Cal Performances at Home is much more than a series of great streamed performances. Fascinating behind-the-scenes artist interviews. Informative and entertaining public forums. The Cal Performances Reading Room, featuring books with interesting connections to our Fall 2020 programs. For all this and much more, keep checking this page for frequent updates and to journey far, far Beyond the Stage!
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Beyond the Stage
The Freedom of Change
The Freedom of Change
As Cal Performances’ 2025–26 Artist in Residence, the pianist from Iceland invites audiences into an ever-evolving dialogue between past and present.
By Thomas May, Cal Performances-commissioned writer, critic, educator, and translator
“You should always try to escape your own success,” Víkingur Ólafsson says. “Because that success so easily turns against you and limits you and your choices and what you want to do next.”
At 41, Ólafsson, who is Cal Performances’ Artist in Residence for the 2025–26 season, has already carved out a career of extraordinary prominence and individuality in the classical music world. By the end of 2024, his recordings had amassed more than one billion streams, and his recent album of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (on Deutsche Grammophon) earned him the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo—a notable milestone in a field crowded with interpretations as hotly debated as they are revered.
The last pianist to win a Grammy for this work was no less than Glenn Gould, honored posthumously in 1983 for his famous second studio recording of the Goldbergs. In temperament and interpretive style, Ólafsson stands worlds apart—yet ever since the New York Times dubbed him “the Icelandic Glenn Gould,” the comparison persistently resurfaces.
“Víkingur is a formidable pianist, which of course is the baseline for anyone who has a career as an international piano soloist,” says Jeremy Geffen, Executive and Artistic Director of Cal Performances. “But there is also a brutal, uncompromising honesty about the way he understands his own playing. He possesses an extraordinary capacity to express his ideas exactly in the way that he envisions them.”
For all this acclaim, Ólafsson has made a quiet art of eluding the potential traps of success—and thereby continuing to surprise music-lovers. “It’s dangerous to get celebrated for anything, because then everybody wants to steer you only in that one direction,” he observes. “You need to avoid getting pinned down.”
Though Ólafsson only made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2022 and first performed at UC Berkeley last year—one of the astonishing 88 destinations on his global Goldbergs tour—Bay Area audiences have had a front-row seat to a musical journey shaped by omnivorous curiosity and a fierce imperative to change. This past January, he appeared with the San Francisco Symphony for the world premiere of John Adams’ After the Fall, composed expressly for him. Ólafsson also pivoted at a moment’s notice from his duo program with fellow star pianist Yuja Wang, originally scheduled at Davies Hall in April, to a solo performance of the Goldbergs (when Wang had to withdraw due to injury).
For his Cal Performances residency, Ólafsson returns to UC Berkeley for two orchestral concerts with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali (October 18–19, Zellerbach Hall [ZH]) and, in the spring, a solo recital built around Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 109, the first of the composer’s final three sonatas for the piano (April 29, ZH). Each offers a different lens on the pianist’s artistic range—from large-scale virtuosity to intimate introspection.
The Architecture of a Recital
Originally, Ólafsson had planned to follow up his Goldberg Variations tour with a single album encompassing all three of Beethoven’s final piano sonatas (Opus 109, 110, and 111). “But the more I worked on them, the more I wondered: Does it really make sense to program them together? Even if it’s almost a rite of passage and countless pianists have done that before me?”
He came to see the trilogy not as a single arc, but as “three absolutely different universes,” each deserving its own context. “Perhaps it would be more interesting to examine what makes those pieces unique rather than what makes them connected,” he reflects. “In my opinion, there are more things that make them unique.”
That line of thinking is emblematic of Ólafsson’s programming philosophy. Here, you can sense his resistance to received wisdom, as well as his drive to reframe even the most hallowed repertoire on his own terms. It’s an approach he pursued on his 2021 album Mozart & Contemporaries, which juxtaposed rarely heard works by Galuppi, Cimarosa, and C.P.E. Bach alongside Mozart to illuminate surprising affinities and departures.
In the case of his April 2026 recital program with Cal Performances, Ólafsson plans to explore what he calls “the road to Opus 109” by tracing the musical and historical lineages that converge in Beethoven’s sonata from 1820. His long-term intention is to do the same for the composer’s last two sonatas as well, shaping a distinct recital program and album around each work.
“What is Opus 109? Where is Beethoven coming from with this piece?” he asks. Ólafsson’s quest for answers led to a kind of temporal dialogue that considers Beethoven’s experimentation in the two-movement Op. 90 from 1814 as a vital precursor. Along the way, he makes a case for an overlooked work by Schubert—his Sonata in E minor (D. 566), written in 1817 at age 20—as a direct response to Beethoven’s Op. 90. Though often assumed to be fragmentary—and, when it is performed, sometimes combined with unrelated pieces to round out a conventional four-movement structure—the sonata, Ólafsson believes, is modeled on the older composer’s innovative two-movement design. “To me, it feels like a sister or a brother piece to Beethoven’s,” he says. “There’s nothing unfinished about it.”
And then there is the inevitable presence of Bach. “These three sonatas form the conceptual spine of the program. But both composers are grappling with Bach”—as, in Ólafsson’s view, every great composer must. Opus 109 culminates in one of Beethoven’s most radiant variation movements, which he is convinced shows the inspiration of the Goldberg Variations. As his main examples, he points to the triple-meter rhythmic pattern of the sarabande (originally a dance form) that shapes Bach’s Aria and Beethoven’s theme, the fugal textures and double trills, and the simple but meaningful cyclical return at the end of the journey.
Following his deep immersion in the Goldberg Variations, Ólafsson now has a different understanding of “the presence of Bach in Beethoven’s late works.” He also includes Bach’s monumental Partita No. 6 in E minor on this recital program: “I think it adds something else to the way we hear Beethoven and Schubert, just as I think Beethoven and Schubert add something to Bach as well. You have three different eras meeting there. Some of it is very Classical. Much of it is progressive and Romantic, with what I see—in my fantasy world—as the birth of Schubert in Beethoven’s Op. 90. But the roots all lie in the Baroque period with Bach.”
Collaborative Forces
Beethoven is also on the agenda in the first of Ólafsson’s two orchestral programs at Cal Performances in October. He joins forces with London’s famed Philharmonia Orchestra and Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, making his Berkeley debut, for the Emperor Piano Concerto No. 5, on a bill that also includes Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 and the Bay Area premiere of a new work by acclaimed Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz.
While the Emperor, which Beethoven composed amid the onslaught of Napoleon’s occupation of Vienna, is among the most frequently performed piano concertos in the repertoire, Ólafsson approaches it with the same critical questioning he applies to other conventions, such as the habit of presenting the composer’s final three piano sonatas as a unified cycle.
“Very often it’s a good idea, when you see something that’s frequently done, to ask yourself: Are we doing it out of convention, or is this really the best way of presenting it?” he remarks. “It’s not trying to do things differently just for the sake of being different. But the older you are, the more specific you feel about your vision. There are plenty of things in the Emperor that are victims of convention. And there’s nothing conventional about any piece Beethoven ever wrote. He was always going against convention himself. So, we should look for that same spirit.”
He continues: “I’m not saying to make anything up or add anything that’s not there. But, sometimes, the greatest scope for originality and freedom to be yourself can be found in those pieces that are most often performed. It seems like a paradox, but the more they’re performed, the more they suffer the same fate—which is to be approached somewhat automatically.” All the more reason to strive to evoke the fresh vitality of music like the Emperor concerto, “even if it’s been played so many times.”
It’s a task he looks forward to undertaking with the Philharmonia, with whom Ólafsson is collaborating this season as a featured artist. He first performed with the storied ensemble in 2016 in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and fondly recalls a program of Bach and Mozart concertos at the 2021 Proms, “when the world was just opening up again” following the COVID-19 shutdown.
Enhancing the prospect of their partnership is his admiration of Santtu-Matias Rouvali—“one of the most dynamic conductors I’ve ever worked with.” Rouvali’s conducting feels like a natural match: “He’s a man of the moment and anything can happen in concerts with him. Santtu gives you a lot of freedom to do spontaneous things. And his baton technique is beautiful, like a ballet dancer.” Most of all, “Santtu understands the orchestra as well as some of the master composers. He knows how to blend, how to make the orchestra sound colorful and unique.”
That chemistry finds another outlet on these artists’ second program, when Ólafsson turns to Maurice Ravel’s beloved, jazz-tinged Concerto in G major. Also on the program are Sibelius’ stirring tone poem Finlandia—a defiant musical emblem of resistance—and Shostakovich’s politically charged Symphony No. 5. Ravel’s kaleidoscopic colors, mercurial shifts in mood, and crystalline transparency pose a very different kind of challenge from the Emperor. Presented so close together, these two concertos promise to be revealing in how they showcase different facets of Ólafsson’s pianism.
“The Ravel and Beethoven Emperor are both standard repertoire works, but they require completely different types of imagination,” Geffen remarks. “In the Emperor, the balance is equally split between the orchestra and the soloist, if not slightly more on the side of the orchestra. Many passages have the soloist supporting what’s happening in the orchestra, rather than the other way around. Ravel’s Concerto in G is, by contrast, much more a work of chamber music, with super virtuosic parts from soloists in the orchestra as well.” Overall, Geffen characterizes Ólafsson as “the Don Draper of soloists, in the sense that there is something enigmatic about him, something that is unknowable because he’s so put together as a human being. He can calculate what he wants, but he’s also able to be spontaneous and humane—that’s such a difficult balance.”
A Cultural In-Between
“The extraordinary thing about Víkingur is that he has such a wide bandwidth of expressive possibility,” according to John Adams. “His Rameau and Bach and Mozart have incredible delicacy, and at the same time he can make the piano sound huge without banging it.” He adds that he “tried to incorporate that awareness into After the Fall,” a concerto that embeds Ólafsson’s special relationship with Bach into its own musical journey by weaving an improvisation on the C minor Prelude from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier into its final section.
Adams had first become aware of Ólafsson through his recordings, but the pianist was already drawn to the American composer when he was a teenager in Reykjavík. Raised in an artistic household—his mother a piano teacher, his father a composer, architect, and poet passionate about Adams’ music—Ólafsson remembers eagerly listening to the latest recordings of his works. When he later visited Adams at his home in Berkeley, he recognized a deep affinity between his homeland and California.
“I’m not surprised John chose to live in the Bay Area,” he says. “When I think California, I think freedom. It is somehow free from the past, from tradition, from convention. I feel the same back home in Iceland. The good thing about where I come from is that it is part of Europe, but it’s closer to North America. It takes cultural influence from both but stands in between. I’m interested in how ideas can come from different directions and create a unique sense of cohesion.”
This perspective is, for Ólafsson, inseparable from his attraction to composers like Bach, Beethoven, and Adams. Despite the differences in chronology and style, he sees in all three a shared instinct for transformation, for drawing on tradition and reshaping it into new, unprecedented visions. “They don’t just do one thing,” he says. “They stay open to vastly different things. I think that takes real confidence and courage—something we see all too rarely these days in music.”
This sense of being “in between”—between musical eras, geographies, idioms—is central to Ólafsson’s artistic identity. It helps explain his abiding connection to Bach, whose music, he says, distills the legacy of the past “into an incredible arsenal of composition.” Bach, too, remains for him an inexhaustible wellspring of possibility and a “vehicle for new invention” conveying “seeds for the future.” Ólafsson believes that Adams similarly uses Bach to look back over music history and “ponder the truly important question: is there still scope to create? There certainly is.”
Becoming the Music
For Ólafsson, performance should be neither a ritualistic presentation nor a pursuit of novelty, but a state of being, of presence. “When you play music on the piano, you have to become the music.” He compares the process to what happens when an actor takes on a role. “You can always tell who is merely acting the role and who becomes the role. The great actors never just act their role. In the same way, you should never act Beethoven, just putting on ‘the Beethoven show.’ You have to become the music. You become the message of the eternally beautiful song of the slow movement of the Emperor Concerto.”
