Kodo
Warabe
2025 One Earth North America Tour
Saturday, January 25, 2025, 8pm
Sunday, January 26, 2025, 3pm
Zellerbach Hall
Run time for this performance is approximately 2 hours including intermission
From the Executive and Artistic Director
Happy New Year from Cal Performances! I’m delighted to welcome you back to campus as we launch the second half of our extraordinary 2024–25 season. Over the coming months—the busiest period on our calendar—we’ll continue with a season distinguished by an array of carefully curated events designed to appeal to the eclectic interests and adventurous sensibilities of Bay Area audiences. Together, we’ll enjoy appearances by dozens of companies, ensembles, and soloists offering a wide range of opportunities to revisit old friends as well as discover thrilling and unfamiliar performers and artworks.
We begin this month with percussionist Antonio Sánchez performing his Grammy-winning soundtrack to a live screening of Birdman, the Best Picture winner at the 2015 Academy Awards (Jan 18, Zellerbach Hall [ZH]). Next comes a return engagement with Cal Performances 2024–25 Artist in Residence Julia Bullock, who will join the famed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for a program packed with some of the most treasured music from the Baroque era (Jan 19, ZH). And we conclude January with the eagerly anticipated appearance by Kodo, the acclaimed Japanese taiko troupe, as these skilled drummers take the Zellerbach stage in their latest creation, Warabe (Jan 25–26, ZH), followed by the beloved Takács Quartet in its second program this season, this time focusing on the music Beethoven and Janáček, as well as Brahms’ towering Piano Quintet in F minor (Op. 34), featuring another of our favorite musical partners, pianist Jeremy Denk (Jan 25–26, Hertz Hall). Note that, due to overwhelming audience demand, a second Takács/Denk performance has been added on Saturday, January 25.
A special note that we’ve recently added three events to our calendar featuring the acclaimed Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen (making her Bay Area debut on February 4 [ZH]); historian and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson and Boston College professor of 19th-century American history Dylan Penningroth (Feb 26, ZH); and composer, vocalist, and banjo virtuoso Rhiannon Giddens and the Old Time Revue (June 21, ZH). Please see our website for details.
As you make your plans for the coming months, I recommend you give particular attention to our 2024–25 Illuminations theme of “Fractured History,” which continues to offer 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. Programming this season includes the return of the multi-talented South African stage and visual artist William Kentridge with the Bay Area premiere of his mind-expanding new chamber opera, The Great Yes, The Great No (March 14–16, ZH). (Berkeley audiences will fondly recall the US premiere of Kentridge’s remarkable Sibyl from March 2023, in addition to the many other performances and events that were part of his residency that season.)
I’m also delighted to recognize the Maria Manetti Shrem and Elizabeth Segerstrom California Orchestra Residency, which will host three special performances with one of the towering artistic institutions of our time, the peerless Vienna Philharmonic, under preeminent conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin (March 5–7, ZH) and joined by pianist Yefim Bronfman on March 7.
And lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our outstanding dance series, distinguished this year by Twyla Tharp Dance’s 60th anniversary Diamond Jubilee (Feb 7–9, ZH), toasting the achievements that have made Tharp one of today’s most celebrated choreographers; highly anticipated Batsheva Dance Company performances of MOMO, a daring recent work by the brilliant dance maker Ohad Naharin (Feb 22–23, ZH); and the Cal Performances debut of the world-renowned Brazilian troupe Grupo Corpo (Apr 25–26, ZH).
I look forward to engaging with so many fresh artistic perspectives alongside you throughout the season. Together, we will witness how these experiences can move each one of us in the profound and unpredictable ways made possible only by the live performing arts.
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances
Happy New Year from Cal Performances! I’m delighted to welcome you back to campus as we launch the second half of our extraordinary 2024–25 season. Over the coming months—the busiest period on our calendar—we’ll continue with a season distinguished by an array of carefully curated events designed to appeal to the eclectic interests and adventurous sensibilities of Bay Area audiences. Together, we’ll enjoy appearances by dozens of companies, ensembles, and soloists offering a wide range of opportunities to revisit old friends as well as discover thrilling and unfamiliar performers and artworks.
We begin this month with percussionist Antonio Sánchez performing his Grammy-winning soundtrack to a live screening of Birdman, the Best Picture winner at the 2015 Academy Awards (Jan 18, Zellerbach Hall [ZH]). Next comes a return engagement with Cal Performances 2024–25 Artist in Residence Julia Bullock, who will join the famed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for a program packed with some of the most treasured music from the Baroque era (Jan 19, ZH). And we conclude January with the eagerly anticipated appearance by Kodo, the acclaimed Japanese taiko troupe, as these skilled drummers take the Zellerbach stage in their latest creation, Warabe (Jan 25–26, ZH), followed by the beloved Takács Quartet in its second program this season, this time focusing on the music Beethoven and Janáček, as well as Brahms’ towering Piano Quintet in F minor (Op. 34), featuring another of our favorite musical partners, pianist Jeremy Denk (Jan 25–26, Hertz Hall). Note that, due to overwhelming audience demand, a second Takács/Denk performance has been added on Saturday, January 25.
A special note that we’ve recently added three events to our calendar featuring the acclaimed Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen (making her Bay Area debut on February 4 [ZH]); historian and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson and Boston College professor of 19th-century American history Dylan Penningroth (Feb 26, ZH); and composer, vocalist, and banjo virtuoso Rhiannon Giddens and the Old Time Revue (June 21, ZH). Please see our website for details.
As you make your plans for the coming months, I recommend you give particular attention to our 2024–25 Illuminations theme of “Fractured History,” which continues to offer 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. Programming this season includes the return of the multi-talented South African stage and visual artist William Kentridge with the Bay Area premiere of his mind-expanding new chamber opera, The Great Yes, The Great No (March 14–16, ZH). (Berkeley audiences will fondly recall the US premiere of Kentridge’s remarkable Sibyl from March 2023, in addition to the many other performances and events that were part of his residency that season.)
I’m also delighted to recognize the Maria Manetti Shrem and Elizabeth Segerstrom California Orchestra Residency, which will host three special performances with one of the towering artistic institutions of our time, the peerless Vienna Philharmonic, under preeminent conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin (March 5–7, ZH) and joined by pianist Yefim Bronfman on March 7.
And lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our outstanding dance series, distinguished this year by Twyla Tharp Dance’s 60th anniversary Diamond Jubilee (Feb 7–9, ZH), toasting the achievements that have made Tharp one of today’s most celebrated choreographers; highly anticipated Batsheva Dance Company performances of MOMO, a daring recent work by the brilliant dance maker Ohad Naharin (Feb 22–23, ZH); and the Cal Performances debut of the world-renowned Brazilian troupe Grupo Corpo (Apr 25–26, ZH).
I look forward to engaging with so many fresh artistic perspectives alongside you throughout the season. Together, we will witness how these experiences can move each one of us in the profound and unpredictable ways made possible only by the live performing arts.
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances