US Travel Guide - Berkeley

Berkeley Entertainment

Any large college town worth its salt features a constant variety of things to see, hear, and do. Mix in the particular multicultural soup that is Berkeley, and you have a world-beating entertainment scenario. Both on-campus and off, the arts and letters are alive and well in Berkeley. Sports, movies, and other bread and circuses are well represented, as well. (Failing all else, of course, San Franciscos right across the Bay. But trust us, the traffics a killer on Saturday night.)

U.C. BERKELEY
CAL PERFORMANCES
Cal Performances (http://www.calperfs.berkeley.edu) puts on a September-May calendar of world class dance, music, and theater. The Russian National Orchestra, the Gate Theatre of Dublin, Steve Reich, David Sedaris, Sonny Rollins, Dawn Upshaw, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Burhan Ocal & The Istanbul Oriental Ensemble; The Istanbul Oriental Ensemble are just a few of the performers gracing the stage of U.C. Berkeleys Zellerbach Hall during the 2000-2001 season. Additionally, Master classes, lectures, demonstrations, and symposia by these visiting artists and scholars are extended to U.C. Berkeley students and often open to the public.

U.C. DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

U.C.s Department of Music sponsors free noon concerts and other performances held in the perfect acoustics of Hertz Hall. Recitals are frequently held in the intimate setting of Morrison Halls Elkus Room (125 Morrison). For further information, call +1 510 642 4864 or go to http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/music/calendar.html

NCAA ATHLETICS

A founding member of the Pac 10 Conference, Cal fronts teams in every major sport played at the American collegiate level - or at least those sports not requiring the presence of ice or snow.

The California Golden Bears, as its teams are known, play football at Memorial Coliseum, and basketball at the Haas Pavillion. Pac 10 competition includes big names like UCLA, Washington, Arizona, USC, and, of course, hated rival Stanford. Further information about sports at Cal is available at http://calbears.fansonly.com.

During Cals long history, just about every team has won an NCAA championship at one time or another (or in the case of the football Bears, the Rose Bowl). The mens basketball team has been improving of late, and won the NIT tournament in 1998. There is the one sport, however, in which Cal has always been dominant: water polo.

OFF CAMPUS

MUSIC

CLASSICAL
The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra is one of the best-kept musical secrets in the country. Conducted by Kent Nagano (whose rising star may soon land him behind the podium of one of the great German or Austrian orchestras), the Berkeley Symphony puts on an adventurous program of works by contemporary composers like John Adams, leavened with Brahms, Beethoven, and Bruckner. Naganos reputation attracts the highest echelon of soloists. The Berkeley Symphony performsat Zellerbach and Hertz Halls on the U.C. campus, as well as in San Francisco. Further information can be found at http://www.berkeleysymphony.org.

In Oakland, the Oakland East Bay Symphony is drawing very favorable notices under Maestro Michael Morgan. A student of Leonard Bernstein, Morgan and the OEBS are as inclined to take chances as their colleagues in Berkeley: every program on the 2000-2001 schedule has at least one selection by a contemporary composer, and the season features quite a few world premieres of newly commissioned works. OEBS concert-goers' risk/reward ratio is sweetened considerably by the venue: the completely renovated Paramount Theater is an art deco temple - a feast for the eyes, inside and out. The OEBS' schedule is available, along with other information, at http://www.oebs.org. The Berkeley-based Chamber Symphony of the West performs a classical and baroque repertoire, often in conjunction with the San Francisco Choral Society and other area choruses, at the First Congregational Church, at 2345 Channing Way. The First Congregational Church also plays regular host to other top-notch regional ensembles, like San Franciscos noted Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (+1 415 252 1288, http://www.philharmonia.org) and the Sonos Handbell Ensemble (+1 510 531 4780, http://www.sonos.org).

The epicenter of the Period Instrument movement is in North Berkeley: MusicSources (the Center for Historically Informed Performances) publishes several books a year (a recent title: Domenico Scarlatti Thematic Index) and, of greater interest to the average music enthusiast, puts on a series of concerts highlighting period instruments and performance styles. MusicSources is located at 1000 The Alameda. (+1 510 528 1685. http://www.sfems.org/musicsources) A number of other chamber performances and recitals are held throughout the week at Berkeley venues such as the Berkeley Piano Club (+1 510 843 6003), Universalist Church of Berkeley (+1 510 525 0302), and the Crowden School (+1 510 644 2299).

