Illuminations Performances Explore “Exile & Sanctuary”

Seven music and theater programs each offer a distinct perspective on exile, sanctuary, and the arts’ role in creating spaces for resistance, healing, and reinvention.

Each year, Cal Performances’ Illuminations theme invites audiences to examine a pressing contemporary topic through the lens of both performance and current academic research at UC Berkeley. For the 2025–26 season, seven music and theater programs, coupled with related activities including Q&As, artist talks, and panel discussions, will take up the theme of “Exile & Sanctuary.” For our purposes, Exile is considered as something more than just physical displacement, but also a rupture in identity, a stripping away of the familiar, leaving the individual or community without a sense of belonging; Sanctuary, in turn, is not simply a refuge, but a creative space in which new connections can be forged.

Each of the performances outlined below provides a lens through which we can consider how people who have experienced exile have found voice and comfort in building new identities, and how the arts can communicate their important stories. Through both straight-forward narrative and abstract presentations, live performances on this season will create vital spaces for resistance, healing, and reinvention.

“Yo-Yo Ma and Angelique Kidjo, one associated with the world of classical music, the other with more diverse musical genres, from world music to jazz to pop to afrobeats. Both demonstrate a rare curiosity and inspiration” (kidjo.com). In August, Berkeley audiences have the rare opportunity to see these two superstars come together to bridge genre divides in an intricate musical program, Sarabande Africaine. Designed to “explore the times and places where classical and African music intersected,” the program acknowledges times in history when African people have been enslaved and their contributions overlooked, and yet their music was used to inspire those very cultures that instigated their systematic subjugation. Throughout the program, Western classical music is balanced by Black folk music, African American spirituals, and many original songs by Kidjo herself, drawing out points of commonality as well as communion within various Black communities, despite a broader history of division.

Since Kronos Quartet’s founding more than 50 years ago, the peerless string quartet has been deeply invested in using music to shed light on pressing social justice issues. This October, the San Francisco-based artists return to Cal Performances for a program that fuses music with multimedia and live conversation to highlight the impact of Chinese Americans on American culture, specifically by recognizing landmark civil rights cases that made it to the courts.

When asked about the genesis of this project, founder and artistic director David Harrington shared that the topic first presented itself when his daughter, who was teaching the third grade, brought home the children’s book I Am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story. This book told of San Francisco-native Wong Kim Ark, whose 1898 Supreme Court case confirmed birthright citizenship for Chinese Americans, even during the time that the Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect in the US. This information prompted Harrington to conduct further research, which collectively emphasized how, for more than a century, Chinese Americans have deftly utilized the court system to challenge laws designed to keep them on the fringes of American society, and, in doing so, strengthened their communities and the role these communities play within US culture at large. The music, film, and unscripted conversation with Bay Area activist David Lei will work together to educate and elucidate concepts of exclusion versus inclusion, resilience, and community.

A troupe of otherworldly imagination, Manual Cinema is renowned for utilizing bold techniques—including shadow puppetry, actors in silhouette, immersive sound design, and live music—to bring engaging stories to life. In November, they will give the Bay Area premiere of a brand new production inspired by Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Macbeth. In the original play, we follow the Scottish General Macbeth who receives a prophecy from three witches that he will one day become King of Scotland; fueled by ambition, Macbeth kills the king in order to claim the throne, and allows his greed and paranoia to motivate further violence and tyranny at both an individual and state level.

Of Manual Cinema’s new production, The 4th Witch, Co-Artistic Director Drew Dir shared, “I started to wonder, oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to tell a story about someone who is impacted by Macbeth’s tyranny? And to follow their psychology and maybe how they lose themselves, and maybe it’s a way to mirror Macbeth’s own journey?” The subject of this exploration is a young girl who finds herself displaced and orphaned as a result of Macbeth’s military pursuits. Facing a sharp severance from her past and a deep loss of all that once defined her world, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery within the safe and welcoming community offered to her by three witches—who just so happen to be the very three who prophesied Macbeth’s rise (and, eventual fall). In the safety of her new adoptive family, she must learn how to make sense of her loss, and decide how she will allow her past struggles to define her future.

Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band, which makes its Cal Performances debut next March, is dedicated to celebrating and extending the contributions of Indigenous musicians, composers, and bandleaders throughout the history of jazz in the US. Representing Indigenous and Native influence across many distinct tribes and traditions, the ensemble is particularly dedicated to the rich and complicated history that feeds into their current sound.

Throughout the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their homes, often by government force or coercion, and placed with white families or, commonly, at white-operated, often government- or church-funded boarding schools. The purpose of removing Native children was to force their assimilation into what the government deemed true “American” culture. These children were given new clothes, new haircuts, and were generally forbidden from speaking their original languages. As these children grew up in a new culture, some found their way into the American jazz scene and, in many noteworthy instances, made important contributions to the genre—including Russell “Big Chief” Moore, Mildred Bailey, Oscar Pettiford, and Jim Pepper, as well as others who, to this day, are rarely credited for their influence. In all of its performances, Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band considers the impact of those who were separated from their homes and their culture—even, at times, their sense of self; and celebrates the healing and reclamation made possible through music-making.

By design, Silkroad Ensemble and its members are influenced by and practiced in a wide array of musical traditions, drawing from the US, Southern Asia, West Africa, and southern Europe. In their latest production under the leadership of artistic director Rhiannon Giddens, the performers explore a concept with which every arts-lover will be familiar: the power of music to “help understand our world, comfort people, help people to process loss and a changing environment, and rebuild community based on our own humanity.” And while music as sanctuary is certainly a very personal experience, the artists are especially interested in the many cultural traditions in which music-making is a deeply communal experience, utilizing both the skills and the artistic inspiration of whole groups of people. This production demonstrates the power of creative expression both to affirm existing communities, including those that may have found themselves excluded from other forums, and to create bonded communities through the power of artistic creation.

Cal Performances favorite, viol virtuoso Jordi Savall makes his annual visit to Berkeley in April, this time alongside three ensembles—Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and Tembembe Ensamble Continuo—and special guest performers from Canada, Guinea, Guadeloupe, Mali, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela. As a sequel to Savall’s Routes of Slavery program, Un Mar de Músicas (A Sea of Music) is dedicated to the 25 million individuals “deported and enslaved…over nearly four centuries, from 1492 to 1888.” In recognition of how wide-spread experiences of exile and displacement were as a result of slavery, Savall’s program draws on music from many affected nations that was either written by, influenced by, or written for those who were enslaved, recognizing both their struggles as well as the ways they relied on one another—and, in some cases, on music itself—to support them during this horrific time. According to the artists, “This program aims to keep the memory of this human tragedy alive through music and lyrics,” acknowledging the contributions and, most importantly, the humanity of formerly enslaved people throughout the world.

In May, Northern California’s own multifaceted Lara Downes, who shares her brilliance with the world as both classical pianist and NPR host, brings together an eclectic group of individuals to tell the story of American music through sound. Specifically, Downes is joined by folk music legend Judy Collins; poet/songwriter and singer for Tank and the Bangas, Tarriona “Tank” Ball; Invoke Quartet; and the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, dedicated to “uniting all people through Black gospel and spiritual music.”

In July 2026, the US will have been established for 250 years. In creating this program, Downes reflected on where the nation began, and the idea that America represented a sanctuary for many of the first waves of immigrants fleeing their original countries, often as a result of being persecuted for their backgrounds and beliefs. In the words of Downes, “Whatever you’re coming from or leaving behind, this country has historically offered an opportunity for reinvention, for new paths forward.” The program is meant to draw on the resulting music across different cultural traditions that emphasizes “shared human experiences and journeys that connect us as Americans.” Of course, this promise of freedom was not granted to all individuals, and was certainly not reflective of the experience of Native Americans and Black people forcefully brought to America. And yet, even within these groups for whom the nation itself did not promise sanctuary, the music borne from their experience helped to unite and define those who found themselves exiled. Throughout the concert, Downes works with her collaborators to unpack this intricate historical narrative through music, and to illuminate what exile and sanctuary represented to various American communities across the centuries.