Jeremy Geffen Introduces the 2024–25 Season
A Letter from Executive and Artistic Director, Jeremy Geffen
By Jeremy Geffen, Cal Performances’ Executive and Artistic Director
It is my pleasure to welcome you to Cal Performances’ 2024–25 season! Over the coming year, we’ll focus our artistic spotlight on fresh perspectives, captivating stories, and brilliant talent in presentations that expand the boundaries of the performing arts and inspire us to engage more deeply with the world around us.
This year, our Illuminations theme, “Fractured History,” will tap into the arts’ ability to expand our worldviews. Through performances as well as related events with UC Berkeley thought leaders, Illuminations will introduce nuanced accounts and powerful new voices to enrich our understanding of the past and explore how our notions of history affect our present and future.
As part of Illuminations, we will re-engage the brilliant creative mind of William Kentridge, whose SIBYL (2022–23 season) still ranks among the most transformative works of art I’ve experienced. In spring 2025, Kentridge will bring the Bay Area premiere of The Great Yes, The Great No, a chamber opera co-commissioned by Cal Performances. Evoking South African musical traditions—interwoven with Kentridge’s unique brand of drawing, projection, and sculpture—this production reimagines a sea voyage of WWII refugees to consider complex ideas, including cultural exchange and colonization.
Another Illuminations artist in our season will double as our artist in residence: powerhouse soprano Julia Bullock. Having been transfixed by her profound technical gifts and gravitas—not to mention the beauty of her voice—at the onset of her career, Cal Performances will welcome Bullock back as one of the most in-demand sopranos and artistic thought leaders of our time. During her residency, Bullock will participate in campus and community activities and give two performances, including the West Coast premiere of a newly staged production of Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle Harawi to open our 2024–25 season.
On the topic of residencies, the Maria Manetti Shrem and Elizabeth Segerstrom California Orchestra Residency will feature three performances by the legendary Vienna Philharmonic under preeminent conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, making his first appearance in Berkeley with these concerts. Since its debut at Cal Performances in 2011, this peerless orchestra has performed in Berkeley more often than anywhere on the West Coast, fostering a special relationship with Bay Area audiences. Its return will be further celebrated during Cal Performances’ gala on March 7, 2025, in conjunction with the performance that evening.
Finally, I can think of no better way to conclude this preview than with two highlights of yet another breathtaking dance season. First, Twyla Tharp Dance’s Diamond Jubilee represents a highly personal and joyful toast to the six decades of artistic output that have made her one of today’s most recognizable choreographers. Additionally, world-renowned dance theater troupe Grupo Corpo will make its Cal Performances debut in a program that speaks to its technical mastery and its multifaceted stylistic influences as a contemporary Brazilian dance company.
I look forward to engaging with many fresh artistic perspectives alongside you, and to witnessing how these experiences will move us in profound and incalculable ways made possible only by the live performing arts.
