23rd Street, San Francisco
11 September 2026
07 September 2026
Museum Monday 2026/36
detail of a self-portrait by Jeanne Hébuterne, seen at SFMOMA as part of the exhibit Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal
04 September 2026
31 August 2026
28 August 2026
West Edge Opera: Claude & Marcel preview concert
As an addition to its summer festival, West Edge Opera headed over to the Wattis Theater at SFMOMA to present a preview concert, minimally staged but with singers & orchestra, of next season's world premiere, Claude & Marcel, based on the lives of Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, two (not necessarily in this order): stepsisters, best friends, lesbian lovers, Jews, surrealists, poets, anti-Fascist resistance fighters, & general shapeshifters. For more information on their lives, check here (or buy a ticket next summer to the finished opera); in this space I will be talking about last Sunday's performance.
The preview lasted about an hour & though there was no official announcement of what portion we were seeing, I think, based on a closing surtitle saying it was the end of Act 1, that we were seeing the first half of the opera. Of course what we heard is contingent & in process & incomplete, but I found it powerfully persuasive & am very excited to experience the completed work next summer. Alyssa Weinberg is the composer, Stephanie Fleischmann the librettist, Jonathan Khuner the music director, Elkhanah Pulitzer the stage director, & Chris Steele the dramaturg; Nikola Printz is Claude, Laura Bohn is Marcel, Angela Yam is Charlotte, their maidservant, & there is a chorus made up of Samuel Faustine, Glenn Healy, Laurel Semerdijian, Kyle Tingzon, & Matthew Worth.
When I entered the nondescript grey & black of the Wattis Theater, I was a bit alarmed to note an amplifier on stage, but it is used mostly for what I'll call, for lack of a better term, sound effects used as music, which would not otherwise carry into even a small space: breathing, for example. We open with rhythmic breathing, which summons up not only (obviously) breath, but the sound of a heart beating (the basic things of life) & merges into natural sounds, the breeze & in particular the ocean. In the spirit of its protagonists, anything can be appropriated & turned into art, into music & drama. Even the conventional orchestral instruments take on new colors, often being played in extreme ways, with a skittering & flittering effect that sounds like the frayed edges of music & the natural world; it is a beautiful, liminal world, in an unworldly light – like Debussy on acid. You hear traditional forms being bent, stretched, transformed, making the music a mirror to the surrealist view of the world, & as such, this is the sound world of Claude & Marcel.
Charlotte has music that is much more flowing & melodic; I don't mean it to sound condescending or dismissive when I say her music is more conventional. It's quite beautiful, & mirrors Charlotte's attempts to understand the two strange mesdames who have hired her for a job she desperately needs. The class & social differences between the two artist-outsiders, both from wealthy backgrounds (which is why they can afford a big house on the Isle of Jersey), & their farmgirl helper are examined with subtlety & care. Charlotte clearly is a bit nonplussed by these odd birds, but willing to accept what might even be their scandalous ways (are they just stepsisters? who are very close? or something more?) & to defend them to overly curious villagers, sometimes by dismissing their accurate guesses as to what the two ladies are. The ladies in turn can be, with the authority of their class, peremptory towards servants, though there's also the defensive fear of revealing themselves too far to possibly traitorous outsiders, even if the outsiders are economically dependent subordinates.
The chorus is sometimes villagers, sometimes occupying soldiers from the German (Nazi) Army. The two blend together. The villagers are curious about the very strange women who have moved in. The Germans are as well. There is no sentimentality, either positive towards the villagers or negative towards the soldiers; both groups are shown convincingly as a mixed bag of ordinary people. The extended sound-effects continue, with stamping feet as one of the musical effects, & also much laughter among the soldiers, as another interesting musical effect. The soldiers are not overdone villains: they are bullies who can threaten & sneer & cause serious harm, but they're also boys far from home, in a place that isn't going to feed them the propaganda they grew up on. I'm not suggesting that the presentation of the Germans is sympathetic, but it is nuanced, which is a good thing. Given their presentation as in many ways ordinary young people, you can see why & how Claude & Marcel's subversive acts could sway them; these are not convinced members of an alleged Master Race, but ignorant boys forced into positions of power they aren't suited for.
The relationship between Claude & Marcel is deftly handled: their low-level squabbles, their uncertainty in the face of the looming Nazi threat, their abiding love of each other & commitment to each other & their mutually-made art. I listed the singers above, & if you are familiar with those names, you know the very high level of singing & acting & commitment we were given. There were indications in the surtitles that the staging will involve some surrealist-dream-style dissolves between locations, & as I mentioned earlier the music flows between the natural world (particularly the sea) & the psychological / social reality of the characters. This was a preview performance, so the piece is in flux, & more no doubt can & will be said about the finished product. What I say here is even more provisional than usual. But I found the hour quite absorbing, with many intriguing possibilities; it will be very exciting to see how they play out in the completed work.