To Ólafsson, this transcends the model of incessant practice in order to present a particular version of a piece to the audience. “In the greatest performances I’ve experienced, I’ve always felt that the conductor or the singer or the pianist ceases to be performing anything; they just become the material.”
That ideal of transformation carries forward from his recording of the Goldberg Variations and resonates with performers he especially admires from the past: Vladimir Horowitz, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Benno Moiseiwitsch…. “When you listen to Rachmaninoff play Chopin, it’s very much Chopin, but it’s also very much Rachmaninoff. This beautiful meeting place between them is uniquely theirs.”
The result is an approach to authenticity that goes beyond literalistic fidelity—but it is an attitude that has fallen out of favor in the last 60 or 70 years, Ólafsson notes. “The reigning idea has been that you are the humble servant of the score. But if you go to the other side of the score, you understand that musical notation is just the beginning of the beginning. It’s impossible to notate poetry and magic in the moment.”
“Víkingur has the gift of being able to make you rethink your own biases,” says Geffen. “Even those who didn’t agree with his Goldberg Variations respected his approach, because he takes risks.”
Revelation rather than rebellion is the goal. “I love the score and spend a lot of time with it, but you can’t say the score has the truth,” Ólafsson insists. “The truth goes beyond the score. The truth is before the score.”
Leadership support for the 2025–26 Víkingur Ólafsson residency at Cal Performances is provided by Michael P. N. A. Hormel.
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5 Questions with Carol T. Christ and Jeff MacKie-Mason, Co-Chairs of Cal Performances’ Board of Trustees
5 Questions with Carol T. Christ and Jeff MacKie-Mason, Co-Chairs of Cal Performances’ Board of Trustees
Internationally celebrated leaders Christ and MacKie-Mason share their personal memories and lifelong passion for the performing arts.
For the period of July 1, 2025–June 30, 2027, Cal Performances is honored to have Carol T. Christ join Jeff MacKie-Mason as Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees. Having served most recently as Chancellor and University Librarian on the UC Berkeley campus, respectively, their impact extends far beyond the City of Berkeley, or even the realm of academia. Regarded internationally for their leadership in higher education, information and technology, and cultural philanthropy, Christ and MacKie-Mason have also proven themselves unwavering advocates for the performing arts, having both been personally shaped throughout their lives by the power of live performance.
MacKie-Mason has been a member of the Cal Performances Board of Trustees since 2016, and has served as Co-Chair since 2021, helping the organization to navigate changes in leadership, shuttered venues and a return to live performances, and, most recently, the redefinition of Cal Performances’ mission, vision, values, and strategic initiatives. Christ joined the board in 2024 following her retirement from UC Berkeley, though she has attended Cal Performances events since the 1970s and was a critical support to the organization during her time as Chancellor, in which capacity she also approved the organization’s new strategic plan.
Cal Performances is thrilled to have these two celebrated leaders—each with such a rich personal history with Cal Performances and with the arts—in a position to guide the organization over the next two years. Though these two certainly need no introduction, we hope this Q&A will provide a more personal look into their relationship with live performance, as well as their vision for Cal Performances’ exciting next chapter.
What role have the performing arts played in your life (as observer or performer)?
Carol Christ (CC): I’ve played the piano since I was a child, and learned the viola as an adult. I also sang in vocal groups for many years. I’ve been attending performances of arts events of all kinds since college. And Cal Performances has had a profound impact on my family. My stepson Adam Sklute became entranced by the ballet by attending a performance of Swan Lake at Cal Performances when he was five years old. He subsequently had a career as a ballet dancer and is now the artistic director of Ballet West.
Jeff MacKie-Mason (JMM): Music has been vital for me since I was in about first grade. My mom was a good pianist, and inspired me from the start—and got me an excellent piano teacher. In high school, I played third chair cello sitting behind Carter Brey (longtime principal cellist in the NY Phil) and played a lot of 60s and 70s folk tunes on guitar. I drifted for a while, but came back to classical piano with a passion 25 years ago, and have taken lessons and practice daily since. Now that I’m retired, music has become my full-time occupation, including not just many hours at the piano, but classes at UC Berkeley to fill in gaps in my musical education.
Jeff MacKie-Mason by UC Berkeley Libraries
How long have you been attending Cal Performances, and what made you want to serve as co-chair?
CC: I’ve been attending Cal Performances since I arrived in Berkeley in the 1970s. Serving as Co-Chair is a small way of saying thank you for the extraordinary performances I’ve attended over the decades.
JMM: I started attending Cal Performances as soon as we arrived to Berkeley in 2015, and joined the Board in 2016. When Jeremy Geffen [Executive and Artistic Director] asked me to become Co-Chair, I gratefully accepted the honor so that I could provide greater service to this magnificent organization—and also so I could work more closely with Jeremy, who is an incredible leader.
What is one (or a few, if you must!) of the most memorable performances you have seen in our halls, and what made it so special?
CC: There have been so many; I remember hearing Luciano Pavarotti sing at the Greek Theatre; I remember the Juilliard Quartet performing the whole cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets. But perhaps my most outstanding memory was a remarkable recital by a young, relatively unknown soprano, Jessye Norman. There were so few people in attendance that the recital was moved from Zellerbach Hall to Hertz Hall, where we heard one of the great voices of the century.
JMM: I was deeply moved by Víkingur Ólafsson’s performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. That’s one of my absolute favorite pieces in the literature, so I’ve listened to a lot of live and recorded performances (and it’s on my bucket list to learn). Víkingur brought a clarity and emotional intelligence that I’d never heard before: it has inspired me anew when I play Bach. Though recorded, I was also transported by Mitsuko Ucihda’s Schubert Impromptus, and by Jeremy Denk’s playing Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier during our online COVID season. And too many others for a short answer!
Carol Christ
Having served in a key leadership role on the UC Berkeley campus, what do you feel is the importance and opportunity of Cal Performances being part of the university?
