a toxic cliché. But I can look past that annoyance, which is sort of the key that unlocks the wildness of the film. I'm ready to join the cult.
Next up, on 29 July, is The Asphalt Jungle, which I also have never seen.
23 June 2025
Another Opening, Another Show: July 2025
July is typically a slow month for performances, but this July seems particularly slow, not that there isn't more than enough listed below to take you out of your residence & yourself for an evening or two. I'll take this opportunity to reiterate that this list is, to use a recently overused word, curated; basically, something needs to be something I could or would, given world enough & time, go to experience. This means certain things don't get listed: anything too rock/rap/pop oriented, anything too electronica, anything that promises us a DJ (a promise meaning there will be bad music played much too loudly). We need more space in this culture for the obscure, the recondite, the artsy, the offbeat, the niche, the so-called unpopular. Go & seek these things out!
There are some terrific on-going things not listed below, as they started in earlier months: the Ruth Asawa exhibit at SFMOMA, the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit at the Legion of Honor, & the African-American Quilt show at BAM/PFA are three that are worth visiting & re-visiting.
And best wishes to all of us as we try to get through the worst of all holidays, the Fourth of July. Explosions. Fire danger. Patriotism. How toxic, & how typically American that the day features that most disgusting & even immoral of competitions, the eating contest. Thank God & hops for beer, which might help us float through to August, which promises to be more exciting (which is a way of saying it promises to be more promising).
Theatrical
San Francisco Playhouse presents My Fair Lady, opening 3 July & running through 13 September.
The SF Mime Troupe presents Disruption: A Musical Farce at various outdoor venues from 4 July to 3 August; check here for specific locations & dates.
Actors Ensemble of Berkeley presents Cymbeline, directed by Glenn Havlan & Gaby Schneider, from 4 to 20 July at the John Hinkel Park Amphitheater.
New Conservatory Theater Center brings back its production of the musical Ride the Cyclone, with book, music, & lyrics by Jacob Richmond & Brooke Maxwell, directed & choreographed by Stephanie Temple, with musical direction by Ben Prince, from 11 July to 15 August.
The Oakland Theater Project presents Lorraine Hansberry's final play, Les Blancs, adapted by Robert Nemiroff & directed by James Mercer II, from 11 to 27 July.
Aurora Theater presents Jane Wagner's one-person show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, directed by Jennifer King, with Marga Gomez in the role originated by Lily Tomlin, & that runs from 12 July to 10 August.
At the Marsh San Francisco, Koorosh Ostowari’s Grandma’s Million-Dollar Scheme: A Comedy-Drama written & performed by Ostowari (directed by David Ford), a one-person show about a mostly true encounter between his younger get-rich-quick-in-real-estate self & a scheming grandmother, plays Saturdays starting on 12 July through 23 August; also at the Marsh San Francisco, Pearl Ong’s Night Driver, written & performed by Ong (& also directed by David Ford), asking the question "What’s a Hong Kong princess doing driving a cab in San Francisco? And what does her very proper mother make of it?", also plays Saturdays (at an earlier time from Ostowari's show), starting 19 July through 23 August.
Shotgun Players presents The Magnolia Ballet by Terry Guest, directed by AeJay Antonis Marquis, a poetic look at four Black men in the American South, from 12 July to 10 August.
The Marsh Berkeley presents Candace Johnson’s Scat-ter Brain: The Music of ADHD, written & performed by Johnson, a one-person semi-autobiographical musical about receiving a diagnosis of ADHD as a 40+ adult; the show starts 19 July & runs on Saturdays through 13 September (no show on 30 August).
The San Leandro Players present Agatha Christie's The Hollow, directed by Amy Cook, from 19 July through 17 August.
Garrison Keillor Tonight, a one-person show featuring the writer & radio host, will take place at the Presidio Theater on 20 July (despite the title, the show is actually a matinee)..
Operatic
Pocket Opera presents its version of Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne, with music direction by Paul Schrage & stage direction by Phil Lowery, on 13 July at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 20 July at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 27 July at the Gunn Theater in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.
