Friday Photo 2025/25

 

at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park

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.

Idomeneo-inspired lighting effects in the opera house lobby before the show.

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.

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 death 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.

Museum Monday 2025/24

 

The Athlete by Auguste Rodin, a plaster model now at the Legion of Honor

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.

Friday Photo 2025/24

 

a tree in the Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park

Museum Monday 2025/23

 

detail of Three Women by Margaret Peterson, at the Oakland Museum of California

Penultimate Salonen: Strauss, Sibelius, & Smith at the San Francisco Symphony

Thursday night I was at Symphony Hall for Esa-Pekka Salonen's penultimate stand as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. (I was there courtesy of Lisa Hirsch; check here for her review of this concert.) He was conducting a meaty program bookended by two Richard Strauss tone poems (Don Juan & Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks); in between came Sibelius's 7th Symphony to close the first half & then, after the intermission, the world premiere of a Symphony commission, Rewilding by local composer Gabriella Smith.

As locals are all too well aware, Symphony management made the boneheaded decision, for reasons never really stated beyond the usual "different artistic visions", to let their prize Music Director go. Overt demonstrations are not allowed, but the audience showed its support for Salonen with on-going applause & cheers for him every chance they got – as he walked on, as he bowed after a piece, as he walked off; when the concert ended, the applause extended well beyond the usual.

In recent years I've sort of lost my taste for Richard Strauss, but Thursday's performance made me wonder why, as the lush, dizzying strains of Don Juan unfolded (sounding occasionally like outtakes from Rosenkavalier, suitably enough given the eroticism pervading both works), with just enough of a zing of danger & a shot of the eerie to make it clear this was not just any lover's rhapsody but the story of a specific lover, the obsessive, haunted, & hunted Don Juan. Well, as they say, that's why they play the games. It's always good to give what we think we know a reality check.

That was followed by the Sibelius 7, a relatively compact piece. A few weeks ago at the Symphony, Dalia Stasevska closed her concert with a vigorous Sibelius 5, a work that rises majestically on muscular wings; the 7th, by contrast, seems rooted monumentally in place, like a vast granite mountain, undecorated by frivolous little flowers & suchlike; what chips & fragments skitter away from it come from the same substantial source.

That was a lot to mull over during intermission, with more to come – in fact, with a highlight to come, as a world premiere always strikes me as the highlight, or maybe I should say potential highlight, of a concert. But before we could hear the piece, the composer was brought out to talk.

As I've often said, I dislike such talks from the stage, & though there is a Romantic interest in hearing an artist discussing his or her creation, their comments are as often as not partial, pale, even a bit misleading (pushing us to look for one element over other, potentially to us more interesting, elements). After all, if a piece could be summed up in words, why write the piece? If you're a composer, you must feel that music conveys things words cannot, & this would be true even if you were a composer also gifted in writing & speaking (& not all are, of course; the "talk to the audience" is a bit of outreach, like using social media, that gets foisted on all composers these days, regardless of their level of interest & skill in these tasks, which are tangential to their main interest, which is writing music). And most of the material given in these speeches is usually available in the program anyway, so it's a twice-told tale for me.

Smith started with a gracious thank-you to Salonen & the orchestra; as a local composer, she grew up hearing the San Francisco Symphony, so it was a particular thrill, she said, for her to work with them. For the rest of her speech, she rather brilliantly evaded any discussion of the music (which needs to speak for itself) by telling us what rewilding is. But – I already know what it is. And I'm all in favor of it! (In fact I wondered if I was more of a purist than Smith, who went on about bicycling, as bicyclists do, whereas I feel bikes are industrial products, mostly requiring paved roads, that, while not as bad as cars, are not as good as walking.) So all in favor, & that's all the more reason I don't need to hear about it when I'm in the cramped & uncomfortable seats of Davies Hall, feeling tired, & having already sat long enough so that my joints are hurting. And it's not Smith's problem that some words she emphasized (like "joy" & "community"), while important & powerful, are also trendy PR-ready buzzwords that set my teeth on edge.

Am I the only one who felt this way? Very likely. Is it a bit ridiculous that it took a while for me to let the music, once it started, get past my mild irritation with the speech? Again, very likely. But there it is. These things affect us, just as much as whether the seats are comfortable or how we're feeling physically. And though Smith did talk about a rewilding project she had recently worked on (converting an old airport runway up in Seattle – information which was also available in the program), she did not explain how the concept of rewilding affected the piece or her conception of it. I heard nature in the music, but not nature being reborn, or wilderness coming out of humanity's wreckage.

Not that that really matters. An arbitrary title can direct you for only so long before one's own reactions to the music take over. And once I got past my usual irritation at the talk, & my irritation that I was irritated, I loved the piece, a rich, striking profusion of sounds new & compelling. There is much frittering percussion, & then great swoops of sound, like a rushing strong wind, or maybe a warning siren. Some of the sounds are unusual – a percussionist was snapping twigs at some points. This made a noticeable number of audience members laugh – not in a derisive way, but in a way that still puzzled me. Snapping a twig doesn't seem particularly comical to me, though apparently it did to some in the context of a symphony orchestra, but haven't we learned from John Cage & Co that any sound from any source could be incorporated into performance?

According to the program, Rewilding is (this is very precise) 23 minutes long, making it the longest of the evening's four selections. The time flew by, as did the rich & redolent sounds. Though a made object involving an incredible degree of skill on the parts of both composer & performers, & sophisticated "technology" (in the form of musical instruments), the piece conveyed a refreshing sense of being out in nature, aware, taking in the nature-made sounds around us. Perhaps Rewilding isn't such an arbitrary title; maybe it refers to what happens in the soul of the listener.

Rewilding is exactly the sort of thing – a new, substantial, thoughtful, & gorgeous piece designed for a large orchestra – that I fear we will see much less of after Salonen goes, being swept aside by lush orchestrations of pop hits & live performances of film scores to currently popular movies that already have perfectly fine recorded soundtracks.

After Smith's powerful piece, it seemed like another of Till Eulenspiegel's pranks to detain us longer with his antics, but there it was, & it turned out to be giddy, zingy fun, kind of like (& I mean this as a compliment) the score of the most luxe Warner Brothers cartoon ever.