CC: Art provides a kind of insight into human experience unlike any other; it is perhaps the most moving and profound form of human knowledge and achievement. And art builds community. I learned to love the performing arts in college; we are giving students that opportunity.
JMM: UC Berkeley is one of the very best liberal arts, comprehensive, research universities in the world. We graduate about 15,000 students a year, who go on to make a meaningful difference throughout the world. Crucial to our educational prowess is precisely that we are a comprehensive, liberal arts institution: our students are exposed to great thinkers, creators, and performers across the whole range of sciences, humanities, and arts. Cal Performances plays a critical role for them during these formative years. Berkeley just wouldn’t be the same without it!
What are you most excited about for Cal Performances’ future?
CC: Under Jeremy Geffen’s leadership, the quality of the seasons has been extraordinary. I look forward to even more great performances.
JMM: Over the past two years, we have developed and launched a strong and very concrete strategic plan. With it, we’ve charted a course forward that will result in Cal Performances not only surviving these difficult times for the performing arts, but becoming stronger. We’ll see innovative programming, increased engagement with campus and K–12 students, support for emerging artists… I’m very excited to be part of this ambitious, and—forgive the over-used word, but—truly transformative forward-looking project.
Carol T. Christ served as UC Berkeley’s 11th chancellor from 2017 through 2024. A celebrated scholar of Victorian literature, she is also known as an advocate for high-caliber, accessible public higher education, and a champion of women’s issues and diversity on college campuses. As chancellor, she worked to foster community, improve the campus climate for people of all backgrounds, celebrate the institution’s long-standing commitment to free speech, strengthen UC Berkeley’s financial position, address a housing shortage, and develop a ten-year strategic plan for the campus. Prior to serving as Chancellor of UC Berkeley, Christ was the 10th President of Smith College from 2002 until 2017. In 1970, Christ joined the English faculty at UC Berkeley. As Chair of the department from 1985 to 1988, she built and maintained one of the top-ranked English departments in the country. Christ entered UC Berkeley’s administration in 1988, serving first as dean of the Division of Humanities and later as provost and dean of the College of Letters and Science. In 1994, she was appointed vice chancellor and provost and later became executive vice chancellor. During her six years as Berkeley’s top academic officer, she was credited with sharpening the institution’s intellectual focus and building top-rated departments in the humanities and sciences.
Christ also chairs the boards of the Central European University and the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath) and serves on the boards of the Marlboro Music School and Festival, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and Rutgers University.
Jeffrey MacKie-Mason is UC Berkeley’s University Librarian Emeritus, and Professor Emeritus of Information and Economics. In June 2024, Jeff MacKie-Mason retired from his positions as University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer, Professor in the School of Information, and Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley and received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award. MacKie-Mason came to Berkeley after 29 years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he served as Dean of the School of Information 2010–2015. He received the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from Michigan in 2010. During his time at the helm at the Berkeley Library, he was a leader in the UC drive to flip the scholarly publishing industry to open access, co-chairing the systemwide publisher negotiation team 2018–2024. He also led the successful $150 million fundraising campaign for the Library. MacKie-Mason earned his PhD in economics from MIT. He has been a pioneering scholar in the economics of the Internet, online behavior, and digital information creation and distribution. His more than 85 scientific publications appear in scholarly journals in the areas of economics, computer science, law, public policy, and information and library science.
MacKie-Mason is a concert pianist with a life-long love of the arts, and has served on the boards of the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan and the Kerrytown Concert House. In addition to his leadership of Cal Performances’ Board of Trustees he also currently serves on the board of Authors Alliance, which advances the interests of authors choosing to share their creations broadly in order to serve the public good.
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Jeremy Geffen Introduces the 2025–26 Season
Jeremy Geffen Introduces the 2025–26 Season
A Letter from Executive and Artistic Director, Jeremy Geffen
By Jeremy Geffen, Executive and Artistic Director of Cal Performances
Welcome to Cal Performances’ 2025–26 season, the Bay Area’s most wide-ranging selection of music, dance, and theater. This season, we’re thrilled to bring you more than 80 events featuring some of the world’s most acclaimed performers—a reflection of the adventurous spirit that Berkeley audiences are famous for.
Our ambitious Illuminations theme of “Exile & Sanctuary” focuses on how issues of displacement can inform bold new explorations of identity and community; how profound distillations of these complex movements can be found in the creative works that originate in their wakes; and how artistic expression can offer safe harbor during times of unrest or upheaval—an idea I hope will ring true for each performance you experience this season.
Of the seven distinct Illuminations programs in our new season, I’d like to draw particular attention to Sarabande Africaine, a thrilling collaboration between superstars Angélique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma that explores the intersections between African and European music traditions, to be performed at the Greek Theatre on our season’s opening weekend.
We also welcome the return of Víkingur Ólafsson as our 2025–26 Artist in Residence. This masterful and ever-insightful pianist appears this fall as soloist in two concerts with London’s extraordinary Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, and returns to our stage for a solo recital in the spring.
Our acclaimed dance series is distinguished by genre-defining artists and major new productions, including the renowned Paris Opera Ballet, making its Cal Performances debut in the North American premiere of a new work by boundary-breaking choreographer Hofesh Shechter; the legendary Martha Graham Dance Company celebrating its centennial; The Joffrey Ballet in an ecstatic and otherworldly celebration of the traditional Scandinavian summer solstice festival; and the long-awaited Cal Performances debut of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham.
All of this, and so much more! As you explore our season calendar, I hope you discover events that offer fresh perspectives, challenge and reward your spirit, and bring you joy. I look forward to seeing you in the audience!
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Illuminations Performances Explore “Exile & Sanctuary”
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 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.
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Cal Performances’ 2025–26 Dance Artists Share Highlights of Their Upcoming Performances
Cal Performances’ 2025–26 Dance Artists Share Highlights of Their Upcoming Performances
“Half affirming, half surprising, and entirely exciting!”