Vocalists
San Francisco Opera's Merola Program presents the Schwabacher Summer Concert: It’s Complicated – Love & Opera, conducted by William Long & directed by Omer Ben Seadia & Elio Bucky, featuring the Merolini in extended scenes from operas by Donizetti, Puccini, & Gounod, & that's 10 & 12 July at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
On 27 July at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, Festival Opera's Salon Series presents Baroque Queens, a program featuring mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz, with Joshua Mikus-Mahoney on cello, Jon Mendle on theorbo & baroque guitar, & Zachary Gordin on harpsichord, sizzling through an array of "legendary heroines, sorceresses, and queens from the past".
Orchestral
Stephanie Childress leads the San Francisco Symphony in what they're calling a Tchaikovsky Spectacular, featuring selection from Sleeping Beauty, the Violin Concerto (with soloist Blake Pouliot), the Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-Overture, & the 1812 Overture, & that's 10 July at the Frost Amphitheater at Stanford & 11 July at Davies Hall.
On 12 - 13 July, Sunny Xia leads TwoSet Violin (Brett Yang & Eddy Chen) along with the San Francisco Symphony in "a night of Sacrilegious Games!" (details of the program have not yet been announced).
On 23 July at Davies Hall, Robert Moody leads the Time for Three string trio (Ranaan Meyer, double bass & vocals; Nicolas Kendall, violin & vocals; & Charles Yang, violin & vocals) along with the San Francisco Symphony in Christopher Theofanidis's Rainbow Body, Mason Bates's Silicon Hymnal, & Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.
Instrumental
Pianists Rachel Breen & Sergey Belyavsky perform Carnivals: from Schumann to Strauss to Stravinsky, featuring Schumann's Carnaval Opus 9, Stravinsky's Three Movements from Petrushka, Moritz Rosenthal's Carnaval de Vienne, & more, at the Piedmont Piano Company on 26 July.
Pianist Alex Stabile will perform works by Bach & Ravel as well as selections from Rachmaninoff’s Études-Tableaux Opus 39 at the Piedmont Piano Company on 27 July.
Early / Baroque Music
The San Francisco Early Music Society celebrates the legacy of William Byrd, a Catholic in Protestant Elizabethan England, with the presentation at Grace Cathedral on 17 - 18 July of Secret Byrd, an immersive concert featuring The Gesualdo Six from the UK & our the local Wildcat Viols in collaboration with Concert Theatre Works.
Jazz, Blues, Folk
Monsieur Periné brings their fusion of the "jazz manouche style of Django Reinhardt with dance-inspiring Latin American rhythms" to the SF Jazz Center from 17 to 20 July.
On 19, 21, & 22 July, Paul Simon (yes, that Paul Simon) will perform his new album Seven Psalms, "along with new arrangements of familiar favorites"; though the website says he is performing "in intimate venues with pristine acoustics", the concerts are nonetheless in Davies Hall.
This seems like a bit of an oddity, as orchestras are collective & the blues seems like an individualist art form, but Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience, featuring "cinematic narration" by Freeman as well as an in-person appearance, surveys the Delta Blues with performances by musicians from the Ground Zero Blues Club as well as the San Francisco Symphony, & that's at Davies Hall on 25 July.
Ravi Coltrane visits the SF Jazz Center for a week as Resident Artistic Director, with a Listening Party on 23 July, his group Coltraxx (Coltrane on tenor & soprano saxophones, David Virelles on keyboards, Dezron Douglas on bass, Johnathan Blake on drums) on 24 - 25 July, & the Ravi Coltrane Quintet (Coltrane on tenor & soprano saxophone, Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Gadi Lehavi on keyboards, & Elé Howell on drums) on 26 - 27 July.
Dance
ODC Dance presents Summer Sampler, featuring the world premieres of Nothing’s Going to Make Sense (choreography by KT Nelson) & Theories of Time (choreography by Mia J Chong), as well as 10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making (choreography by Catherine Galasso), & that's 17 - 20 July at the ODC Theater.
Art Means Painting
The Minnesota Street Project Foundation presents the 2025 San Francisco Art Book Fair, featuring an "exhibition and celebration of printed material from independent publishers, artists, designers, collectors, and enthusiasts from around the world", & that's from 11 to 13 July.
Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain opens at the Oakland Museum of California on 18 July.
Ferlinghetti for San Francisco, featuring artworks on paper created by the renowned poet & publisher, opens at the Legion of Honor on 19 July.
Cinematic
Some film series launch this month at BAM/PFA: Mikio Naruse: The Auteur as Salaryman, exploring the works of the great Japanese filmmaker, begins 3 July, with movies screening through 21 December; & Smiles of a Summer Night: Swedish Auteurs, featuring works by Ingmar Bergman & other Swedish filmmakers, opens 11 July, with movies screening through 29 August.
