Side by side with Duke, a model for learning
On the way from the Greek Theatre to dinner after the Sunday, Sept. 23, tribute to Duke Ellington concert by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, composer John Adams shared a morsel, prefaced with a typically generous remark: Ellington, he said, was the “greatest American composer. Hands down.”
Adams’ grandfather had owned Irwin’s Gardens, a dance hall in Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H., he said. And sometimes Ellington would play with his band there. “So when I was a kid, two times I got to sit on the piano bench next to Duke Ellington while he played.”
It’s possible, he also said (without using this dopey metaphor) that you can hear Ellington atoms in Adams molecules. The recollection was shared quickly, informally but with the zest of someone awestruck that such a thing had occurred.
It was particularly fitting at this Gala at the Greek, which was raising money for Cal Performances educational programs. At the reception before the concert, Raphaella Brown, violinist and senior at Oakland School for the Arts and one of Cal Performances’ student ambassadors, talked about the program’s putting together opportunities for young people to attend professional performances, meet polished performers and learn from them.
The orchestra, of course, was led by jazz superstar Wynton Marsalis, with special guest Jon Batiste. (Batiste has many musical credentials, but it was the mention of his nightly gig on the staunchly progressive “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” that got an audible murmur of appreciation from the Berkeley audience.) The Greek was crowded, the music irresistible, and tiers of jazz fans nodded their heads, wiggled their fingers and jiggled their feet, not only to keep time with the music but also to keep warm. UC President Janet Napolitano and UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, sitting side by side, looked like they were down with the music (and happy to be in a controversy-free zone).
After the show, guests went backstage to dinner by Taste Catering — every gala planner should schedule in late summer in homage to tomato salad — and wine by Mt. Beautiful Wines. Gala co-chairs Helen Meyer, Maris
Meyerson and Sara Wilson had arranged pashminas to augment the heat lamps; the meal was good, and the fundraising pitch raised about $250,000.
P.S.: Cal Performances’ Award of Distinction was given to former executive and Artistic Director Matías Tarnopolsky, who left in early summer to become president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He misses the California air, he said, but “I get to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra every day, and that’s a dream come true.”
At his June goodbye party, Cal Performances board stalwarts Meyer and Susan Graham had presented Tarnopolsky with a Selmer 1010 clarinet he’d longed for. How’s the practicing going? “It’s occasional,” he said, looking like a teenager whose mom had asked exactly that question. “But every minute counts.”
Catherine Stefani, who was appointed supervisor in January when District Two Supe Mark Farrell left to become mayor, is up for re-election in November. At Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Women’s Lunch the other day, Stefani mentioned that her husband, Chris Bankovitch, was delivering signs to a supporter’s home last week when he fell and broke his leg. Standing by one’s woman, in some cases, makes sitting by one’s woman necessary.
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Have you read ‘The Community Manifesto’ yet? Oh, my God.” Female student to male student in black mask, overheard on Sproul Plaza by Allen Matthews
Way on top of the Salesforce Tower on Tuesday, Sept. 25, Marc Benioff was hosting a party for the movers and shakers, the best and the brightest, a mix of San Francisco officials, moguls and tech glitterati.
The city had been soaked in Salesforce since the closing of Howard Street the week before, but Tuesday’s bombshell news about the cracked beam that forced the closing of the Transbay Transit Center seemed to have eclipsed this week’s images of the streets crowded with blue-lanyard-wearing Dreamforce attendees.
San Franciscans were abuzz about the structural flaw — especially after reports about the problems of the Millennium Tower next door — but maybe bad news doesn’t float upward. One party attendee chatted with a group of guests who had no idea that the terminal had been closed, the traffic was chaotic and that, literally, the foundations of our shining new concrete city were in trouble.