Each season, Cal Performances’ dance series presents a wide range of dance companies, and while our programming can be relied on to welcome return engagements with familiar favorites, we also take pride in introducing audiences to choreographers and companies who have not previously made it to Berkeley. As we considered the full range of dance offerings this season, we thought it would be helpful to hear directly from each troupe about one aspect of its upcoming campus visit that might be considered a company hallmark, something that loyal audiences have come to recognize and eagerly anticipate with each new production. We also asked them to identify an element of their upcoming performances that is new or unique, and that even longtime fans may not anticipate. We hope that this overview is half affirming, half surprising, and entirely exciting!
Steeped in a revered ballet tradition that dates to the court of Louis XIV, the stunning dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet meet the visceral and emotive choreography of London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter in the North American premiere of a new evening-length work. Shechter is known for creating vivid, urgent cinematic tableaus in his acclaimed works, and his bold new creation has been envisioned especially for this exquisite company.
The familiar/trademark: The company shared, “Following the repertoire additions of The Art of Not Looking Back in 2018 and Uprising and In Your Rooms in 2022, Hofesh Shechter extends his collaboration with the Paris Opera by offering the Ballet’s dancers the experience of a new production, the first he has given to a company other than his own. This is an opportunity for him to continue working with performers he knows well, who display all their virtuosity in his choreographic universe.”
The new/unexpected: According to Paris Opera Ballet, “For this creation, Hofesh Shechter imagines a cabaret noir atmosphere, in which the dancers are accompanied by a live band. Red curtains, reminiscent of the velvet of the Palais Garnier auditorium, open and close in a mobile staging reminiscent of an offbeat cafe-theater.”
Contemporary dance and ancient martial arts combine in this award-winning collaboration between choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, sculptor Antony Gormley, composer Szymon Brzóska, and 20 Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Temple in China’s Henan Province. Sutra explores the Shaolin kung fu tradition in the context of contemporary culture, inviting a cadre of modern-day practitioners to lend their skills—the flying kicks, backflips, and shadow-boxing practiced as part of their spiritual discipline—to a humorous fable about a European outsider learning about their monastery.
The familiar/trademark: Of the themes and incredible collaborations illuminated in this work, Sadler’s Wells shared that, as a company, it is a “world-leading creative organization dedicated to dance in all its forms. With over three centuries of theatrical heritage and a year-round program of performances and learning activities, it is the place where artists come together to create dance, and where people of all backgrounds come to experience it—to take part, learn, experiment, and be inspired. Its vision is to reflect and respond to the world through dance, enabling artists of all backgrounds to create dance that moves us and opens our minds, and sharing those experiences with the widest possible audiences—to enrich their lives and deepen their understanding of what it means to be human.”
The new/unexpected: When developing the choreography for Sutra, Cherkaoui worked with the monks to learn about not only kung fu, but also fascinating other traditions they had of embodying movement, which ultimately influenced the production’s incredibly unique choreography. Cherkaoui shared, “That very first time [I visited the temple], it was all about movement. Martial arts and Shaolin kung fu have movements, so I was just asking, what are the moves you have, and what’s the vocabulary? And then, from what they showed me, there were some things that I felt were really interesting, and others that I didn’t know how to approach. I loved their animal incarnations, when they’re being like a panther or moving like a snake. It’s real theater—and it’s like dance. When you’re doing Swan Lake, you have to believe you’re a swan. And so, when you have a martial artist who believes he’s an eagle, it’s the same, the same imagination.”
Blending illusion and acrobatics with a sense of whimsy and wonder, MOMIX’s Alice, created by company founder Moses Pendleton, features the bold athleticism and theatrical flair of the troupe’s celebrated dancers as they traverse a series of absurdist vignettes inspired by Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Because the story itself is so closely tied to transformation and defying-logic, it provides an incredible canvas to play with movement and illusion that is seemingly performed by magic!
The familiar/trademark: According to Moses Pendleton, “While I don’t intend to retell the whole Alice story, I do intend to use it as a taking-off point for invention. I’m curious to see what will emerge, and I’m getting curiouser and curiouser the more I learn about Lewis Carroll, who, like me, was a devoted photographer.”
The new/unexpected: Audiences may be surprised to learn that, per Moses Pendleton, “all of the stunts, tricks, and illusions are done by the eight company members—no additional help needed!”
Mark Morris Dance Group, one of the world’s leading dance companies today, has fostered a close relationship with Cal Performances, having first performed in Berkeley in 1987 and making annual visits since 1994. Though the company certainly represents one of Berkeley audiences’ favorite regular performers, Morris never fails to offer something fresh and exciting with each new visit. In this his latest creation, Morris looks upward for inspiration—at the Moon!—to explore mankind’s fascination with our constant celestial companion. Live and recorded music, from folk songs to pop hits to concert works, provide the sonic backdrop for MOON, a poetic and playful reflection on our attempts as earthlings to understand our enigmatic neighbor.
The familiar/trademark: MOON follows a long tradition of Morris productions in which the art engages with its subject in a creative way, without trying to force a specific interpretation. Per Morris, “MOON is a dance and music show built on thoughts and studies of our Moon. The source of so much mystery, curiosity, ritual, superstition, art, and fascination, there is a lot to celebrate and to puzzle over. Our Earth and its Moon are a match made in heaven, with our Moon as a dazzling accessory to Earth’s terrible beauty. Moon is credited with time and tide, fertility, power, and romance. The desire to touch the moon and know about it has always driven us, as has the compulsion to make contact with potential beings on other heavenly bodies. The famed, futile Golden Record which was thrown into space aboard Voyager in 1977 is a perfect example of our curiosity and enormous ego. I have used it and a variety of other materials—textual, visual, and musical—as sources of imagination in the construction of this piece. The Space Program, The Moon Landing, the 12 earthlings who have walked thereon…so many passes have been made at and beyond the moon, but the occasional Moon walk is not enough to satisfy our Earthly need to spread the news about ourselves and wait, no doubt forever, for a response. I hope to provide a possible way to observe and enjoy Moon and space, without understanding a thing.”