Friday Photo 2025/23

 

at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park

Museum Monday 2025/22

 

detail of Birds and flowers by Oki Ichiga, now at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Friday Photo 2025/22

 

detail of a stained glass window at Saint Matthew's Lutheran Church in San Francisco

Another Opening, Another Show: June 2025

If you're reading this, you have undoubtedly bought performance tickets from one to dozens of organizations in the past, which means you will receive frequent emails from one to dozens of performance groups, no matter how long ago you bought from them, & so you have probably heard already that the NEA, guided by the current Republican administration's usual unholy trinity of cruelty, incompetence, & smug stupidity, has slashed grant money (including money already promised for works already underway) to most arts groups. If you can afford to donate – well, you know what to do. And at this point, buying tickets is not just entertainment or self-enrichment or whatever live performance provides to you: it is a vital way of supporting the arts & fighting back against the fascists. So pick your battles from the enticing list below:

Theatrical

From 17 to 22 June, Berkeley Rep hosts Who’s With Me?, written & performed by W Kamau Bell; this revival of his show is a special benefit series of performances to help Bay Area arts organizations hit by the recent NEA fund pull-backs & cuts, including the American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Crowded Fire Theater, Dance Brigade/Dancers Mission Theater, Magic Theatre, Marin Shakespeare Company, New Conservatory Theatre Center, Oakland Children’s Fairyland, Oakland Theater Project, San Francisco Youth Theatre, Theatre Bay Area, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, & Zaccho Dance Theatre.

For three weekends in June, the New Conservatory Theatre Center,  in association with Martuni’s, presents three different Pride Cabarets: on 6 - 7 June, it's How I Became the Countess, with J Conrad Frank accompanied by Russell Deason; on 13 - 14 June, it's Dusty Pörn, with pianist Joe Wicht, in These Pumps Are Made for Walkin’; & on 20 - 21 June, it's Cantos De Mi Tierra in ORGULLO!, "honoring Spanish-speaking LGBTQ+ icons".

Kunoichi Productions in association with Theater of Yugen presents Pacific Overtures, the Sondheim musical about the opening of Japan to the Western powers, directed by Nick Ishimaru, from 30 May to 15 June at La Brava Theater.

Ray of Light presents Next to Normal, the musical by Tom Kitt (music) & Brian Yorkey (book & lyrics), from 30 May to 21 June at the Victoria Theater in San Francisco.

Theater Rhinoceros presents Doodler, a true-crime story from the 1970s about a series of unsolved murders of gay men in the Castro, a one-person show with John Fisher as everything, including running lights & sound & selling concessions; the show will be at The Marsh San Francisco, rather than Theater Rhinoceros, & runs from 31 May to 6 July.

ACT presents a "World Premiere Hip-Hop Musical", Co-Founders, by Ryan Nicole Austin, Beau Lewis, & Adesha Adefela, with a music team led by Victoria Theodore, directed by Jamil Jude, from 29 May through 6 July at the Strand.

Berkeley Rep presents The Big Reveal Live Show!, written & performed by Sasha Velour, from 4 to 15 June.

On 7 - 8 June at the Potrero Stage, Golden Thread Productions presents, as part of their New Threads Staged Reading Series, Oriental, or 1001 Ways to Tie Yourself in Knots by Evren Odcikin, directed by Elizabeth Carter.

Before I Forget, written & performed by Adam Strauss, plays at The Marsh Berkeley from 7 to 21 June.

From 12 to 22 June, the Great Star Theater in San Francisco's Chinatown presents Au Room by Pink Puma, & when you recall that "Au" is the elemental abbreviation for gold, you will be prepared for a shimmering, gold-covered aerialist cabaret.

David Henry Hwang's Yellowface continues at Shotgun Players until 14 June, but on 9 - 10 June their Champagne Staged Reading Series presents A Black-Billed Cuckoo by Mat Smart, directed by Mary Ann Rdogers, & on 19 June they present  the San-Francisco Neo-Futurists in Blackest Wrench, "a one-night-only Juneteenth edition of The Infinite Wrench! Featuring an all-Black cast".

BARD Theater presents Coriolanus, featuring "the political subterfuge and brutality of Ancient Rome by way of 2012 American politics, complete with an emo soundtrack, homoerotic frenemies, and the mother of all toxic boy-moms…" from 13 to 28 June at the Eclectic Box Theater in San Francisco.

Word for Word and Z Space present Lauren Groff's Annunciation, directed by Joel Mullennix, from 18 June through 13 July; on 9 July only, there will be an author's talkback after the show with Lauren Groff.

The Magic Theater presents the world premiere of Aztlán by Luis Alfaro, directed By Kinan Valdez, a "contemporary California story about the search for the resonance of the cultural, mythical, and political remnants of Aztlán in our modern world", & that runs from 25 June to 13 July.

Talking

City Arts & Lectures presents Michael Pollan & Gül Dölen, in conversation with Indre Viskontas, on the Future of Psychedelics (Co-produced with the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics), & that's 5 June at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco.

Operatic

Opera Parallèle presents a revised version of Harvey Milk, the opera by Stewart Wallace (music) & Michael Korie (words), from 31 May to 7 June at the Yerba Buena Center.

Urs Leonhardt Steiner leads the Golden Gate Symphony & Chorus in a selection of arias & choruses from popular operas, & that's on 7 June at the Clock Tower in Benicia & 8 June at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

San Francisco Opera presents a double-cast run of Puccini's ever popular La Bohème, conducted by Ramón Tebar: on 3, 7, 10, 12, 15, & 19 June, Rodolfo is Pene Pati, Mimì is Karen Chia-Ling Ho, Marcello is Lucas Meachem, & Musetta is Andrea Carroll; on 13, 18, & 21 June, Rodolfo is Evan LeRoy Johnson, Mimì is Nicole Car, Marcello is Will Liverman, & Musetta is Brittany Renee. (The Opera is also presenting a free touring abridgement of this opera, Bohème Out of the Box; check here for dates & locations.)

San Francisco Opera presents Mozart's Idomeneo on 14, 17, 20, 22, & 25 March, conducted by Eun Sun Kim & directed by Lindy Hume, featuring Matthew Polenzani in the title role, Daniela Mack as Idamante, Ying Fang as Ilia, Elza van den Heever as Elettra, & Alek Shrader as Arbace.

Pocket Opera presents Kirke Mecham's operatic version of Molière's Tartuffe, with music direction by Kyle Naig & stage direction by Nicolas A Garcia, on 15 June at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 22 June at the Gunn Theater at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, & 29 June at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

Festival Opera presents Pagliacci in the Park, a free outdoor version of Leoncavallo's opera, on 26 June at Orinda Community Park & on 29 June at Civic Park in Walnut Creek.

On 7 June at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, the Wagner Society of Northern California presents The Quest for the Grail: Parsifal by the Bay with Kip Cranna.

Cole Thomason-Redus of the San Francisco Opera will give a lecture on Black Voices in American Opera on 7 & 14 June; the lecture on the 7th is at the Ocean View Branch of the SF Public Library & the one on the 14th is at the Potrero Branch.