24 August 2026
22 August 2026
Another Opening, Another Show: September 2026
September is the traditional start of the "performance season", as it used to be of the school year; now most students are back to school in August, & I start receiving back-to-school ads in early July. The seasons all blur together these days. Two weeks ago I wandered into the drugstore, looking for soft-bristle toothbrushes, in my usual summer attire of shorts & a tank top, only to see the shelves being stocked with ghoulish Halloween supplies ("ghoulish" would include the mega-packs of candy that will, if they're any good, though they probably are not, undoubtedly be stale by the end of October). It was around the time of that visit that I received my first ad this year that mentioned "pumpkin spice" on . . . something. Does it matter? (I've never actually had "pumpkin spice", outside of pumpkin pie; I assume it's basically cinnamon with a dash of clove?) So Autumn (season of mists & mellow fruitfulness, thank you John Keats) is bringing its salutary chill to our thresholds. Or would be, except climate change means that we're entering the hottest months in the Bay Area, though the snowmen & sleigh bells of Christmas will soon no doubt be making their improbable California appearance. The world is a mixed-up place, as we all know, but at least the Opera & the Symphony have stuck to their traditional schedules, opening this month, so off we go. One thing that never changes is the need of the performing arts for financial support & attentive, respectful audiences, so let's all do what we can in that regard (end of sermon, at least for today: go in peace to love & serve the Muses).
Theatrical
On 27 August at SFMOMA, in conjunction with their exhibition Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal, Laura Sheppard of the Yiddish Theater Ensemble will present a staged dramatic reading from Harriet Levy's Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Their Circle; the show is directed by Suzanne Stassevitch with piano accompaniment by Dale Tsang & is free with RSVP.
From 4 September to 11 October at their Peet’s Theatre, Berkeley Rep presents The Cook by Eduardo Machado, directed by David Mendizábal, about an aristocratic Cuban family's cook, Gladys, who vows to protect their mansion when they flee Castro's Revolution – and then, forty years later, the family's daughter returns.
From 5 to 26 September at the Potrero Stage, Crowded Fire presents Manning by Benjamin Benne, directed by Adin Walker, about a Latin family (a father & his two sons) mourning the loss of their wife/mother.
From 10 to 12 September at the Strand Theater, ACT presents Crushing, created by Carly Steyer & Megan Calfas, executive produced by Rosario Dawson, co-produced by Natachi Onwuamaegbu, in which "multidisciplinary artists—playwrights, actors, novelists, poets, comedians—perform true stories from their love lives onstage" (thanks, but I'd rather attend the rebuttal show).
From 10 to 27 September at Fort Mason's Magic Theatre, the Lorraine Hansberry Theater presents the world premiere of African Stew by Lisa B Thompson, directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, about what happens when the families of a newly engaged African American woman & a Nigerian man meet for the first time.
From 11 September to 11 October, Berkeley Playhouse presents Legally Blonde: The Musical, directed by No’Eau Kahalekulu with music direction by Camden Daly & choreography by Cat Delos Santos Reyes.
From 12 September to 18 October, the New Conservatory Theater Center presents Little Shop of Horrors, the beloved musical by Howard Ashman & Alan Menken, directed by Ben Villegas Randle, with musical direction by Jad Bernardo & choreography by Leslie Waggoner.
From 15 to 19 September at their Roda Theater, Berkeley Rep presents Choligarchy, written & performed by Margaret Cho.
On 18 - 20 September at the Douglas Morrisson Theatre in Hayward, SPARC Theater presents Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, directed by Gary Armagnac.
From 22 September to 18 October at the Toni Rembe Theater, ACT presents Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest as adapted & directed by Emma Rice.
From 25 September to 11 October at Z Space, the Oakland Theater Project & New Performance present King Lear, directed by Michael Socrates Moran.
Starting 26 September at the Ashby Stage, Shotgun Players presents The Fall Show, created by Erika Chong Shuch & Charles Mee, about "an older couple’s unexpected romance".
From 26 September to 28 November, San Francisco Playhouse presents Peter Pan Goes Wrong by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields & Jonathan Sayer, the creators of The Play That Goes Wrong, so this one is pretty self-explanatory.
Talking
On 9 September at the Goldman Theater in the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Other Minds presents The Nature of Music 21: Listening With, featuring "musician, anthropologist, and philosopher of sound" Marina Peterson discussing "How does one listen with rather than listen to? And how might listening with allow the listener to more fruitfully conceptualize climate change?"
