Writing a new musical chapter
Robert Cole, the tireless impresario and musician who raised Berkeley’s Cal Performances to international prominence during his productive 2½ decades there, helped bring early music to the fore in 1990 when he started the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, a biennial celebration that draws artists, scholars, instrument makers and fans.
When Cole left the helm of Cal Performances in 2010, he took a hiatus from the Berkeley festival while he conducted orchestras around the world and programmed the debut season of Sonoma State’s Green Music Center. He returned to direct the festivals in 2014 and ’16 (for no pay) and booked the 2018 early-music extravaganza, which runs June 3-11 at two resonant Berkeley churches. The music, played on period instruments, will stretch from the early Middle Ages to the Romantic era.
Cole is stepping down afterward, but not retiring — a concept that doesn’t click with the 87-year-old producer. He’s been woodshedding hours a day on his clarinet and viola, which he hadn’t played much in ages until about a year ago. He aims to play well enough again to perform chamber music out in the world.
“I’m trying to get back there. It’s a struggle, but it’s coming back,” says Cole, a modest gent who sometimes plays viola with the Berkeley Baroque Strings and is getting his clarinet embouchure in shape.
“I’ve really gotten into it, sort of obsessively. I just appreciate the sound more. I’m trying to whip up my chops. I’m very serious about this. And it’s very invigorating,” adds Cole, speaking by phone from the Berkeley home he shares with his wife, jazz pianist and California Jazz Conservatory founding President Susan Muscarella.
“I’ve never found anything as interesting as work, and my work is music. I feel very lucky. I’m not retiring, just moving over. I’m working just as seriously as I did when I was a kid. I’m just not satisfied being an amateur musician.”
Cole will have more time to practice after the festival, which offers a mix of top international, national and Bay Area talent and bright young ensembles.
The concerts include programs with piquant titles like “Nasty Women — French Baroque Cantatas of Retribution,” “Two Baroque Girls,” and “Monks Singing Pagans — Medieval songs of heroes, gods and strong women,” the last performed by the famed Paris ensemble Sequential in its festival debut.
“I reach out to people around the world and locally, they come up with suggestions and I go with the ones that sound the most interesting and are viable,” explains Cole, who calls early music “a growth industry.”
Among other things, he’s keen to hear musicians from the Valley of the Moon Festival playing music by Schubert and Schumann on instruments for which they were written. Co-director Eric Zivian plays Schumann’s Piano Quintet on his 1841 Viennese fortepiano.
With the fortepiano, “it’s a fair fight with the string quartet,” Cole says. “You can hear both. With a modern piano, the strings don’t have a chance.”
For more information, go to www.berkeleyfestival.org.
Music at Montalvo
Guitarist Leo Kottke, rocker Jim Messina, singer-songwriter Kate Edmonson, the jazz fusion-playing Yellowjackets and the Irish/bluegrass band We Banjo 3 are among the artists booked for the Carriage House Theatre Concert Series at Montalvo in Saratoga, organizers announced.
The concert series opens Oct. 14 with Hawaiian slack key guitarists Led Kaapana and Mike Kaawa.
For more information, go to www.montalvoarts.org.
San Jose Jazz
The 29th annual San Jose Summer Jazz Fest serves up 120-plus performances on 12 stages in and around Plaza de César Chavez from Aug. 10 to 12, with headliners including Lalah Hathaway, Booker T.’s Stax Revue doing “A Journey Through Soul, Blues & R&B,” Kool & the Gang, and alto saxophonist Vincent Herring’s big band doing “Story of Jazz: 100 years,” sung and narrated by Bay Area stalwart Nicolas Bearde.
Also on the bill are singer Jane Monheit, pianist Marcus Roberts, Argentina’s Tango Jazz Quartet, Ghanaian saxophonist Steve Bedi and Spain’s Moisés P. Sánchez Quartet.
For more information, go to www.summerfest.sanjosejazz.org.
Afro-Latin roots
The first Afro-Latinx Festival, celebrating “the creative feats of Latin American musical traditions rooted in the African diaspora,” launches Saturday, May 19, at San Francisco’s Bayview Opera House. The performers include star Cuban jazz pianist Chuchito Valdez, playing new songs melding ancient Yoruban and contemporary elements; Cuban-born Roberto Borrell’s bata drum ensemble; Mexicanborn local rapper Gina Madrid’s band; and the AfroPeruvian drum ensemble from Willie Brown Middle School.
For more information, go to www.bvoh.org.