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Press Releases
Cal Performances at UC Berkeley Announces 'Cal Performances at Home' - A New Performing Arts Streaming Series
CONTACTS:
Louisa Spier Jeanette Peach
Cal Performances Cal Performances
(510) 919-6649 (949) 378-7338
lspier@calperformances.org jpeach@calperformances.org
Cal Performances at Home press kit
CAL PERFORMANCES AT UC BERKELEY ANNOUNCES
CAL PERFORMANCES AT HOME
A NEW PERFORMING ARTS STREAMING SERIES
Fall performance series features 15 new, professionally produced
full-length music and theater performances
A new performance premieres each week
beginning October 1, 2020 through January 14, 2021
Main Stage performance videos will be accompanied by free
Beyond the Stage artist talks, interviews, and lectures
The Digital Classroom will provide educational content for K–12 teachers and students
A New Year’s Eve Musical Celebration will ring in 2021 with performances
recorded specially for Cal Performances audiences
Berkeley, August 25, 2020—Cal Performances at UC Berkeley announces Cal Performances at Home, an ambitious performing arts streaming series that features 15 newly produced, full-length Main Stage performance video streams available beginning October 1, 2020 through January 14, 2021. With in-person events mostly halted by the global pandemic, Cal Performances is expanding its activities beyond the live events it has historically offered to present the arts in a new format, available to stream directly on demand to viewers’ home screens. Recorded on stages all over the world, from renowned venues and recording studios in the locations where the artists are sheltering in place, the series includes 10 programs that were previously scheduled for Cal Performances’ live-event fall season, four new performances, and a New Year’s Eve Musical Celebration.
A new Main Stage video performance will debut each week. Viewers will have access to most performances for three months after its premiere, and on the evenings of each streaming premiere, a special digital “watch party” will feature a participatory live chat element. Main Stage videos will be supplemented with free Beyond the Stage original digital content, including artist talks, interviews, lectures, and panel discussions, which will contextualize programs and give viewers the opportunity to engage directly with artists and each other. A third area of content, the Digital Classroom, will focus on educational content for students of different ages, parents, and educators.
“In this moment when in-person performances are not yet safe, we have been reminded of the performing arts’ unsurpassed ability to express the power and potential of the human spirit,” said Jeremy Geffen, executive and artistic director of Cal Performances. “As we approach fall 2020 and what would have been the beginning of our in-person season, Cal Performances’ most pressing goal has become finding a way to enable our audiences to continue to experience what they love about the performing arts.”
Geffen continues: “Cal Performances at Home takes us into bold and meaningful new territory where we can engage our audiences and community while simultaneously supporting the artists who are the lifeblood of our program. The almost universal pause in live performance across the country—indeed, in much of the world—has been devastating for the artistic community, and this new endeavor provides performing artists with critical financial support as well as the opportunity to once again experience the joy of performing for audiences in professionally produced settings. Today’s artists are truly showing us—on a daily basis—what it means to remain resilient, creative, and hopeful.”
“Given the seemingly overwhelming challenges currently facing the performing arts, the visionary leadership demonstrated here is reason alone to celebrate,” said Caroline Winnett, executive director of SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s startup incubator and accelerator, and a member of Cal Performances’ board of trustees. “Led by executive and artistic director Jeremy Geffen, the staff has pivoted in response to the global pandemic, reacting with both speed and imagination. Indeed, the entire program has shifted toward an ambitious plan for online presentation that may well become a national and international model. Cal Performances at Home honors the best traditions of presenting new and groundbreaking work and does so through a medium suited to the times. Its scope is wide and the variety of offerings is broad and exciting. There’s truly nothing like it, anywhere.”
