It's the start of the calendar year, though the half-way point in the traditional performance calendar; time to dust off December's glitter & pack away its tinsel & accept the onrushing realities of 2025: let's all make sure that reality includes as much art as we can manage.
Theatrical
Robert Townsend’s Living the Shuffle, a one-person show written & performed by the director of the film Hollywood Shuffle, comes to The Marsh Berkeley from 3 January to 2 February.
BroadwaySF brings the touring company of the recent Broadway musical based on Some Like It Hot to the Orpheum from 7 to 26 January.
The Marsh Rising series presents Crush, a dance-comedy show about, you know, having a crush on someone, created & performed by Molly Rose-Williams, at the Marsh San Francisco on 8 January, & Don’t Mind Me (I’ll Just Sit Here in the Dark), an examination of the Jewish Mother stereotype written & performed by Lauren Mayer & directed by Michael Mohammad, at the Marsh San Francisco on 15 January.
San Francisco Playhouse presents Exotic Deadly: or, The MSG Play by Keiko Green, directed by Jesca Prudencio, from 30 January to 8 March.
Berkeley Rep presents the world premiere of The Thing About Jellyfish, adapted for the stage by Keith Bunin from the novel by Ali Benjamin, directed by Tyne Rafaeli, from 31 January to 9 March.
Talking
The Contemporary Jewish Museum & the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco present The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik speaking on Cities & Jewish Life on 21 January.
Operatic
Undergrad Opera at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents The Magic Flute on 23 & 24 January.
Choral
The San Francisco Early Music Society presents the Boston Camerata, directed by Anne Azéma, in We'll Be There! American Spirituals, Black and White, 1800 - 1900, & that's 30 January at First Congregational in Berkeley & 31 January at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco; on 29 January, Azéma & the Camerata will lead a sing-along workshop at The Chan Center for the Arts, 170 Valencia St., San Francisco.
Vocalists
You can find a listing for Schubert's Winterreise as part of the Left Coast Ensemble's Winter Wandering Festival, listed (somewhat arbitrarily) under Modern / Contemporary Music.
Orchestral
Here's what's happening at the San Francisco Symphony this month: on 9 - 11 January (there is an Open Rehearsal on the morning of the 9th, as well as an evening performance), James Gaffigan conducts Missy Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto (with soloist Ray Chen), & the Prokofiev 5; on 16, 18 - 19 January (with an Open Rehearsal the morning of the 16th, as well as an evening performance), David Robertson leads the world premiere of an SF Symphony commission, After the Fall, a new piano concerto by John Adams, with soloist Víkingur Ólafsson, along with The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, & speaking of unanswered questions, who thought the perfect item to round out Adams & Ives would be that overly frequent visitor, Orff's Carmina Burana (with soloists Susanna Phillips, soprano; Arnold Livingston Geis, tenor, & Will Liverman, baritone, as well as the San Francisco Girls Chorus & the regular Symphony Chorus); on 24 - 25 January, Mark Elder conducts Berlioz's Overture to Les francs-juges as well as his Le roi Lear Overture, Debussy's Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune, Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, & John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine; & on 30 - 31 January & 1 February, Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt returns to lead the Schubert 5 & the Brahms 1.
Ming Luke leads the Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, Haydn's Paukenmesse (Missa in tempore belli), & the Faurè Requiem at Hertz Hall on the Berkeley campus on 3 - 5 January.
Voices of Music presents works by Haydn, Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-Georges, & Boccherini, on 10 January at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, 11 January at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 12 January at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Caroline Hume Concert Hall.
Daniel Hope leads the New Century Chamber Orchestra in Musical Diversions, a program featuring pianist Inon Barnatan performing CPE Bach's Keyboard Concerto #3 in D minor, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto #1 in C minor, Opus 35, For piano, trumpet and strings (with Brandon Ridenour on trumpet), & Bartók's Divertimento for String Orchestra, & you can hear it on 17 January at First Congregational in Berkeley, 18 January at the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, & 19 January at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco.
Chamber Music
The Saturday morning lecture series at Herbst Theater, presented by San Francisco Performances, featuring musicologist Robert Greenberg & the Alexander String Quartet (Zakarias Grafilo & Yuna Lee, violins; David Samuel, viola; Sandy Wilson, cello), continues its exploration of The String Quartets of Papa Joe & Wolfgang with two sessions this month: on 11 January, you can hear Haydn's String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 33, #2, “the Joke” & Mozart's String Quartet #14 in G Major, K 387, the “Spring”; & on 25 January, you can hear Mozart's String Quartet #22 in B-Flat Major, K 589 & Haydn's String Quartet in D Major, Opus 64, #5, the “Lark”.
