Jeff Kaliss

Jeff Kaliss has featured and reviewed classical, jazz, rock, and world musics and other entertainment for the San Francisco Chronicle and a host of other regional, national, international, and web-based publications. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, is a published poet, and is the author of I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone (Backbeat Books) and numerous textbook and encyclopedia entries, album liner notes, and festival program notes.

Articles By This Author

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Review

Lila Downs Is All Showbiz at SFJAZZ

Jeff Kaliss - May 21, 2019

The singer deployed her vocal gifts in a set drawn from her latest album.

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Preview

Kronos Fest 2019 Explores the People’s History

Jeff Kaliss - May 20, 2019

A sense of coming together and the power of the collective underline the quartet’s fifth annual festival.

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Review

New Century Chamber Orchestra Gets Down Home in “American Masters”

Jeff Kaliss - May 14, 2019

A collaboration with Marcus Roberts’s jazz trio opens new musical avenues for the NCCO.

Review

Silkroad Dazzles and Inspires Without Always Illuminating

Jeff Kaliss - May 6, 2019

The latest iteration of the multicultural collaboration explores the idea of the heroic gesture.

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Review

Get on Your Feet With the Afro-Cuban All Stars

Jeff Kaliss - May 6, 2019

The 14-member ensemble has the audience at SFJAZZ dancing and clapping along.

The New Voices Bay Area Chorus
Preview

It’s a Nonbinary World, and New Voices Is Here to Sing It

Jeff Kaliss - April 30, 2019

The Bay Area chorus New Voices is for vocalists who identify as transgender, intersex, and gender-queer.

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Review

The Galax Quartet Makes the Case for New Music on Old Instruments

Jeff Kaliss - April 29, 2019

New compositions sound fresh on Baroque-style instruments at the Center for New Music.

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Review

Dynamite Guitar Maestros Reveal Finely Honed Chops on Exquisite Axes

Jeff Kaliss - April 15, 2019

S.F. Conservatory of Music instructors strut their fretted stuff in a concert ranging from the Baroque to jazz and back.

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Artist Spotlight

Craig Hella Johnson and Conspirare Bring Matthew Shepard to the Bay Area

Jeff Kaliss - April 9, 2019

The lauded choral conductor/composer talks about his concert-length musical response to a notorious anti-gay hate crime.

Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini
Preview

Natalie Cressman and Guitarist Ian Faquini Team Up for a Brazilian Outing

Jeff Kaliss - March 29, 2019

The singer/trombonist talks about the duo’s new recording of originals and an upcoming tour stop in Oakland.