The second Fraenkel Film Festival, sponsored by the Fraenkel Gallery & featuring films chosen by visual artists, runs at the Roxie Theater from 9 to 19 July (all proceeds will benefit the Roxie); there's a terrific line-up of movies, & some that caught my eye are Chaplin's The Great Dictator, Dorothy Arzner's Merrily We Go to Hell, & The Wizard of Oz.
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival opens 17 July & runs through 3 August; check here for films & locations.
On 19 July, as part of the Legion of Honor's centennial celebration, the museum will host a free showing of Hitchcock's Vertigo, which includes several scenes shot on location at the Legion.
Godzilla Fest 2025 plays at the Balboa Theater from 18 to 20 July; check out the schedule here. If only Godzilla was the worst monster we faced these days. . .
Museum Monday 2025/25
detail of The Legend of Brutus and Portia by Jacopo del Sellaio, now at the Legion of Honor
20 June 2025
18 June 2025
San Francisco Opera: Idomeneo
For some time now I have been saying to anyone who wants to listen, as well as to many who do not, that Idomeneo is the one Mozart opera I have never really connected with (to forestall the question, I love Clemenza di Tito, as well as all baroque opera, so this is not an objection to opera seria or stylized music drama in general). Yet I persist in trying! On Tuesday night I was at the second performance of San Francisco Opera's latest production of the piece. Idomeneo & I remain unconnected.
Not that I don't see things to admire in it: mostly musical things. Eun Sun Kim led a crisp ensemble in music that was powerful & tender. San Francisco Opera had assembled a sterling cast – Matthew Polenzani in the title tole; Daniela Mack as his son Idamante; Ying Fang as Ilia, a Trojan princess loved by Idamante; Elza van den Heever as the volatile Elettra, in unrequited love with Idamante; Alek Shrader as the counselor Arbace – who all sang with beautiful sound, but beauty used to expressive purposes; the vocal fireworks were explosive, the yearning & sorrow genuine. (I have to give a special mention to Mack, who was singing despite some unannounced vocal cord issues; she could not continue singing during Act 3 & instead mimed the role while Laura Krumm sang offstage – kudos to both of them for doing so beautifully under physically difficult circumstances. During the curtain calls company director Matthew Shilvock explained the situation & introduced Krumm.)
Ying Fang was making her San Francisco Opera debut & her tender & lively performance as the conflicted Ilia confirmed advanced word of her extremely beautiful voice & skillful acting. There were also excellent contributions from some current Adler Fellows: Georgiana Adams & Mary Hoskins as Cretan Women, Samuel White & Olivier Zerouali as Trojan Men, Samuel White as the High Priest of Neptune, & particularly Jongwon Han as the Voice of the Oracel.
It was an excellent performance of early prime Mozart, musically speaking. I know someone who was there last night after also hearing Saturday's opening, & he is currently planning a third & maybe fourth visit. But all he cares about is singing. He doesn't care about staging, or the drama, & he sits in the last row of the second balcony, a spot from which you can barely see what's going on way down on the stage anyway.
For people like me, who prefer the front row of the orchestra & consider opera a theatrical form, the production by Lindy Hume was less satisfying. I will say whatever role she may have had in helping the singers shape their characters & their interactions paid off; the performers were all convincing – though there were some oddities; for example, when Elettra, thinking she & Idamante are being sent off together, sings that although he loves another, she is going to turn that around & make him love her – when she sings that, surely Idamante shouldn't be standing there, directly addressed by her? What is he supposed to do with that? We don't know, because Mozart & his librettist Giambattista Varesco didn't give him any response. He just looks noble & stricken. But how could an honorable young man like Idamante not protest immediately that he loves Ilia, even if (he thinks) she doesn't return his love, & how could he proceed with the trip as if Elettra hadn't announced to him that she was going to seduce him?
