By the end of this month, nearly all of the local performing arts groups will have announced their line-up for the next season (which, weirdly, still runs on the same track as the school year, as if all of us are heading off to our mountain villas or beach houses for the summer). Suitably for the spring-time weather, it's a time of renewed hope & excitement, though maybe less so this year: first we had the SF Opera's shrunken season (down to six operas & some specialty concerts; they've also, for reasons I do not understand, reverted to having an actual opera as the sacrificial victim for the Opening Night ceremonies, rather than the highlights concert more suitable to the occasion that they've been presenting the past few years) & then that was followed by the overwhelming disappointment of hearing that Esa-Pekka Salonen is not renewing his contract with the SF Symphony, as he & the Board do not agree on the future of the Symphony. Usually "artistic differences" is a euphemism, but here it seems to be the heart of the matter. Salonen, of course, is a world-renowned composer & conductor, with many contacts among today's artists (it's difficult to describe him & them without falling into horrible PR/Management speak like "visionary", "bold", exciting & innovative", but . . . those are the suitable words). The Board is . . . a lot of rich people? who, like most rich people, think they're smarter than they really are? I don't know what the Board thinks they're doing. Presumably at some point they will try to let the rest of us know. For now, we're left with the departure of one of our time's leading musical artists, & our local scene diminishes correspondingly (though, in the spirit of springtime hopefulness, I will mention that while the SF Opera & the SF Symphony are both pillars of the local performing-arts world, there are plenty of smaller groups that continue to produce interesting works). "So quick bright things come to confusion" as Shakespeare tells us. & speaking of him, to continue in the spirit of happier notes, here is your reminder that 23 April is, among other things, the traditional date given as Shakespeare's birthday. There are no specific commemorations of that momentous day listed below, but I'm sure you can think of something suitable, & there's plenty of other stuff to keep you going until May.
Theatrical
ACT presents Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, a one-person show written & performed by Kristina Wong, directed by Chay Yew; she started sewing masks in the early days of the pandemic & the project grew. . . . ; the show is at the Strand Theater from 30 March to 5 May.
BroadwaySF presents John Cleese: Last Time to See Me Before I Die, featuring comedy & conversation from the celebrated Mr Cleese, at the Orpheum Theater on 5 April.
From 5 April to 12 May, the New Conservatory Theater Center, in association with Golden Thread Productions, presents The Tutor, a world premiere commission by Torange Yeghiazarian, directed by Sahar Assaf, about a Bay Area man just married to an Iranian woman who hires a lifelong female friend to tutor her, only to have the two women fall in love.
On 6 April at the Alcazar Theater, you can experience Toxic, a one-person comedy show by Abhishek Upmanyu; how could I not list someone who describes himself as a "haiku enthusiast"?
On 6 - 7 April the Oakland Theater Project presents a world premiere workshop performance of Dan Hoyle's Takes All Kinds, a one-person show exploring the political divisions in America.
Brian Copeland’s popular one-person show, Not a Genuine Black Man, returns for a limited engagement (Saturdays only, between 6 April & 4 May) at The Marsh San Francisco.
Axis, written & directed by Dirk Alphin, exploring the last family left in a town sinking into the earth during the American bicentennial year, plays The Marsh San Francisco from 7 to 28 April.
Golden Thread Productions presents Returning to Haifa, based on the short novel by Ghassan Kanafani (about a Palestinian couple after the Six Days' War returning to the home in Haifa they were forced out of in 1948), adapted for the stage by Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi & directed by Samer Al-Saber, running at the Potrero Stage from 12 April to 4 May.
While their mainstage continues with A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Shotgun Players Champagne Staged Reading Series will take over on 15 - 16 April with The Motion by Christopher Chen, directed by Patrick Dooley, about something that starts as a scholarly debate about animal rights & ends up as something else.
BroadwaySF presents the touring company of the musical Hairspray! at the Orpheum Theater from 16 to 21 April.
ACT presents the Tony- & Pulitzer-winning musical A Strange Loop, with book, music, & lyrics by Michael R Jackson, choreography by Raja Feather Kelly, directed by Stephen Brackett, about a queer Black writer writing a musical about a queer Black writer writing a musical about a queer Black writer, at the Toni Rembe Theater from 18 April to 12 May.
