Features

The Bay Area’s fall bounty of music includes delicious selections from jazz, pop, and other musics from around the globe. Here are a few worth your notice.

For Beck-Ruiz and His Choir, Elijah Is Child’s Play
Youth Performances in the Presidio San Francisco
Berkeley Music Festival a Joyful Romp

Read an account of the Gamelan and its Balinese roots in excerpt from Music of the Peoples of the World by Bill Alves.

Read more about the Gamelan influence on Western music and composers such as Claude Debussy and Benjamin Britten.

Gamelan holds surprisingly wide appeal in America, which has more than 200 ensembles. SFCV profiles Gamelan Sekar Jaya, easily the best-known gamelan orchestra in the Bay Area, as it continues to reach a fascinating cross-section of music lovers.

Entertainment on Tap: Billy Elliot
VoiceBox: A Pandora's Box For Young Singers
SingersMarin Offers Choir Scholarships

Ensemble Parallèle stages a vivid reimagining of Gertrude Stein’s and Virgil Thomson’s masterwork; Luciano Chessa adds his imaginative response, called A Heavenly Act.

With reverence for the past and a lot of detective work, the “pluck-o-philiac” John Phillips restores and builds harpsichords in his Berkeley shop.