Cal Performances at Home follows the overwhelmingly positive response to the weekly Now, More Than Ever YouTube playlists and blog posts of music and dance performances that Cal Performances’ executive and artistic director Jeremy Geffen has been curating since the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of all in-person performances. More than 30 issues of the Now, More Than Ever playlists can be viewed online at news.calperformances.org/now-more-than-ever,with a companion playlist available on Spotify. To date, two respected guest curators have also participated in the project—soprano Julia Bullock and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
Four performances on the Cal Performances at Home schedule are part of Cal Performances’ new Illuminations series, which invites audiences to explore the connections between UC Berkeley’s groundbreaking scholarship and the performing arts. Illuminations this season is centered around two programmatic themes, “Music and the Mind” and “Fact or Fiction.” Related activities will be announced at a later date.
- “Music and the Mind” examines the transformative and therapeutic potential of music and features performances and public programs with artists and scientists from the campus community and beyond. Two performances this fall probe the relationships between the brain and music composition and performance: the Tetzlaff Quartet (Oct. 8), performing two late Beethoven string quartets, composed when the composer was profoundly deaf; and virtuoso jazz keyboardist Matthew Whitaker (Nov. 5), whose brain scientists are studying in an effort to understand how he “visualizes” music as a blind performer.
- “Fact or Fiction” programs investigate how artists and scholars balance the art of storytelling with questions of historical accuracy, exploring the tension between “creative license” and what happens when alterations of fact impact our ability to tell the difference between what is true and what is false. Jazz composer Darcy James Argue’s multimedia production Real Enemies (Oct. 21) considers the role of conspiracy theories in American culture. And in the Cal Performances co-commission Frankenstein (Oct. 29), the innovative Chicago-based theater troupe Manual Cinema examines the parallels between Mary Shelley’s famous fictional “creature” and the actual events of the author’s life.
The fall performance series kicks off on Thursday, October 1 at 7pm (PDT) with violinist Tessa Lark and pianist Andrew Armstrong in an eclectic program infused with folk sounds from Northern and Eastern Europe and featuring Schubert’s transcendent Fantasy in C major. On Thursday, October 8 at 7pm (PDT), Cal Performances at Home welcomes the return—following its memorable Berkeley debut in 2017—of the Tetzlaff Quartet, this time performing two of Beethoven’s extraordinary late string quartets (an Illuminations: Music and the Mind performance). On Wednesday, October 14 at 7pm (PDT), composer, flutist, and vocalist Nathalie Joachim and Spektral Quartet will present Fanm d'Ayiti (Women of Haiti), a suite of kaleidoscopic, original compositions and arrangements that explores Joachim’s Haitian heritage and celebrates the songs and stories of Haiti’s most compelling female artists.The streaming premiere of Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society performing Real Enemies (an Illuminations: Fact or Fiction performance), will take place on Wednesday, October 21 at 7pm (PDT). For Cal Performances at Home, Argue, librettist Isaac Butler, and film director Peter Nigrini have gone back into the recording studio with the musicians to create an immersive made-for-video adaptation of Argue’s acclaimed Real Enemies—a multimedia work mixing visuals, text, and music to explore the American fascination with conspiracy theories. Returning to Cal Performances after the much-lauded performances of its renowned Ada/Ava production in 2018, Manual Cinema’s Frankenstein, co-commissioned by Cal Performances and the second performance in the season’s Illuminations: Fact or Fiction series, will premiere on Thursday, October 29 at 7pm (PDT).
Cal Performances at Home November programming begins with a concert by 19-year-old jazz piano and Hammond B-3 organ phenomenon Matthew Whitaker, (the second performance in the Illuminations: Music and the Mind series). At 7pm (PST) on Thursday, November 5, he will lead his quartet in selections from his newest recording, Now Hear This, featuring original music by Whitaker as well as works by jazz masters like Ahmad Jamal, Billy Strayhorn, and Michel Camilo. At 7pm (PST) on Thursday, November 12, cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han return to Cal Performances in a marathon program of the complete Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano. Longtime Cal Performances collaborator and audience favorite Jordi Savall will perform with La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations in the streaming premiere of a program of selections from Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals (the Madrigals of Love and War), Thursday, November 19 at 7pm (PST). On Friday, November 27 at 7pm (PST), Cal Performances at Home will feature An Evening with Yo-Yo Ma, with details to be announced.