42nd Street Moon presents the popular jukebox musical Forever Plaid, directed by Daniel Thomas, from 18 April to 5 May.
Aurora Theater presents Tanya Barfield's Blue Door, directed by Darryl V Jones, about a Black professor of mathematics who spends a fevered night (or dreams during that night) with three generations of his ancestors; the show runs from 19 April to 19 May.
The UC Berkeley Drama Department (not their official name, I believe, but you know what I mean) presents The Wednesday Club, with book, lyrics, & direction by Joe Goode & music & music direction by Ben Juodvalkis, runs at Zellerbach Playhouse from 25 to 28 April & explores collaboration among a group of "LGBTQ+ drama nerds (and their allies)".
The Oakland Theater Project presents the world premiere of Red Red Red by Amelio Garcia, directed by William Thomas Hodgson, based on Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, a riff on the Greek mythological tale of Geryon & Herakles, & that runs from 26 April to 19 May.
BroadwaySF presents Funny Girl, the classic musical from Jule Styne & Bob Merrill with an updated book by Harvey Fierstein, directed by Michael Mayer, at the Orpheum Theater from 30 April to 26 May.
Talking
Ocean Vuong will appear in conversation with Cathy Park Hong on 4 April at BAM/PFA & on 5 April, at the same venue, he will read from his latest poetry collection, Time Is a Mother.
Joan Nathan, celebrated for her books on Jewish food traditions, will discuss her latest, My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories, with chefs Charles Phan (of The Slanted Door) & Mourad Lahlou (of Aziza & Mourad) at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on 30 April.
Operatic
Opera Parallèle presents Birds & Balls, a double-bill of Vinkensport (The Finch Opera) with music by David T Little & text by Royce Vavrek, about the Flemish sport of Finch Sitting, & Balls, a world premiere with music by Laura Karpman & text by Gail Collins, about the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King & Bobby Riggs, & that's 5 - 7 April at the SF Jazz Center.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music Historical Studies Department presents Handel's Serse on 6 & 7 April.
On 7 April at Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley, you can see the Musical Theater Prize Concert, featuring the world premiere of The Little Prince, an opera by Cal student Chengrui “Tom” Pan.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Opera and Musical Theatre program presents Pauline Viardot's chamber opera Cendrillon on 20 & 21 April.
Pocket Opera presents Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen, in a Donald Pippin translation they found in their archives, on 14 April at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 21 April at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 28 April at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco; music direction is by Jonathan Khuner, stage direction by Nicolas A Garcia, & choreography by Lissa Resnick.
Choral
21V, a chorus for alto & soprano singers of all genders, performs Reclaiming Radical, a program including a world premiere from Chris Castro celebrating César Chavez & Dolores Huerta, Trevor Weston's Truth Tones in honor of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Stacy Garrop's setting of the last letter written to Ruth Bader Ginsburg by her husband (this is a new work composed for 21V), & Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate's We Are the Storm; you can hear it all on 5 April at Mission Dolores (the old church, not the basilica) & 6 April at the Berkeley Hillside Club.
On 6 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, Pacific Edge Voices will present The Sound Garden of Love (the title plays off Blake's poem The Garden of Love), & the program will include Elgar’s Lux Aeterna, Meredith Monk’s Panda Chant, Dahlgren’s God’s Great Dust Storm, Dylan Tran’s If Music Be the Food of Love, & the group's first live performance of Vienna Teng’s Hymn of Acxiom, which they recorded during the lockdown; the chorus will be joined for this concert by Soul Beatz, Oakland’s community drum circle; selections from the program will be performed on 7 April as part of a free outdoor concert at the Pergola on Lake Merritt in Oakland.
On 20 - 21 April at Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco, Bob Geary leads the San Francisco Choral Society in Dvořák's Mass in D Major, in Goin’ Home, a song arrangement attributed to William Arms Fisher based on the celebrated theme from Dvořák's 9th Symphony, From the New World, & Margaret Bond’s Credo; featured are soloists Benjamin Bachmann on organ, soprano Shawnette Sulker, mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich, tenor Lee Steward, & bass-baritone Wilford Kelly.