Choral

Robert Geary leads Volti in The Guardians of Yggdrasil, a new work by Mark Winges based on Norse mythology (with a libretto by Lisa Delan), as well as Caroline Shaw‘s Ochre, on 6 - 8 June at Z Space in San Francisco.

On 7 June at Calvary Presbyterian, the San Francisco Boys Chorus, joined by special guests from Kitka Women's Vocal Ensemble, will present Build Me A World, a program featuring works by Vivaldi, Mozart, Duruflé, & others, along with traditional folk tunes.

Kitka Women's Vocal Ensemble offers an "evening of Balkan, Baltic, Slavic, and Caucasian songs for the Summer Solstice" at Old First Concerts on 14 June.

San Francisco Choral Artists present Welcome to the Zoo!, a survey of animal-centered works from the Renaissance up to world premieres (by Bryce McCandless, Zoe Yost, & Patricia Julien), & the performances are 8 June at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 14 June at All Saints' Episcopal in Palo Alto, & 15 June at Saint Paul's Episcopal in Oakland.

Chanticleer presents Chanticleer and the Fox: An Evening of Renaissance Theater Music, based on the children's book Chanticleer and the Fox,  illustrated by Barbara Cooney; for this family-friendly program, the group offers free admission for children 12 & under (children must be accompanied by a ticketed adult); you can hear the performance on 7 June (two performances) at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco, 8 June at Saint John's Lutheran in Sacramento, 10 June at Mission Santa Clara, 12 June at Mount Tamalpais United Methodist, & 13 June at First Church in Berkeley.

Slavyanka Chorus, led by Irina Shachneva, performs Songs of the Soul, featuring spiritual music of Russia from the 17th century to our own time, with performances on 14 June at the Church of the Redeemer in Los Altos & 15 June at Star of the Sea in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus presents a Pride Concert at the Curran Theater on 21 June.

Vocalists

Randy Rainbow brings his National Freakin’ Treasure tour to the Palace of Fine Arts Theater on 5 June, & if you don't know his anti-Trump parody videos, do yourself a favor & go to YouTube to check them out.

On 14 June, the Berkeley Hillside Club presents vocalist Sarah Cabral performing Música do Brasil, accompanied by Ian Faquini (acoustic guitar), Eva Scow (mandolin), & Alex Calatayud (percussion).

Merola presents A Grand Night for Singing – An American Songfest on 26 June at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, featuring the Merolini in a celebration of American song chosen by Ronny Michael Greenberg.

San Francisco Opera presents a Pride Concert, conducted by Eun Sun Kim & Robert Mollicone, with videos by Tal Rosner, hosted by Monét X Change & featuring vocalists Jamie Barton, Brian Mulligan, & Nikola Printz, at the Opera House on 27 June.

Orchestral

On 1 June in Zellerbach Hall, Joseph Young leads the Berkeley Symphony in Methuselah (In Chains of Time) by Gity Razaz, Piazzolla's Aconcagua, Concerto for Bandoneon, String Orchestra and Percussion (featuring accordion soloist Hanzhi Wang), & the Shostakovich 5.

On 8 June at Herbst Theater, the San Francisco Pride Band presents . . . On A High Note: The Pete Nowlen Farewell Concert; to mark the retirement of Newlen, the Band's longtime Artistic Director, he will conduct the world premiere of American Epic (commissioned from composer Carlos McMillan Fuentes under the Band’s Black, Indigenous, Person of Color (BIPOC) Composition Program), along with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (with Fuentes as piano soloist), as well as Chamak by Reena Esmail, To a Liberator by George Fredrick McKay, Tundra by Nubia Jaime-Donjuan (conducted by Mike Wong), & Monkey Business by David Lovrien.

On 13 June at the Paramount, Kedrick Armstrong leads the Oakland Symphony in Errollyn Wallen's Mighty River along with the Beethoven 9, the Choral, with soloists Hope Briggs (soprano), Zoie Reams (mezzo-soprano), Ashley Faatoalia (tenor), & Adam Lau (bass).

On 14 June at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Martha Stoddard leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in the American premiere of Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra by Juan Sebastian Cardona-Ospina (with timpani soloist Jimmy Chan), Overture by Grażyna Bacewicz, What the Wildflowers Tell Me by Mahler (arranged by Britten), & the Sibelius 3.

The Verdi Requiem that San Francisco Symphony management sabotaged last fall is making an appearance in the closing weeks of the season, on 20 & 22 June, this time led by James Gaffigan, with vocal soloists Rachel Willis-Sørensen (soprano), Jamie Barton (mezzo-soprano), Mario Chang (tenor), & Morris Robinson (bass), joined by the Symphony Chorus, led by Jenny Wong; in addition to the Verdi, the program includes Mozart's Ave verum corpus, & Gordon Getty's Intermezzo from Goodbye, Mr. Chips, his Saint Christopher, & his The Old Man in the Snow.

Owing to the boneheaded myopia of the San Francisco Symphony's current mismanagers, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen is leading his final performances with the ensemble this month: on 6 - 8 June, he conducts the world premiere of an SFS commission, Rewilding by Gabriella Smith, along with Richard Strauss's Don Juan, his Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, & the Sibelius 7; on 12 - 14 June, he leads the Mahler 2, the Resurrection (a choice, under current circumstances, both ironic & hopeful), with soloists Heidi Stober (soprano) & Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano), along with the Symphony Chorus, led by Jenny Wong.

On 26 & 27 June, the San Francisco Symphony joins with something called BLACKSTAR Symphony to perform a symphonic re-imagining of David Bowie's final album, Blackstar. I like Bowie so I'm listing this, but generally I feel pop music doesn't really need the lush amplification of a symphony orchestra & I wish Orchestras would devote their "new/unusual music" energies towards new scores written specifically for them, not in pumping up pop works that don't need the upholstery. (Yes, I am well aware that many of the staple Symphonic composers used the folk & popular music of their time, but that's exactly it: they used such music, adapting & changing it to suit their purposes; they didn't just flesh it out, full-length, with unnecessary sonorities in order to lure in ticket-buyers who otherwise would never go near Symphony Hall.)

Chamber Music

On 8 June, the Berkeley Hillside Club Concert Series presents An Afternoon of Music & Words, with the words provided by Martha Anne Toll, from her book Duet for One, & the music by Gwendolyn Mok (piano), Ariel Pawlik-Zwiebel (violin), Markus Pawlik (piano), & Omri Shimron (piano); remarks & readings by Toll will be interspersed with performances of Franck's Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano (third movemen), Vocalise by Rachmaninoff, Bach's French Suite #2 in C Minor (second & third movements, Courante & Sarabande), & the Brahms Sonata for Two Pianos in F Minor, Opus 34b (first movement).