The staging struck me as mostly Modernizing Update 101: there is a unit set, a large boxy room with large doors on the back & on the sides. Everything is overwhelmingly white, black, or gray (with the exception of a red cloth that gets carried around by Idomeneo when he is trying to sacrifice to Neptune in Act 3, & some green branches – inevitably, the rebirth of hope – carried by the chorus at the very end. But after 3 and a half hours, these bits of color didn't do much, at least for one exhausted viewer. There are projections against the walls of the room: some effective shots of the sea (some color here; lots of deep blues) at the beginning of the opera. During emotional moments, abstract blotches swirl around the walls, to match the inner tumult, a device that might have been more effective if it had been used less often. During emotional moments (Idomeneo's Fuor del mar, Elettra's D'Oreste, d'Ajace) characters will, naturally, tear off their outer garments. There are, of course, many chairs on stage. They get moved, re-arranged, sometimes thrown, occasionally sat in.
The costumes are mostly contemporary, with some odd touches: a couple of the guards, as well as some of the higher aristocracy, wear uniforms or suits surmounted by a shoulder cape of shiny black feathers. When Elettra & Idamanta are supposed to leave on their voyage, their outfits have odd golden filigree added to the back & shoulders. The clothes are almost all black, & struck me as drab & ugly. At the beginning of the opera, when the Trojan prisoners are being freed, they line up, sort of, & go up to a table where some guards give them envelopes, which, when opened, have a paper in them. I am unclear on what was supposed to be happening there. I assume it was meant to represent some sort of sign that they were now free (maybe the papers were new legal ID?) but it struck me as mostly the theatrical equivalent of busy-work, the kind of thing you do when you feel something needs to be happening on stage other than someone standing there singing, no matter how beautifully, a noble though perhaps slightly repetitious sentiment.
So the production wasn't helping things, in my view, but I have some issues with the opera itself. I have speculated to some that the reason I don't connect with Idomeneo is that we're promised a sea monster but he only shows up offstage. I'm only half-kidding about this, because the thing is, most opportunities for drama in this story are, like the sea monster, shoved offstage. The crux of the drama is that Idomeneo, returning to his kingdom of Crete after the fall of Troy, is caught in a huge & deadly storm &, apparently not having read as many fairy tales as I have, tries to placate Neptune by promising to sacrifice to him the first living creature he sees on land, which of course turns out to be his son. (Think of the dramatic fireworks Handel made out of a similar vow & a similar dilemma in Jephtha, & you'll see what's missing here.) In his sorrow Idomeneo, apparently not having read as much Greek mythology as I have, thinks he can outwit the god's anger by just sending Idamante away on a long trip. This doesn't work, of course, & the even angrier Neptune, deprived of his human sacrifice, sends a rampaging sea monster to attack the king's city.
Idomeneo doesn't tell his son, until the very end, about the vow. He just shuns him, orders him away, & generally rejects him. Presumably this is done to protect Idamante, who seems like the type to offer himself as a sacrifice if honor commands, but Idomeneo's evasive ways cause his son probably more pain than a straightforward explanation would have. What we end up with is hours of the father being abrupt & inexplicably (in the eyes of Idamante) unloving, while the son wonders unhappily what he did wrong. There isn't a lot of development there, mostly restatement. Some of the articles in the program-book note that Mozart's troubled relationship with his own father (or other father-figures) entered into his work here. On the one hand, sure, but on the other, so what? The only reason we have any interest in the troubled relationship of these long-dead men is that one of them created art that keeps our interest. And the art has to continue to hold our interest & to stand on its own apart from any psychobiography of the artist.
The motor of this drama is the anger of Neptune, but the drama's handling of it is fundamentally incoherent. Everything is driven by the sea god's implacable anger: the deadly storms, Idomeneo's vow, his attempt to evade fulfilling that vow, the attack of the sea monster. . . There is a daring & challenging indictment being drawn up about the cruelty of the gods &, by implication, the religion that surrounds them. And then, abruptly, near the end of the opera, the sting is removed: Neptune, having apparently checked a calendar to see what year it is & realizing that the alternative is to become nothing more than a fancy fountain ornament, decides he'd better get on board with the Enlightenment. So he announces that Love & Reason are Everything, & that his commands, which called pretty clearly for a human sacrifice or else, had been completely misunderstood & instead what he obviously meant was that Idomeneo should step aside as King & let Idamante take over after he marries Ilia. Elettra gets her big number & goes offstage, presumably to kill herself, thereby removing the last obstacle to a happy ending, if not for her then at least for everyone else. Well, not quite everyone: I guess it's too bad about those hundreds of people killed by the rampaging sea monster! Maybe the sea monster also misunderstood what Neptune wanted. (I am reminded of Jane Campion's The Piano, in which a sincerely meant but barely plausible happy ending is tacked on to the story, completely undercutting everything we've just spent hours watching.)