On 15 September at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Isabel Allende will discuss her new book, Story Telling: A Writing Life.
Operatic
The San Francisco Opera opens its season with Verdi's magnificent Simon Boccanegra, conducted by Eun Sun Kim & directed by Claus Guth (revival direction by Katherine M Carter), with Amartuvshin Enkhbat in the title role, Eleonora Buratto as Amelia/Maria (Toni Marie Palmertree takes the role on the 27 September performance), Christian Van Horn as Jacopo Fiesco, Joshua Guerrero as Gabriele Adorno, Aleksey Bogdanov as Paolo Albiani, & Gabriel Natal-Báez as Pietro; performances are 12, 16, 19, 22, 25, & 27 September; please note that 12 September is Opening Night for the season, & you are the best judge if that is the sort of scene that appeals to you.
The second opera in San Francisco Opera's season is a rarity, Mary, Queen of Scots, with music & libretto by Thea Musgrave, conducted by Clelia Cafiero & directed by Stewart Laing, the opera stars Heidi Stober in the title role, Thomas Mole as James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Thomas Kinch as the Earl of Bothwell, Christopher Sokolowski as Lord Darnley, Hadleigh Adams as David Riccio, David Soar as Cardinal Beaton, Philip Skinner as Lord Gordon, Olivier Zerouali as the Earl of Morton, Chance Jonas-O'Toole as the Earl of Ruthven, Sadie Cheslak as Mary Seton, Sofia Gotch as Mary Beaton, Mary Hoskins as Mary Livingston, & Alexa Frankian as Mary Fleming; performances are 20, 24, 26, 29 September & 2 & 4 October.
On 13 September at Robin Williams Meadow in Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Opera presents its annual Opera in the Park concert, with Music Director Eun Sun Kim leading the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in "an afternoon of duets, arias, and more", performed by as yet unannounced singers from the current season. I find the idea of outdoor concerts more pleasing than the actual experience, but as with the Opening Night shenanigans, you are the best judge of whether this will appeal to you.
From 13 to 27 September, Opera San José presents Mozart's Don Giovanni, conducted by Joseph Marcheso & directed by Alek Shrader, with Wm. Clay Thompson in the title role, Kenneth Kellogg as the Commendatore, Yulan Piao as Donna Anna, Jonghyun Park as Don Ottavio, Maria Brea as Donna Elvira, Phillip Lopez as Leporello, Joseph Park as Masetto, & Nicole Koh as Zerlina.
Opera Day in the Bay will take place on 20 September in the Redwood Park at the Transamerica Pyramid Center; produced by Céline Ricci, hosted by Carla Lucero, & dedicated to the memory of Erie Mills, this event brings together Ars Minerva, Festival Opera, Lamplighters Music Theatre, Livermore Valley Opera, Mercury Opera Theater, Opera Parallèle, Opera San José, Pocket Opera, Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera, San Francisco Opera Guild, Upspark Productions, & West Edge Opera in a celebration of what opera is & can be (specific performers & musical selections will be announced in early September); the event is free but advance registration via Eventbrite is required
On 27 September at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, Festival Opera opens its Salon Series with a Resident Artist Showcase, celebrating its new resident artist program & featuring Marielle Leiboff & Rachel Nelson (sopranos), Phoebe Dinga (mezzo-soprano), Spencer Greene (tenor), Liam Daley (baritone) with pianist Daniel Lockert performing operatic scenes & arias by Verdi, Handel, Mozart, Leoncavallo, Richard Strauss, Bizet, Rachmaninoff, Lehar, Massenet, Jeanine Tesori, & Bernstein.
On 26 September at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco, the Wagner Society of Northern California will present Wagner and Clam Fritters – a Talk by Joseph Horowitz, about Anton Seidl & the early days of Wagnerism in America.
Vocalists
On 8 September in Davies Hall, Anthony Parnther leads the San Francisco Symphony as they accompany jazz singer Samara Joy.
On 27 September in Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents baritone Lester Lynch with pianist Kevin Korth in a program "exploring love, loss, and mortality" in the form of Samuel Barber's Dover Beach (with string quartet: René Mandel & Wyatt Underhill, violins; Kaya Bryla, viola; Anne Richardson, cello), Mahler's Rückert Lieder, & lieder by Schubert & Mussorgsky, songs by Hahn & Tosti, & traditional songs as arranged by Gordon Getty,
Orchestral
On 12 September at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Robert Mollicone leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in Dance, Drama, and Desire, a program including Barber's Overture to The School for Scandal, Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite #2, Korngold's Cello Concerto (with soloist Hans Brightbill), & Chausson's Symphony in B-flat Major.
