Kids Around the Bay

A Richmond Arts Center Keeps Truckin'

The East Bay Center for the Performing Arts (EBCPA) was established in Richmond following the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. In the years since it has evolved from a modest music school to a fortress of creativity and hope in the city’s Iron Triangle neighborhood — which has a population of 20,000 and is formed by the various railways tracks that run through downtown, as well as by a history of poverty and violence.

The center, whose outreach programs are well known in Western Contra Costa County, has three objectives: develop school partnership programs; offer free or almost free repertoire and training; and relentlessly engage the community. In the interest of documenting how music changes communities we called Charlene Smith, the center’s director of development.

The news, she said, is mixed. On the one hand, fund-raising is ever harder and some programs have been cut back. On the other hand, available programs have never had so many students. In addition, two years ago the Berkelee College of Music in Boston invited one of the center’s students to a five-week, intensive music program, which led to a full-ride four-year scholarship. Last year the college took three young men for the five-week intensive.

“So that’s encouraging,” said Smith. “We’re making progress even though development remains a great struggle.”

She had one other story to make the point that if you can get just one person on their way it may have profound results. The story is about a girl named Simmie.

In 1990, Simmie, then 10, was all but homeless in North Richmond. She and her parents slid from motel to motel, but at one point Simmie’s mother found out about the East Bay Center. The child started showing up, and early on met the incomparable Rae Imamura, one of the original assistant directors of the center, and a well-known player in local symphonies and new music ensembles and, in her last years, known for her collaborations with pianist Aki Takahashi.

“From my first lesson,” Simmie would say years later. “I was in awe of her cultured accent, her long and beautiful dark hair, her royal bearing, and especially, the music she called out of the piano. I wanted very badly to play like she did. So I practiced diligently. Rae taught me so many things about life, that approaching a piece and playing it was how one should approach life. When I’m in trouble, I still hear Rae in my head, giving me advice. What is important, she said, is that you keep going, even if you think you have made a mistake. Make it part of the music.”

Meanwhile, Simmie branched out and took classes in West African music and dance, as well as steel drums and Capoeira, the Brazilian martial art. She took acting classes and became entranced by the arts.

“I wanted to try everything, and the more I explored, the more fascinated I became. It was incredible. I gained a sense of myself, that I wasn’t just a freak with poofy hair and a white mom who didn’t even know who MC Hammer was. I was a member of the community at the center, and also connected to the larger Richmond community. I no longer felt like an outsider, marginalized and alone.”

All the while, Simmie and her family were on the move from Richmond to Oakland and then El Cerrito and then Berkeley; the only anchor in her life was the center.

Eventually, fate pulled a miracle out of its hat. With help from people at the Center, Simmie applied for UC Berkeley, got in, and flourished. She followed an interest to influence community health and was accepted at Yale Medical School. Over the next nine years she got her MD and a PhD.

In 2008, she returned home for a visit and heard that Rae Imamura was ill and so visited her in the hospital.

“We talked about many things over the next few days. I confessed I hadn’t practiced (the piano) in a long time. She said that I hadn’t lost my music, and that I had just had to put it aside for a time to learn a new and specialized language, the language of medicine and healing. She said, We are all connected, in space and in time. And I could see that this was true. Twenty years ago, I met Rae as her student; now our relationship had changed, and I had some knowledge that might help in her medical care. And it felt right that I should have this new role, and I was no longer afraid.”

Imamura died in November, 2008.

As for the center, if you live anywhere between El Cerrito and San Leandro you may interested in a new 12-week program for children ages 3 to 5, and their families, which is to say their entire families. March 20 through June 5. Every Wednesday: 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Music, dancing, marching, percussion, painting, clay making… Admission: free.

About Town

January 31, Thursday (tonight!) The Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto presents “The Music and the Mirror … Broadway’s Reflection of Our American Life" – Sing-along. Featuring music from the songbooks of great Jewish composers, including Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, Lerner and Loewe, Kander and Ebb, and, the great Gershwins, George and Ira. For the whole family. If your only singing experience is in the shower, no matter. No auditions or experience required. Tickets: $18 to $25. More information

Through February 2, (Saturday) At the Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford University. The Stanford Savoyards present H.M.S. Pinafore, The Next Generation. Gene Roddenberry meets Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan. Pinafore — which, you may remember is the name of a jumper dress or apron — premiered in 1878 at the Savoy Theatre and ran for 571 performances, a record at the time. The Next Generation has been equivalently popular in its time and some critics consider it the best TV show of all time. Now imagine the quarter deck of the HMS Pinafore as the flight deck of a federation starship, circa 2360. Complete with all the Gilbert silliness and satire, and closeups of class warfare, and a still-terrific score by Sullivan. Tickets: $10 to $20. More Information.

Feb. 2, Saturday, 11 a.m., at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito: De Rompe y Raja, the Peruvian Cultural Association that has performed many times at the large San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, brings a short program of music, song, and dance to the BADM stage. The Discovery Museum does many concerts like this one, year round, emphasizing “world” music. More information

Feb. 3, Sunday 7 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; Feb. 7, Thursday, 8 p.m., Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis. Kodo: One Earth Tour. Taiko drumming is a vividly theatrical art form, great for young kids — not for those scared by loud sounds. This group has been in existence for 30 years and is one of the most admired taiko ensembles in the world. More information/Cal Perfs and Mondavi Center/UC Davis

February 9, Saturday, at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert. On the program: Brahms’ Double; Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Amos Yang, from the S.F. Symphony, does the solo honors on cello. Along with 95 young musicians, ages 12 to 21, conducted by David Ramadanoff. YPSO is the oldest youth orchestra in the state and the second oldest in the United States. Tickets: $12 to $15. There is also a free outreach concert the next day, Sunday, February 10 at the San Leandro Performing Arts Center. More information

Through February 10 at the Firehouse Arts Center, Pacific Coast Repertory Theatre, and Pleasanton Civic Arts present Rent, Jonathan Larson’s Broadway musical based on Puccini’s La bohème. Instead of Paris in the 1840s, it’s Greenwich Village in the 1990s, instead of tuberculosis, AIDS. Otherwise, besides a gay drag queen and Mimi as an S&M dancer, characters and arcs are close to the original. The show, which opened in 1996, won both a Pulitzer and a Tony. Not for the whole family, one could argue, but for most of the family. It’s about falling in love, finding your voice and living for today. Or think of it this way: If you were going to see the premiere of La Boheme on February 1, 1896, at the Teatro Regio in Turin, who would have taken to see that? This is a musical for its time. Tickets: $17 to $33. More Information.

Advance Tickets Suggested

Feb. 15-17, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley: Circus Oz presented by Cal Performances brings this hilarious, theatrical, and accomplished Aussie troop back for their fourth visit. It’s a hot ticket, and with a new, original show and live music, you definitely will need to plan ahead for this one. More information

March 23, Saturday. West Coast Performing Arts Presenters at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose present Come Together. A Beatles tribute recreating both the mania and the British invasion. The Beatles were first to the beach, and after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, drawing 73 million to the little black and white screen, that history was off and running. It all seems so quaint now. “I want to hold your hand….”? Compare that with the lyrics of say Macklemore, the new hip hop sensation from Seattle. Here you can take your kids to see what it was like when grandpa and grandma were growing up. Tickets: $32 to $47. More information