May & June 2026

NAT SEELEN and VERETSKI PASS

Saturday, May 16

Extraordinary Klezmer, Eastern European, and original music from these masters of the art. Nat Seelen is a brilliant clarinetist, teacher, composer and performer, and founder of the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music. Veretski Pass–Cookie Segelstein, Joshua Horowitz and Stewart Brotman–perform, teach, research and develop music from the Carpathian Mountains and beyond. Don’t miss this rare confluence of international musicians, and the opportunity to journey well beyond the flatlands of Berkeley. Want to go right now? Listen here and here.

Make reservations here.

HARD DRIVE

Saturday, June 13  door opens at 7, music at 7:30

Hard Drive–a serious, modern / traditional, authentic bluegrass collective: Tatiana Hargreaves, fiddle; Aaron Tacke, banjo; Sonya Badigian, guitar; and Nokosee Fields, bass. You want some major-league roots music? Come on by!

From brother duets to blistering fiddle tunes, Hard Drive reaches deeply into the world of old-time, country, and bluegrass music. The Bluegrass Situation says, “a delightful subversion of our expectations of what traditional bluegrass is supposed to be.” Hard Drive serves up “high-octane bluegrass old-time style, delivered with deep intuitive insight, manic exploratory zeal and seriously powerhouse instrumental (and vocal) chops–but also, importantly, with an abundant and overwhelming sense of fun.” [Folk Radio UK]. They float gently around a Bermuda-Triangle-type space/time warp in central North Carolina, and they’re expanding at the approximate speed of the universe. Listen to some tunes here.

Reservations

AGAVE

Sunday, June 14th, 7:30pm

Join GRAMMY-nominated AGAVE for Smash Hits of the ’80s and ’90s.  We all love the ’80s, right? Big hair, flashy clothes, and all the hottest dance moves… We’re talking the 1680s, of course, and the big hair was usually a powdered wig. But the music was just as totally awesome! AGAVE, an “energized, free-spirited…group of Californian Virtuosi” (Early Music America) presents a program of some of the biggest hits of two decades that changed baroque music, from a rocking four part sonata by Corelli, to the brilliant songbird Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, the dazzling dance rhythms of Purcell, and the mind-blowing creativity and virtuosity of Georg Muffat and Heinrich Biber.

Program:
Nuns Just Wanna Have Fun (Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704), Sonata Quarta, Op. 16 #4)
Songbird (Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729), Trio Sonata No. 3 in D major)
Grunge Metal (Georg Muffat (1653-1704), Sonata No. 2 from Armonico Tributo, ‘Dolce Somnium’)
Stadium Rock (Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), Sonata a Quattro, WoO 4)
Let’s Dance (Henry Purcell (1659-1695), Three Parts Upon a Ground)
Heavy Metal (Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704), Harmonia artificioso-ariosa, Partia I)

AGAVE is:
Aaron Westman, Anna Washburn, and Katherine Kyme, violins
Katherine Kyme, viola
William Skeen, viola da gamba
Henry Lebedinsky, harpsichord
Kevin Cooper, theorbo and guitar

This concert is presented as part of the Berkeley Early Music Festival “Fringe”. Find out more about the festival here.

Reservations