On 18- 19 September, David Afkham leads the San Francisco Symphony in Unsuk Chin's subito con forza, the Schumann 4, & the Brahms Piano Concerto #1 (with soloist Garrick Ohlsson).
On 24 September, the San Francisco Symphony holds its Opening Gala; Giancarlo Guerrero will lead the band in The Chairman Dances by John Adams, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (with soloist Hilary Hahn), & the Capriccio espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakov.
On 26 September in the Caroline H Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Edwin Outwater will lead the SFCM Orchestra in To Decipher Birdsong by Brayden Meng (winner of the Conservatory's Highsmith Orchestra Composition Prize), Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral (this piece will be conducted by Conservatory student Grace Whalen), & the Prokofiev 5.
On 26 - 27 September at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, Donato Cabrera leads the California Symphony in The Oceanides by Sibelius, Jennifer Higdon's Cello Concerto (with soloist Julian Schwarz), & Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.
On 27 September in Herbst Theater, the San Francisco Pride Band will hold its Fall Community Concert; details have not yet been announced.
Chamber Music
The Friction Quartet (Otis Harriel & Kevin Rogers, violins; Mitso Floor, viola; Doug Machiz, cello) will perform Transformation, a program curated by Rogers featuring Julia Wolfe's Blue Dress, György Ligeti's String Quartet #1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes), & Haydn's String Quartet opus 76 #6 in E flat Major, & that's 18 September at the SF Community Music Center & 20 September at the Crowden School in Berkeley.
On 20 September in Davies Hall, pianist Garrick Ohlsson joins San Francisco Symphony musicians in an afternoon of chamber music, featuring the Brahms Piano Trio #2 in C major, Opus 87, Impulso Suite by Ramiro Boero, La muerte del ángel & Decarísimo by Astor Piazzolla, & the Piano Quintet, Opus 67 by Amy Beach.
Noontime Concerts hasn't released its full performance calendar for this month yet, but if you're in the vicinity of Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco around 12:30 on a Tuesday, you might want to check here to see what's on offer.
Instrumental
On 6 September at Grace Cathedral, Raymond Hawkins will perform an organ recital featuring dance & dance-inspired music by Bach, Couperin, Haydn, Vierne, Boëllmann, Edward German (as arranged by Edwin Lemare), Calvin Hampton, & Naji Hakim.
On 20 September at Old First Concerts, harpist Noël Wan will perform Les fleurs du mal, a program featuring music (some transcribed for her instrument) by Rachmaninoff, Gabriel Jenks Stalk, Gabriel Fauré, Clifton Callender, Puccini, Per Nørgård Consolazione, & Wagner.
On 20 September at Noe Valley Ministry, Noe Music presents the San Francisco recital debut of pianist Janice Carissa, who will perform two Philip Glass Études, Bach's French Suite #5, Frederic Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. a piece composed for Carissa by Eunike Tanzil, & Prokofiev's Sonata #8.
On 27 September, percussionists Allen Biggs & Tommy Kesecker will perform at the First Unitarian Universality Society of San Francisco, as part of their Starr King Way Performance Series.
Early / Baroque Music
Chanticleer presents The Machaut Project, an exploration (staged by Elkhanah Pulitzer) of the
world of Guillaume de Machaut, a "realm of devotion and desire, where courtly love becomes a meditation on the human heart", & you can experience it on 13, 17, 19, & 20 September at the ODC Theater in San Francisco.
On 27 September the Cantata Collective resumes its traversal of Bach's cantatas at Saint Mary Magdalen in Berkeley; this time they present Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 38, Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost, BWV 114, & Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz, BWV 138, with vocal soloists Nola Richardson (soprano), Heidi Waterman (alto), Brian Thorsett (tenor), Edward Vogel (bass); the concerts are free & open to the public.
On 27 September at the First Church of Christ Scientist in Berkeley (the Maybeck Church), the Handel Opera Project presents Unbuttoned Bach & Vivacious Vivaldi, featuring Vivaldi's Piccolo Concerto in C Major (with soloist Susanne Rublein) & Bach's Cantate Burlesque BWV 212, the “Peasant Cantata” (with vocal soloists Kristen Campbell, soprano, & Wayne Wong, baritone); the concert is free but there is a suggested donation.
Modernist / Contemporary Music
On 8 September at Brava Theater, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players & the ARTZenter Institute present the first of this season's free ARTZenter Institute Emerging Composer World Premiere Concerts; this one features flotsam by Ella Kaale, Witchcraft II: Sacrificial Ritual by Matthew Lam, One Thousand Self Portraits by James Larkins, & Crosshair Offset by Xingyue Song.
