Arts & culture, Campus & community, Events at Berkeley, Performing arts

Berkeley Talks: Cal Performances announces its 2019-20 season

Associate director Rob Bailis and KQED reporter Cy Musiker discuss upcoming performances


Read the transcript.

Subscribe to Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley.

Rob Bailis and Cy Musiker on stage talking

Rob Bailis (left) and Cy Musiker (Photo by Eli Zaturanski)

On Thursday, April 18, 2019, Cal Performances’ board of trustees co-chairs Helen Meyer and Susan Graham, and executive and artistic director Jeremy Geffen, announced the organization’s 2019-20 season, programmed by associate director Rob Bailis.

Hear Bailis in conversation about the season with Cy Musiker, a KQED radio news reporter, anchor and recently retired host of KQED’s weekly arts showThe Do List. Musiker is an alumnus of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Ballet dancers from Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo will perform March 14-15, 2020, in Zellerbach Hall. (Photo by Zoran Jelenic)

Cal Performances’ 2019-20 season showcases an exhilarating and expansive breadth of dance productions, from grand to intimate in scale, featuring a broad range of international performance traditions and starring renowned companies from the U.S. and abroad in Zellerbach Hall, widely considered the finest concert dance venue on the west coast; virtuoso soloists and conductors making their Cal Performances debuts; and immersion in key bodies of work by Beethoven, Bartók and Liszt.

Acrobats performing on stage

The Peking Acrobats will perform Nov. 29-Dec. 1, 2019, in Zellerbach Hall. (Photo by Tom Meinhold)

An interdisciplinary set of projects explores the artistic accomplishments of UC Berkeley faculty and alumni and Berkeley natives — with composers, scholars, writers, filmmakers and performers bringing new and recent work to campus. Dance and contemporary music ensembles perform Cal Performances co-commissioned work and the season concludes with a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission project staged in collaboration with lead commissioner Stanford Live. Artists and ensembles with meaningful, decades-long relationships with Cal Performances and Bay Area audiences return and master performers from across the globe travel to Zellerbach Hall for presentations that revive and refresh traditional and contemporary music and dance practices.

See all Berkeley Talks.

(Cal Performances video)