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Sights & Sounds: Tanya Tomkins

John Hefti / cropped and resized

Sights & Sounds is your weekly guide to the Bay Area arts scene. Cellist and co-founder of the Valley of the Moon Music Festival Tanya Tomkins told KALW’s Jen Chien about three great arts events happening around the Bay this weekend.

Violinist Benjamin Beilman will perform at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music this Friday. He is young but already very accomplished: he’s the winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as multiple other awards. He'll be playing pieces from composers including Maurice Ravel, Johannes Brahms, Kaija Saariaho, and more. 

TOMKINS: He had transformed everyone in the audience. I've never seen such excited about a single musician before. ... Sometimes a musician will just have an incredible charisma that's remarkable.

Cheaper Than Therapy is a weekly stand-up comedy show at the Shelton Theater in downtown San Francisco. Each show features comedians Eloisa Bravo, Scott Simpson, and Jon Allen, along with a rotating selection of other comics from the Bay and beyond. The show starts at 10 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, and features a full bar. 

TOMKINS: You know in the current political climate ... the idea of seeing live comedy, the idea of it, right around now, who doesn't need that?

This is Not Normal is a one-man show by Mike Daisey that's a direct follow-up to his previous show The Trump Card. It’s a monologue about our current political moment and looks at the rise of autocracy and right-wing nationalism across the globe. It's playing at the Shotgun Players Theater in Berkeley on Thursday through Sunday nights. 

TOMKINS: He is so compelling, he's such an incredible storyteller, he's a great thinker.