Varied lineup for Silicon Valley Music Festival
After living in New York for seven years, Silicon Valley Music Festival founder
Ray Furuta is back in San Jose and excited about the festival’s fifth anniversary season, a fourday chamber music event that kicks off Wednesday.
“It will be the first season that I’ve been in the area full time, and for the first time, I feel that we have begun to truly contribute to the cultural life and vibrancy of San Jose and Silicon Valley,” Furuta said.
There’s quite a varied lineup for the festival, which is presented by Chamber Music Silicon Valley and runs through Saturday at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara. Wednesday’s opening night event, “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” features opera singer Malinda Haslett performing from the Great American Songbook and is already at capacity.
There still are tickets available for the remainder of the performances, which include a look at French Impressionism’s influence on composers, the work of composer Erich Korngold and a celebration of Ludwig von Beethoven. Learn
more about the programs or get tickets at www. cmsv.org. LOS GATOS SOUNDS: This may shock people who think of Los Gatos as merely an obstacle course on their way to Santa Cruz, but there’s some very good reasons to hang out in the Town of the Cats. Ron Simner, Paul
Kent and Scott Canali took over as producers of Los Gatos Music in the Park this year, and kicked off the free Sunday concert series last weekend with
Mustache Harbor playing soft rock on the Civic Center Lawn. Entourage performs at 5 p.m. Sunday, and the series runs through Sept. 3, when the festivities move to Oak Meadow Park for a dance party featuring the Houserockers. The whole lineup is available at www.lgmip.com.
And Los Gatos Music and Arts kicks off the Wednesday evening Jazz on the Plazz series this week with Duchess , a New York-based vocal trio. The weekly 6:30 p.m. concerts at the Los Gatos Town Plaza are paying tribute to Duke Ellington this summer and continue through Aug. 24. See the schedule at www.jazzontheplazz.com.
BARD ON THE RUN: It’s the final weekend to catch Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s al fresco production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” which director
Shannon DeMelo has restaged as a 1990s battle of the bands. There are four free performances left at Frank Bramhall Park in Willow Glen, with Thursday and Sunday starting at 7 p.m. and Friday and Saturday at 8.
And if you miss out this weekend, Silicon Valley Shakespeare is taking this show on the road, with performances planned for Sept. 9-8 at Central Park in San Mateo. Get more details at www.svshakespeare.org.
FACES OF THEATER: To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Theatre Bay Area hosted a fundraiser to honor artists and champions of the Bay Area theater scene, and there were many familiar names among the 40@40 Celebration honorees in San Francisco on Monday night.
Those with past or present South ties included
Randall King (San Jose Stage), Timothy Near (San Jose Rep), Robert
Kelley (TheatreWorks), Elisa Marina Alvarado (Teatro Visión) and Luis Valdez (El Teatro Campesino).