Erickson's music introduced in "Solstice" by Del Sol String Quartet at Berkeley City Club (Julia Morgan architecture)

Berkeley Chamber Performances Music at the Julia Morgan Berkeley City Club... a club member  enjoys swimming in the Julia Morgan designed pool.  Holly  describes the club as a real oasis, and I agree with her.  Her mother was from Rhodesia(now Tanzania), and used to have pleasure in saying that she (her other)  she was a true "African American"! Holly missed the chance to take the trip they had planned to Tanzania together, as her mother developed Alzheimers.  She spoke Swahili and taught it when she was in her last days confined to a care center.   Holly's father was a surgeon, and she went to UCB for her degree and has been here ever since.  She is adopted. I told her that is a movie:  "Admission".  She found her mother, but she was dead, and her fellow brothers were not interested in a relationship as they are fundamentalists, and did not want to acknowledge her.  I think her action, to know her own identity, was courageous.  The birth mother  was from Southern California.  Holly  has a son, by insemination...and I told her that is a movie, too...Really an interesting younger woman.  She gave me a lift home, and it only took moments, because she knew the short cuts and the hills so well...kind of her.   She works as a fiduciary, with a MSW, as she learned how to handle estates with the death of her mother. I shared with her the death of my own parents in the past year or so as the estate had a court appointed fiduciary.

 The concert, by the local Del Sol String Quartet was memorable in introducing and celebrating an overlooked composer in his lifetime at Berkeley. Robert Erickson (1917-97) with "Solstice", (1985)  He is being further celebrated by this quartet in a couple of other venues during the month.  The head of the donor sponsors or "Jane" introduced herself.  I felt the quartet was overreaching in playing a Persian composer(who was present)'s music and Ukrainian music on western instruments, but a valorous effort, and certainly did bring the music to the audience.  We enjoyed very good wine and good cheeses and strawberries, blueberries, afterwards, followed by some very delicious chocolate cookies, which I suggested, to Holly, that she take home to her 14 year old son.  The NYT called them "high spirited...dynamic", and I would agree, along with the Boston Globe's assessment, "Bracing...performed with sensitivity and flair"...and in this monumental room designed by Julia Morgan.  A memorable evening.