On 15 June at Davies Hall, a chamber group of San Francisco Symphony musicians will perform Caroline Shaw's Entr’acte, Anton Arensky's Cello Quartet, Aleksey Igudesman's Latin Suite for Two Violas, & the String Quartet #3 in B-flat Major, Opus 67 by Brahms.

On 22 June at Old First Concerts, Le Due Muse (Sarah Hong, cello; Makiko Ooka, piano), with special guest violinist Fumino Ando, will perform Nikolai Myaskovsky's Sonata for Cello and Piano, #1, Rachmaninoff's Sonata for Cello and Piano, & Anton Arensky's Piano Trio.

On 28 - 29 June at Old First Concerts, Sixth Station Trio (Anju Goto, violin; Federico Strand Ramirez, cello; Katelyn Tan, piano) will perform music from the video game Stardew Valley.

Instrumental

On 1 June at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason & pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason performing Mendelssohn's Cello Sonata #1 in B-flat major, Fauré's Cello Sonata #1 in D minor, Poulenc's Cello Sonata, & Natalie Klouda's Tor Mordôn.

On 4 June at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents double-bass player Xavier Foley, performing Bach's Suite #5 for Solo Cello (as arranged for bass), along with a series of his own compositions.

Noontime Concerts at Old Saint Mary's presents two piano recitals this month: on 17 June Sharon Su performs Chopin's Berceuse, Opus 57, Maria Szymanowska's Nocturne in B-flat Major, Mel Bonis's Omphale, Opus 68, Ravel's Jeux d’eau, & Florence Price's Fantasie nègre #1 in E minor; & on 24 June, Jason Sia performs an as-yet unannounced program.

Early / Baroque Music

On 3 June at Old Saint Mary's, Noontime Concerts presents Musica Pacifica (Judith Lisenberg, recorder; William Skeen, cellist, Yuko Tanaka, keyboard) performing chamber works by Bach & Buxtehude.

WAVE (Women's Antique Vocal Ensemble) performs a 25th Anniversary Concert, Celebrating the Past, Looking to the Future, on 6 June at Saint Mary Magdalen in Berkeley, when they will perform "some of our favorite music from 25 years of concerts — gorgeous medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque songs from Europe, England, and Latin America — plus some wonderful music new to us".

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents Emperor of the Moon, a collaboration between Nash Baroque Ensemble & Dance Through Time, offering a "pastiche of music, dance, pantomime and puppetry from the 17th and 18th-century English stage", & you can see it 6 June at Carrington Hall in Redwood City, 7 June at the Live Oak Theater in Berkeley, & 8 June at the Gunn Theater in the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

The Handel Opera Project presents Handel's Samson on 15 June at the First Church of Christ, Scientist (the Maybeck Church) in Berkeley; the cast features Gabriel Liboiron-Cohen as Samson, Daphne Touchais as Dalila, Sara Couden as Micah, Wayne Wong as Manoah, Michael Orlinsky as Harapha, & Shannon Arcilla, Jayne Diliberto, & Caleb Alexander as assorted Philistines.

Modern / Contemporary Music

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents Spring Contrasts, a program exploring the "contrasting timbres of the violin [Liana Bérubé], clarinet [Jeff Anderle], and piano [Allegra Chapman]", featuring the Suite en Trio, Opus 59  by Mel Bonis, Processional by Hannah Kendall, Unquiet Waters by Kevin Day, selections from Cinco Bocetos: Canción de la Montaña & Canción del Campo by Roberto Sierra, the first movement of the Sonata for Violin and Piano by Roberto Sierra, & Contrasts by Bartók, & you can hear it all on 7 June at the Piedmont Center for the Arts & on 9 June at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players & the ARTZenter Institute continue their collaboration this month, with two concerts (both at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, & both free), one on 18 June featuring Luca Robadey's Stained Glass, Laura Cetilia's Unless, & Daniel Cui's Nanjing Fragments & one on 20 June featuring Gabriel Duarte's Färgstark, Sofia Jen Ouyang's Burst, & Angel Gomez's Synecdoche; if I'm understanding correctly, & I may not be, these are the pieces selected after the first round of concerts.

Garden of Memory, New Music Bay Area's annual & much loved celebration of the Summer Solstice, will take place at Chapel of the Chimes on 21 June; tickets are only available in advance, & as attendance is limited they're gone well in advance, so buy now if you're interested in going.

Jazz

On 8 June at the Presidio Theater, the Marcus Shelby Orchestra will perform Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues, Shelby's celebration of "the history and legacy of Black baseball through songs, video, theatrics, singers, dancers, and clowns."

The San Francisco Jazz Festival runs 13 - 15 June; check here for the line-up.

Art Means Painting

Bouquets to Art, the popular exhibition of plants arranged to reflect the surrounding art, runs 3 to 8 June at the de Young & the Legion of Honor.

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California, tracing "the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration" opens at BAM/PFA on 8 June & runs through 30 November; this is sure to be one not to miss!

On 14 June at BAM/PFA, Yasufumi Nakamori will lecture on Martin Wong and Premodern Art of Asia (the museum's 2017 exhibit Martin Wong: Human Instamatic was a highlight of their recent exhibition history).

Cinematic

The 22nd SF Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest), with 39 features & 47 shorts, will run, mostly at the Roxie, from 1 to 11 June; check here for the full schedule.

BAM/PFA begins its summer series of films this month: In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City. inspired by the book of the same title by Imogen Sara Smith, "focuses on film noirs set in suburbia and small towns, on the road, in the desert, and along borderlands" & that launches 6 June & runs through 24 July; the self-explanatory Robert Altman at 100, featuring a nice selection of acknowledged classics (Nashville) & lesser-known gems (Popeye), opens 13 June & goes through 30 August; Bruce Conner: Films from the BAMPFA Collection will feature two different programs of Conner's experimental / collage films, on 15 & 27 June; Andrei Tarkovsky: Voyages in Time opens 20 June & runs through 29 August (I had always thought of myself as a Tarkovsky lover, & then one day I decided to check how many of his films I had actually seen, & I realized that what I am is a devout lover of Andrei Rublev with a lot of catching up to do).

It's not as difficult to see as it was before Criterion released its edition, but if you want to see Jacques Rivette's marvelous Céline and Julie Go Boating on a big screen, you may do so at the Balboa in San Francisco on 9 June.

The 21st International Queer Women of Color Film Festival (presented by Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project), featuring 49 films across 7 screenings, runs at the Presidio Theater from 13 to 15 June.

Frameline, the LGBTQ+ film festival, runs 18 to 28 June; check here for films & locations.