The Schwabacher Recital Series presents mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey with pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson on 3 April at the Taube Atrium Theater; repertory to be announced.
On 9 April at the Century Club in San Francisco, Taste of Talent presents Dayenu: A Passover Celebration, with the launch of JIVE (Jewish Innovative Voices & Experiences), led by producer Ronny Michael Greenberg, the cantor of Sherith Israel baritone Simon Barrad, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, & violinist Elizabeth Castro Greenberg; they plan to "bring together the themes of freedom, bondage, and resilience through new perspectives, new works and creative arrangements representing the rich and diverse Jewish musical traditions"; this concert will feature music from the Hans Zimmer / Stephen Schwartz soundtrack to Prince of Egypt, as well as pieces by Simon & Garfunkel, Gerald Cohen, Samuel Barber, Robert Owens, Tom Cipullo, Ernest Bloch, & Yiddish songs, Jazz, Cabaret, & Operetta arias composed by Jews imprisoned during the Holocaust, such as Viktor Ullmann, Ilse Weber, & Joseph Beer.
The San Francisco Symphony presents Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes at Davies Hall on 14 April.
In Zellerbach Hall on 23 April, Cal Performances presents soprano Amina Edris & tenor Pene Pati, accompanied by pianist Robert Mollicone, in Voyages, a program including songs by Duparc, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Quilter, & Vaughan Williams, as well as traditional songs from Egypt (where she's from) & Samoa (where he's from).
Cal Performances presents Angélique Kidjo at Zellerbach Hall on 26 April.
Orchestral
The San Francisco Symphony presents the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, led by & featuring on solo violin Joshua Bell, at Davies Hall on 7 April, when they will perform Flight of Moving Days by Vince Mendoza, featuring percussionist Douglas Marriner (a new composition marking the centenary of Academy founder Sir Neville Marriner) along with the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto & the Schumann 2
Richard Egarr leads the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Romantic Radiance, a program featuring Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (with soloist Shunske Sato) & the Beethoven 3, the Eroica, on 11 April at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, 12 April at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford in Palo Alto, & 13 April at First Congregational in Berkeley.
On 13 April at the Taube Atrium Theater, guest conductor Paul Phillips leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in Britten's Sinfonietta opus 1, the Saint-Saens Violin Concerto #3 in B minor (featuring soloist Michael Long), Wang Lu's Surge, & William Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony (the program will be repeated on 14 April at Stanford University's Dinkelspiel Auditorium).
Karina Canellakis leads the San Francisco Symphony in Richard Strauss's Don Juan & his Death and Transfiguration & Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (featuring soloist Cédric Tiberghien) & his La Valse on 18 - 20 April.
Jory Fankuchen leads the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of Trevor Weston's Aqua as well as Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite #3 & the Mozart 40, & you can hear it 19 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 20 April at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 21 April at First Congregational in Berkeley.
Gustavo Gimeno leads the San Francisco Symphony in Funeral March from The Great Citizen, Opus 55 by Shostakovich, William Walton's Viola Concerto (with soloist Jonathan Vinocour), & the Prokofiev 3 on 25 - 27 April.
On 27 April at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, One Found Sound will perform the west coast premiere of Sam Wu's Hydrosphere (the winner of One Found Sound's 2023 Emerging Composer Award), Ruth Gipps's Seascape, & the Beethoven 3, the Eroica.
On 27 April at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Edwin Outwater leads the SFCM Orchestra in the world premiere of Acequia by Nicolás Lell Benavides, as well as Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs (featuring mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz), & Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole & his La Valse.
On 27 April at Hertz Hall, the UC Berkeley Philharmonia Orchestra will be led by Thomas Green & Noam Elisha in Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
Chamber Music
On 2 April, for Chamber Music Tuesday at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Jupiter Quartet will play Anton Arensky's String Quartet #2 in A Minor, Nathan Shields's Medusa, & Max Bruch's String Octet in B-flat Major.