On 14 January, Noontime Concerts at Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco will present a Musical Tribute to Dr Martin Luther King Jr, featuring pianist (& program organizer) Carl Blake, soprano Hope Briggs, violinist Joseph Edelberg, pianist Daniel Glover, baritone Bradley Kynard, & flutist William Underwood III, who will perform works by Valerie Coleman, Serge Bortkiewicz, Leslie Adams. Garrett-Martin-Nicholson, Olivier Messiaen, William Grant Still, Roland M Carter, Undine Smith Moore, Blind Tom Wiggins, & Bruce Starks (the rest of the month hasn't been listed on the website yet, but presumably they will resume their regular Tuesday lunchtime concerts).
Cal Performances presents the Takács Quartet, joined by pianist Jeremy Denk, at Hertz Hall on 25 - 26 January, when they will perform Beethoven's String Quartet in F major, Opus 18, #1, Janáček's String Quartet #1, The Kreutzer Sonata, & the Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Opus 34.
On 31 January at the Barbro Osher Recital Hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Bowes Center, Philharmonia Baroque presents Bach in Bengal, featuring Arjun Verma on sitar, William Rossel on tabla, & the Philharmonia Baroque Chamber Players performing original works for sitar, tabla, & strings, as well as variations on a Bach Bourée by Ali Akbar Khan.
Instrumental
Trumpeter Chris Botti plays the SF Jazz Center from 7 to 12 January.
On 17 January, Old First Concerts presents pianist Samantha Cho performing a world premiere piece by Monica Chew, as well as music by Mozart, Debussy, Takemitsu, & Jean Ahn.
Kodo, the Japanese drum troupe, returns to Cal Performances & Zellerbach Hall on 25 - 26 January, with their latest program, Warabe, the Japanese word for child; the program explores the “desire to play the drums with the simple heart of a child.”
Early / Baroque Music
On 19 January in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, joined by soprano Julia Bullock, in a program of arias & instrumental works by Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, Purcell, Pachelbel, Rameau, Strozzi, Telemann, & Lully.
On 19 January the Cantata Collective continues its survey of Bach's sacred cantatas, presented for free at Saint Mary Magdalen's in Berkeley, with Es ist das Heil uns kommen her, BWV 9 & Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, BWV 115, with soloists Nola Richardson (soprano), Sylvia Leith (alto), Kyle Stegall (tenor), & Edmund Milly (bass).
On 25 January at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances, in association with the OMNI Foundation for the Performing Arts, presents guitarist Miloš in The Arts & the Hours, a program featuring baroque & baroque-inspired music by Weiss, Bach, Rameau, Barrios, Abel, Scarlatti, Couperin, & Duplessy.
Modern / Contemporary Music
On 5 January, Old First Concerts presents pianist Sarah Cahill in a program dedicated to the music of James Cleghorn, the long-time music librarian for 25 years at the San Francisco Public Library.
On 17 January at Herbst Theater, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players & the ARTZenter Institute Emerging Composer Program present another free concert featuring all-new scores for orchestra, this time featuring works by Peter Chatterjee, Daniel Cui, Gabriel Duarte DaSilva, Angel Gomez Ramos, James Larkins, & Benjamin Webster.
Other Minds celebrates co-founder Charles Amirkhanian’s 80th Birthday on 19 January at the Goldman Theater in the David Brower Center in Berkeley, featuring compositions by the honoree & on-stage discussions by friends of Other Minds.
On 25 January at the Center for New Music, Ensemble for These Times presents Midnight Serenades: Music by Women and Non-binary Composers, featuring works by Olivia Bennett, Gabriella Carrido, Devon Lee, & others, as well as world premieres by Lucy Chen & Madeline Clara Cheng.
On 25 January at the SF Jazz Center, pianist Gloria Cheng performs Root Progressions, a program featuring solo commissions by Anthony Davis, Jon Jang, Linda May Han Oh, James Newton, Arturo O’Farrill, & Gernot Wolfgang.
