Music Cooks Up a Story at Cabrillo
“Fearless at 50” is the tag line for the 50th anniversary of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, one of the Bay Area’s top summer festivals. It’s international in tone, a benchmark for new music. Originally minimalist and formal in all respects, it’s now the reverse. For the last 20 years, it has sprung from the mind’s eye of Music Director Marin Alsop, the conductor who is also the music director of the Baltimore Symphony. This summer she’s assembled her customary trove of talent, and much of it young, including 21-year-old composer, Dylan Mattingly.
There are some classic works, like Lou Harrison’s Third Symphony and Carlos Chavez’ Discovery. But the headliner is Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra (July 28-29). Also on the lineup: a multimedia, multicomposer Cabrillo commission inspired by the Kitchen Sisters, best known for their segments on NPR. In an era when “storytelling” is treated like the discovery of a new life form — and now a formal discipline in business school — the Kitchen Sisters are among the pioneers in reviving the magic and profundity of the format and then, through collaboration, taking it to another level. For the whole family, for the whole imagination. If you could go to just one event next weekend, this should be it.
Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra, July 28, 1 p.m., July 29, 8 p.m., Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, $32-$50.
You Can Do What With Sound?
Ron Hipschman, a physicist at San Francisco’s Exploratorium museum, is giving a series of lectures on the world around us. This weekend, he’s speaking on sound. Lectures last about 45 minutes. “I may go over,” he said. “There’s a lot to say.” What exactly? “We’re going to talk about basic definitions, pitch, and frequency, waves, the nature of sound. Harmonics. Timbre.” Hipschman used to be a laserist at the Academy of Sciences, and got his fill of both good and bad rock music — he will be a Beatle forever, and forever loathe Metallica.
He pointed out some interesting news about sound these days. “The military is developing contactless weapons that uses sound to stop street riots. There are also experiments to use sound in fire suppression.” Hipschman, who used to teach physics at San Francisco State, added that no matter what you’ve heard, “brown noise” or “Brownian noise” is an urban legend. The sound is supposed to induce an involuntary bowel movement. Hipschman will explain what’s really going on and what isn’t.
Full Spectrum Science: Sound, July 21, 1 p.m., The Exploratorium (McBean Theater), Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.
Kabaret For Kids
Meet the next generation of Liza Minnellis and Joel Grays — at age 15. Six acts in an all-new theater. Original music, featuring, among others, Guitarist Maddy Hudson, 13; Magician Jack Dugan, 13, doing “major” illusions; and pianist Alison Wang.
The Producer and Host for the show is Samantha Samuels (who used to perform with Joan Rivers and the Smothers Bros, et. al.): “This is not like seeing adults perform Annie. This is in the vein of the old Sonny and Cher show. Or Ed Sullivan,” she says. “What we hope for is that the younger kids that come, and it’s really for kids ages 3 to 8, will leave the performance thinking, I wish I could play the piano like Alison Wang.”
Performers have trained at, among other places, the West Coast Olympic Gymnastic Academy in Pleasanton and Dance Connection, a competitive dance studio in Concord.
Samantha Samuels’ Kabaret for Kids, July 21, 1 p.m., Firehouse Arts Center, Pleasanton, $8-$12.
Keeping It Real At Dance Camp
The Alvin Ailey Dance Camps were founded 24 years ago on the great dancer/choreographer’s belief in the innate talent of kids: If you give them structure and a dream, they’ll come into their own. The theme of this summer’s camp, and the name of the final performance, is “Infinite Possibilities,” referring to the sum of openness, focus, and collaboration, which is what you learn at camp. A gospel as it were, and the finale is well worth seeing, even if you have no interest in dance camps.
Derrick Minter, one of the instructors in the camp, worked with Alvin Ailey and has been at the Berkeley camp since it started in 1989. Asked why the camp works so well, he gave this example. “We had a heavy set boy, 12 or 13, who came to the program. Most of the boys who come in are fearful, because it’s an unusual experience and he was also fearful at first, but he changed dramatically over the course of the camp. He’s also changed his eating habits and gradually got in shape.” “He’s freeing himself,” added Minter. “His whole personality has changed. What he thought was hard is now fun. He’s happier, freer in movement and in conversation, and he’s found a way to work with the other kids. This is what it’s about.” (It’s also about some incredibly talented performers). And it’s free.
Ailey Camp Final Performance, Aug. 2, 7 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, free.
Willy Wonka, Even More Amazing
As compelling as Roald Dahl’s story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is, you could argue that the musical taken from the 1971 film is well-worn territory. But suddenly, it’s not. “What makes this production stand apart,” says Berkeley Playhouse Artistic Director Elizabeth McKoy, “is that we’ve created a new blueprint for the imagination.” Clearly the problem with such a project is how to translate a film experience — and expectation — into a theatrical experience. Ms. McKoy and company have come up with some remarkable ways to create special effects, effects that actually transcend digital tricks.
“Our interest was not to compete with the film but, for example, to use color, shape, and dance to convey place.” So in the case of the scene in the chocolate lab, she uses actors hanging by bungee chords to replicate escaping gasses.
Veteran actor Vernon Bush takes on the role defined by Gene Wilder and makes his own imprint. Golden Ticket Kids include members of Playhouse’s summer school. There are big discounts for children (and even seniors).
Incidentally, if theater is serious business in your house, or even if it isn’t, you should look into this program. Next season starts in September with The Sound of Music, followed by Guys and Dolls, and an original musical production based on civil rights marches in Selma in the 1960s. And this time next summer, Mulan.
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, through Aug. 19 (Fri. through Sun.), Julia Morgan Theater, Berkeley, $17-$35.