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Around Berkeley
🎹 The New Century Chamber Orchestra will be joined by SF Conservatory professor of piano Awadagin Pratt for a concert featuring Jessie Montgomery’s Grammy-winning Rounds. The program will be closed with Leonard Bernstein’s deeply lyrical Serenade, based on Plato’s Symposium, featuring the violin, strings and percussion. If you miss their performance in Berkeley, you have two more chances to hear them play this program in the Bay Area; there will be repeat performances over the weekend at the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park and the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco. Thursday, May 2, 7:30 p.m. First Congregational Church. $30-$70
🎸 East Bay blues harmonica ace Mark Hummel celebrates one of the greatest to ever pick up a harp with the James Cotton Blues Band at the Back Room featuring veteran guitarist Steve Freund (who played with Cotton for a dozen years), drummer June Core (another former Cotton-ite), and bassist Randy Bermudes. Friday, May 3, 8 p.m. The Back Room. $30
🌱 Ten Berkeley native gardens — located in everything from people’s homes to traffic circles, parking strips and even the Hillside Club — will open their doors and gates to the public as part of the annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour. Saturday, May 4, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Various locations. FREE (RSVP required)
📚 With the Berkeley Public Library’s celebration of “Star Wars: May the 4th be With You” and “National Free Comic Book Day” on Saturday, even the littlest adjunct professor can nurture their love of texts (and graphics). The daylong celebration includes a young readers and writers showcase, youth-oriented author talks, panel discussions, book signings, teens/YA programs, family reading activities, a book giveaway, arts and crafts and STEAM activities. The Family Day serves as an appetizer for the literary feast of the 10th Annual Bay Area Book Festival, which runs June 1-2 in various venues downtown. Events include talks by leading authors, conversations and a Writers’ Day outdoor fair and literary marketplace (Sunday only). Saturday, May 4, 11 a.m. -5 p.m. Central Library. FREE
✂️ Berkeley Commonplace, a nonprofit that aims to bring collaborative art projects and other creative activities to Bay Area residents, will host the premiere exhibition for Postal Collage Project No. 13 at the Berkeley Art Center. The exhibit features more than 200 collaborative collages by artists across 16 countries. A free book-making workshop is planned for 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on May 4, the opening day. Saturday, May 4, through Sunday, May 12. FREE
🎻 Cinematic universes collide at Ashkenaz with a May The Fourth Be With You dance-off pitting the padawans of Star Wars against the cadets of Star Trek in a square dance showdown featuring calling by Robin Fischer and Evie Ladin, complete with live old-time string band music. Saturday, May 4, 7:30 p.m. Ashkenaz. $15/$20
🎸 After wrapping up a sold-out two-month run as the band in the Shotgun Players production of Hedwig and The Angry Inch, the women of the powerhouse Oakland rock/funk band Skip the Needle return to their own music as Shelley Doty, Kofy Brown, Vicki Randall and Katie Cash build on a recent EP inspired by the iconic Black sci-fi writer Octavia Butler, Octavia of Earth, Volume 2. Saturday, May 4, 8 p.m. Freight & Salvage. $25-$30
🎹 The California Jazz Conservatory kicks off Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month with drum maestro Akira Tana and East Wind Blues featuring Kyoto-raised Takezo Takeda on trumpet and vocals, Sundra Manning on organ, Berkeley tenor sax great Bob Kenmotsu and various surprise guests. Saturday, May 4, 8 p.m. California Jazz Conservatory. $25
🇵🇪 Dedicated to the intoxicating Peruvian style of cumbia known as chicha, Cumbia Paradiso celebrates the release of the band’s first EP at the Starry Plough with drummer Axel Herrara, bassist Clayton Miller, percussionist David Eagle, keyboardist and saxophonist Leonard Sherman, vocalist Marcel Espina and guitarist Owen Otto. Saturday, May 4, 8 p.m. Starry Plough. $15-$20 (21+ after 10 p.m.)