On Thursday, December 3 at 7pm (PST) audiences will be treated to the Cal Performances at Home streaming premiere of pianist Leif Ove Andsnes in recital performing Mozart’s Fantasia in C minor, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, Pathétique, Janácek’s Selections from On an Overgrown Path, Book 1, and Dvorák’s Selections from Poetic Tone Picture. The Dover Quartet’s performance of Haydn’s The Fifths quartet; Ligeti’s first string quartet, composed while he was still living in communist Hungary; and Dvorák’s poetic and expressive penultimate Quartet in G major premieres on Thursday, December 10 at 7pm (PST.) Manual Cinema returns to Cal Performances at Home for the second time this season with three livestreamed performances of the Cal Performances co-commissioned production of A Christmas Carol on Thursday, December 17 at 5pm (PST), Friday, December 18 at 7pm (PST), and Saturday, December 19 at 1pm (PST).
Cal Performances at Home closes out the year with a special New Year’s Eve Musical Celebration on Thursday, December 31 at 8pm (PST). The festive evening of original performances, recorded especially for Cal Performances’ audiences to usher in the year 2021, includes soloists, recitalists, jazz artists, and chamber ensembles featured in the fall video series.
On January 7, 2021 at 7pm (PST) trumpeter and vocalist Bria Skonberg performs a concert recorded at Louis Armstrong’s historic home in Queens (NY). The performance will feature selections from Skonberg’s latest album, Nothing Never Happens, and feature a mix of jazz classics, vintage vocal works, original compositions, and new takes on pop songs by artists including the Beatles, Queen, and Sonny Bono. The Cal Performances at Home fall season concludes on Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 7pm (PDT) with a recital by soprano Julia Bullock and pianist Laura Poe. The singer, who has appeared several times at Cal Performances in recent years, recently guest-curated an issue of the Now, More Than Ever playlist and blog, which can be viewed at https://news.calperformances.org/2020/06/30/issue-22-july-1/.
Ticket Information
Tickets for the fall 2020 series of Cal Performances at Home go on sale on Tuesday, September 8 at 12 noon (PDT). Tickets are $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 for household viewing (three or more viewers). $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students to all events. Viewers will have access to most of the videos for three months following the streaming debut with the exception of Leif Ove Andsnes’ recital which will be available for one month following the streaming premiere, and Manual Cinema’s A Christmas Carol and the New Year's Eve Musical Celebration which will not be available for viewing after the streaming broadcasts. Cal Performances is offering all Fall 2020 Cal Performances at Home content to current 2020–21 subscribers at no charge as a way of thanking them for their loyal support of the organization during this challenging time. Full access to all Fall 2020 Cal Performances at Home content is also complimentary for Cal Performances donors at the $225 level and above. Tickets are available at calperformances.org and by phone at (510) 642-9988.
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CALENDAR EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE:
CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, October 1, 7pm (PDT)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Tessa Lark, violin
Andrew Armstrong, pianoProgram:
Bartók (arr. Székely)/Romanian Folk Dances
Ysaÿe/Sonata No. 5 for Solo Violin
Schubert/Fantasy in C major, D. 934
Grieg/Violin Sonata No. 3 in C minor
Ravel/Tzigane
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, October 8, 7pm (PDT)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Tetzlaff Quartet
Program:
Beethoven/String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130,
with Grosse Fuge in B-flat major, Op. 133
Beethoven/String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132
This performance is part of the Illuminations: Music and the Mind series.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Wednesday, October 14, 7pm (PDT)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Nathalie Joachim and Spektral Quartet
Fanm d'AyitiProgram:
Composer, flutist, and vocalist Nathalie Joachim, already familiar to Cal Performances’ audiences for her appearances as part of Eighth Blackbird, collaborates with Chicago’s Spektral Quartet in Fanm d'Ayiti (Women of Haiti), a suite of kaleidoscopic original compositions and arrangements that explores Joachim’s Haitian heritage and celebrates the songs and stories of Haiti’s most compelling female artists. Singing in kreyòl (Haitian Creole), Joachim weaves her own luminous voice with recordings of those of her grandmother, a girls choir from her family’s hometown, and interviews with activist women performers who fought for social justice in the world’s first free Black republic. Folk songs blend seamlessly with chamber strings and electronic soundscapes in Joachim’s deft—and highly personal—musical journey. The digital audio recording of Fanm d’Ayiti received a Grammy nomination for Best World Music Album and has been praised for bridging “vast expanses of time and place, bringing together the sounds of Haitian folk music, Western classical music, electronic, and hints of pop… in service to one of the deepest of traditions—the tradition of innovation” (The Nation).
