Arts & Events


Press Release: CELEBRATE LATINO HERITAGE MONTH
8th Annual Bay Area Flamenco Festival
Festival Flamenco Gitano
September 21-October 6, 2013

Saturday September 14, 2013 - 11:11:00 AM

The Bay Area Flamenco Festival Invites you to experience deeply authentic Gypsy flamenco direct from Spain, first-hand in an intimate setting.

"Exhilarating..." The New York Times The 8th Annual Bay Area Flamenco Festival features world-class artists from Spain on three consecutive weekends in Berkeley. Festival opening night is this coming Saturday, September 21 and features a highly anticipated performance by living legend of Gypsy flamenco dance, Concha Vargas at La Peña Cultural Center. The show starts at 8pm and earlier in the evening Ñora Spanish Cuisine is taking over La Peña Café for a pop-up 5-course Andalusian-inspired dinner. Weekend two features a homecoming concert Sunday, September 29th at 8pm celebrating internationally renowned guitarist David Serva Jones’s 50 plus years in flamenco at the Freight & Salvage. And the Festival closing weekend features a performance on Saturday October 5th at 8pm by rising star Gypsy dancer Gema Moneo from Jerez de la Frontera at the Thurst Stage of the Berkeley Repertory Theater. The Festival has also arranged for a series of workshops and master classes on Saturdays Sept 21 — Oct 5 at the Ashkenaz and Berkeley's Casa Latina Bakery. Plus there will be a special event showcasing the acclaimed photography collection, Flamenco Project edited by guitarist/photographer Steve Kahn on Thursday, September 27th at 7pm at La Peña Cultural Center.

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Around & About Music: Berkeley Symphony's New Season--Chamber Music Series Begins This Sunday; Opening Symphony Concert, October 3

By Ken Bullock
Friday September 13, 2013 - 08:41:00 AM

Berkeley Symphony's new season begins—in advance of its opening concert with Joana Carneiro conducting Edmund Campion's (of UC Berkeley) Ossicles, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 2 (with Italian pianist Alessio Bax) & Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, 7 pm, October 3 at Zellerbach Hall—with a new series, Berkeley Symphony & Friends Chamber Music, the first program premiering this Sunday at 5 in the Piedmont Center for the Arts (801 Magnolia, Piedmont), with guest violinist Stuart Canin, former concertmaster of San Francisco Symphony & of Los Angeles Opera, accompanied by Berkeley Symphony musicians Rene Mandel (also the Symphony's executive director), violin; Tiantian Lan, Symphony principal violist; & Helene Wickett, piano, playing Mozart's Fuo for Violin & Viola in G Major, Martinu's Three Madrigals for Violin & Viola, Prokofiev's Sonata for Two Violins & Cesar Franck's Sonata for Violin & Piano in A Major. $25 berkeleysymphony.org Future programs on November 3, January 19, March 16 & April 13. -more-


Around & About Poetry: Jack Marshall Reads from 'Spiral Trace' at Moe's on Thursday, with Poet Anne Winters

By Ken Bullock
Friday September 13, 2013 - 08:40:00 AM

Jack Marshall, well-known Bay Area poet, an El Cerrito resident, will read from his booklength poem, Spiral Trace, recently released by Coffee House Press, at Moe's Books on Telegraph this Thursday at 7:30, with poet Anne Winters also reading from her book, The Displaced of Capital. Admission is free. -more-


A Spectacular “Bonnie & Clyde” at Shotgun Players

By John A. McMullen II
Thursday September 12, 2013 - 01:56:00 PM

Mark Jackson has taken a seemingly boring play by Adam Peck and made it spectacular. The highlight of “BONNIE & CLYDE” at SHOTGUN PLAYERS is the incredibly poignant choreography which is a collaboration of Director Jackson, Kimberly Dooley, and the two actors Joe Estlack and Megan Trout. Jon Tracy provides a lighting design of blinding bursts that imply the headlights of a posse or the rat-a-tat of a machine gun or the heavenly light to which Bonnie Parker reassures herself will be the next destination. Matt Stine’s sound design of combining the revving of the engine of a get-away car with a chorus of classical voices starts this dazzling production. -more-


Theater Review: After the Revolution, at Aurora

By Ken Bullock
Friday September 13, 2013 - 05:12:00 PM

"I thought he was blacklisted because he was an ideological Commie—and now you tell me ... "

Opening with excited, overlapping dialogue by three generations of a staunchly leftist political family, gathered to celebrate the granddaughter's speech at graduation about the persecuted, heroic grandfather she's named an activist foundation after—and closing with a tense tete-a-tete between granddaughter and step-grandmother, keeper of the flame for her legendary late husband, and maybe the thorniest Jewish grandma onstage since Lost in Yonkers ...

Amy Herzog's After the Revolution, about the revelation of social and family myths and its devastating effect on those raised to believe them as gospel, seems the perfect play for Aurora to start a new season with. Joy Carlin has directed a fine cast—Jessica Bates, Ellen Ratner, Rolf Saxon, Pamela Gaye Walker, Victor Talmadge, Adrian Achondo, Peter Kybert and Sarah Mitchell—resolved into an ensemble. The background of its story, of the legacy of a political lion, pilloried by HUAC just after the execution of the Rosenbergs, tarnished by posthumous charges of espionage, is also a surprisingly current theme, with the Snowden Affair and the NSA scandal it brought about still being played out. -more-


Press Release: Michael Parenti in Book Launch

Thursday September 12, 2013 - 02:01:00 PM

Come hear Michael Parenti speak about, and read from, his newly published memoir: Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid's Life. Michael will also sign copies (and crack jokes). -more-


Press Release: Tenants' Union to Hold Potluck

Friday September 13, 2013 - 09:28:00 AM

The Berkeley Tenants Union is alive and kicking. Come kick it with us at our special September 18 Potluck, which we are sharing with our friends from Berkeley Citizens Action. There are several alarming changes threatening protections Berkeley tenants have come to take for granted. Come to the Potluck to learn more, or visit our website at berkeleytenants.org. -more-