Noontime Concerts at Old Saint Mary's in downtown San Francisco offers violinist Florin Parvulescu & pianist Samantha Cho performing Beethoven's Violin Sonata #1 in D Major, Fauré's Violin Sonata #1 in A Major, & Earl Wild's setting of the Gershwins' Embraceable You on 2 April; & violinist Yip Wai-Chow, cellist Ayoun Alexandra Kim, & pianist Jon Lee performing Haydn's Piano Trio in E-flat major, Clara Schumann's 3 Romances for Cello and Piano, Schubert's Rondo for Violin and Piano, & Debussy's Piano Trio in G major on 9 April; the rest of the month's schedule hasn't been released yet, but you can check for it here.
On 13 April in Zellerbach Hall, the Danish String Quartet, joined by cellist Johannes Rostamo, returns to Cal Performances, bringing Schubert's String Quintet in C major, a new work for string quintet by Thomas Adès, & some Schubert lieder, as arranged by the Quartet.
On 14 April at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, the Berkeley Symphony presents Play on Words, a program featuring Korngold's Suite from Much Ado About Nothing for Violin and Piano, Gordon Getty's Four Dickinson Songs for Soprano and Piano, Jake Heggie's Shed No Tear (from a poem by John Keats) for Soprano and Piano, & Schubert's Trio in E-flat major, Opus 100 for Piano, Violin, Cello; the musicians featured are soprano Lisa Delan, violinist René Mandel, cellist Evan Kahn, & pianist Kevin Korth (with Jake Heggie as special guest pianist for Shed No Tear).
Chamber Music San Francisco presents cellist Steven Isserlis & pianist Connie Shih at Herbst Theater on 14 April, where they will perform Busoni's Variations on a Finnish folk song, Kultaselle, Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata, Bloch's Pieces from Jewish Life, Fauré's Sonata #1, & Poulenc's Sonata.
Cal Performances presents the Quatuor Ébène at First Congregational on 16 April, where they will perform Mozart's String Quartet #21 in D major, the Prussian, Schnittke's String Quartet #3, & Grieg's String Quartet #1 in G minor.
A chamber group of San Francisco Symphony musicians will perform Danzas de Panama by William Grant Still, Sextet in C major by Ernst von Dohnányi, & the String Quartet #3 in F major by Shostakovich at Davies Hall on 21 April.
On 25 April at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents the Dover Quartet & pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, performing Joaquín Turina's La oración del torero (The Bullfighter’s Prayer), the Dohnányi Piano Quintet #. 2 in E-flat Minor, & the Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor.
This season's Saturday morning lecture/concert series from San Francisco Performances, Music as a Mirror of Our World: The String Quartet from 1905 to 1946, with host/lecturer Robert Greenberg & music from the Alexander String Quartet, concludes on 27 April at Herbst Theater with a session devoted to the United Kingdom, featuring the Britten String Quartet #2 in C Major, Opus 36 & William Walton's String Quartet #2 in A Minor.
On 30 April at Herbst Theater, Chamber Music San Francisco presents violinist Daniel Hope with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips, performing Enescu's Impromptu Concertante, Ravel's Sonata Opus Posthumous, the American premiere of Jake Heggie's Fantasy Suite 1803, & Franck's Sonata in A Major.
Instrumental
On 2 April at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma & pianist Kathryn Stott performing the Berceuse, Opus 16 by Fauré, Songs My Mother Taught Me by Dvořák, Menino by Sérgio Assad, Cantique by Nadia Boulanger, Papillon, Opus 77 by Fauré, the Cello Sonata in D minor, Opus 40 by Shostakovich, Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt, & César Franck's Violin Sonata in A major (transcribed for cello).
Cal Performances brings Japanese troupe Drum Tao & its 30th anniversary tour to Zellerbach Hall on 11 - 12 April.
The Dewing Piano Recital Series concert will take place at the Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College on 14 April, & will feature Varvara Tarasova playing solo works by Brahms & Schumann (the concert is free but you must register to attend).
San Francisco Performances presents the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain at Herbst Theater on 16 April; the program will be announced from the stage.
The San Francisco Symphony presents pianist Yefim Bronfman at Davies Hall on 21 April, when he will perform Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor, Opus 143, Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Opus 26, Esa-Pekka Salonen's Sisar, & Chopin's Piano Sonata #3 in B minor, Opus 58.