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Wednesday, October 21, 7pm (PDT)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society
Real EnemiesDarcy James Argue, music
Isaac Butler, writer and director
Peter Nigrini, film design
Produced by Beth Morrison ProjectsProgram:
Celebrated composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society is a Grammy-nominated, 18-piece big band of New York’s best and brightest improvisers. For Cal Performances at Home, Argue, librettist Isaac Butler, and film director Peter Nigrini have gone back into the recording studio with the musicians to create an immersive made-for-video adaptation of Argue’s acclaimed Real Enemies—a multimedia work mixing visuals, text, and music to explore the American fascination with conspiracy theories. Taking his title from a 2009 book by Kathryn Olmsted (Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11), Argue has created a multimovement suite packed with plots and paranoia, “a work of furious ambition that feels deeply in tune with our present moment” (The New York Times). Argue’s eclectic music combines traditional jazz with postwar serialism, Latin rhythms, film noir orchestrations, and rock sonorities, deploying a clever mix of distinctly American musical styles to explore everything from the Red Scare to the surveillance state, mind control to fake moon landings, and FBI schemes to alien sightings.This performance is part of the Illuminations: Fact or Fiction series.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, October 29, 7pm (PDT)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Manual Cinema
Frankenstein (Cal Performances Co-commission)Program:
Chicago’s collective of musicians, composers, theater artists, and filmmakers captivates with its handmade and marvelously imaginative creations as seen in its mesmerizing production of Ada/Ava presented by Cal Performances in 2018. Frankenstein, co-commissioned by Cal Performances, weaves together the plot of Mary Shelley’s gothic tale with themes of desire, birth, and loss from the author’s own biography—asking us to consider our responsibility to, and for, our modern-day creations. The company’s performers manipulate hundreds of paper puppets to create a silent animated film in real time, featuring live actors and an immersive score performed onstage by four musicians. For Cal Performances at Home, Manual Cinema is creating a new iteration of its acclaimed Frankenstein production, made especially for home video viewing. “Ingenious...no matter where you look, you’ll find beauty and intrigue” (Chicago Sun-Times).This performance is part of the Illuminations: Fact or Fiction series.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, November 5, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Matthew Whitaker Quartet
Matthew Whitaker, piano and Hammond B3 organ
Marcos Robinson, guitar
Karim Hutton, bass
Isaiah Johnson, drumsProgram:
Keyboardist Matthew Whitaker is a once-in-a-generation musical talent. Blind since age two, Whitaker holds court on piano and Hammond B-3 organ, with a bold and confident sense of swing and a wide-ranging palette that spans straight-ahead jazz and hard bop, R&B, and Latin influences. He has been performing across the globe since age 11—even opening for Stevie Wonder at the Apollo Theater—and at 13, he became the youngest musician to be endorsed by Hammond in the company’s history. Having just released his second recording, the 19-year-old is currently taking the jazz world by storm.This performance is part of the Illuminations: Music and the Mind series.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, November 12, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)David Finckel, cello
Wu Han, pianoProgram:
Beethoven/The Five Sonatas for Cello and Piano
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, November 19, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Jordi Savall
La Capella Reial de Catalunya
Le Concert des NationsProgram:
Monteverdi/Madrigals, Selections from Book 8, Madrigals of Love and War
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Friday, November 27, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)An Evening with Yo-Yo Ma
Program to be announced.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, December 3, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for one month. (Subject to change.)Leif Ove Andsnes, piano
Program:
Mozart/Fantasia in C minor, K. 475
Beethoven/Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 13, Pathétique
Janácek/Selections from On an Overgrown Path, Book 1
Dvorák/Selections from Poetic Tone Picture, Op. 85