On 9 September, 836M presents a Creative Lab in partnership with the Kronos Performing Arts Association; the Kronos Quartet (David Harrington & Gabriela Díaz, violins; Ayane Kozasa, viola; Paul Wiancko, cello) will hold a public rehearsal of Philip Glass's String Quartet #5 & Yevgeniy Sharlat’s Pencil Sketch (the Quartet will be performing the Glass in several concerts in 2027, celebrating the composer's 90th birthday); you can make a reservation here.
On 12 September at BAM/PFA, cellist / composer Theresa Wong will perform her 2011 song cycle The Unlearning, "a reflection on Francisco Goya’s 1810 series of etchings Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War) and their resonance with our contemporary world", as a duo with violinist / vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, along with projections by Daria Martin & Mao Mollona.
On 13 September at Old First Concerts, pianist Kevin Lee Sun & Friends will perform Look to This Day, a program that "presents music by two living composers—Hyo-shin Na and Daniel De Togni—centered around the difficulty, ephemerality, and cherishment of life. Sun performs two solo works by Na, and is joined by composer De Togni on shakuhachi for his own Death Poems, and soprano Wallis Lucas joins for De Togni’s Songs of Becoming, both West Coast Premieres."
On 19 September at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco & on 20 September at the Berkeley Piano Club, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents Impossible Inventions, a program featuring Thea Musgrave's In the Still of the Night, Paul Novak's impossible inventions (their 2025 Composition Contest Winner), Mendelssohn's String Quartet #1 in E-flat major, Opus 12, & world premieres from LCCE's Pathways Program.
On 25 September at the Curran Theater, Laurie Anderson performs The Republic of Love featuring Sexmob.
On 25 September in the Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Concert Hall at Northeastern University (formerly Mills College) in Oakland, pianist Sarah Cahill, with guest pianist Regina Myers, will perform the annual Darius Milhaud Concert, featuring works by Milhaud as well as Germaine Tailleferre, Pauline Oliveros, Elinor Armer, William Bolcom, Tom Constanten, Lou Harrison, Maggi Payne, Terry Riley, Theresa Wong, James Tenney, & Annea Lockwood; the event is free but reservations are suggested.
Jazz
On 6 September at Old First Concerts, Mike Greensill & Friends will celebrate pianist / arranger /accompanist Greensill’s 80th birthday & his 40th anniversary of performing at Old First Concerts; the friends will include Roberta Donnay, Kellie Fuller, & Gale Terminello, vocals; Noel Jewkes, saxes; Bill Klingelhoffer, French horn; Ruth Davies, bass; & Brad Buethe, guitar.
Pianist / composer Paul Cornish brings his eponymous Trio to the SF Jazz Center on 10 - 11 September.
On 10 -11 September at the SF Jazz Center, Christian McBride pays a centennial tribute to Ray Brown, joined by with an all-star trio of Ray Brown Trio alumni — pianist Benny Green & drummer Gregory Hutchinson, both alums of the Ray Brown Trio.
On 12 - 13 September at the SF Jazz Center, pianist Nduduzo Makhathini will make his venue debut, bringing his trio & music from his latest release, The Myth We Choose.
On 12 - 13 September, bassist Christian McBride brings his Quintet (also featuring Nicole Glover, tenor saxophone; Ely Perlman, guitar; Mike King, piano; & Savannah Harris, drums) to the SF Jazz Center.
From 17 to 20 September at the SF Jazz Center, Branford Marsalis & the rest of his quartet (Marsalis on tenor saxophone, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, & Justin Faulkner on drums will be joined by vocalist Dianne Reeves to pay centennial tribute to John Coltrane.
On 19 September at the UC Theater in Berkeley, the SF Jazz Center presents saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (joined by Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Gadi Lehavi on piano, Elé Howell on drums, & a bass player TBA) paying centennial tribute to his father, John Coltrane.
USAF The Commanders Jazz Ensemble will perform a free concert (first come, first seated) at the Presidio Theater on 19 September.
On 19 - 20 September at the SF Jazz Center, pianist / composer Myra Melford brings her Trio (Medford, Michael Formanek on bass, Ches Smith on drums & vibraphone) will perform music from her latest release, SPLASH.
On 21 September at the SF Jazz Center, the Branford Marsalis Quartet (Marsalis on tenor saxophone, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, Justin Faulkner on drums) will perform.
On 22 September, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will perform at the SF Jazz Center.
