Arts & Events

Gustavo Dudamel, 34 years old, is the latest super-star among conductors. Much in demand internationally, Dudamel is Music Director of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. This week he brings his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela to Berkeley for an ambitious and ground-breaking series of concerts, classroom visits, open rehearsals, and master classes. Dudamel himself is a product of Venezuela’s El Sistema, the ambitious and hugely successful national system founded by conductor José Antonio Abreu in 1975 to enhance music education and social change in that country. To date, over 2 million Venezuelan children have received musical instruction, and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra’s 180 members are all graduates of El Sistema. -more-

Locally-sourced food has been all the rage for a while now, but locally-sourced opera?

Berkeley Chamber Opera is attempting to provide just that—productions which showcase the work of the Bay Area’s wealth of resident professional talent in accessible settings, at a price which is affordable for a wide range of opera fans.

Many who have been introduced to opera through the popular Metropolitan Opera films haven’t yet experienced the unique excitement of live performance.

Berkeley Chamber Opera hopes to change that. Next on its schedule is Mozart's beloved Marriage of Figaro, to be staged at Berkeley's Hillside Club on October 9 and 11. -more-

This remarkable show, which runs from July 28 to November 1 at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, brings together 50 or so ancient bronzes from 34 museums in 13 countries on 4 continents. It is a traveling exhibition which opened March 14 at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, then moved to Los Angeles, and will proceed in November to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Entitled “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World,” this show is perhaps misnamed, for although it focuses primarily on Greek and Roman works of the Hellenistic period – from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the 2^nd century AD – it also includes significant works from the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC, the so-called Classical period of ancient Greece. It offers, as one journalist noted, “the Murderer’s Row of Greek Bronzes.” -more-

On Friday evening, September 25, Gustavo Dudamel led the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre. Under Dudamel’s direction, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra has taken its place as one of the world’s leading orchestras. They just returned from performing several concerts and the opera La Bohème at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, with Dudamel conducting. Last week they opened the 2015-16 season in Los Angeles by uniting with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies. Beethoven, of course, was also the orchestra’s focus in their visit to Berkeley, and this visit was capped off in memorable fashion by an illuminating performance of Beethoven’s immortal 9^th Symphony in D minor, Op. 125. -more-

James Keller was longtime resident playwright at the Magic Theatre some years back, his plays and adaptations familiar to Bay Area audiences, and they've been performed in London and New York as well. For the past twenty-some years, he's also been a popular teacher at Berkeley Adult School and other East Bay venues, well-known for teaching literature, film and other cultural subjects with great vigor. Keller's still writing (both plays and poetry) and directing his own scripts for the occasional show by his troupe, Poor Players ( poorplayers.org ). His dialogue and characters engage the audience, dancing in the spectators' minds' eye. -more-

The Piedmont Center for the Arts was packed early evening last Sunday, the crowd spilling through the open doors into the warm, still air outside the hall where violinist Stuart Canin, pianist Janet Guggenheim--later joined by cellist Jonah Kim--played the opening program of the third season of Berkeley Symphony & Friends chamber concert series with brilliant acuity, particularly apt for a concert dedicated to the memory of Robert Commanday, dean of Bay Area music critics, who died at his nearby home September 3, age 93. -more-