San Francisco Performances presents cellist Camille Thomas at Herbst Theater on 23 April, where she will perform works by Chopin as arranged by Auguste Franchomme & Mischa Maisky, a Nocturne & Air Russe Varié by Franchomme, & David Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody, Opus 68.
Early / Baroque Music
The San Francisco Early Music Society presents violinist Rachel Barton Pine & harpsichordist Jory Vinikour in a program of sonatas & partitas by Bach on 5 April at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 6 April at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 7 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.
Cal Performances brings countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński & Il Pomo d’Oro to Zellerbach Hall on 9 April, where they will perform a program of baroque rarities by Monteverdi, Marini, Caccini, Frescobaldi, Kerll, Strozzi, Cavalli, Pallavicino, Netti, Sartorio, Jarzębski, & Moratelli.
Paul Flight leads the California Bach Society in a program of North German Masters, featuring music by Buxtehude, Schop, Tunder, & Bach, on 26 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 27 April at All Saints' Episcopal in Palo Alto, & 28 April at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley.
Under the heading Bach's Favorite Instruments, Jeffrey Thomas will lead the American Bach Soloists in Bach's Concerto in A Minor for Violin, his Concerto in D Major for Harpsichord, his Concerto in A Major for Oboe d’amore, & his Sonata in G Major for Two Flutes, as well as Telemann's Concerto in G Major for Viola & his Concerto in A Major for Flute, Violin, and 'Cello (with featured soloists YuEun Kim & Tomà Iliev on violin, Corey Jamason on harpsichord, Stephen Hammer on oboe d'amore, Bethanne Walker & Vincent Canciello on flute, Joseph Howe on violoncello, & Yvonne Smith on viola, & you can hear them 26 April at Saint Stephen's in Belvedere, 27 April at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 28 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 29 April at Davis Community Church in Davis.
See also Handel's Serse at the SF Conservatory of Music, listed under Operatic.
Modern / Contemporary Music
On 1 April at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music there will be a composer portrait concert for David Conte, featuring his Elegy for Violin and Piano, selections from his one-act ballet Brokeback Mountain, the aria Willow from his opera East of Eden, Aria and Fugue for Viola and Piano, & Piano Trio #2.
On 5 April, Ensemble for These Times will collaborate with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (at the Conservatory's Barbro Osher Recital Hall) in a multimedia exploration of Expressionist music from the Second Viennese School & new music inspired by it, featuring the world premieres of a new chamber arrangement by TJ Martin of Berg's Sieben Frühe Lieder & two trios by David Garner & Valerie Liu, as well as music by Schoenberg, Webern, & Adam Schoenberg, & the winner of the SFCM TAC Department's student composition competition.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the American premiere of Pierrot Lunaire & the 150th birthday of its composer, the great Arnold Schoenberg, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players will host a two-day mini festival on 20 - 21 April at the Taube Atrium Theater: on 20 April, Pierrot RE:imagined gives us Kevin Day's un(ravel)ed, Katherine Balch's Musica Spolia, the American premiere of Massimo Lauricella's E Piove in Petto una Dolcezza Inquieta (with featured soloist soprano Winnie Nieh), Andrew Norman's Mine Mime Meme, & Mason Bates's Difficult Bamboo (before the concert Bates will be interviewed by SFCMP Artistic Director Eric Dudley); & on 21 April, Pierrot RE:encountered gives us Joan Tower's Petroushskates, selections from Schoenberg's Cabaret Songs, Jessie Montgomery's Lunar Songs: I. and III, & Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, which will be accompanied by a newly commissioned animated video by Simona Fitcal; mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway will be the vocal soloist for the Montgomery & the Schoenberg selections.
Sarah Cahill’s Backstage Pass, presented by Amateur Music Network at Old First Concerts on 22 April, will feature Theresa Wong performing music from her album Practicing Sands & talking about composing & improvising on cello & other instruments.
On 25 April at the Center for New Music, the Nathan Clevenger Trio (which also includes Jordan Glenn & Cory Wright) will be joined by Phillip Greenlief & Marié Abe to celebrate the release of the Trio's new album, Unsettled by the Ocean, with an evening of improved & composed material..