Dance
On 6 September at the East Meadow of Presidio Park in San Francisco, World Arts West will hold the third & final weekend (the other two were in July & August) of its 2026 festival, Legacy of Liberation, with free public performances to "celebrate diverse communities through the art of dance" by Academy of Danse Libre, Amazed by Grace Dance Ministry, Los Lupeños de San José, & Uzumaru.
On 11 - 12 September at Z Space, the Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble will celebrate its 20th Anniversary with a sampler of their repertory.
The Parsons Dance Company performs at the Presidio Theater on 12 - 13 September.
RAWdance will be in residence at 836M this fall, developing a new full-length work based on the myth of Echo & Narcissus which will premiere in December at ZSpace; the residency kicks off on 17 September with an opening receiption at 835M (free but reservations are required).
On 20 September, the Chitresh Das Dance Company will perform Invoking the River at the Presidio Theater.
From 25 to 27 September in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents the Australian Ballet in Oscar, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon & music by Joby Talbot (performed live by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra).
Mostly Museums
GaHee Park: Behind the Curtain, the surrealist painter's first solo institutional exhibition in the USA, opened at the Yerba Buena Center on 7 August & runs through 3 January 2027.
Eternal Paris: Photographing the City of Light opens at the Legion of Honor on 5 September.
You have until 13 September to see Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal, an excellent small exhibit at SFMOMA.
BeHere / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration opens in the Great Hall of the Oakland Museum of California on 18 September & runs through 27 December.
You have until 20 September to take in the superb exhibit The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy at the Legion of Honor.
On 20 September, Maren Hassinger will restage her 1982 performance piece Pink Trash, on UC Berkeley’s Crescent Lawn (this is in conjunction with BAM/PFA's current exhibit Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing).
Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective, opening at the Asian Art Museum on 25 September & running through 25 January 2027, offers the first North American museum exhibition of the career of the Korean abstract artist.
Cinematic
On 29 August & 1 September, the Roxie will be showing a new 4K restoration of Center Stage, Stanley Kwan's unconventional biopic of Chinese silent film star Ruan Lingyu, played by Maggie Cheung (Kwan also directed one of my all-time favorite films, Rouge).
The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is running Through an Open Window, co-curated by filmmaker Michael Vass & artist GaHee Park, described as a "weekly film series exploring voyeurism and theatricality, cocktail charm and social taboos"; check here for upcoming titles.
BAM/PFA is launching many of their fall film series this month, beginning with Alice Diop in Person from 3 to 18 September, in conjunction with the French filmmaker's residence at UC Berkeley; Jean-Luc Godard’s Early Films opens 5 September & runs through 19 November; an extensive retrospective of Martin Scorsese Pictures opens 5 September & runs through next June; Alternative Visions, the Archive's "long-running annual series of historical and contemporary experimental film" starts 9 September & runs through 18 November; Georgian Cinema Now: Part 1 (Georgia as in the country, not the southern state) opens 23 September & runs through 2 October; & the Special Screenings series this month includes Chaplin's Modern Times on 12 September.
On 17 September at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Loren Means will present a lecture with film clips on Jewish Directors: Film Noir & the Femme Fatale.
From 17 to 20 September at the 4-Star Theater in San Francisco, you can check out SFCritterFest, a series of films exploring the relations between humans & the animal world.
On 19 September at the Roxie, the Neon Speaks Festival presents SF Lost Neon Landscapes: Chinatown, a compilation of short films featuring the iconic (yes, I'm using the word) SF neighborhood.
On 19 September, the Orinda Theater & the San Francisco Silent Film Festival present a centennial screening of Buster Keaton’s The General, with Timothy Brock conducting the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra in his original score; though I've always regretted that Keaton chose to make a Confederate soldier his hero, this is truly one of the great films of the silent era.
From 24 to 27 September at the Roxie Theater, the San Francisco Film Preserve presents Re:Vision, their "inaugural film festival, celebrating the work of archives and archivists. Over four days at the Roxie, we're spotlighting astounding works of cinema across decades, borders, and genres"; check out the full schedule here.
The first annual San Francisco Brazilian Film Festival will be held at the Vogue Theater on 24 - 27 September; click here for more information.
This month's classic movie matinee at the Orinda Theater, on 29 September, is 1933's Footlight Parade, with musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley, & what more do you need to know than that?