Museum Monday 2025/21

 

Hercules Slaying the Lernaean Hydra, a silver sculpture by the Circle of Antico, now at the Legion of Honor

Friday Photo 2025/21

 

rhododendrons in Golden Gate Park

Museum Monday 2025/20

 

detail of Krazy Kat [Beauty Salon] by George Herriman. seem as part of the special exhibit Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art at the Legion of Honor

Thiebaud designed sets for a Krazy Kat ballet; this cartoon was part of his personal collection

Friday Photo 2025/20

 

from a flowering tree in Lincoln Park, San Francisco

we're nearing the end of the season for flowering trees. . . .

Museum Monday 2025/19

 

detail of Petunias by Georgia O'Keeffe, now at the de Young Museum

Friday Photo 2025/19

 

trees

Museum Monday 2025/18

 

detail of Untitled (Gingko Leaves on Three Branches) by Ruth Asawa, seen as part of Ruth Asawa: Retrospective at SFMOMA

Friday Photo 2025/18

 

cherry blossoms

Another Opening, Another Show: May 2025

Yes, we May. . . .

Festivals

The San Francisco International Arts Festival runs from 30 April to 11 May, presenting dance/poetry/film/music/drama in various manifestations in various Mission District venues; click here for the calendar.

Theatrical

Theatre Lunatico’s Shoebox Shakespeare gives us Romeo and Juliet, directed by Michael Barr, playing from 26 April to 18 May at La Val's Subterranean.

San Francisco Playhouse presents The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on the novel by Mark Haddon as adapted by Simon Stephens; it is directed by Susi Damilano & runs from 1 May to 21 June.

From 2 to 18 May, the Oakland Theater Project performs Ironbound by Martyna Majok, directed by Emilie Whelan, about the life of a working-class immigrant woman in a run-down New Jersey town.

Berkeley Rep presents the world premiere of The Aves by Jiehae Park, directed by Knud Adams, from 2 May through 8 June.

From 9 May to 8 June, the New Conservatory Theater Center presents To My Girls by JC Lee, directed by Ben Villegas Randle, about a group of gay men reuniting for a weekend in Palm Springs & what happens when "the inflatable swans are tossed aside, and the truth is laid bare"; also at the NCTC, the High School Performance Ensemble presents Arsenic & Old Lace from 1 to 4 May.

Shotgun Players present David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, directed by Daniel J Eslick, a "semi-autobiographical comedy" inspired by the casting of the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon; that opens 10 May & runs through 8 June.

BroadwaySF presents the touring company of Parade, Jason Robert Brown's musical about the Leo Frank lynching, at the Orpheum from 20 May to 8 June.

From 23 May to 29 June, Berkeley Playhouse presents The Sound of Music, directed by Danny Cozart, with music directed by Michael Patrick Wiles & choreography by Allison Paraiso.

Talking

City Arts & Lectures has a full month (all events at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco): on 2 May, poet & essayist Ross Gay will be in conversation with Aracelis Girmay; on 13 May, sociologist/genderist/journalist Anna Malaika Tubbs will be in conversation with Jamira Burley (this is described as "A City Arts & Lectures Salon", & I have no idea how that differs from the usual City Arts presentations); on 21 May, biographer Ron Chernow will be in conversation with Jonathan Bass, I assume mostly about his new biography of Mark Twain; & on 27 May, writer & graphic novelist Alison Bechdel will appear.

Operatic

If you missed, or would like to revisit, Ars Minerva's delightful production last November of La Flora by Antonio Sartorio & Marc’Antonio Ziani, you can go to the Roxie in San Francisco on 4 May to see it on film.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music Chamber Opera program presents a double-bill of Errollyn Wallen’s Anon & Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea (the latter based on the play by JM Synge), directed by Heather Mathews & Sergey Khalikulov & conducted by Dana Sadava & Curt Pajer, on 8 & 9 May.

The Lamplighters present Gilbert & Sullivan's The Sorcerer on 16 - 18 May at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco.

On 21 May at the Presidio Theater, Music of Remembrance presents After Life, with music by Tom Cipullo to a libretto by David Mason which "imagines a confrontation between the ghosts of Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso over the responsibility of artists in a troubled world. This expanded version opens with a musical soirée set in the home of Stein and Alice B. Toklas, with selections by composers they might have hosted at one of their legendary gatherings"; the opera is conducted by Alastair Willis & directed by Erich Parce; Cipullo & Mason will appear in conversation with Mina Miller.

West Bay Opera presents Verdi's Otello, directed by Richard Harrell & conducted by José Luis Moscovich, with John Kun Park as Otello, Julia Behbudov as Desdemona, & Robert Balonek as Iago, at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto on 23, 25, & 31 May & 1 June.

Choral

On 9, 10, & 12 May at the Noe Valley Ministry, Resound Ensemble presents Soul Fire: A Radiant Concert for Dark Times, including works by Ysaÿe M. Barnwell, Antônio Carlos Jobim & Newton Mendonça, John Conahan, Thomas Morley, & Alvin Trotman.

Sacred & Profane offers Giving Voice: Settings of Speeches, choral settings by Anna-Karin Klockar, Dale Trumbore, Ēriks Ešenvalds, Trevor Weston, Joel Thompson, & Kirke Mechem, as well as world premieres from Adam Lange & Zanaida Robles, of celebrated speeches, & you can hear the results on 10 May at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley & 11 May at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco.

Clerestory presents Savor the Sound: A Musical Celebration of Food and Drink, ranging from "a Renaissance madrigal evoking the sounds of an open air food market in Paris, to the aroma of spicy chili in a Latin jazz arrangement", & you can hear it on 16 May at Saint Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco & 17 May at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley.

 

The Golden Gate Men's Chorus, joined by Cantus, perform two programs this month, both at Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco: on 17 May, they will perform music by Cecilia McDowall, René Eespere, John August Pamintuan, Stacey Gibbs, Abbie Betinis, Steven Sametz, & others; & on 18 May, with additional guests the Ragazzi Boys Chorus, they will perform works by Alan Menken, Robert Sund, Emil Fredberg, Richard Rodgers, Paul McCartney, & Harold Arlen, as well as a world premiere from Saunder Choi, & "a special tribute to the 500th anniversary of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, featuring the iconic Gloria from Missa Papae Marcelli".

On 22 May at the Scottish Rite Center on Oakland's Lake Merritt, the San Francisco Girls Chorus will give its Spring Concert (repertory has not yet been announced).

On 24 May at First Congregational in Berkeley, John Kendall Bailey leads Chora Nova in Grant Us Peace, a program featuring Dona Nobis Pacem by Vaughan Williams, Verleih uns Frieden by Mendelssohn, Barber's Agnus Dei (most famous in its instrument-only setting as Adagio for Strings), Mark Miller's Dona Nobis Pacem, Bach's Komm, Süsser Tod (as arranged by Knut Nysted), & the Dona Nobis Pacem from Mozart's Coronation Mass.