On 26 April at the Center for New Music, violinist & composer Concetta Abbate will perform a program of her music for solo violin & voice to "showcase her new music and arts organization Sound & Memory", which seeks to "incorporate music into contemporary rituals for both grief and death."
Other Musical Traditions
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music will offer an evening of Jewish Music on 5 April; the program is yet to be announced.
The Ali Akbar College of Music will host a 15th Annual Birthday Tribute to Maestro Ali Akbar Khan. featuring vocalist Pandit Uday Bhawalkar as well as Alam Khan & Manik Khan on sarod & Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri on tabla performing Indian classical music, at Old First Concerts on 13 April.
On 26 April, Old First Concerts will present ZOFO (pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann & Keisuke Nakagoshi) in Echoes of Gamelan, a program examining the influence of gamelan music on western composers, including Debussy, Godwosky, Gustav Holst, George Crumb, Brian Baumbusch, Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti, as well as transcriptions by Colin McPhee of Balinese ceremonial music.
The Berkeley Bluegrass Festival will take place 26 - 28 April at Freight & Salvage.
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of 69 Love Songs, the Magnetic Fields will perform the entire album live over two nights (26 - 27 April are sold out, but shows have been added on 28 - 29 April) at the Curran Theater.
Dance
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater makes its annual springtime return to Zellerbach Hall & Cal Performances from 2 to 7 April, with five different programs: Program A (on 2 & 6 April), contains Dancing Spirit (Ronald K Brown, to music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Radiohead, War), Me, Myself and You (Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, to music by Duke Ellington, arranged by Damien Sneed & performed by Brandie Sutton), Solo (Hans van Manen to music by Bach), & Revelations (Alvin Ailey, to traditional spirituals); Program B (3 April) contains Following the Subtle Current Upstream (Alonzo King, to music by Zakir Hussain, Miguel Frasconi, & Miriam Makeba), CENTURY (Amy Hall Garner, to music by various artists), & Are You in Your Feelings? (Kyle Abraham, to music by various artists); Program C (4 April) contains Following the Subtle Current Upstream (Alonzo King, to music by Zakir Hussain, Miguel Frasconi, & Miriam Makeba), Me, Myself and You (Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, to music by Duke Ellington, arranged by Damien Sneed & performed by Brandie Sutton), & Revelations (Alvin Ailey to traditional spirituals, performed live at this performance by vocalists Chenee Campbell, Nia Drummond, Sean Holland II, & Marvin Lowe; The Revelations Choir and Band, comprised of Bay Area musicians; conducted by Damien Sneed); Program D (5 & 6 (matinee) April), contains Ailey Classics, featuring Reflections in D & excerpts from Memoria, Night Creature, Pas de Duke, Masekela Langage, Opus McShann, Love Songs, & For ‘Bird’ – With Love, & Revelations (Alvin Ailey, to traditional spirituals); Program 3 (7 April, matinee) contains Following the Subtle Current Upstream (Alonzo King, to music by Zakir Hussain, Miguel Frasconi, & Miriam Makeba), CENTURY (Amy Hall Garner, to music by various artists), & Revelations (Alvin Ailey, to traditional spirituals).
Vertical.Show, a combination of pole & aerial sports with modern choreography, plays the Great Star Theater in SF's Chinatown from 4 to 21 April.
The San Francisco Ballet starts the month with Next@90 Curtain Call, a program repeating some of the hits from last year's festival – Gateway to the Sun (choreography by Nicolas Blanc, to music by Anna Clyne), Violin Concerto (choreography by Yuri Possokhov, to music by Stravinsky), & Madcap (choreography by Danielle Rowe, to music by Pär Hagström) – & that runs between 2 & 13 April.
From 4 to 14 April, the San Francisco Ballet presents Dos Mujeres, a program featuring the world premiere of Carmen, with choreography by Arielle Smith to music by, no, not Bizet, but Arturo O’Farrill; &, for those who feel they just haven't heard enough about Frida Kahlo lately, the SF Ballet premiere of Broken Wings, with choreography by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa to music by Peter Salem.