So I remain unconvinced by Idomeneo. But if you want to hear some glorious music, sure, go up to the balcony, sit back, & bask in the sonic splendors. But you may want to keep your eyes closed. Check here for remaining performances.
16 June 2025
Kunoichi Productions: Pacific Overtures
Here's my odd confession about Stephen Sondheim: when I first discovered Sweeney Todd, I was so dazzled by it, so overwhelmed by how close it came to artistic perfection, so struck by its completeness, that it took me quite a while to explore & appreciate the rest of Sondheim. (I am still surprised when I meet people who have some other favorite Sondheim musical, or even some other favorite musical, or who can't sing, however poorly, the entire score). I did make one exception, though: Pacific Overtures, a work I also loved immediately & have wanted to see on stage for years, though I'm also aware of the dangers of such wishes; after wanting for many years to see one of Federico Garcia Lorca's plays on stage, I went to Yerma at Shotgun Players a couple of years ago, & I'm still reeling from their clueless travesty (my entry on it is here).
So I was both excited & filled with my standard anxiety when I was wandering down Haight Street one day last month & saw a poster advertising a production of Pacific Overtures, by Kunoichi Productions. I had never heard of them before, which is why I had to find out about the show from a poster, which is yet another reason it's good to wander. It turns out Kunoichi Productions is a new local group, dedicated to "bold, innovative multidisciplinary theater with Japanese aesthetics, blending the ancient and the modern, using both comedy and philosophy while fusing Eastern and Western theatrical elements"; kunoichi means female ninja; & you can find that information & more at their website here.
I ended up making it to the show's final performance, which was yesterday afternoon, & I am glad I did not skip it, as it turned out to be a very good production, really impressively good, considering the challenges of putting on this complicated work & what I assume are the group's limited resources (as we all know, these are difficult times even for established arts groups, let along scrappy start-ups, so, again, kudos to them for taking on & rising to such a big challenge).
Given Kunoichi's interests, staging Pacific Overtures as their first full production was an astute yet bold choice, as the piece straddles & explores different worlds & power structures, showing how they interact, intersect & clash, & how their inhabitants change or refuse to change during cross-cultural confrontation. Despite all it has to offer, this show isn't done that often, I'm not sure why. I assume the need for an all or mostly Asian cast hinders some, but certainly in this area there's no lack of qualified talent. As I've mentioned, it's a complicated show, but that comes with being a Sondheim show, & his is a name that is now a draw for a sizable group (I can't speak to the rest of the run, of course, but yesterday the house was almost full, & very attentive & enthusiastic).
Pacific Overtures has some of my favorite Sondheim numbers, such as the exquisite There is no other way & one of my all-time favorites, Chrysanthemum Tea, a song which manages to be both witty & tragic, as well as advancing the plot, giving us some history & cultural context, & revealing the personalities of all involved, which makes it, obviously, a triumph of the musical-comedy stage. ("Musical comedy" is a term used only for convenience here, as this show's subject, the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry & his American warships, is not a topic that would suggest, to most people, the makings of a Broadway musical.) The score also contains the song Sondheim once said was his personal favorite, Someone in a Tree, a complicated, multi-voiced narrative about . . . well, many things, but not quite grasping what we supposedly witness is a major part of it.
First I am going to complain about something, but this is my complaint every time I see a musical: the entire show was amplified. Given the relatively small performance space (La Brava Theater, which I had not been to before, despite many years of theater-going; it turned out to be a welcoming space, with the shabby-chic Art-Deco elegance of a former movie palace, which it is), one that an actor's voice should be able to fill, it was a shame that they didn't take advantage of the possibilities for intimacy & subtlety that come with a natural speaking voice. Amplification flattens & distorts tones, removes lower-volume possibilities, & in some ways reduces the audience's attention, as they don't have to listen as carefully. And the little microphones taped to the performers' faces are ugly & distracting. I say all this knowing full well that the use of amplification is going to continue, of course. I just wish it were not so automatic when singing is involved.