The new/unexpected: A special treat for the aesthetics of this particular creation, Morris shares, “MOON features stage projections by ‘the godmother of modern projection design,’ Wendall K. Harrington,” whose credits include sets for more than 35 Broadway shows and numerous prestigious awards.
It is impossible to overstate Martha Graham’s influence on dance in the past century. Her distinctive, groundbreaking movement technique has been carried in dancers’ bodies for generations; the works she commissioned have grown and multiplied over hundreds of performances; and her contributions to the art of stage design and dance production are countless. This season, the company returns to Cal Performances for the first time in more than a decade to celebrate its 100th anniversary with classic Graham works alongside newly commissioned dances by some of today’s most compelling choreographers.
The familiar/trademark: The company shared, “We are bringing three iconic Graham masterworks to Cal Performances—dances that are considered to be some of the greatest works of 20th century American art. Graham created Chronicle in 1936, the same year she turned down the Nazi’s invitation to dance at the Olympic Games in Berlin. With a cast of 11 women, it offers a powerful anti-war statement. Night Journey (1947) is Graham’s radical transformation of the Oedipus story, told through the memories of Jocasta, his wife and mother. And Appalachian Spring, probably Graham’s best known work, with its Pulitzer Prize-winning score by composer Aaron Copland, still resonates with American determination, optimism, and hope for the future. These timeless classics are brought brilliantly to life and relevancy by the current dancers of the Martha Graham Dance Company. They are among the most athletically powerful and expressive dancers on the planet. Audiences will see Graham’s famous physical vocabulary, the Graham Technique, with its essential moves—the ‘contraction and release’—performed by today’s leading experts in her style.”
The new/unexpected: According to the company, “Audiences may not realize that the current Martha Graham Dance Company performs stunning new works from some of today’s top choreographers alongside Graham classics. We are bringing a wonderful dance that we premiered in 2024 to Cal Performances: We the People by choreographer Jamar Roberts, with a commissioned score from Rhiannon Giddens. Rhiannon’s music has a traditional bluegrass sound and provides a toe-tapping backdrop for Jamar’s athletic, hard-driving movement. We are also dancing an even newer work, Cortege, which premiered in 2025 by choreographic duo Baye & Asa. These rising stars in the dance world have created a work for eight dancers inspired by Martha Graham’s own 1967 choreography in Cortege of Eagles. Intense, hyper-physical, and dramatic, Cortege is not to be missed. Audiences who don’t know the work of Baye & Asa will be excited to discover them.”
Visionary choreographer Kyle Abraham is known for telling stories at the intersection of Black and queer culture, reflecting on themes of love, isolation, and personal and social change. In February, Abraham brings his accomplished A.I.M to Berkeley for its eagerly anticipated Cal Performances debut, featuring three works danced to live music by a number of accomplished musicians.
The familiar/trademark: The company shared, “Kyle’s work has been a part of Cal Performances for some time. Audiences may recognize his name in pieces performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, including Another Night (2012), Untitled America (2016), and Are You in Your Feelings? (2022).” Regarding dances on this debut program, they shared, “Created as one of three repertory works during Kyle Abraham’s tenure as Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts from 2012–2014, The Gettin’ (2014) is a work for six dancers set to music by Grammy Award-winning jazz artist Robert Glasper and his trio, who reimagine Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.” On the whole, “Abraham describes his movement vocabulary as ‘a postmodern gumbo,’ one with roots in social dance and a love for blending movement vocabularies including, but not limited to, ballet and contemporary dance.”
The new/unexpected: One exciting element on this particular program is the inclusion of live musicians. Per Kyle Abraham, Artistic Director, “Live musical performance adds dimension. Musicians make choices that allow the dancers to react in real time, making every performance unique and one of a kind.”
From its first public performances in 1958, to the premiere of the masterpiece Revelations in 1960, through the struggles of touring in the Civil Rights Movement, to the tragic loss of its founder in 1989—across so much social upheaval and cultural change, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has thrived as a model of Black resilience and unparalleled artistic excellence. With brand-new commissions from next-generation creators and beloved works by Ailey himself, this revered institution has embodied exceptional power, beauty, and grace each time they’ve made their annual visit to the Berkeley campus for the past 57 years.
The familiar/trademark: The company shared, “There are very few experiences in modern dance akin to the one shared by audiences watching Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform Revelations. Whether witnessing it for the first time or the hundredth, people feel the ballet’s communion with African American cultural heritage—its spiritual, uplifting power that speaks to people everywhere. The work’s three acts trace an arc from resilience to elation, and it is a hallmark of every Ailey performance to see audiences on their feet by the ballet’s curtain call.”
The new/unexpected: Per the company, “The 2025–26 season will mark Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s first under the new artistic directorship of Alicia Graf Mack, and she is bringing her unique perspective to bear on the Company’s program. Having danced with the Company for six years and acted as dean and director of the Juilliard Dance Division, her mandate is to bring Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater into the future, showing the Ailey dancers in new ways while honoring the Company’s historic past.” Though this will be her first Ailey Week at Cal Performances under her new title, Berkeley audiences have seen her dance with the Company many times throughout the years, and Cal Performances is thrilled to welcome her back in this new capacity!
The peerless Joffrey Ballet returns to Zellerbach Hall with a signature blockbuster work, Alexander Ekman’s daring, sensual, exuberant celebration of the traditional Scandinavian summer solstice festival. Dancers cavort in pastoral revelry as reality and fantasy blur in a joyous ode to the arrival of the summer season. A mind-bending trip to a surreal realm of earthly and supernatural delights, Midsummer features a score by composer Mikael Karlsson and features Swedish indie rock sensation Anna von Hausswolff, who performs live.
The familiar/trademark: The company shared, “Ekman’s ode to the longest day of the year follows a traditional Midsummer festival—from a passionate, lively celebration by day to a whirlwind dream by night. Ekman’s picturesque fusion of classical and contemporary ballet blurs the line between the real and the imagined, making audiences wonder, ‘Was it all just a dream?’”
