Featured events- 03/10/2012 - Ton Koopman & The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir
- 02/27/2012 - Classical at the Freight: Rossini Birthday Celebration
- 02/23/2012 - Michio Kaku: Physics of the Future, How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
- 02/23/2012 - 2012: a Turning Point? And If So, Which Way?: A Talk by Robert Reich
- 02/19/2012 - Takacs Quartet
Category Archives: Arts
Rare works from Serendipity Books to be auctioned
The collection the late Peter Howard amassed for Serendipity Books was so vast that it will take Bonhams six different auctions to sell it off.
Once stuffed into an old winery on University Avenue, the collection, estimated at one million volumes, has now been sorted – and resorted and resorted – for sale.
“The bookstore on University … is a warren of rooms filled to the roof with titles from the mundane and popular to the erudite and obscure,” Catherine Williamson, Bonhams’ director of fine books & manuscripts explained in the auction catalogue. “Peter wanted people to search for their books, looking carefully and hopefully finding not only what they were looking for, but far more.
“While working to clear the store in advance of this first sale (and the others scheduled throughout this year) we have found ourselves going over shelves once, twice, three times and on the fourth time finding something else worth pulling out and putting in the catalog. I‘m sure that is as Peter would have wished it,” said Williamson. … Continue reading »
Tagged Bonham's, Peter Howard, Serendipity Books
Thousands expected at Tedx conference on Saturday
More than 1,500 people are expected to go to Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC campus on Saturday for the third annual Tedx/Berkeley.
“Inspiring innovation,” is the theme for the daylong conference, which is organized independently from the main TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) held every year around the world.
Speakers include Carl Bass, the CEO of Autodesk, Charles Holt, an actor and singer who has appeared in numerous Broadway musicals, Connie K. Duckworth, the founder of ARZU, a nonprofit … Continue reading »
Tagged Carl Bass, Charles Holt, Connie K Duckworth, TEDx
Love books? Help give away 1 million of them
Book lovers around the world are planning to give away millions of books on April 23 – and they are looking for Berkeley readers to help them.
The event is called World Book Night and its inaugural event in Great Britain in March of 2011 was phenomenally successful. Tens of thousands of people handed out a million free books to those who might not necessarily have ready access to them. The idea was for people to share their love of reading and ignite a similar passion in others.
Now World Book Night has expanded around the world to Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and the United States. The goal is for one million books to be distributed in each country. … Continue reading »
Tagged Ann Leyhe, Mrs. Dalloway's, World Book Night
Cal frat boy Kyle Crews a hit with Jennifer Lopez & co
American Idol fans know that when a judge says “you’re going to Hollywood”, that’s very good news. These words were spoken by former Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler to UC Berkeley undergraduate Kyle Crews recently when he auditioned for the show in San Diego, which also happens to be his hometown.
Crews, who dedicated his rendition of Monica’s “Angel of Mine” to Tyler’s fellow judge Jennifer Lopez (telling host Ryan Seacrest beforehand that he couldn’t stop thinking of her “voluptuous lips”), made an impression despite his loud plaid shirt (“you’re going to have to lose that shirt,” said Tyler). Third judge Randy Jackson simply whooped and declared: “That’s crazy. You sound nothing like you look.”
The 19-year-old, whois an enthusiastic member of Cal’s Kappa Alpha fraternity, will now go through to the next rounds in Hollywood. … Continue reading »
In Berkeley: Cuban pianist sensation Alfredo Rodríguez
As Cuba’s latest piano sensation, Alfredo Rodríguez knows he’s walking in exalted company. A graduate of the Manuel Saumell Conservatory, the same Havana institution that launched Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Manuel Valera, Rodriguez found out early on that prodigious talent could be a passport to an illustrious musical career.
“Knowing that Gonzalo had gone there, it’s a very big deal,” says Rodríguez, 26, from his home in Los Angeles. “In the school, they just teach classical music. It’s on the street that you play popular music and discover jazz. In my case, I love classical music and jazz too. Improvisation is the most important thing to me in the music. It’s my passion.”
Rodríguez makes his Berkeley debut Sunday when Cal Performances presents his solo recital at Hertz Hall. While he often tours with a trio the pianist is completely at home alone at the keyboard, a setting that allows him to fully explore his virtuosic technique and boundless imagination. … Continue reading »
The “before” pictures: Berkeley Art Museum/PFA
Call it “beautiful decay”: these stunning photographs, taken by David Stark Wilson, show the interiors of the future home of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA).
