San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus
Holiday Spectacular 2023
Sunday, December 17, 2023, 5pm
Zellerbach Hall
This program will be performed without intermission and last approximately 90 minutes.
From the Executive and Artistic Director
Happy Holidays from Cal Performances! Like you, we enjoy celebrating this special time with those nearest and dearest to us. So it’s particularly pleasing to welcome you to a December performance this year. As 2023 draws to a close, we’ll enjoy visits from the formidable Brooklyn-based performance ensemble Urban Bush Women (Dec 1–3), the boundlessly inventive jazz prodigy Matthew Whitaker (Dec 8), perennial Cal Performances favorites The Tallis Scholars in a special Christmas-themed concert (Dec 13), and the Bay Area’s beloved San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus closing out our fall season with its festive and celebratory Holiday Spectacular (Dec 17). Whatever event(s) you’ve chosen to attend, thank you for spending part of this busy time with us at UC Berkeley.
When we return next year, we’ll continue with a season packed with more than 80 carefully curated events designed to appeal to the eclectic interests and adventurous sensibilities of Bay Area audiences. In total, this year’s schedule features nearly 30 companies, ensembles, and solo artists new to our program, offering a wide range of opportunities to discover unfamiliar performers and artworks. There’s plenty to enjoy, including six world premieres, six Cal Performances co-commissions, nearly one dozen local and regional premieres, and the West Coast premieres of Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions and Nathalie Joachim’s Ki moun ou ye (Who are you?).
Cal Performances continues to invest in ongoing relationships with established and acclaimed artistic partners, with upcoming presentations including a landmark collaboration between Germany’s Pina Bausch Foundation, Senegal’s École des Sables, and the UK’s Sadler’s Wells theater in the first-ever Bay Area performances of Bausch’s pioneering The Rite of Spring (1975), as well as the renewal of a multi-season residency by The Joffrey Ballet, which this year will present its first full-length narrative ballet, Anna Karenina, at Zellerbach Hall. And I’m especially pleased that in March, the renowned pianist Mitsuko Uchida will join us as Artist in Residence for two special concerts as well as additional opportunities for the campus and wider Bay Area community to engage with her singular artistry.
A focus of the season will be our multi-dimensional Illuminations programming, which once again will connect the work of world-class artists to the intellectual life and scholarship at UC Berkeley via performances and public programs investigating a pressing theme—this season, “Individual & Community.” Concepts of “individual” and “community” have been at the forefront of public discourse in recent years, with new questions emerging as to how we can best nurture a sense of community and how the groups we associate with impact our own sense of self. Given our fast-evolving social landscape, how can we retain and celebrate the traits that make each of us unique, while still thriving in a world that demands cooperation and collaboration? With the performing arts serving as our guide and compass, our 2023–24 “Individual & Community” programming will explore the tensions that come into play when balancing the interests of the individual with those of the group.
Please make sure to check out our website for complete information. We’re thrilled to share all the details with you, and to welcome you once again to Cal Performances!
Again, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances
Happy Holidays from Cal Performances! Like you, we enjoy celebrating this special time with those nearest and dearest to us. So it’s particularly pleasing to welcome you to a December performance this year. As 2023 draws to a close, we’ll enjoy visits from the formidable Brooklyn-based performance ensemble Urban Bush Women (Dec 1–3), the boundlessly inventive jazz prodigy Matthew Whitaker (Dec 8), perennial Cal Performances favorites The Tallis Scholars in a special Christmas-themed concert (Dec 13), and the Bay Area’s beloved San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus closing out our fall season with its festive and celebratory Holiday Spectacular (Dec 17). Whatever event(s) you’ve chosen to attend, thank you for spending part of this busy time with us at UC Berkeley.
When we return next year, we’ll continue with a season packed with more than 80 carefully curated events designed to appeal to the eclectic interests and adventurous sensibilities of Bay Area audiences. In total, this year’s schedule features nearly 30 companies, ensembles, and solo artists new to our program, offering a wide range of opportunities to discover unfamiliar performers and artworks. There’s plenty to enjoy, including six world premieres, six Cal Performances co-commissions, nearly one dozen local and regional premieres, and the West Coast premieres of Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions and Nathalie Joachim’s Ki moun ou ye (Who are you?).
Cal Performances continues to invest in ongoing relationships with established and acclaimed artistic partners, with upcoming presentations including a landmark collaboration between Germany’s Pina Bausch Foundation, Senegal’s École des Sables, and the UK’s Sadler’s Wells theater in the first-ever Bay Area performances of Bausch’s pioneering The Rite of Spring (1975), as well as the renewal of a multi-season residency by The Joffrey Ballet, which this year will present its first full-length narrative ballet, Anna Karenina, at Zellerbach Hall. And I’m especially pleased that in March, the renowned pianist Mitsuko Uchida will join us as Artist in Residence for two special concerts as well as additional opportunities for the campus and wider Bay Area community to engage with her singular artistry.
A focus of the season will be our multi-dimensional Illuminations programming, which once again will connect the work of world-class artists to the intellectual life and scholarship at UC Berkeley via performances and public programs investigating a pressing theme—this season, “Individual & Community.” Concepts of “individual” and “community” have been at the forefront of public discourse in recent years, with new questions emerging as to how we can best nurture a sense of community and how the groups we associate with impact our own sense of self. Given our fast-evolving social landscape, how can we retain and celebrate the traits that make each of us unique, while still thriving in a world that demands cooperation and collaboration? With the performing arts serving as our guide and compass, our 2023–24 “Individual & Community” programming will explore the tensions that come into play when balancing the interests of the individual with those of the group.
Please make sure to check out our website for complete information. We’re thrilled to share all the details with you, and to welcome you once again to Cal Performances!
Again, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances
About the Program
Hello, and Happy Holidays! Thank you so much for making the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus part of your holidays this year! As the days become shorter and shorter, we cherish this opportunity to bring light and life to our Bay Area community.
In planning this year’s show, I sought to fill a void—to observe what’s missing, and see if we can create the show we need. The stories I was seeing in the news, the stories being written about our City by the Bay—and even the stories I told myself—were missing something critically important: Love.
From that, an entire concert season was born. In this production of Holiday Spectacular, you’ll hear the holiday classics and campy wonder you have come to expect, but you’ll also hear what love sounds like in our voices: for our friends and family, for the trailblazers and torchbearers who came before us, and for the days still to come. I hope you’ll come back and hear us in March and June as we continue to fill San Francisco with our voices and our love.
Please enjoy the incredibly hard work our singers have put in for this production. I hope it fills you with love: for your San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, for your friends and family, and maybe most importantly, for yourself.
I end every rehearsal the same way, and it’s how I’ll close this letter: with a rallying call for radical action:
Tell someone you love them! XOXO
—Jake Stensberg