Taped-on face mikes aside, this was a very attractive production. The costumes were especially impressive, & astutely done: when the brothel-keeper comes out with her gaggle of crude farm girls, half of whom were comically played by men, to perform Welcome to Kanagawa, the countrified geishas' outfits were notably more garish than anyone else's, done in overly bright shades of pink & green & other electric colors. (This comic scene is balanced later in the drama by one in which three British sailors approach a young girl they think is a geisha, leading to unwanted advances from them that end in the killing of one of the sailors by the girl's father, a scene performed in this production with great delicacy & menace.) The more aristocratic Japanese were in refined dark blues & browns. Commodore Perry, done up like something approaching a Kabuki demon, wore a glistening jacket of stars & stripes, accompanied by two American sailors with grotesque "white people" masks, making them look both swinish & babylike.
There was a lot of movement, clearly based in Japanese theatrical traditions, which the performers seemed quite expert in (in other words, their movements looked natural & expressive, & not like something they had studied just for the occasion), as well as several choreographed dance numbers, all handled with aplomb. Clever use was made of the single set, a multi-level Japanese-style house, & of the auditorium itself, as characters entered or exited through the aisles (causing those of us in the front row to be cautious about extending our legs out!).
It was fascinating to see, finally, something I've been so familiar with through recordings, because of course most recordings don't give you the full show – there are narrative bits, expository bits done with dialogue, that reveals important context for the familiar songs. I have a bad habit of listening to recordings & not necessarily reading all the liner notes, or the plot summaries, so it sometimes takes a while for me to understand exactly what's happening (and in the recording of the original Broadway cast, as part of the work's incorporation of traditional Japanese theatrical techniques, the women's parts are played by men, which further complicates things if you're not reading along; in the recording of the Broadway revival, women play the women's roles, & in this production they did as well, though there's also some cross-gender casting, as mentioned earlier).
Parts of the story, particularly towards the end, were clearer to me than they ever had been before. There were also moments when I wasn't sure if I picked up on something because it was clear, or because at some level I already knew what was going on; for example, during Someone in a Tree, one of the narrators is an old man, one whose mind is possibly starting to slip, who tries to recall what he heard & saw on that long-ago day, when he climbed up a tree & saw into the treaty-house – he's very chatty, & very repetitious, but the important details elude him. The actor in this role skillfully conveyed the character's age, but was it that I was already aware enough of it to pick up on his rather subtle indications? (I have this same situation with Shakespeare productions, especially heavily cut ones: does the story still make sense as they tell it, or do I just know the material so well I'm supplying the lacunae?) (And for the record, the other narrators in Someone in a Tree are the old man's younger self (much younger, as they keep reminding us), a warrior who had been hidden under the floorboards of the treaty house, & the Reciter, our guide through the evening & the history.)
The big comedy number, Say Hello, in which representatives from foreign powers keep showing up, each bearing gifts & menace, & each characterized with musical cleverness by Sondheim (the British representative patters à la Gilbert & Sullivan, the French diplomat is filigreed with a bit of Offenbach), was very cleverly done by the group. As you'd expect with Sondheim, there's a lot of cleverness (the wordplay doesn't stop with the title). And as you'd also expect with Sondheim, if you know his work rather than his reputation (or at least his former reputation), there's a deep reservoir of emotion being drawn on. Some of the characters make only brief appearances (the wife of the low-level samurai at the beginning, for instance) & some have major arcs (the fisherman who, capsized at sea, ended up spending time in Massachusetts, who later returned to warn the Japanese about Perry's ships) that end up in surprising places, but their sorrows, their anger & confusion, provide the human spine to the history, all well conveyed by these players.
The final song, Next, Next, an urgent, on-rushing, speedy look at the changes in Japan after the Meiji Emperor decides to assert his supremacy & lead his country victoriously into the modern world, was astutely updated. There was a flash at one moment that I took to be a reference to the dropping of the atomic bomb. One of the performers at the very end was dressed in an anime-cosplay style, which is certainly a huge part of Japan's current influence but not something that would have been noted, certainly not noted as a major cultural marker for the USA, when the musical premiered in this mid-1970s.
