Bay Area's fall arts season pulses with color

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 26, 2008 | by Anonymous

Wow!

Even the most jaded arts journalist can get bowled over this time of year. It's what happens when you take the first full survey of what's on tap for the fall arts season. As you pursue the landscape, your eyes widen; your pulse quickens and you feel your summer- atrophied brain cells snapping back to attention.

There's Dave Brubeck returning to San Francisco Jazz Festival; a new opera based on Amy Tan's "The Bonesetter's Daughter"; Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Odetta and Emmylou Harris all playing for free; Mark Morris revisiting "Romeo and Juliet"; Tony-magnet musical "Spring Awakening" arriving in the Bay Area; mercurial soprano sensation Angela Gheorghiu performing at UC Berkeley. And wait, there's more ...

We hope the concerts, exhibits and performances we've spotlighted will inspire similar excitement from you. In today's section, we focus on just a few of the big-ticket items headed our way.

In classical music, Angela Gheorghiu, the soprano who made headlines for her stirring performance in last year's San Francisco Opera production of "La Rondine" (and also for getting fired from a Chicago Lyric Opera production for missing too many rehearsals), returns for a Cal Performances recital. There's also the "Bonesetter's Daughter" opera, which we'll preview in depth on Sept. 7.

The art world welcomes a trove of historic treasures rescued from tumultuous Afghanistan, and an exhibit detailing how early photographs opened our "eyes" to the world that was beyond our sight.

Popular music welcomes the return of two star-studded institutions, the San Francisco Jazz Festival and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, an almost criminally overlooked event that produces scores of American roots musicians for a weekend of free concerts.

The theater scene is highlighted by the arrival of "Spring Awakening," a bittersweet coming-of-age musical that pulls no punches in addressing the emotional odyssey of adolescence.

And in dance, Mark Morris returns to UC Berkeley's Cal Performances with his brand-new vision of "Romeo and Juliet" in tow.

Of course, that's just scratching the surface. A broader calendar of fall events and exhibits, will give you a bigger taste of the true bounty that awaits us.

-- Randy McMullen