East Bay Express

The appears Nov. 3 at Hertz Hall in ’ Illuminations: “Fractured History” series with impeccable timing. Featuring the work of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, the prestigious string quartet presents an afternoon concert on the third day of Native Heritage Month. , an Emmy Award-winning classical music composer, is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma…

Read more the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com/american-indigenous-and-western-classical-music-blend-anew/ 🎼

Photos:
1) Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, photo by Shevaun Williams
2) The Dover Quartet, photo by Roy Cox

The Arab Film Festival is now one of four Arab Film and Media Institute pillars with a shared mission, “to enhance public understanding of Arab culture and provide insight into the beauty, complexity and diversity intrinsic to the Arab world.”

Whether immigration or refugee stories, the theme of migration—of people leaving home—is a prominent theme in this year’s festival…

Read more by about and this year’s Arab Film Festival, running now through Nov. 3, at the link in our IG stories. Or visit eastbayexpress.com. 🎞️ 🎥

Photos courtesy of :
1) “Hajjan”
2) “Baghdad Messi”
3) “From Ground Zero”

This week’s issue is here! Pick up a paper copy at stacks and boxes throughout Oakland and Berkeley. Or visit eastbayexpress.com.

What holds the future for music festivals? The founder of San Francisco’s Psyched! Radio, Guillermo Goyri, may have the answer. Psyched! Fest spreads over six days throughout San Francisco and the East Bay from Oct. 30-Nov. 4, hosting a total of 64 bands at indoor venues, clubs and bars. Ticket prices start at $15, making Psyched! Fest an inexpensive festival with incomparable variety…

Read more about at the link in our IG stories or visit eastbayexpress.com/psyched-fest-returns-to-the-bay-area/ 🎶🎸

Story and photos by
1)
2)

Oakland’s downtown has been slow to recover from the pandemic. Longterm restaurants such as Calavera, Luka’s Taproom and Parlour have closed. Before the Oakland Restaurant Marketing Collective (ORMC) officially formed this year, Nelson German and Luigi DiRuocco decided they wanted to take action. Both of their respective businesses—alaMar Dominican Kitchen and the Caffè by Mr. Espresso—have been affected by the lack of foot traffic. And in German’s case, by crime. Burglars broke into Alamar twice earlier this year in May, along with two Old Oakland restaurants, La Guerrera’s Kitchen and T’Chaka…

Read more from at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com/saving-our-dining-scene/ 🍽️

Photos courtesy of

Richmond-based artist Daniel “Attaboy” Seifert is fascinated by transition and transience. Both of these fascinations are expressed in his solo show, “Portal,” on view at San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery through December.

“If you look up at the stars, we are nothing. An atom on the back of nothing,” Seifert said in a phone interview. Paintings such as “Collision,” which depict asteroid-like rock formations floating in groupings, speak to his belief of the “beauty and wonderment” of our short time on Earth. In “Organica,” vividly colored mushrooms and flowers explode from an unknown source. In “Anthro Study 1,” a multifaceted being appears to reach for … a finger hold? The sun?

Read more at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com/attaboys-portal-into-nothing-and-everything/ 👀

Photos:
1-4) Courtesy of Daniel Attaboy Seifert/ and 111 Minna Gallery/
5) Attaboy with by Franklin Avery and Katy Castro
6) Annie Owens with by Franklin Avery and Katy Castro
7) Annie Owens with “Nocturne,” courtesy of Annie Owens

The songs on Chuck Prophet’s new release, “Wake the Dead,” underwent a long gestation period. He was getting ready to tour behind his last album, 2020’s “The Land That Time Forgot,” when he was told he had lymphoma.

While he recovered, listening to music kept him upbeat. “The Covid lockdown, and my treatment, afforded me time to really dig into the music,” Prophet said. “I kept returning to cumbia. It never failed to lift my spirits. It’s in the air outside all the taquerias in the Mission. I’m not qualified to go into the history of the music, but I dig it.”

Prophet discovered cumbia with the help of ¿Qiensave?, the band from Salinas that backs him up on “Wake the Dead”…

Read more at the link in our stories, visit eastbayexpress.com or pick up a paper copy for your weekend reading pleasure!

Photos by , courtesy of and

This week’s Social Eyes features our expertly curated live music, film and local theater events throughout the East Bay! 🎶 🎥 🎭

Including:
1) at on Friday. Photo by Maria del Rio
2) at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, c/o . Photo courtesy of MUMMENSCHANZ Foundation & Noe Flum
3) at on Sunday. Photo by BAS-BOGAERTS
4) at on Sunday. Photo by Bernadette Rose

This week’s issue is here! 🥳 Featuring Richmond artist , legendary Bay Area musician with , psyche-rock music festival and more… 🖼️🎶🎸

Cover photo by Franklin Avery & Katy Castro; design by Danilo Design Group

The bloodline of a fish is a dark red muscle that runs along the animal’s spine. In the fine-dining kitchens where Chef Tu David Phu began his professional career, he was taught to throw the bloodline away. But at his parents’ house, his family kept it. In his new cookbook, “The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quốc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between,” co-written by Soleil Ho, Phu connects his own life to a recipe for tuna bloodline tartare. He writes, “As a chef, the dream is to have at least one dish in your repertoire that can tell your whole story in just a few bites.”

Read more by on and his cookbook with at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com!

Photo by Micah Diele Photography

The November 2024 ballot includes the presidential contest, a U.S. Senate race, U.S. House races, State Senate and Assembly races, and nine state ballot measures. But local elections are also in play. Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond are all electing multiple city councilmembers and one mayor this fall.

