Cy and David’s Picks: Musical Notes from Native California, Trance Blues, and Bell X1’s High-Flying Pop – KQED

KQEDs Cy Musiker and David Wiegand share their picks for great events around the Bay Area this week.

The list is long this week for amazing stuff we couldnt fit in the show. Yiddish songbird Heather Klein premieres her new onewomanmusical, Shanghai Angel, about her grandmothers emigration from Austria to Shanghai to America through Angel Island. Its Feb. 26at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.Naatak opensthe very timely playAirport Insecurity, a Trump-esquetale of an Indian techie stuck at an airport in immigration limbo. Itsat the Cubberley Community Centerin Palo Alto, running Feb. 24-March 4. And for the ultimate in cool and classical, Mason Bates DJs and directs one of his Mercury Soul shows on Feb. 24, called Baroque & Beats at the DNA Lounge. Now for the show.

Feb. 2425: Otis Taylors new album, Fantasizing about Being Black, is about the history of the African American experience, from the slave ships to the Mississippi Delta, and the blues music that was born of those influences. Taylor has always recognized thatthe blues are a form of protest music, and theres plenty of comment here on the racism that endures in America today. Hes got a great band, too, withAnne Harris on violin. Details for his two shows at Biscuits and Blues are here.

Feb. 28May 29: The French painter Claude Monet is most famous for hishuge water lily paintings, done late in life. But we get a new perspective on the French artist in a show coming to the Legion of Honor called Monet: the Early Years,with 60 paintings demonstrating a period in the mid-19th century when the artist was part of a generation re-inventing painting. I didnt become an impressionist, the catalog quotes Monet. As long as I can remember I always have been one. He was always, as well, a master of color and a lover of landscapes. What a treat to see this first major U.S. exhibition devoted to Monets early works. Details for the show are here.

Feb. 24: The Oakland Symphony is presenting its annual concert celebrating world music traditions, and this year Conductor Michael Morgan sticks close to home with a program called Notes from Native California. Among the pieces is Big Sur: The Night Sun, by John Wineglass, featuring the voice of Ohlone/Chumash singer Kanyon Sayers-Roods, whose amazing soprano voice I first heard a few weeks ago at the Intertribal Friendship Housein Oakland. Sayers-Roods told me she makes up her own songs, and quotes her mom on how theyre not traditional, but still authentic. My mother goes, That is spirit. Those are our ancestors speaking through you. That is your culture being awakened. That is truth,' Sayers-Roods said. Because my mother and my grandmother have always shared a quote, When song, ceremony and dance stop, so does the earth, and I too believe that. Shes just one of the highlights for a concert that also features Shostakovitchs NinthSymphony. Details here.

Feb. 24March 3: Theres acategory called CNN Opera, describing a musical about a modern political event or movement. Think The Death of Klinghoffer by John Adams and Alice Goodman, or The Life and Times of Malcolm X by Anthony Davis. Now added to that list is The Source, from 2016, about soldier Chelsea Mannings decision to disclose hundreds of thousands of classified and sensitive documents to WikiLeaks, her courtmartial, and her sex reassignment surgery.Composer Ted Hearne, who teaches composition at U.S.C., and librettist Mark Doten have created a kind of pop collage out of vocal, instrumental, and recorded sounds sung by a group of vocalists using a lot of autotune. The story is all the more compelling after former President Barack Obamas pardoning of Manning. Details for the show at the San Francisco Opera Lab are here.

Feb. 28:The Bell X-1 was the first plane to break the sound barrier, and the name also inspired a group ofyoung rockers from Ireland. Bell X1 make lovely danceable pop and gorgeous ballads. They write smart lyrics, mixing the personal with the political on song like Sons and Daughters, asking future generations for forgiveness for the mistakes of the present and on The End is Nigh, they ask Will the wrong guy get the codes, which seems an apt question for Europeans worried about our election of President Donald Trump. San Francisco isthe last stop on a short U.S. Tour for the Bell X1, before they return to their home base in Dublin, Ireland. Details for their show at The Chapel in San Francisco are here.

Feb. 28March 2: We squeezed in a pair of shoutouts as well. David picked former Bay Area resident Bill Hayes, who returns to read from his new memoir Insomniac City, focusing on his love affair with both New York City and the late author and psychiatrist Oliver Sacks. Hayes reads at Mrs. Dalloways in Berkeley on Feb. 28, at Rakestraw Books in Danville on March 1, and Book Passage in San Francisco on March 2. Details for all appearances are here.

Feb 2526: And I championthe Villalobos Brothers, a marvelous band of violinists playing jazz and Mexican roots music. Theyre part of San Jose Jazz Winter Fest on Feb. 25, and at Freight & Salvage on Feb. 26. Details here.

Cy Musiker co-hosts The Do List and covers the arts for KQED News and The California Report. He loves live performance, especially great theater, jazz, roots music, anything by Mahler. Cy has an MJ from UC Berkeley's School of Journalism, and got his BA from Hampshire College. His work has been recognized by the Society for Professional Journalists with their Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service in Journalism. When he can, Cy likes to swim in Tomales Bay, run with his dog in the East Bay Hills, and hike the Sierra.

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Cy and David's Picks: Musical Notes from Native California, Trance Blues, and Bell X1's High-Flying Pop - KQED