Just as with the new Magnes, which unveiled its new space on Sunday, BAM/PFA is to be housed in a 1920s-era 1939 building originally designed as a printing plant for UC Berkeley. It is located at 2120 Oxford Street at Center Street, in the heart of downtown.
Is it not fitting that, as the demand for printed thesis, documents, books and monographs has waned, the engine rooms that produced these volumes are now being put to good use while remaining in the cultural realm?
Book explores impact of Berkeley Art Museum’s Peter Selz
When Peter Selz arrived in Berkeley in 1965, the university only had a small art gallery to display its modest collection of art. Selz had been recruited from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to oversee the construction of a new, contemporary museum, the Berkeley Art Museum on Bancroft Way.
He did that and more. With Selz at the helm, the Berkeley Art Museum redefined many aspects of modern art and brought overdue attention to California artists.
Selz was already “something of a star,” when he arrived in Berkeley, according to Paul J. Karlstrom, whose new book, Peter Selz: Sketches of a Life, has just been released by UC Press. He had been one of the first curators to trumpet the work of Mark Rothko. His star grew even brighter in Berkeley after he put on groundbreaking shows such as “Directions in Kinetic Sculpture,” an exhibition of the Surrealist René Magritte, and Funk!, which showcased ceramicist Peter Voulkos, Bruce Conner, and other California artists. Selz, who had fled Germany during the Nazi regime, also created the Pacific Film Archive. … Continue reading »
Berkeley High student wows with poetry, spoken word
Noah St. John is the antithesis of the archetypal awkward teenager. A sophomore at Berkeley High, he exudes a quiet confidence and has a magnetic stage presence.
Last year he won the 2011 Bay Area Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam after performing “Strawberry Blonde,” a piece about his crush on a girl in school, and NPR broadcasts him reading his pieces.
In a profile published in the Chronicle yesterday, St. John said: ”For me, it’s about communicating with the audience, not so much getting caught up in the rhythm or sound of your own poem.”
In the video above, he performs a spoken word piece about capoeira in the first round of the poetry slam he went to win. Watch out for the almost nonchalant body flips.
For a stunning bird’s eye view, launch a kite (or a balloon)
Michael Layefsky’s passion for aerial photography was born one day in 1997 when he was taking one of his customary walks on the UC Berkeley campus and he came across “this guy flying a humongous kite on the big lawn in front of the library”.
The “guy” turned out to be Cal architecture professor Cris Benton, an early adopter of kite aerial photography, whose stunning work can be viewed on his website and Flickr pool.
“Cris is both very talented and an educator. The internet was in its infancy when he started but he set out to document and provide information on KAP, as its known,” says Layefsky, who quickly became an eager student.
An early attempt by Layefsky to capture images from a camera rigged onto a kite took place in Berkeley’s Cesar Chavez Park. “It was really windy and way too hard to navigate the kite,” he recalls. “My wife nearly had her arm pulled out trying to help me.” … Continue reading »
Matter + Spirit: The Sculpture of Stephen De Staebler
By Emily S. Mendel
The de Young Museum’s compelling retrospective exhibition of the sculpture of Berkeley’s Stephen De Staebler opened nine months too late for the artist to see it. The De Young’s American Art curator, Timothy Anglin Burgard, worked actively with De Staebler to mount the exhibition, but unfortunately De Staebler died in May 2011 before the show was completed.
De Staebler, who was born in 1933, became a figurative sculptor at a time when such works were déclassé. One of his teachers at the famous Black Mountain College in North Carolina was Robert Motherwell, a leading voice of the Abstract Expressionist movement, who wanted De Staebler to shift from figurative work to the abstract school. De Staebler decided not to take Motherwell’s advice.
Instead, De Staebler benefitted from working with pioneering ceramist Peter Voulkos, who, in the late 1950s, had founded the ceramics department at the UC Berkeley. Voulkos, who was instrumental in turning ceramics into a vital art form, rather than the second-string craft it had been thought to be, introduced De Staebler to clay and kiln techniques. Since his childhood was spent in Missouri’s countryside, De Staebler had a strong tactile, and deeply symbolic connection with clay. … Continue reading »
Tagged de Young Musuem, Stephen de Staebler
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