Last week, we talked about Fog Design + Art, the art fair opening today (Jan. 12) at Fort Mason, but we neglected another gathering of galleries: Untitled, San Francisco at Pier 70 in the Dogpatch, a new outpost for an art fair out of Miami Beach. Perhaps the competition will make them both better, and the art more affordable (not likely). Now here’s the show:
Jan. 13: Brahms’ German Requiem is a gorgeous expression of the joy that can come after great sorrow. The student musicians from the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts have every right to those emotions, after the death of junior and chorus member Draven McGill and alum Johnny Igaz in the Ghost Ship fire in December. The performance at the Calvary Presyterian Church in San Francisco is dedicated to the two young men. Details here.
Jan. 19–Feb. 19: Berkeley playwright Aaron Loeb (Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party) wrote Ideation a few years ago while working with consultants in his day job as a video game executive, and while his wife led a civil suit against the former defense minister of Somalia. Ideation melds those elements into a show that will seem very familiar at first to anyone who works in a modern office — with tightly wound corporate types outlining strategies on a white board — except they’re plotting something very creepy, reminiscent of a police state. It’s good to see this show get a fresh production in Silicon Valley, where companies sometimes help foreign governments do not-so-nice things like spy on dissidents. Details for Ideation’s run at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose are here.
Jan. 19: Glasgow-based Mogwai makes trance-like prog rock, and the band’s new album, Atomic, serves a double mission: it’s also the soundtrack to the British documentary Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise, about the prospect of nuclear warfare. Band member Stuart Braithwaite says Mogwai has been wanting to make music about the threat of nuclear annihilation ever since visiting Hiroshima some years ago. Mogwai is showing the film and doing the live soundtrack on its current tour; perhaps our President-elect should see the film before tweeting about the need for a new arms race. Details for Mogwai’s show at the UC Theatre in Berkeley are here.
