259 stories by "CHLOE VELTMAN"
My second annual trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival kicked off last night after a seven-hour drive from San Francisco with The White Snake, a world premiere re-telling of an ancient Chi…
All around me I'm seeing signs of a society that's becoming more artistically participatory.Yes, we're still by and large a culture that pays to enjoy the experience of passively watching "r…
I think it's going to take me quite a while to unpack the events of the past few days. I'll make a start now, at any rate.It all began on Friday evening with the "graduation" ceremony and di…
The one downside to being an arts critic / reporter is that you're not supposed to leave performances before the curtain comes down.I completely understand this rationale: A review or featur…
Jenny Bilfied talks through the Bing plans.Yesterday, Stanford University held a media reception and briefing to unveil its 2012-2013 season plans. The news was worthy of attention. But the …
The words theatre and magic are often seen in the same sentence, even though the two genres place very different demands upon audiences' understanding of reality that are often difficult to …
There are times when it's good to go into a cultural happening with a strong sense of what one's letting oneself in for and there are times when a lack of knowledge provides the best possibl…
Carey Perloff's surprisingly astute production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame (or Fin De Partie in the original French) at the American Conservatory Theater ended with a game-like coda last nig…
A visit to the Brick and Mortar Music Hall in San Francisco a couple of nights ago provided some hints at the sorts of things that concertgoers will and will not tolerate. I asked a bu…
A weekend of musical adventures in the Bay Area. Some quick thoughts about a few things I came across...1) Berkeley Symphony Gala: The best one I've attended yet. The reason? The Symphony co…
Wednesday night saw the inauguration of VoiceBox's live event series.I am choosing to call it the inauguration of a series because it came off stupendously well and I am gagging to this agai…
One of the things that the a cappella world prides itself on is how stylistically all-encompassing its remit is. In a cappella concerts and competitions, anything (supposedly) goes, from bar…
The Kronos Quartet rounded out its year-long residency at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this weekend with a concert featuring the music of a bunch of incredible women compo…
It was few months ago that I first heard about The Frost Amphitheatre. If I hadn't been told about this outdoor concert venue smack bang in the middle of the Stanford campus, I would have ne…
Douglas von Blumenthal, a radiologist who listens to VoiceBox, my weekly public radio and podcast series about the human voice, was inspired to share his interesting ideas about simultaneous…
A work of art that evokes a sense of place can be a powerful thing. It brings up all kinds of memories and yearnings. Dickens was good at it and JMW Turner, but its' not an easy goal to achi…
No arts organization can or should live forever, no matter how revered and well-funded it might be.Stil, the possible demise of an amateur wind ensemble (which used to give public performanc…
I often hear people in this country complaining about how pointless the standing ovation has become in a performance setting. Here in the States, an artist need only walk on stage, belch, an…
Interactivity is so much the rage these days both in journalism and in the arts that it's starting to make things like the business of going to see a traditional play or ballet look really o…
The Kitchen Sisters " a.k.a. National Public Radio producers Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva -- tell extraordinary stories about ordinary people.Thousands of listeners have tuned in over the ye…
Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of cultural life in San Francisco at the present time is how Pop-Up Magazine manages to sell out Davies Symphony Hall, one of the city's biggest venues …
Caught Annie Baker's subtle play about modern manhood, The Aliens, in a beautifully crafted production at SF Playhouse over the weekend.Forgive the concision of this blog post, but I'm dog-t…
One of the best things about being a John S Knight Fellow at Stanford is that when a line of thinking tugs at you and you're struggling to reel it in, all you have to do is put the word out …
If the music I heard at the Fifth Annual Switchboard Music Festival can be used as a gauge of the state of contemporary composition today, I would have to say that contemporary music is a lo…