If you missed the Oakland Ballet Company's Dancing Moons Festival 2024 performance in March at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, you can catch the same program (a reprise of Layer Upon Layer by Caili Quan, Ballet de Porcelaines by Phil Chan, & highlights from Exquisite Corpse by Elaine Kudo, Seyong Kim, & Phil Chan, & excerpts from the work-in-progress Angel Island, based on Huang Ruo’s composition inspired by poems carved into the walls of the west coast immigration detention center) at ODC in San Francisco on 5 - 6 April.
Nancy Karp + Dancers collaborate with the Friction Quartet & Haruka Fujii (percussion) & David A Jaffe (mandolin & mandocello) in Eppur si muove, a world premiere set to Sundial by Samuel Adams & fly through the night, and land near dawn, set to music by David A Jaffe, & that's at the Taube Atrium Theater on 6 - 7 April.
From 18 to 24 April, San Francisco Ballet will present an encore of the popular world premiere season opener, Mere Mortals, with choreography by Aszure Barton & music by Floating Points; the story is, as I understand it, a mash-up between Artificial Intelligence & the legends of Orpheus; the performance will be followed by an after-party.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet's spring program, featuring three works by King – a world premiere, a reimagined version of The Collective Agreement (in collaboration with jazz pianist Jason Moran & light-installation artist Jim Campbell), & Concerto for Two Violins (to music by Bach) – will be performed at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on 5, 7, & 10 - 14 April (the performance on the 11th will include a Q&A with King).
Cal Performances presents the Mark Morris Dance Group in Socrates, to the score by Erik Satie, & the world premiere of Via Dolorosa, set to Nico Muhly's The Street, using texts by Alice Goodman; as usual with MMDG, the music is live; you can experience it all at Zellerbach Hall on 19 - 21 April.
Art Means Painting
MOAD is opening its next round of exhibits on 27 March: we have !!!!!, the first solo museum show for British artist Rachel Jones; Unruly Navigations, which "testifies to the urgent, disorderly, rebellious, and nonlinear movements of people, cultures, ideas, religions, and aesthetics that define diaspora"; Value Test: Brown Paper featuring Mary Brown's "portraits depicting fictional Black women rendered in oil on brown paper bags. The eponymous “paper bag tests” were historically conducted amongst the Black upper classes to gauge entry into elite spaces, granting access only to those lighter than the brown paper" (Value Test runs through 19 May & the other two exhibits through 1 September).
Creative Growth: The House That Art Built, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Creative Growth, "the first organization in the United States dedicated to supporting artists with developmental disabilities", opens at SFMOMA on 6 April & runs through 6 October.
Two exhibits are opening at the Legion of Honor on 6 April: Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World, examines the modernizing, westernizing Meiji-era changes in the ukiyo-e tradition, & Zuan-cho: Kimono Design in Modern Japan (1868 – 1912) examines kimono design books (zuan-cho means “design idea books”) from the same period.
A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration opens at BAM/PFA on 13 April & runs through 22 September, the exhibit "features newly commissioned works across media by twelve artists, including Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems", all examining the experience & legacy of the Great Migration.
Phoenix Kingdoms: The Last Splendor of China’s Bronze Age, highlighting recent archaeological discoveries from the Zeng & Chu states conquered by the First Emperor, opens at the Asian Art Museum on 19 April & runs through 22 July.
Cinematic
Berkeley & the Movies, an exhibit at the Berkeley Historical Society, opens on 7 April.
The good news is that the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's annual extravaganza is back; the bad news, at least for those of us who are nondrivers in the East Bay, is that due to the renovation/ruination of the Castro Theater, it is being held this year at the Palace of Fine Arts, a much less transit-friendly venue; nonetheless, the 10 - 14 April schedule holds many treasures, all with the SFF's signature live accompaniment.
As usual the Roxie in San Francisco has a lot going on, including the new documentary Carol Doda Topless at the Condor, 40th anniversary screenings of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli release Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, & more in the series Taipei Tales: The Cinema of Edward Yang.
As part of its Unscripted series, the Curran Theater presents two evenings with John Cusack: on 18 April they will screen High Fidelity & on 19 April Being John Malkovich; both shows are followed by a discussion with Cusack that will include audience questions.
The San Francisco International Film Festival runs 24 - 28 April this year in various Bay Area locations; the programs have not yet been announced but when they are you can find them here.
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