Arts & Events
Bruce Barthol Plays at Freight & Salvage
From Bruce Barthol’s days as bassist with the original Country Joe and the Fish, to his three decades as resident composer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, to playing for this year’s reunion of survivors of the Spanish Civil War’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Barthol’s been an unstinting fount of committed and humor songs and instrumental music. -more-
A Different Side of John Cage Tonight
John Cage’s groundbreaking music is often associated with Asian thought: the random throws of the I Ching, Taoist and Zen spontaneity. Tonight (Friday) at 8 p.m., at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., a different side of Cage’s exploration of non-European music and philosophy will be heard, when dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni sings his “18 Microtonal Ragas.” Cuni, the first performer to prepare all of these ragas for full performance, sings in five different languages, accompanied by Werner Durand, drones and electronics, and Raymond Kaczynski and Federico Saliesi on percussion. Cage’s “Solo for Voice 58” will also be performed. Italian-born Cuni has been a sensation among Indian music listeners the past few years. The concert is presented by Other Minds, founded by Charles Amirkhanian (formerly of KPFA), in association with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Goethe-Institut, both of San Francisco. $25, www.brownpapertickets. com or (800) 838-3006. -more-
Moving Pictures: The Grassroots Movement to Stop Apartheid
Berkeley filmmaker Connie Field has taken on a vast project in her effort to document the global movement against apartheid in South Africa over half a century. Have You Heard From Johannesburg? is a six-part series that examines the movement in stand-alone documentaries. Field has completed the first of them and is at work finishing the second. Apartheid and the Club of the West, which will eventually take its place as the fourth installment in the series, opens today (Friday) at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. -more-
East Bay Then and Now: Maybeck’s Boke House: Made by One Crusader for Another
On November 14, 1901 an item in the Berkeley Daily Gazette informed: -more-
Garden Variety: Take a Nursery Jaunt Up Tomales Bay
Mostly Natives is a classic, and worth a jaunt on a nice day. If you’re the sort of traveler who appreciates dramatic and various weather shows, that would include the average rainy spell; the rolling curtains and airborne leviathans of fog and cloud that unroll across the Richmond—San Rafael Bridge and lie in the folds of Marin County, alternately dazzling and shrouding you on the road are one of our particular local pleasures. -more-
About the House: A Few Things I Was Wrong About
This is for my wife. Actually, it’s for wives and girlfriends everywhere. Here it is. I was wrong. Wait, I’ll say it again. I was wrong. How are you feeling? Giddy? Lightheaded? Well, don’t lose control. It’s one of these construction things. Not anything important like bedspreads, hair-do’s or Angelina’s latest fling. -more-
The Shtetl Before the Holocaust
We know so much about the deportation and death of Polish Jews in the Holocaust, but so little about life in the shtetl before the genocide. The exhibition of his paintings, currently on view at the Magnes Museum displays 65 pictures by an artist who has documented the joys and sorrows of daily life in the shtetl. -more-
The Theater: Virago Theatre Stages ‘Mankind’s Last Hope’ In Alameda
Mankind’s Last Hope, Virago Theatre’s burlesque futuristic sitcom, through this weekend at Alameda’s Rhythmix Cultural Center near the Park Street Bridge, is the perfect antidote to the overcommercialization of Halloween. -more-
Spooky, Unusual Events in Celebration of Halloween
All Hallows, All Saints, All Souls, Samhain, Todos Santos, Dia de los Muertes ... by any other name, to us, Halloween and the cluster of celebrations around the old Celtic lunar new year after harvest, adopted by the Christian Church as holidays. -more-
Books: A Guide to the Bay Area’s Buildings and Architecture
A long-awaited, much-needed, and up-to-date guide to the great and representative buildings and architectural history of the Bay Area debuts this month. -more-
Kingdom of Shadows: The Origins of the Horror Film
As long as we've had motion pictures, we've used them to scare ourselves. The medium is perfectly suited for it. Even the earliest filmmakers saw the potential, employing double exposures, trick shots, spooky sets and dramatic lighting to illuminate the darker side of the imagination, to bring to life the ethereal netherworlds and distorted figures of the collective unconscious. -more-
Wild Neighbors: Birds in Berkeley: The Owls in the Oak
Eighty-one years ago Joseph Grinnell, director of UC’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, sat in his corner office at the edge of Faculty Glade watching a crew of arborists at work on a venerable coast live oak. Or, as he put it in his essay “Tree Surgery and the Birds,” “ ‘tree surgeons’ … under directions of a ‘landscape architect.’ ” His contempt is evident. Over the years, Grinnell had observed 46 species of birds in that oak. And he noted the removal of bits of the tree that had attracted particular species of birds: the decaying stub where the downy woodpecker drummed, the white-breasted nuthatch’s favorite foraging ground, the flycatcher’s perch. -more-