Arts & Events

Around and About Music

By Ken Bullock
Wednesday May 25, 2011 - 01:00:00 PM

Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch at the Jazz School; Meet the Mendocino Music Festival in Berkeley; Cello Heaven with a Soprano 

Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch at the Jazz School 

Bay Area bassist-composer Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & switch--whose CD What Is Known won the Village Voice's Jazz Critics Poll Best Debut Album award last year--will be playing the JazzSchool Friday, May 27, at 8, 2087 Addison near Shattuck. Bait & Switch consists of tenor saxophonist Aaron Bennett, electric guitarist John Finkbeiner, drummer Vijay Anderson, and Lisa on acoustic bass. $12. Tickets at the door or from jazzschool.com 

Meet the Mendocino Music Festival in Berkeley 

The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Mendocino Music Festival, held on the headlands in Mendocino this summer from July 9 to 23, will be previewed in a special program next Tuesday, May 31, at 8 p. m. in the Members Lounge of the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, featuring Berkeleyite pianist and Festival co-founder Susan Waterfall and violinist Jeremy Cohen (renowned for both his work with Quartet San Francisco and as a jazz violinist) playing John Adams' Road Movies and Astor Piazolla's Milonga in Re, as well as a two-piano version of Gershwin's I Got Rhythm Variations, with Waterfall and her son (by Festival music director Allan Pollack) Julian Pollack (who played Adams' Hallelujah Junction so wonderfully at the City Club and the Festival last year)--as well as the Julian Pollack Trio, featuring Noah Garabedian and Evan Hughes (all Berkeley High Jazz Band alumni), playing jazz standards from their Infinite Playground CD, during a break from their California tour. Tickets: $20 at the door. Limited seating. No-host bar available before and during the show. mendocinomusic.com 

Cello Heaven with a Soprano 

Locally and nationally acclaimed cellist Burke Schuchmann's eight cello choir, Cello Heaven, will perform with soprano Susan Rode Morris--founding member of Ensemble Alcatraz, who's performed with Philharmonia Baroque, American Bach Soloists and Magnificat!--Thursday, June 2nd, at Saint Alban's Church, 1501 Washington, in Albany, in a program of Villa-Lobos' Bachianis Braziliares No. 5; Faure's Pie Jesu (from his Requiem)--both featuring Morris--as well as Bach, Riegger, Russian choir pieces, and Brahms' Eleven Choral Preludes, arranged by Cello Heaven member Tom Fattarusso, in a benefit for the St. Albans organ fund and Cello Heaven's scholarship fund. $20. 234-4502; burkepalomarin@gmail.com Sponsored by the Palomarin Chamber Music Foundation of Point Richmond.