The new/unexpected: “Alexander Ekman dares to be bold with Midsummer Night’s Dream, creating an astonishing dance-theater performance of tremendous theatricality and scale,” says The Mary B. Galvin Artistic Director Ashley Wheater, MBE. “Playing to the strengths of Joffrey company artists to convey the evolution of our art form, woven together with the trailblazing talents of Ekman’s creative team, Midsummer gifts audiences with an unforgettable experience.”
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Spotlight on Classical Music Across 2025–26
Spotlight on Classical Music Across 2025–26
A feast for the ears across orchestra and recital series!
By Janet E. Bedell, Cal Performances-commissioned writer
Cal Performances’ 2025–26 season offers a robust selection of classical music performances across recital, chamber, and orchestra formats, that collectively serves as a powerful reminder of just how relevant and resonant these core masterworks remain to this day. Below, you’ll find a deep-dive on five classical recitals and one orchestra performance, each of which offers something distinct, reflected in both the repertoire and in the unique interpretive talents and virtuosity of the artists bringing these works to life.
Program: Bach’s Six Partitas for Solo Keyboard
One of America’s truly multifaceted artists—attested to by his being selected as a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow—Jeremy Denk makes his return to Cal Performances. With a wide-ranging repertoire, he is especially renowned for his performances of J.S. Bach; his recording of the Goldberg Variations reached No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Charts, while his performance of the Well-Tempered Klavier, Book I was one of the highlights of the Cal Performances at Home 20–21 digital season.
Among Bach’s greatest keyboard masterpieces is the modestly named First Clavier Ubung (“Keyboard Exercises”), which comprise the six keyboard partitas—his ultimate demonstration of the Baroque dance suite form. Usually, we get to hear one or two of these on a concert, but Denk’s performance offers the rare opportunity to hear all six in a single evening! These are immensely challenging pieces in terms of technical difficulty as well as artistic depth. Bach takes the standard Baroque dances—allemandes, courantes, sarabands, and gigues—and rings ingenious changes on them. Each partita has its own personality, established in its opening movement; some are predominantly light and fast, while others, like the great Nos. 4 and 6, are rich and meditative. There are standout movements throughout, such as No. 6’s magnificent opening Toccata (the last he wrote), with a length and complexity that makes it a complete piece unto itself; and the spectacular Gigue closing No. 4, a high-speed fugue that grows into a double fugue. Bach’s first biographer J.N. Forkel claimed, “He who has learnt to play a few of them could make his fortune.”
Program to include Brahms’ Symphony No. 4, Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss, and Ravel’s Boléro
The revered Italian conductor Riccardo Muti became the Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2010, making this renowned orchestra a pacesetter among America’s Big Five orchestras. With the 2024–25 season, he has transitioned to the post of Music Director Emeritus for Life, continuing one of this country’s legendary artistic partnerships.
Muti brings a well-balanced musical feast to Zellerbach in which the main course is followed by an aperitif, and then dessert. Known for his mastery of Brahms repertoire, he has chosen Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, the composer’s last and arguably greatest, to open the program. The famous Hans von Bülow, who co-conducted with the composer for the Fourth’s first performances in 1885, called it “stupendous,…individual and rocklike. Incomparable strength from start to finish.” This symphony boasts Brahms’ most uninhibited, joyful scherzo, as well as the magnificent passacaglia finale, which builds 30 wondrous variations over a theme Brahms borrowed from Bach. The aperitif is Stravinsky’s ballet The Fairy’s Kiss, based on a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. Stravinsky was a shape-shifter throughout his long career—sometimes a radical modernist, at others, an ironic neo-Classicist. Here, he revealed his surprising lifelong love of Tchaikovsky by creating a ballet that borrows from some of Tchaikovsky’s little-known piano pieces alongside Stravinsky’s own imitations of the older composer’s style, complete with Tchaikovsky’s characteristic melodic gestures and overall Romantic sweep. The dessert is Ravel’s immortal Boléro, an intoxicating exploration of a single boléro rhythm and two closely related exotic melodies.
Program to include Schumann’s Dichterliebe, as well as songs by Porter, Poulenc, Satie, Schoenberg, Trenet, Weill
Making her debut at Cal Performances, American mezzo Samantha Hankey—boasting a rich, bronze-toned voice combined with dramatic prowess—is an exciting young rising star. Already in high demand by opera houses and concert halls in Europe, she achieved wider fame in America in 2023 when she sang Octavian in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier opposite Lise Davidsen at the Metropolitan Opera in a performance featured on the Met’s Live in HD series. Debuting recently at Carnegie Hall, Hankey also has devoted herself to lieder programs that are refreshingly off the beaten track.
At Cal Performances, she will sing Schumann’s cornerstone cycle Dichterliebe (“A Poet’s Love”) song cycle. While Dichterliebe is often associated with male voices (tenors and baritones), the fact that it was dedicated to a soprano shows that it was conceived with the possibility of female voices performing it in mind. Surrounding this beloved staple of German Romantic lieder will be songs in three languages by a selection of 20th-century composers—Poulenc, Satie, Schoenberg, Weill, and Cole Porter—who mostly come from the worlds of jazz, cabaret, and Broadway. We’ll hear an unexpected side of Schoenberg in the light-hearted “Gigerlette” from his early Brettl-Lieder inspired by the risqué Berlin cabaret style. Another surprise is “Boum!,” a vivacious tongue-twister by French singer-composer Charles Trenet. Like Trenet, master American songwriter Cole Porter wrote the words as well as the music for his film scores and Broadway musicals; his poignantly romantic “So in Love” was written for the two estranged lovers in Kiss Me Kate, an enduring Broadway favorite based on Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew.