21 August 2026
West Edge Opera: American Apollo
The third & final opera of the 2026 West Edge Opera Festival was American Apollo, a new opera with music by Damian Geter to a libretto by Lila Palmer, offering & examining the relationship between John Singer Sargent & Thomas Eugene McKeller, a young Black man employed at Sargent's hotel in Boston, who served as a model for the painter for a set of murals in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. McKeller's body served for various Greek gods & heroes, though his skin, his face, & sometimes his gender were switched, which is not unusual for models, of course, but Sargent also left a radiant portrait of a naked McKeller as himself, a portrait that he kept in his own possession & passed on to close friends. It did not surface into the "official" story of Sargent until the 1980s, when it was acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the same museum whose sub rosa renditions of McKeller still greet visitors on the grand main staircase.
The 1980s were the years I spent in Boston; this story resonated with me on several levels, as I was familiar with the splendid Sargents in the MFA's collection as well as the work of another major character in the opera, Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose eponymous museum, located just a few blocks from the MFA (& not that far from my last apartments) is one of my favorite places on earth. (Many a reverie of mine has been if not resolved then ended as I thump down to earth on the thought, Goddammit, why don't I have a Veronese Room?) Sargent gave Gardner an album of sketches of McKeller (signed, unlike many of his sketches: what might that signify?), which she did not display publicly but kept in her Museum. The rediscovery of these sketches led to the exhibit Boston's Apollo, which I missed seeing because of the pandemic; the catalogue is an in-depth look at Sargent & McKeller & worth reading for anyone intrigued by the subject. That exhibit brought new prominence to the relationship between artist & model.
I found the opera a subtle & layered work, & I'm glad I saw it twice. Nobody knows for sure what the relationship was between the painter & his favored model; even bohemian & wealthy artistic circles could be discreet, & passing time always erases life in its wake (a number of scholars have done heroic work piecing together what can still be known about McKeller's life). Time may erase life, but art can linger; there is, above all, the now celebrated nude portrait of the model not as a god or hero but as a man (who radiates godliness & heroism in his joyful nakedness). Probably drawing inspiration from that painting, & its history of being kept privately by the artist, this work tells a definite & probable story of a romantic relationship between the two men. It's not the only possible story from what hints remain to us, but it's convincing & compelling.
The music is lovely & sometimes approaches the perfumed & languishing air of salon music; I assume this is a re-creation of the sophisticated artistic atmosphere of Sargent's & Gardner's wealthy, cultured, Euro-American milieu (I don't know any of the composer's other music, so I don't know if this is his sound or the particular sound he chose for the particular period he is dramatizing). The scenes involving interactions among the Black characters are subtly different, with echoes of a jazz bass & horns (it's lightly done, though, without a gross distinction between the worlds, which interact & flow together). There's quite a lot of harp in the score. The harp is an interesting instrument. It has a fairly ethereal reputation – society girls plucking it as they hunt for husbands, chubby cherubim plinking away around the celestial throne, that sort of thing – but its sound has a surprising amount of tensile strength, & it can sound both glittery & strong, like sequins made out of steel. The final sound of the opera is one last spritz from the harp, vanishing into the silence.
Geter also insets Reynaldo Hahn's song À Chloris. It's a bold move, incorporating another composer's work, but it not only strengthens the period feel, it also resonates thematically here, in an opera about taking from different sources, different cultures, different ways, & shaping what you've taken into something of your own (even as you're adding to, being subsumed in, another tradition). It's worth looking at the lyrics & music of the song: setting a fairly banal celebration of triumphant & reciprocated love by the Renaissance poet Théophile de Viau (you can find the words here), Hahn transforms the text into something new & deeper with his music (a sound which is simpatico with the aura summoned by Geter's for this opera), providing an exquisitely melancholy Bach-like tune, adding a deeper dimension to the words, as if even in the moment of wild first joy the speaker knows that his love, this nacreous bubble, will soon vanish, its momentary beauty gone except for memory & concomitant regrets. Sargent sits down at the piano during a modeling session & starts playing & singing the song. He explicitly compares what Hahn is doing to what he (& McKeller) are creating: a new twist on old, very old, themes. McKeller doesn't know the song, but he knows enough French & enough music to pick up the score & sing the rest of it. Sargent tells him he's full of surprises. The wistful song, with its sense of a blissful love lost, will ripple through the orchestra as the work proceeds.
The opera itself works with surprises & indirection. The story plays out on stage, but the more you know about the situation the more implications you see. McKeller has moved up north from Wilmington, North Carolina, a city which, when McKeller lived there, was the site of a White Supremacist coup against the elected local government. You don't have to know this to know about the racial prejudices & pressures that would cause a young Black man to move away, but it is one of those things that opens out the world of the opera, which begins with a group of Black men lamenting (angrily, despairingly, stubbornly, resignedly, factually: a lot is being conveyed) their racial status in the United States.