The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble hosts a Winter Wandering Festival, which will include: the last works of Luigi Nono & Schubert (respectively “Hay que caminar” soñando & the String Quintet in C Major, D 956) on 24 January at the First Church of Christ Scientist (the Maybeck church) in Berkeley & on 2 February at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco; Echo Contest…Nearly on 25 January at the Maybeck Church in Berkeley, in which "Left Coast musicians join with community members to create two improvisatory works which explore the spatial dimension of music within Maybeck’s innovative architecture", featuring Raven Chacon's Echo Contest & Danny Clay's Nearly; On the Threshold of Dreamland, in which Volti joins with Left Coast to perform the world premiers of Todd Kitchen's Soprasymmetry IV, “as west and east in all flat maps are one” & LJ White's This Place, along with Huang Ruo's Without Words, Britten's Folk Songs, & Laurie San Martin's Witches, & that's 25 January at the Maybeck Church in Berkeley & 1 February at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco; A Dark Matter (Coffee Concert), a morning program featuring the world premiere of Addie Camsuzou's Unearth & Gilad Cohen's A Dark Matter (the 2023 LCCE Composition Contest Winner), as well as Tōru Takemitsu's Equinox, Jessie Cox's Afronaut, Thea Musgrave's Impromptu #1, Elliott Carter's Steep Steps, & selections from Britten's Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, & that's 26 January at the Berkeley Hillside Club & 1 February at the Noe Valley Ministry; & Schubert's Winterreise, with tenor Kyle Stegall & Eric Zivian on piano, on 26 January at the Berkeley Piano Club & 31 January at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco. You can buy festival passes to the whole series or tickets for individual concerts.
San Francisco Performances presents its annual three-day PIVOT festival at Herbst Theater, curated again this year by singer/pianist/composer Gabriel Kahane: on 29 January, he is joined by violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, the Del Sol Quartet, & members of Sandbox Percussion in Kihlstedt’s 26 Little Deaths, inspired by Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies; on 30 January, he is joined by singer/songwriter/guitarist Haley Heynderickx & brass quartet The Westerlies in an exploration of Heynderickx's songs; & on 31 January he is joined by Sandbox Percussion in a performance of Andy Akiho’s Seven Pillars.
Jazz
Meshell Ndegeocello performs music from her latest album, No More Water/The Fire Next Time: The Gospel of James Baldwin, at the SF Jazz Center on 17 - 19 January.
Composer/trumpeter/SF Jazz Executive Artistic Director Terence Blanchard brings his E-collective & Turtle Island Quartet to the SF Jazz Center from 23 to 26 January; 23 January features music from his album Flow, 24 - 25 January feature music from A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina), & 26 January features special guest vocalist Dianne Reeves; there is also a Listening Party on 22 January.
Flutist Jamie Baum & her quartet play the SF Jazz Center on 24 January.
Bass player Jeong Lim Yang & her Trio play Mary Lou Williams' Zodiac Suite at the SF Jazz Center on 26 January.
Freight & Salvage presents a three-day Django Reinhardt Birthday Celebration, featuring the Hot Club of Cowtown, Christine Tassan et les Imposteurs, & the Hot Club of San Francisco (24 January); the Rhythm Future Quartet, the Hot Club of San Francisco featuring Cullen "Cujo" Luper on violin, & San Lyon (25 January); & Debi Botos, the Hot Club of San Francisco, & the Hot Club of Los Angeles (26 January).
Dance
San Francisco Ballet presents Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, set to music by Massenet, from 24 January to 1 February.
The Japan Society of Northern California invites you to Theater of Yugen's NOHspace theater on 25 January to experience the Nihonbuyo style of traditional Japanese dance with professional dancer Ume Nakamura, who will perform & discuss the style.
Art Means Painting
You have until 12 January to see the Battle of Pavia tapestries at the de Young & until 26 January to see the Mary Cassatt show at the Legion of Honor.
MOAD (the Museum of the African Diaspora) offers free admission on Martin Luther King Jr Day (20 January).
On 26 January, the Berkeley Historical Society hosts The Life and Art of Chiura Obata, An Illustrated Talk by Kimi Hill (the artist's granddaughter), which will include discussions of the Japanese-born artist's long association with UC Berkeley & his time in the American internment camps during World War II.
Cinematic
On 11 January at Grace Cathedral, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents Hitchcock's The Manxman, with Ben Palmer conducting the Oakland Symphony in Stephen Horne's original score.
On 18 January in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances screens Alejandro Iñárritu’s film Birdman, with Antonio Sánchez performing his score for the film live.
BAM/PFA launches some film series this month: Landscapes of Myth: Westerns After The Searchers begins 10 January (I'm not a fan of Westerns in general, but sure, this series looks interesting); Masc II: Mascs plus Muchachas: Butch Dykes, Trans Men, and Gender Nonconforming Heroes in Cinema, a second iteration of the popular series from last year, runs 17 January through 23 February; & Sergei Loznitsa: Filmmaker in Residence, will run, with screenings & talks, from 30 January through 8 February.
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