🕯️ The city of Berkeley will sponsor a virtual, secular Holocaust Remembrance Day event. You’ll hear from a child Holocaust survivor, a Jewish history professor and a cello and bassoon duo. The event is held in partnership with the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay and Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay. Sunday, May 5, 2 to 3 p.m. Virtual. RSVP
🎻 San Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet, which rose to fame by winning the grand prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, is coming to Berkeley for a performance of Fanny Mendelssohn, Kenji Bunch and Antonin Dvorak. Tuesday, May 7, 7:30 p.m. Berkeley City Club (2nd floor). $17.50-$35 (RSVP)
🍄 In the latest installment of Berkeleyside’s Idea Makers series, Tovin Lapan, editor of East Bay Nosh, will discuss the landscape of alternative meats with guests Ricardo San Martin (Director of the Alt: Meat Lab at UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology) and Beth Zotter (CEO of Umaro Foods, which is exploring how to turn seaweed into “bacon). Then, The Oaklandside News Editor Darwin BondGraham will chat mushrooms with mycologist Alan Rockefeller and local mushroom forager Carrie Staller. Wednesday, May 8, 6:30 p.m. BAMPFA. $15-20 (RSVP)
🌹Get a head start on Mother’s Day planning. The city’s “Hats and High Tea” event, a celebration of women, will include live music, an afternoon tea party and other kid-friendly activities. Bring your fanciest hat! Saturday, May 11, 2 p.m.-5 p.m. Berkeley Rose Garden. FREE (RSVP)
🎤 Berkeley’s poet laureates will give a poetry reading and discuss their work. Read our stories about author, activist and poet Aya De León and high schooler Julia Segrè, Berkeley’s first-ever youth poet laureate. Berkeley Vice Youth Poet Laureate Serena Griffin will join them. (Note: this event was initially scheduled for Monday, April 22, and appeared in last week’s edition of The Scene but has been rescheduled.) Monday, May 13, 6 p.m. Central Branch, Berkeley Public Library (5th Floor). FREE
🧱 ACCI Gallery’s latest exhibit, Timeless Terrains, explores two mediums: paint and ceramics. The exhibit is open through May 19. FREE
Beyond Berkeley
🚲 East Bay Kidical Mass is a big group bike ride for kids and family members. “We choose an easy route that anyone can ride and ride as a pack for safety and fun,” its website says. This one will start at the Lake Merritt BART Plaza between Madison and Oak Streets and 7th and 8th streets and loop around Lake Merritt. Saturday, May 11, 10:30 a.m. (RSVP)
📷 NOTICE, an exhibit by 10 Oakland-based photographers and the Oakland Street Photography Collective will be displayed at the East Bay Photo Collective. Artists part of the exhibit include pablo circa and Demondre Ward (co-curators), Ariel Mason, Brandon Ruffin, Bradley Fowl, Elvin Catley, Kristian Salum, Najee Tobin, Rudi Cruz and Tarence Sang. The work by these photographers invites people to look up from their phones and pay closer attention to fleeting moments around them. The exhibit runs May 3 through June 23. Opening reception, Friday, May 3, 6-9 p.m., 312 8th Street, Oakland. FREE
🩰 The Oakland Ballet presents Lustig LIVE!, a program of four works celebrating Graham Lustig, the Oakland Ballet’s artistic director since 2010. The program includes the world premiere of Faun, inspired by the life and career of Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, where Graham Lustig will perform as the mature Nijinsky and three shorts: Uncertain Steps, created initially for the Introdans, a dance company based in the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands; Dialogues, about a woman who looks back at her life and past lovers; and Heartbreak Hotel inspired by the Californian invention of speed-dating and set to songs popularized by Elvis Presley. Friday, May 3, and Saturday, May 4, 7;30 p.m., Odell Johnson Performing Arts Center, Laney College, 900 Fallon Street, Oakland. $20-$100
🎞️ Journalist and filmmaker Cady Voge is screening her new documentary All We Carry. The event will be co-sponsored by the Kehilla Community Synagogue Immigration Committee and the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity. The documentary follows the three-year journey of a family fleeing Honduras, their months spent at an immigration detention center, and everything they endured while waiting for the asylum verdict. A panel discussion with the filmmakers and other community leaders will follow the screening. Saturday, May 4, 6:30 p.m., 1300 Grand Ave. Piedmont. $10-$20 suggested donation
📚“An exciting evening of literature and intellectual stimulation” is what to expect at this lit event with authors Dr. Darice Little Badger, a member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, and Tommy Orange, a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Both have new books: Sheine Lende, a prequel to Badger’s 2020 young adult novel Elatsoe, and Wandering Stars, a prequel and a sequel to Orange’s 2018 There There. Oakland Arts & Lectures was launched as part of the Activate Oaklang grant funding. Sunday, May 5, 3 p.m., Oakstop, 1723 Broadway, Oakland. FREE
💃 If you’re looking for a day party to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, look no further than the Chillonas party at FLUID510. The queer Latinx party is produced by local Drag Queens La Chucha, Sally Limon, and Jose Alejo. The day party features DJs Marv and La Hija del Volcán behind the turntables, go-go dancers, and artwork by La Chucha. The party will be hosted by drag queens Luke Modelo, Sicaria Contract Killa, and 2024 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Yosimar Reyes. Sunday, May 5, 5- 8 p.m. 1544 Broadway, Oakland. $10
If there’s an event you’d like us to consider for this roundup, email us at the-scene@berkeleyside.org. If there’s an event that you’d like to promote on our calendar, you can use the self-submission form on our events page.
The Oaklandside’s Arts and Community reporter Azucena Rasilla contributed reporting to this story.