Program to include Saint-Saëns’ Bassoon Sonata; Carlos Simon’s hear them; John Musto’s Shadow of the Blues; Beethoven’s 7 Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen”; and Barber’s Cello Sonata
The first saxophonist to win First Prize at the Young Concert Artists Auditions as well as the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, the multi-talented Steven Banks is both a composer and a virtuoso performer striving to bring his instrument—long associated with jazz—into the heart of classical music. In 2022, he premiered his own Cries, Sighs and Dreams, a work for alto saxophone and string quartet, with the Borromeo Quartet at Carnegie Hall. Banks also has devoted himself to playing works originally written for other instruments, and his wonderfully eclectic Cal Performances program Golden Silhouettes will tackle works created for bassoon, voice, and cello. The highlight of this program, however, is Carlos Simon’s hear them, a work that is actually intended for the baritone saxophone and was written on a commission from Banks. It is a superb tone poem that showcases Banks’ dramatic instincts and the variegated tones of his instrument, from high, almost human cries, to the inky growling of its bass register. Simon, who has just been appointed as the Boston Symphony’s first-ever Composer-in-Residence and Boston Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever Composer Chair, writes, “I have been constantly aware of the presence of my ancestors in my life… This piece was inspired by a poem by Nayyirah Waheed, which simply asks the ancestors to speak louder if you cannot hear them.”
Written in 1921, the penultimate year of his long and prolific career, Camille Saint-Saëns’ suave French Bassoon Concerto is filled with beautiful singing lines as well as wit and virtuosity. Brooklyn-born composer John Musto’s Shadows of the Blues was originally a four-song cycle setting of poems by Langston Hughes about life in Harlem in the early 20th century. Here Musto, the son of a jazz guitarist, deftly mixes contemporary art-song style with haunting traces of the blues. We’ll also hear two works composed for the cello: Beethoven’s charming variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” and Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata. The Beethoven is a cello showpiece based on the exquisite friendship duet “Bei Männern,” sung by Pamina and Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Barber wrote his Cello Sonata in 1932 when he was only in his early twenties. A passionate neo-Romantic work, both lyrical and dramatic, it bears a strong resemblance to the music of Brahms, a composer Barber particularly adored at that time.
Program to include Ligeti’s Fanfares; Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata; Chopin’s Nocturnes, Selected Impromptus, and Fantaisie Impromptu; Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso; Albéniz’s “El Puerto” from Iberia; and Liszt’s Rhapsodie espagnole
The winner of First Prize at the 2021 International Chopin Competition, Chinese-Canadian pianist Bruce Liu is another young star making his Cal Performances debut this season. Liu began his piano studies at the age of eight, and made his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra just seven years later. Praised by the BBC Music Magazine for “playing of breathtaking beauty,” this Montreal native combines a refined, poetic tone with a capacity for fiery technical virtuosity when the music demands it. His first CD with Deutsche Grammophon featured his winning Chopin performances in Warsaw and was selected by Gramophone magazine for its list of the “Best Classical Albums of 2021.” Naturally, Chopin’s music will hold a prominent place in Liu’s Berkeley recital, including the two beautiful Nocturnes of Opus 27. Also featured will be three of the composer’s Impromptus in addition to the well-loved Fantasie Impromptu in C-sharp minor. This last work is included because it bears strong connections with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, also on the program, a work subtitled “Quasi una fantasia” (“almost a fantasy”) and is in the same key as the Chopin.
An unusual offering opens the program: Ligeti’s demanding “Fanfares” from his 1985 Etudes, Book 1. A work of coruscating brilliance and immense technical difficulty, “Fanfares” juxtaposes an angular fanfare motive with a continuous ostinato; the combination progressively creates intense polyrhythmic clashes between the two. Finally, Liu has chosen three sparkling Spanish-inspired pieces—Ravel’s humorous favorite Alborada del gracioso (“Morning Serenade of a Jester”), Albéniz’s “El Puerto” from his masterpiece Ibéria, and Liszt’s Rhapsodie espagnole. Since he was the only composer of the three who actually was Spanish, Albéniz’s colorful salute to the doorway of the Cathedral de Santa Maria in Cádiz is the most authentic in flavor, employing the traditional Spanish zapateado dance and reflecting the sound of the guitar. Naturally, Liszt’s rhapsody, based on two popular Iberian dance tunes, is the most spectacular—a suitably bravura recital finale.
Program to include Liszt’s arrangement of Bach’s Variations on “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen”; Medtner’s Piano Sonata in F minor; Chopin’s Prelude in C-sharp minor; Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 10; and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111
In a season rich in great pianists, Alexandre Kantorow’s debut is a concert that no piano aficionado should miss. After his winning the First Prize, Gold Medal, and the rarely given Grand Prix at age 22 at the 16th International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019, Kantorow’s career took off like a rocket. In 2023, he was given one of the most prestigious piano prizes, the Gilmore Artist Award, while in 2024 the French government made him a Chevalier del’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Also in 2024, he was a featured soloist at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Gramophone magazine has described him as a “fire-breathing virtuoso with a poetic charm.”
Kantorow has chosen a remarkable program revealing the breadth of his musical skills. It begins with variations (Liszt’s meditative Variations on the Theme “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” after J.S. Bach) and closes with them (Beethoven’s sublime final Piano Sonata, Op. 111). Two highlights of this concert will be sonatas by the early 20th century Russian virtuoso composers Nikolai Medtner and Alexander Scriabin. His music too rarely heard in America, Medtner was a brilliant composer who, upon graduating from the Moscow Conservatory at age 20, won the Gold Medal for piano (the head of the conservatory wishing it could be a Diamond Medal because of Medtner’s exceptional accomplishments!). Shortly thereafter, the composer created his formidable Piano Sonata in F minor, the first of what would be a total of 14 works in the form. A tremendous challenge for any pianist to tackle, this is a powerful late-Romantic work that sweeps the listener irresistibly along from beginning to end.
An eccentric, visionary composer, Scriabin claimed that “the purpose of music is revelation.” He dreamed of uniting nearly all of the senses in his works: hearing, sight, taste, and smell. Kantorow will play the last of his piano sonatas, No. 10, which is another major challenge—both technically and musically—for the pianist. With its abundance of glistening trills fluttering like tiny wings, this sonata is often called his “Insect Sonata,” based on a conversation with Scriabin in which he said, “Insects, butterflies, moths—they are all living flowers…. They are all born of the sun, and the sun nourishes them…. This sun-like caress is the closest to me. Take my tenth sonata—it is an entire sonata from insects.”