Ming Luke leads the Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra in Sergei Taneyev's Saint John of Damascus & the Saint-Saëns Requiem on 30 - 31 May & 1 June at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.

On 31 May at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco presents Estranged Together, a program centering "around themes of home, loss and belonging".

Vocalists

Cécile McLorin Salvant plays the SF Jazz Center from 1 to 3 May.

Lieder Alive! presents soprano Esther Rayo with pianist Peter Grünberg performing Schubert & "a plethora of their trademark Classical Spanish repertoire—highlights from their recent major recording", & you can hear them on 18 May at Old First Concerts in San Francisco & 25 May at the First Church of Christ Scientist (the Maybeck church) in Berkeley.

Orchestral

Violinist Daniel Hope, Music Director & Concertmaster of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, leads them in Dance, a program featuring the Dance of the Furies from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, the Anonymous Lamento e Rota di Tristano, Handels' Rigaudon from the Water Music Suite, a selection from a Concerto Grosso by Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco, a Fandango by Nicola Conforto, Mozart's Rondo in B-flat Major for Violin and Orchestra, a selection of Schubert's Five German Dances, the Farandole from Bizet's L’Arlésienne Suite #2, Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances, the traditional tune Odessa Bulgar, Florence Price's Ticklin’ Toes, the Saint-Saëns Dance Macabre, Offenbach's "Can-Can" from Orpheus in the Underworld, the Act II Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, the Marche Chevaliers from Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet, the Finale: Alla Tarantella from Schulhoff's Five Pieces for String Quartet, Piazzolla's Escualo, & Wojciech Kilar's Orawa, & you can hear all that on 1 May at First Congregational in Berkeley, 2 May at Saint Stephen's Episcopal in Belvedere, 3 May at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco, & 4 May at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University.

On 2 May at Hertz Hall, Thomas Green & Noam Elisha lead the UC Berkeley Philharmonia Orchestra in Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin & the Sibelius 2.

On 2 - 3 May, Giancarlo Guerrero leads the San Francisco Symphony in Saariaho's Asteroid 4179: Toutatis, the 1947 version of Stravinsky's Petrushka, Respighi's Fountains of Rome, & his Pines of Rome.

On 3 May, Edwin Outwater leads the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra in Joaquin Rodrigo's Fantasia para un gentilhombre (with featured soloist on guitar Samuel Liang, winner of the SFCM's concerto competition) along with the Maher 6, the Tragic.

Donato Cabrera leads the California Symphony in the Schubert 8, the Unfinished, & the also unfinished Bruckner 9, & that's 3 - 4 May at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek.

On 9 & 10 May in Hertz Concert Hall, David Milnes leads the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in Chen Yi's Landscape Impression & the Mahler 7.

The SF Bach Choir, with the Jubilate Baroque Orchestra & vocal soloists Clarissa Lyons (soprano), Adore Alexander (alto), Ben Pattison (tenor), & Curtis Streetman (bass), present A Night in Vienna, a program which includes not waltzes but Mozart's Requiem, Mass #2 by Marianna Martines, & short works by Michael Haydn, & you can hear them on 10 May at First Congregational in Berkeley & 11 May at Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco.

On 15 - 17 May, Dalia Stasevska leads the San Francisco Symphony in the world premiere of a cello concerto by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Before we fall (with soloist Johannes Moser), along with the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams & the Sibelius 5.

On 16 May at the Paramount Theater, Kedrick Armstrong leads the Oakland Symphony in Paul Robeson: Here I Stand, with music by Carlos Simon to a libretto by Dan Harder, featuring bass Morris Robinson & the Oakland Symphony Chorus, along with Jasmine Barnes's Sometimes I Cry & the Brahms 2.

On 18 May, Radu Paponiu leads the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra in Anna Clyne's This Midnight Hour, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Petite Suite de concert, & Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

Departing Music Director (already his future absence is being mourned) Esa-Pekka Salonen leads two programs at the San Francisco Symphony this month: on 23 - 25 May, he conducts Magnus Lindberg's Chorale, the Berg Violin Concerto (with soloist Isabelle Faust), & Stravinsky's The Firebird; on 29 - 30 May & 1 June, he conducts the Beethoven 4 & his Violin Concerto (with soloist Hilary Hahn).

Chamber Music

On 2 May, the Berkeley Hillside Club Concert Series presents The Melodiya Chamber Ensemble (violist Sergey Rakitchenkov & pianist Arkadi Serper) performing Beethoven's Romance for Violin and Orchestra #2 in F Major, Opus 50 & his Romance for Violin and Orchestra #1 in F Major, Opus 40 (both transcribed for viola & piano), Schumann's Toccata in C Major, Opus 7 for piano solo, his Pictures from Fairyland, Opus113 for viola & piano, Hindemith's Sonata for viola solo, Opus 25, #1, William Bolcom's Grateful Ghost Rag for piano solo & Norman Dello Joio's Lyric Fantasies for viola and chamber orchestra (in a reduction for viola & piano).

On 2 May at 405 Schrader, the Friction Quartet (Otis Harriel & Kevin Rogers, violins; Mitso Floor, viola, Doug Machiz, cello) will perform two String Quartet #2s, one by Prokofiev & one by Borodin.

On 4 May (known to some as Star Wars Day) at Hertz Hall, the UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble, either augmented by or hosting guest ensemble BD Winds, directed & conducted by Katilin Bove, will perform a space-themed program, featuring selection from John Williams's Star Wars Trilogy as well as Anthony Barfield's Red Sky & Katahj Copley's DOPE.

Berkeley Chamber Performances presents Dancing with Ravel, featuring pianist Gwendolyn Mok along with violinist Florin Parvulescu & cellist David Goldblatt performing the Valses nobles et sentimentales, a selection from Daphnis et Chloe, the Forlane, the Menuet, & the Rigaudon from Le Tombeau de Couperin, & the Trio for violin, cello and piano, & that's 6 May at the Berkeley City Club & 10 May at the Lafayette Library.

On 7 May at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Barbro Osher Recital Hall, piano & string students at the Conservatory will perform Mendelssohn's Piano Quartet #3 in b minor, Opus 3, Prokofiev's String Quartet #2 in F Major, Opus 92, & Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 95.

On 10 May Saint John the Evangelist Episcopal in San Francisco presents Silence & Song, an "informal evening of healing music and reflections. Bring your heart and your hurt and sit with us. Let us find lightness together through music and community. We invite you to bring a yoga mat or a cushion (the venue will have pews)"; admission is "by free-will donation (cash, venmo, or zelle) at the door; no one turned away for lack of funds"; the featured performers include Sidney Chen (music box), Victoria Fraser (harmonium, voice), Bethany Hill (dulcimer, voice), Jennifer Paulino (voice), Celeste Winant (voice), Katrina Zosseder (fiddle), & Nick Smith, leading guided meditation.