Read more at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com. 🇺🇸

Photo by Alan Mazzocco/Shutterstock

Katsy Pline is the name songwriter Evie Brown chose when she started putting music online. “It started out as a joke on my page,” Brown said. “I grew up listening to Tammy Wynette, Skeeter Davis and Patsy Cline. I didn’t want to put my real identity out on the net, so I made up a name that would hint at the kind of music I was aiming for.”

Brown went on to describe her music style and influences. “Gram Parsons described his sound as Cosmic American Music,” she said. “It was a blend of folk, rock, soul, country and R&B. I was already composing music with sounds based on the experimental music I was hearing in San Francisco. I wanted to make music that was strange and otherworldly, but still grounded in country and Americana...”

Read more about at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com. 🎶

Photo by Nathan Kosta /

When Kedrick Armstrong steps up to the podium Oct. 18 at the Paramount Theatre as the Oakland Symphony’s ninth music director, he will be aware of but also liberated by the position’s inherent blessings and burdens. In the light of his exuberant enthusiasm, such things as monumental, weighty legacies bestowed by his predecessors—the beloved late Michael Morgan and the orchestra’s first African-American music director, Calvin Simmons, among others—become buoyant platforms from which he springs into his first season...

Read more about and at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com. 🎼

Photos by

New issue out today includes our local Voters’ Guide! But also other non-election stuff like new music from , ‘s new music director, ‘s new cookbook, and more. Pick up a paper copy or visit eastbayexpress.com. 🇺🇸❤️🤍💙

Fae Nageon de Lestang and Grant McLeod, the duo that performs as Animal Prince, met at a jam session in Gainesville, Florida. “I was playing violin in the University [of Florida] symphony orchestra, but I liked all kinds of music,” Nageon de Lestang said. “I complimented Grant’s playing, and we became friends. He was playing drums in a band called Flat Land and asked me to sit in. I soon joined the group. The music, and our relationship, grew from there.”

Read more about at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com/animal-prince-envisions-a-better-future/ 🎶

Photos by Cayce Clifford

Brian Molyneaux cannot stop taking photographs of strangers.

The compulsion took root in an Oakland Whole Foods in 2016. Molyneaux saw someone standing in the store’s floral department with a box cutter, posed with a gravity akin to the Statue of Liberty, and asked to take his photograph.

The next day, Molyneaux took his curiosity further. He came up with a goal: photograph one person on the street, every day, in 24 frames or less—an old habit from his film days when a roll only provided 24 or 36 photos. What started as a half-hearted commitment bloomed into a six-month challenge, then a year-long one and eventually more than eight years of dedicated portraiture work. Other photographers, he says, called him crazy. To Molyneaux, it was only natural...

Read more from .plachy.writes about at the link in our stories. Pick up a paper copy (this issue on stands until Wednesday!) or visit eastbayexpress.com. 📸

Photos by

New issue out today! 🎊 Pick up a paper copy or visit eastbayexpress.com.

Cover photos by
Cover design by .design

Berkeley Rep’s “Mexodus” blazes an indelible trail across and beyond the Peet’s Theatre stage. Its illuminating history is ignited by the searing energy of Nygel D. Robinson and Brian Quijada. The dynamic playwright/performer duo anchoring the two-person cast infuses the 100-minute, live-looped, multicultural musical created in real time with hip-hop, reggae, African-American spirituals, freedom and work songs, Mexican ranchera, bolero and more. Triangulating three century-spanning, profound stories, Associate Artistic Director David Mendizábal, also the costume designer, delivers taut direction that never leaves loose ends hanging…

Read more at eastbayexpress.com!

Photo by , courtesy of

Understory, a worker-owned collective on Eighth Street, closed its Oakland location at the end of June. The owners have yet to announce a reopening date elsewhere, but their progressive approach to running a kitchen and dining room lives on. Three new concepts opened in the space on Sept. 7. Café con Cariño, That Hausa Vegan and ASÚKAR are all part of Oakland Bloom’s restaurant incubator, Open Test Kitchen (OTK).

Read more about at the link in our stories, pick up this week’s paper copy or visit eastbayexpress.com!

Photos courtesy of
Story by

The new album from London’s Ibibio Sound Machine is titled “Pull the Rope.” The band blends styles from Nigeria and West Africa with jazz, rock, EDM, funk and R&B. This time out, the band leaned more heavily into studio effects to expand their sound.

will play TODAY—Friday, Oct. 4, at the Festival, in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Admission is free.

Read more at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com! 🎶

Photos by Matilda Hill-Jenkins

New issue out today! 🎊

COVER: “Mexodus” photos by Ben Krantz Studio/Berkeley Repertory Theatre; design by .design

Berkeley has a well-known, successful cultural and arts district downtown, which includes multiple theaters, performance spaces and museums.

But artists and cultural organizations in West Berkeley, along the San Pablo corridor and adjacent to North Oakland and Emeryville, have discussed for years the possibility of becoming officially recognized as another one. Now, that possibility may be moving closer to becoming a reality…

Read more at the link in our stories! Or visit https://eastbayexpress.com/connecting-the-arts-dots-in-berkeley/

Photos by :
1) One of three murals being installed along San Pablo Avenue, ‘t.w.five,’ is part of the Kala Art Institute Print Public project.
2) Susan O’Malley’s ‘Less Internet More Love’ mural, located at Bob McGee’s Machining Co. in Berkeley, is from the series ‘Advice From My 80-Year-Old Self.’

Since coming to fruition in 2009, CNIP has helped food-insecure families work towards being food secure. However, the market match program was slated for removal from Gov. Newsom’s January budget until supporters of the program petitioned, rallied and fought to save the program...

Read more at the link in our stories or visit eastbayexpress.com.

Words and photos by .
Pictured: Lorenzo Crocket, assistant market manager