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, December 10, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Dover Quartet
Program:
Haydn/String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2, The Fifths
Ligeti/String Quartet No. 1, Métamorphoses nocturnes
Dvorák/String Quartet in G major, Op. 106Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
LIVESTREAMED EVENT
Thursday, December 17, 5pm (PST)
Friday, December 18, 7pm (PST)
Saturday, December 19, 1pm (PST)Manual Cinema
A Christmas Carol (Cal Performances Co-Commission)Program:
Manual Cinema broadcasts holiday cheer directly to your home with this livestreamed adaptation of Charles Dickens’ timeless A Christmas Carol, a Cal Performances commission. The company has created a new production tailored for home viewing, one that’s poignantly resonant with our current lives. In it, an avowed holiday skeptic, Aunt Trudy has been tasked with presenting her family’s annual Christmas Carolpuppet show from the isolation of her studio apartment—over a Zoom call while the family celebrates Christmas Eve under lockdown. But as Trudy becomes more absorbed in her own version of the story, the puppets take on a life of their own, and the family’s holiday call transforms into a stunning cinematic adaptation of Dickens’ classic ghost story. Manual Cinema’s vivid production features hundreds of paper puppets, miniatures, silhouettes, and an original music score performed live.This program will not be available for later viewing.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAMING ONE NIGHT ONLY
Thursday December 31, 8pm (PST)New Year’s Eve Musical Celebration
Program:
Join the artists who have made the Cal Performances at Home season possible for a celebratory evening of original performances recorded especially for this occasion. Soloists, recitalists, jazz artists, and chamber ensembles featured in the fall online streaming series have contributed special musical selections to help Cal Performances audiences usher in the year 2021 in style. All performers have carefully chosen their contributions, with the aim of sharing works that convey the joy, hope, warmth, and spirit of the holidays. Their transcendent performances promise to remind viewers of the power of the arts to uplift and connect us all, even during the most trying of times.This program will not be available for later viewing.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday January 7, 2021, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Bria Skonberg, trumpet, vocals
Program:
In buoyant performances that combine the energy of New Orleans swing with the dreamy vocals of radio crooners past, the charismatic young trumpeter and vocalist Bria Skonberg recalls a time, before bebop, when jazz was our nation’s popular music. Skonberg last performed at Cal Performances in April 2019, as part of the dream team from the Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour. Here, in a set recorded at the historic Louis Armstrong House in Queens, NY, she and her quintet perform selections from her latest album, Nothing Never Happens, a mix of hot jazz classics, vintage vocal tunes, original compositions, and fresh new takes on pop songs by the likes of the Beatles, Queen, and Sonny Bono. “Bria Skonberg plays trumpet like a red hot devil and sings like a dream” (The Wall Street Journal).
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
STREAM PREMIERE
Thursday, January 14, 2021, 7pm (PST)
Following the premiere, this performance will be available to view on demand for three months. (Subject to change.)Julia Bullock, soprano
Program to be announced.
Cal Performances audiences know the superb, daring soprano Julia Bullock well, from her 2018 Hertz Hall recital, and before that, in her star turns as both Josephine Baker and French mystic and activist Simone Weil at the 2016 Ojai at Berkeley festival. Just before this spring’s lockdown, Bullock visited the Bay Area to sing with the San Francisco Symphony, where theSan Francisco Chronicle praised the dramatic power and clarity of her interpretations, and her “ability to plunge unnervingly deep into this music and then surface, like some kind of musical pearl diver, with great glistening strands of expressive jewels.” Recording this recital from her home city of Munich, Bullock presents one of her characteristically diverse and thoughtfully curated programs, traversing art song, contemporary works, and selections from African-American jazz and blues.
Tickets: $15 for a single viewer, $30 for two viewers, and $60 per household viewing. $5 tickets are available for UC Berkeley students.
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