JAZZ, ROCK, AND FOLK

The place for jazz in the East Bay - and, in fact in the BayArea - is Yoshis, in Jack London Square in Oakland. The one club to consistently book top-drawer East Coast talent like Joshua Redman, McCoy Tyner, and Arturo Sandoval, Yoshis may also be the only jazz club in the country where you can have sushi served at your table.

The spring and fall San Francisco Jazz Festival has discovered Oaklands Paramount Theater, the perfect Jazz Age venue for larger ensembles with flashier staging. The SFJF draws jazz luminaries from across the country and around the world. Emeryvilles Kimballs East features soul-jazz, R& B and blues legends like Bobby Blue Bland, Jimmy McGriff and Nancy Wilson. Grittier Oakland blues can be dug at Elis Mile High Club. The Ivy Room (in Albany, just to the north of Berkeley) also books great local blues talent. Jazzschool and Jupiter are the downtown Berkeley jazz clubs, packed on weekends. Jupiter, with its garden court, is particularly popular on summer and late autumn evenings.

Berkeley has long been a mecca for folkies: In West Berkeley, The Starry Plough and the Freight and Salvage are two fine, woody clubs featuring acoustic talent from around the country. Ashkenaz, nearby on San Pablo Avenue goes a bit more in the folk-rock direction, while Blakes, on Telegraph, offers the full range of rock, jazz-rock, and folk-rock. La Pena Cultural Center books an eclectic mix of Latin rhythms, blues, and uncategorizable but always danceable sounds from all over the world. Theres plenty of space to get up and salsa/boogie/watusi, and the La Pena kitchen fuels your fun.

Rock headliners play the Berkeley Community Theater and, sometimes, the Greek Theater. Acts on the scale of the Rolling Stones play in the Oakland Coliseum.

THEATER
The award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theatre (or Berkeley Rep, as its commonly known) is in the opinion of many critics the finest theater company in the Bay Areasome feel the best outside of New York. Since 1968, the Rep has been rewarding audiences with challenging, contemporary drama, and has become possibly the largest performing arts organization in Northern California. The theater is at 2025 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley.

Other, smaller ensembles round out the Berkeley theater scene: in North Berkeley, the Actors Ensemble Theater plays at the Live Oak Park Theater; the Aurora Theaters polished productions regularly sell out the Aurora Theater in the dowdy Berkeley City Club'the Aurora plans to move to a new theater of their own at 2071 Addison, near the Berkeley Rep, for the 2001-2002 season; newcomer TheaterFirsts recent stagings of Death and the Maiden and The Ladies of the Camellias have drawn good notices at the Julia Morgan Theater in the Elmwood; and the scrappy Shotgun Players have moved their high-energy repertoire out of cramped LaVals Pizza and into new digs at Adeline and Alcatraz. U.C. Berkeleys Dramatic Arts Department stages student productions every year, as well. For more information, call +1 510 601 8932.

FILM
The Pacific Film Archive, at the Berkeley Art Museum on Bancroft, puts together often obscure but unfailingly riveting programs at their 234-seat theater. Its a shrine to the film arts, and has a great little cafe to boot. Down the street, the UC Theater is a revival houses revival house. One screen, 1,300 seats, faded art deco flourishes - if only the sound system were better. Factoid: the UC (not connected with the university) showed the Rocky Horror Picture show every Saturday night for 25 years.

Berkeley is one city where downtown movie houses are thriving. The Fine Arts, the Act 1&2, the California, the Shattuck, and the UA Berkeley form a four-block, 25-screen phalanx, but its still not enough to keep shows from selling out. Quick and fun downtown eateries make it a great scene for a cheap date.

The Oaks and the Albany are reliable old favorites for North Berkeleyites. The first-and-a-half run Elmwood Cinema has slightly cheaper tickets for last months best movies with a dozen restaurants within a stones throw of it; and the Dolbyized neo-Deco Emery Bay 10, right off the freeway in nearby Emeryville, provides movie-goers with a mulitplex of dinner choices in the Emery Bay Markets international food court.