Arts & Events

Worth Noting:

City Council is on recess until April 12^th leaving Tuesday free, but the rest of the week is packed. The April 12^th city council agenda is available for comment and posted after the list of city meetings.

Monday evening at the 7 pm Personnel Board meeting the Police Chief is scheduled to update the board on Berkeley Police Department (BPD) staffing. This might be interesting in light of the City Audit of the BPD and needs for improvement that will be presented to council on April 12^th.

Wednesday the big meeting for the evening will be the hearing at the Planning Commission on the BART Station Housing project zoning amendments and statement of overriding considerations.

VISION 2050 City Directors and staff are making the rounds with community meetings to present the big overview of infrastructure needs and financing in advance of the council ballot initiative for financing the various projects. It might be good to ask how much of the Vision 2050 bond/tax ballot plan will be allocated to cover the City of Berkeley’s share of the $121,000,000 pier ferry capital costs and how firm are other allocations to the various infrastructure and affordable housing projects.

The Homeless Services Panel of Experts will be reviewing Measure P allocations.

Thursday afternoon WETA will receive the Berkeley Ferry Business Plan. If you don’t attend take a cruise thru pages 36 – 103 of the packet. The business plan projects that by the 10^th year of service, fares will cover only 54% of the operating costs. “Local efforts to evaluate the benefits of ferry service and to develop sources of local funding including inclusion in cities’ own capital improvement programs and creation of special funding sources…” As for the $112,000,000 of capital costs “…The two parties [WETA and City of Berkeley] are currently in discussion concerning how capital costs will be split…”

Looking at the LPC demolition referrals, the next mixed-use housing projects will be the the sites of the Dollar Store and Virginia Cleaners on Shattuck.

Saturday April 9^th the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council at 10 am will take up Berkeley issues, the agenda is not yet posted.

Shattuck will be closed from Allston to Center for the Celebrate the Arts Festival at the Downtown BART Station Plaza.

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On Sunday, March 27, world renowned pianist Mitsuko Uchida came to Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall to preform two Mozart Piano Concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra led by concertmaster Mark Steinberg. In actuality, most of the leading was done by Mitsuko Uchida, who conducted from the piano in the Mozart Piano Concertos. Also included in the program were Selected Fantasias by Henry Purcell, ably led by Concertmaster Mark Steinberg. These works by Purcell, which were performed just before intermission, included lovely writing for the violas. -more-

Under the auspices of Cal Performances, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton joined with pianist-composer Jake Heggie in a recital on Sunday afternoon, April 3, at Hertz Hall. Jamie Barton, fresh off a dazzling performance at the Metropolitan Opera as Princess Eboli in the original French version of Verdi’s Don Carlos, here showed a lighter side. At least this was so in the songs she performed composed by her accompanist, Jake Heggie. I am not a huge fan of Jake Heggie’s. I admired his early operas Dead Man Walking and Moby Dick, but I passed on attending his 2016 opera It’s A Wonderful Life due to my intense dislike of the trite and maudlin Frank Capra film on which it is based. Recently, I was hugely disappointed by Heggie’s 2019 opera If I Were You, which I found woefully trite. As for Jake Heggie’s art songs, they are angular and often arch but devoid of melodies. You’ll never leave a concert hall humming lovely melodies heard in Jake Heggie’s songs. They may be whimsical, they may be arch, they may be stilted; but they are almost never melodic. -more-