The racial difference is a running theme, & how could it not be, but so are differences in age & class & background & worldly experience between the two men. There is a real connection there, as we see when McKeller collaborates with Sargent during their sessions, which become like a director & an actor puzzling out a drama together, but how much of a chance would these two really have together, in their world or ours? A former valet / model (&, presumably, lover) of Sargent's shows up & threatens him & McKeller. He makes dismissive references to Sargent's taste for "exotics" (meaning men of color), as if the jaded aging man needed increasingly spicy dishes for his palate to taste anything, & as if this young American Black man were some sort of fancy foreign import instead of a refugee from North Carolina.
Given all the complicating factors, Sargent & McKeller do not have a steady affair. Reality intervenes, as reality does. Sometimes the intervention is tragic, as when the First World War convulses the globe; German bombs kill relatives of Sargent's; McKeller enlists in the American army. Sometimes the intervention is positive, as when Isabella Stewart Gardner brings the men back together, as she sees how powerfully McKeller has inspired her friend's art. (Even her commitment to art, though, has sadness underpinning it; she sings of how she dedicated herself to beauty after her little son, barely two years old, died.) With her keen eye & abundant spirit, she does with artist & model what she did with artworks in her museum: she arranges, she juxtaposes sometimes unlikely elements, creating out of existing objects something new, a vivid spark of the memorably gorgeous.
And don't artists always have the last, or at least the lasting, word? As the painter & his model go from "Mr Sargent" & "Mr McKeller" to "John" & "Tom", the model wants to be seen as himself: that is, not as a model. A model has an artistic function that often involves metamorphosis & erasure. McKeller knows what the deal is, of course; it's a wish to be in a different world, a different relation to Mr Sargent / John. In the very moving final scene, McKeller hears of the painter's death (by then he's left the hotel for a job as a postal carrier, & his close friend Ida Mae shows him the newspaper when he stops by on his route). He goes by his studio to pay his respects. That part is historical fact. What is perhaps speculative, but certainly compelling, even overwhelming, is that it's only then that McKeller discovers the portrait of him that Sargent did. He is overcome by this proof that the artist's transforming eye had in fact seen him for who & as he was.
This was a rich work. Like the Gardner museum, or Sargent's paintings, it would repay repeated visits. On the surface, it's a conventional story of an artist & his model. (Is the relationship exploitation or celebration? or both & something else besides?) But, as in the scene in which McKeller starts singing Hahn's art song, it's full of surprises. Sargent is now a celebrated figure, but his reputation has dipped & swooped over the years (too many portraits of rich society ladies, perhaps). But it's worth remembering that painting murals featuring Greek gods & heroes was a strangely, stubbornly outmoded artistic choice in the years between 1916 & 1925, when Sargent dedicated himself to what he saw as the capstone of his career. Matisse had painted Femme au Chapeau in 1905. Picasso had painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (a work openly, assertively, famously influenced by African art) in 1907. The western tradition was twisting & splintering under Sargent's feet (& in fact, the Gardner museum was the first American museum to own & display a work by Matisse). The ground is always shifting under us. Nothing here is as it seems.
You can't present a rich & subtle work without rich & subtle artistry. If artists have the last word, as Sargent did viewing McKeller, here are some of the artists who had the last, or at least latest, word with their viewing of Sargent viewing McKeller: Kedrick Armstrong led a gorgeous performance of the gorgeous score, & Nataki Garrett molded it all on stage. Baritone Markel Reed performed Thomas McKeller; he doesn't particularly look like McKeller, outside of both being Black men, but he has a commanding stage presence & a rich, resonant, honeyed voice; this must be a really taxing role, given the length of the opera & the demands it places on him, but he had the strength & power to make his ending liebestod, in which he sees Sargent's portrait of him & realizes its implications, deeply moving. Tenor John Bellemer performs John Singer Sargent, with great beauty of tone & delicacy of touch. He makes the famous man both surprisingly tentative around his models & authoritative in his artistic vision. Isabella Stewart Gardner is not an easy role – there's always the danger of slipping into a caricatured Eccentric Rich Lady mode, sort of a haute monde Auntie Mame (I hate Auntie Mame, by the way), but soprano Marnie Breckenridge brought warmth, wit, & understanding to the performance. Alexandra Armantrading creates a warm, compassionate Ida Mae McDonald, indelible in her few appearances, as does Leberta Lorál as Thomas's mother (as well as another minor role). Matt Hidalgo brings cynical anger & some floating high notes to Nicola D’Inverno (the former valet / model / lover); he also portrays Mr Sparhawk. Philip Harris, Wilford Kelly, Michael Belle, & Alex Taite are all memorable in small roles. Outstanding work all around.
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