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Tad Malone on December 13, 2018
The South Bay’s jazz scene is one of the best in the Bay Area. That’s thanks in large part to San Jose Jazz. The organization hosts two seasonal soirees—Summer Fest and Winter Fest—and regularly puts on stellar shows at Café Stritch (another key to our region’s thriving jazz community).
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Yousif Kassab on December 13, 2018
When it comes to music, the very concept of a genre is polarizing. Some artists will bristle at any attempt to pin a label on their work; some will shrug off the practice of categorization as a meaningless but unavoidable convention of the industry; others still will actively tout their given tag,…
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Wallace Baine on December 13, 2018
In that very tiny village called Celebrities Everybody Loves (Bill Murray, Keanu Reeves, etc.), the immortal Willie Nelson is mayor. After a serious illness that sidelined him for a while, and a little campaigning for Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Willie is on the road again—this time with his family, including his wife,…
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Wallace Baine on December 13, 2018
There’s never a bad time to visit the historic California Theatre, one of downtown San Jose’s most beautiful buildings. But the best time might be during the holiday season. For the 14th straight year, the Symphony Silicon Valley Chorale—under the direction of Elena Sharkova and accompanied by a brass ensemble—will lead a…
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Wallace Baine on December 13, 2018
Conductor Barbara Day Turner and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra combine forces with the Choral Project, under the direction of Daniel Hughes, for this annual winter concert that explores the music of faiths and traditions from around the world. Among the goodies are the Basque carol Gabriel’s Message, Jaco Wong’s Behold the…
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Wallace Baine on December 13, 2018
The celebrated tenor quartet Il Divo is a great example of humankind’s desire to span cultural divides by (literally) singing from the same hymnal. The swoony foursome features a highly diverse cast, with singers from Spain, France, Switzerland and the U.S. The group, which expertly blends classical opera and pop, was the…
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Wallace Baine on December 13, 2018
Sure, you can listen to your neighbors’ off-key version of “We Three Kings” on your doorstep without leaving the house. But wouldn’t you rather get your holiday music fix from a Grammy-winning jazz legend? The great Dianne Reeves belongs in the lineage of Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and she’s been bringing…
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Thanks to Gary Singh for pointing me to the Peace Center on Seventh Street on a recent Wednesday night. There was a talk by a witness to the storied Refugee Caravan that night. I had seen a poster, which was subsequently torn down. As luck would have it, however, I spotted Gary…
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Mike Huguenor on December 5, 2018
One of the best bands to come from indie rock’s late ’90s-early ’00s golden age, Pinback inspired a generation of musicians to stray from chords, distortion and just about every other standard rock trope. When bands like Franz Ferdinand and Yeah Yeah Yeahs went for angularity, Pinback went for the gracefully slanted.…
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Tad Malone on December 5, 2018
What started in 1991 as a small acoustic-only offering by a local radio station has grown over the decades into an alternative rock spectacular. ALT 105’s annual one-day winter show Not So Silent Night features the biggest names in rock and its various sects, and this year’s show at the SAP Center…
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