On 10 May at Saint John's Presbyterian in Berkeley, Four Seasons Arts presents its 2025 Founder’s Concert: Commemorating Dr. W. Hazaiah Williams ("one of the first African-American presenters of classical music in the United States. Beginning in 1958, he was dedicated to the racial and cultural integration and expansion of the classical music audience and of the concert stage"), featuring violinist Tai Murray & pianist Kyunga Lee, who will be performing A Nostalgic Piece by Elena Kats-Chernin, Pieces of Light (for solo violin) by Daniel Kidane, Five Pieces, Opus 81 by Jean Sibelius, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, #6 & #7 by Ravel (arranged by Jascha Heifetz), Suite Opus 6 by Britten, No-Man’s Land Lullaby or No Man’s Medley by Eleanor Alberga, Cleaning (for solo violin) by Katherine Balch, & Aus der Musik zu “Viel Larmen um Nichts” Four Pieces by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

On 11 May, the Hillside Club in Berkeley continues its Chamber Music Sundaes series with Lukàš Janata's Reciprocity for cello and bass, Andrés Martin's Tres Tangos for cello and bass, & the Butterfly Lovers Concerto for cello and bass by Zhanhao He & Gang Chen (with cellist Amos Yang & bassist Charles Chandler) & Shostakovich's String Quartet #3 in F Major, Opus 73 (with violinists Polina Sedukh & Olivia Chen, violist Leonid Plashinov-Johnson, & cellist Yang).

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents Ensemble Constantinople, performing with Persian Setar master Kiya Tabassian & Senegalese & Kora master & Griot, Ablaye Cissoko, supported by percussionist Patrick Graham, in Traversées, an exploration of the "crossroads of artistic encounters; drawing from the heritage of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from Europe to the Mediterranean and the Middle East", & you can travel along on 9 May at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 10 May at First Presbyterian in Berkeley, & 11 May at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.

On 11 May at the Legion of Honor's Gunn Theater, San Francisco Symphony musicians Alexander Barantschik (violin), Peter Wyrick (cello), & Anton Nel (piano) will perform Haydn's Piano Trio in G major, Frank Bridge's Phantasie for Piano Trio, & Mendelssohn's Piano Trio #2 in C minor, Opus 66.

On 16 May, the Berkeley Hillside Club presents Sarah Wood (violin), Elaine Kreston (cello), & Lisa Maresh (piano) in Living For Art, featuring Clara Schumann's Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 17 & the unrevised 1854 edition of Brahms's Piano Trio in B Major, Opus 8.

On 18 May at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, musicians from the Berkeley Symphony will perform Connections, a program selected by flutist Stacey Pelinka, consisting of Saariaho's Dolce Tormento, Chris Castro's Forms and Doubles, Jay Rhie's …in the dreams of another…, Jen Wang's Among Their Empty Names, & Louise Farrenc's Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano Opus 45.

The Friction Quartet (Otis Harriel & Kevin Rogers, violins; Mitso Floor, viola, Doug Machiz, cello) will perform Folklore, a program featuring Jessie Montgomery's Source Code, Yevgeniy Sharlat's RIPEFG (featuring violist Floor on the melodica), Sarang Kim's Two Hearts (a Friction commission). & Prokofiev's String Quartet #2, & you can hear it 23 May at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco & 24 May at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Palo Alto.

Instrumental

On 3 May at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances in association with OMNI Foundation for the performing arts presents guitarist Manuel Barrueco, who will perform his own trancription of Bach's Suite in D Major, BWV 1007, Manuel Ponce's Sonata Clásica, Hommage à Fernando Sor, Piazzolla's Tango-Étude Number 2 in C Major & his Tango-Étude Number 3 in A Minor (transcribed by Barrueco), Villa-Lobos's Chôros #1 & his Prelude #1, & Joaquin Turina's Sonata for Guitar, Opus 61.

On 4 May at the Presidio Theater, San Francisco Performances presents cellist Christopher Costanza performing Britten's Cello Suite #2, Opus 80 & Bach's Cello Suite #6 in D Major, BWV 1012.

On 4 May at Wu Performance Hall, the UC Berkeley Music Department presents pianist Hélène Papadopoulos performing the world premiere of Carmine-Emanuele Cella's Piccoli preludi lirici, inspired by Schubert's last piano sonatas, along with Bach's Four Duets & his Overture in the French Style in B Minor.

On 6 May at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Cha Chi Ming Recital Hall, Conservatory students in the duo piano class will perform Rachmaninoff's Suite # 2 for Two Pianos, Opus 17, Dvořák's Slavonic Dance for Four Hands, Opus 72, # 2, Mozart's Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos & his Sonata in F Major for Four Hands, Schubert's March Militaire in D Major for Four Hands, Opus 51, #1, Piazzolla's Libertango for Four Hands, & Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos in d minor.

On 11 May at Herbst Theater, Chamber Music San Francisco presents the Beijing Guitar Duo (Meng Su & Yameng Wang) performing Franck's Prelude, Fugue et Variations, Opus 18, Debussy's Petite Suite, Radamés Gnattali's Suite Retratos, Tan Dun's Eight Memories in Watercolor, Opus 1, the Valses poéticos by Enrique Granados, & Piazzolla's Tango Suite.

On 21 May, the San Francisco Symphony presents pianist Tony Siqi Yun, who will perform Theme and Variations in D minor, Opus 18b by Brahms, Beethoven's Appassionata sonata, Busoni's Berceuse from Elegies, &  Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, Opus 13.

Early / Baroque Music

On 2 May at First Congregational in Berkeley, Cal Performances presents The Tallis Scholars, led by Peter Phillips, in Palestrina 500, featuring the birthday boy's Missa Ut re mi fa sol la, his Laudate pueri, his Tribulationes civitatum, & his Tu es Petrus, as well as Orlando di Lasso's Media vita & his Timor et tremor (the Tallis Scholar concerts tend to sell out; there are a few tickets left as I type this, but move quickly if you're interested).

Magen Solomon leads the California Bach Society in a program exploring the way Bach borrowed & transformed works by other composers & his own earlier works as well as traditional tunes, with performances of the Missa Brevis in G Major, the double-choir motet Der Geist hilft, & his Cantata #4, Christ lag in Todesbanden; the program also includes performances of some of the source music, & you can hear it all 2 May at Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal in San Francisco, 3 May at All Saints' Episcopal in Palo Alto, & 4 May at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley.

