Seventh-inning stars
The Giants may have lost the game, but Eva Sapper, 20, of Sonoma County and Napa residents Loren Moale and Mikayla Barber won big when they took center stage with Jewish rapper Matisyahu to lead “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch at the San Francisco Giants’ Jewish Heritage Night last week. “It was one of those magic moments,” said Howard Sapper, Eva’s dad and founder of Everybody Is a Star Foundation, which is dedicated to using music to encourage self-esteem and confidence in children and teens with special needs. “Matisyahu said the highlight of his night was singing with Eva and the others,” he added.
Jazzy teens
Two talented local teens will be on the program at the Monterey Jazz Festival next month. Nate Schwartz, 18, is the winner of the Next Generation Jazz Festival Big Band Composition Competition for high school students. He’ll receive the Gerald Wilson Award (named after the composer and trumpeter) and a $1,000 cash prize, writes proud grandma Fritzie Davis Noble. Nate’s composition, “Ninjas Can’t Catch You If You’re on Fire,” will be performed on the Jimmy Lyons Stage at the festival on Sept. 22. Nate is a graduate of Northgate High School in Walnut Creek. Brother Max Schwartz, 15, and his Berkeley High School Jazz Combo A also will perform at the jazz festival — also on Sept. 22. They’ll be playing at noon at the “Nightclub” venue on the Monterey County Fairgrounds. Besides Max, Combo A group members are Liam Collins, Hugo Shiboski, Sam Klein-Markman, Michael Orenstein and Marcelo Perez.
Film festival postscripts
The world premiere of “American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco” sold out the Castro Theatre July 31 at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, reports Jackie Krentzman, the film’s producer. Insider jokes about such trivia as the historic rivalry between congregations Emanu-El and Sherith Israel, founded the same week in 1851, drew appreciative laughs from a boisterous audience. Afterward, at a young adults’ party sponsored by Hebrew Free Loan and YAD of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, director Marc Shaffer noted that not every famous incident made it into the film. The 1907 corruption trial of political boss Abraham Ruef, for example, didn’t fit the story line. If you missed the premiere, catch it Sept. 3 at the Magnes in Berkeley or Jan. 25 at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto.
In other film festival news, writer-director Jill Soloway, whose “Afternoon Delight” screened Aug. 3 at the California Theatre in Berkeley, said her film takes place around her own turf, the JCC in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood. The producer of “Six Feet Under” and other TV shows, she says her film about a bored Jewish housewife who becomes fixated on a young stripper — it won a directing award at Sundance — will open in theaters on Aug. 30, just in time to “talk about it at Rosh Hashanah services and at your break-fasts,” she joked.
Short shorts
Brandeis Hillel Day School alum and San Francisco native Eric Rachmany, frontman for the rock, world and reggae band Rebelution, will play Berkeley’s Greek Theatre on Saturday, Aug. 17 with the beatboxing reggae star Matisyahu. The two groups will headline amphitheater venues along the West Coast and across the country … The Barbara and Richard Rosenberg Institute for Marine Biology and Environmental Science has been established at the Romberg Tiburon Center with a $1 million donation from the couple. It will focus on issues such as global climate and habitat change and public engagement on the health of the San Francisco Bay.
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