There were no printed programs handed out, & I understand the cost-savings there, but I wish they had at least given us a single sheet. There was a QR code you could scan, but I'm just not going to do that. But Kunoichi Productions's website did give the credits, so here they are, though unfortunately I don't see listings for the set, lighting, & costume designers:
Lawrence-Michael C. Arias as Abe
Faustino Cadiz III as Swing
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro as the Reciter
Edward Im as the Boy
Sarah Jiang as Tamate
Stephen Kanaski as the Warrior
Ryan Marchand as Perry
Eiko Moon-Yamamoto as the Shogun's Mother
Nick Nakashima as Kayama
Vinh G. Nguyen as Manjiro
Mayadevi Ross as the Madame
Julia Wright as Swing
Directed by Nick Ishimaru
Music Direction by Diana Lee
Choreography by Megan and Shannon Kurashige of Sharp & Fine
Cultural Advising by Ken Kanesaka
Dramaturgy by Ai Ebashi
Good job all, & I look forward to seeing what Kunoichi Productions comes up with next.
Do you see that straw? That's a straw.
– There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is sitting there The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, citizen?
– Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow.
– Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better.
– Is that really a fact? says Alf.
– Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Do you not know that?
So off they started about Irish sport and shoneen games the like of the lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all of that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.
A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian O'Ciarnain's in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president of this noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient panceltic forefathers. . . .
Once again, happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.
13 June 2025
Salonen's Last Stand, Mahler's Resurrection
Last night I was back at Davies Hall for the first in departing Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen's final run of performances, a three-concert run of Mahler's Second Symphony, the Resurrection. I was there once again courtesy of Lisa Hirsch, & I am particularly grateful as the Symphony's Uber-style surge pricing means single tickets for these concerts are going for astronomical sums, which is not surprising given this might be our last chance to hear what one of the great conductors of our time can do with our orchestra..
The Resurrection, a massive work, an emotional landmark for many symphony-goers, is always a special occasion, though of course as Salonen's last stand, these performances are particularly fraught. I assume the repertory was set before Symphony management made the unexplained & inexplicable decision to let their prize music director go, but the circumstances made the choice both ironic & hopeful.
The hall was packed & the audience vociferous in its applause & cheers for Salonen & Co every chance they got (not that there wasn't some of the usual bad behavior – very loud coughs, items dropped, & one man down front who had to be cautioned about his cell phone use during the performance by an usher with a sign; people are going to people, no matter how special the occasion). And this was a special occasion. The applause for the conductor's entry were in support; the applause & cheers for his final bows were in tribute. This was a stupendous performance on everyone's part: the orchestra, the chorus & their director (Jenny Wong), the soloists (soprano Heidi Stober & mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke), as well as Salonen. Given what I'll keep calling the circumstances, & despite or perhaps really because of the magnificent artistic achievement of all the musicians concerned, it was difficult not to feel that the performance was at some level the musical equivalent of the fuck-you dress.
As you can probably tell from my attempts to marshal praise-words into some sort of coherent form, this performance – strong, supple, soaring in its clarity & emotion – was a glowing one. I've been to other powerful Mahler performances that, while memorable, also left me feeling bludgeoned, not lifted up as this one did. This symphony is a tricky ship to sail! To switch metaphors, it was like seeing a familiar Old Master painting after a scrupulous cleaning, revealing shades of color & swathes of details that had been hidden under wax & varnish, waiting to be revealed. Particular instruments (the harps, the organ, the timpani) spoke with an invigorating clarity & force, but also with a tenderness, I hadn't recalled. The slow still entry of the chorus was like the first rays of sunlight after a stormy (picturesque, but stormy) night. Cooke, whom I believe I once described as "reliably radiant", came through as usual, with a voice like the warmth of a tender embrace. Stober soared along with the sinuous musical lines. The chorus ascended as one, & brought us with them. Requiems often try to duplicate the trumpets of the Last Judgment, but this was the thunderous opening of the final ascension. And this transitory & electric cathedral, with its vast perspective of arching architecture, its colors & pillars, &, this being Mahler, its gargoyles, had been summoned from the score as by a magician's wand by the conductor's baton, floating over us, suspended, giving us the usual dilemma: what do you do after hearing such a revelation?
I've read through what I've written a couple of times, wondering if I should tone it down, tamp down the extravagance, prune a few adjectives. But why? Ultimately, we go to live performances to have an evening like this, one that will live in memory as a justification for the time & money we spend on this strange hobby of going to sit in the dark, listening to sounds that will pass away just as we (often barely) comprehend them. So let my babbling stand as a monument to the why & wherefore of a concert-going life.
Enough of my raving. Re-entry has, as usual, been difficult. This was a great evening, & as for what happens to the Symphony after this, well, resurrection is always the hope.
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