On 3 - 4 May at Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco, Robert Geary leads the San Francisco Choral Society and the Orchestra of the Cantata Collective in Bach’s Mass in B Minor, featuring soloists Michele Kennedy (soprano), Heidi Waterman (mezzo-soprano), Shauna Fallihee (mezzo-soprano), Michael Jankosky (tenor), & Wilford Kelly (bass baritone).

Sven Edward Olbash leads Tactus SF in Arise, my Love II, a new program based on a previous theme: motets from the Song of Songs, in settings by Praetorius, Melchior Franck, & Jacob Handl, & you can hear them on 17 May at Saint Matthew's Lutheran in San Francisco & 18 May at Saint Columba Catholic in Oakland.

On 25 May at Saint Mary Magdalen in Berkeley, the Cantata Collective will perform Bach's Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben, BWV 109, & his Ich habe meine Zuversicht, BWV 188, with vocal soloists Tonia D’Amelio (soprano), Jay Carter (alto), Nicholas Phan (tenor), & Edward Vogel (bass).

Modern / Contemporary Music

On 9 May at the Community Music Center in San Francisco & as part of the SF International Arts Festival, Ensemble for These Times presents Mujeres Ahora, a program of music by 21st Century Latina composers, including pieces by inti figgis-vizueta, Gabriela Lena Frank, Tania León, Carla Lucero, Claudia Montero, Angélica Negrón, & Gabriela Ortiz.

On 10 May at Brava Theater, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players present Shared Rituals, a program featuring music by Latin composers including Paul Mortilla's Paradiso: Weavers of Light (featuring members of the Friction Quartet & pianist Sun Chang), the Bay Area premiere of Tania Léon's Indígena, Gabriel Lena Frank's Lamento del Panaca for solo guitar, the American premiere of Ana Lara's Y los oros la Luz, & the west coast premieres of Miguel Chuaqui's Tiempo Norte, Tiempo Sur & Gabriella Ortiz's Corpórea; before the concert, there is one of SFCMP's "Under the Hood" talks, featuring Artistic Director Eric Dudley in conversation with members of the Friction Quartet & Chuaqui.

On 19 May at Noe Valley Ministry, Earplay gives us the world premiere of Benjamin Sabey's Dream Suite (for sextet in six, cyclic, attacca movements). along with Edna Alejandra Longoria's El bailongo (for flute, cello, violin, & piano. Longoria is the winner of the 2024 Earplay Vibrant Shores Composition Competition), Mei Fang Lin's Friction (for flute and viola; an Earplay commission), & Carolyn Chen's Stomachs of Ravens (for solo flute).

Jazz / American Songbook / Bluegrass

On 1 May, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Roots, Jazz, and American Music department will present a Big Band Concert featuring bass player & composer Rufus Reid.

From 2 - 4 May, Freight & Salvage presents the Berkeley Bluegrass Festival; you can go to individual concerts or buy a series pass; click here for details.

On 11 May, the Chan National Queer Arts Center & the San Francisco International Arts Festival present Brock & Spencer: The Queer American Songbook, & that's singer Jason Brock & pianist Dee Spencer, who will not only perform classics by Gershwin, Porter, & Rodgers & Hart "while sharing stories of the legendary LGBTQ+ performers who brought these songs to life over the years" but also "contemporary songs from the 1980s and 1990s"; the cabaret-style performance will be at the Chan.

On 18 May, Jon Batiste brings his Maestro tour to Davies Symphony Hall.

On 20 May, Keith Lockhart will lead the San Francisco Symphony, joined by featured soloists pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet & pianist / singer Michael Feinstein, for a jazz-inflected evening of what used to be called standards.

On 24 May at the Paramount Theater, SF Jazz will present Louis, a "modern reimagining of early silent film in the Chaplin tradition", telling the tale of the very young Louis Armstrong in 1907 New Orleans, with a score by Wynton Marsalis, performed live by Marsalis on trumpet, Cecile Licad on piano, & "an all-star 11-piece jazz ensemble conducted by Andy Faber"

On 25 May at Freight & Salvage, you can hear 4 Pianists: Mary Watkins, Barbara Higbie, Tammy Lynne Hall, & Adrienne Torf, "celebrating the music and friendship of four pianist/composers [who have worked] over 5 decades in Jazz, Classical, Gospel, Folk, New Age and Women’s Music".

Dance

San Francisco Ballet brings back Frankenstein (choreography by Liam Scarlett, music by Lowell Liebermann) through 4 May.

The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company presents Wheel, "an exploratory voyage of movement, memory, and visual transformation as we investigate the universality of the wheel - the wheel of time, of chance, of seasons, of currents and of lies", with live music by Paul Dresher and Joel Davel, visual design by Jack Beuttler, text by Michael Palmer, & costumes by Mary Domenico, at ZSpace on 1 - 4 May.

On 4 May at the Paramount, the Oakland Ballet presents the Angel Island Project (A Dancing Moons Festival Production), in collaboration with the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, featuring works by Natasha Adorlee, Phil Chan, Lawrence Chen, Ye Feng, Elaine Kudo, Ashley Thopiah, & Wei Wang, with live musical accompaniment by Del Sol Quartet & Volti (with conductor Wei Cheng).

The State Ballet Theatre of Ukraine performs Swan Lake at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater on 6 May.

Cal Performances presents the marvelous Mark Morris Dance Group in the return of Pepperland, his setting of Sergeant-Pepper-era Beatles songs as arranged by Ethan Iverson, & that's 9 - 11 May in Zellerbach Hall.

The Alonzo King Lines Ballet presents its spring season from 10 to 18 May at Yerba Buena, featuring the world premiere of King’s "first-ever collaboration with legendary jazz trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire, performing live with LINES Ballet" as well as King's Scheherazade, with a score by the late tabla master Zakir Hussain.

Art Means Painting

The Fifty-Fifth Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, featuring works by Viviana Martínez Carlos, Priyanka D’Souza, Arianna Khmelniuk, Jasmine Nyende, bryant terry, & Zekarias Musele Thompson, opens at BAM/PFA on 14 May & runs through 27 July.

Mary Blair: Mid-Century Magic, exploring the designer/art director best known for her work with Walt Disney, opens at the Walt Disney Family Museum on 22 May & runs until 7 September.

Printing Color: Chiaroscuro to Screenprint, exploring "technological and artistic revolutions in color printmaking from the 16th century through today", opens at the Legion of Honor on 24 May.

Cinematic

Love Streams, Gena Rowlands & John Cassavetes runs at BAM/PFA from 2 to 14 May.

The Roxie is running Three by Charles Burnett starting 4 May.

CAAM (Center for Asian American Media) Fest runs at the Roxie in San Francisco from 9 to 11 May.

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents Murnau's Nosferatu, with live musical accompaniment by the Sascha Jacobsen Quintet, on 23 May at Grace Cathedral.