Cole’s current policy seems to be to balance mainstream attractions (if it’s the Mark Morris Dance Group, he gets to conduct, as well) with more experimental fare. There are those who grumble that he plays it too safe. But there are reasons for that, and in any case the Bay Area as a whole has grown in artistic diversity and sophistication, so that venues in San Francisco such as Cowell Theater at Fort Mason or the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and a whole host of SoMa outposts have taken up any slack.

A glance at this calendar year’s Cal Performances offerings gives an idea of its scope. There are touring classical-music virtuosos such as the hot young German violinist Julia Fischer, pianists Jonathan Biss, Murray Perahia, and Krystian Zimerman, violinist Vadim Repin, and tenor Matthew Polenzani. There are string quartets: the Takács, the Brentano, and the Jerusalem. There is early music—Les Violons du Roy with mezzo Magdalena Kozena, Hesperion XXI with gambist Jordi Savall, the Yukimi Kambe Viol Consort, and the Bach Collegium Japan. There is contemporary classical music: Magnus Lindberg, John Adams, Mark Dresser, et al. And jazz: Brad Meldau, Chick Corea, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the Ramsey Lewis Trio, and Eddie Palmieri. Talkers: John Cleese, Frank Rich, and Michael Feldman. And lots of world music from the United States (gospel), Ireland, Turkey, Peru, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Iran, Hawaii (though San Francisco-based), the Cape Verde Islands, South Africa, Mexico and India (Ravi Shankar, no less). And the nonclassifiable, like Imago Theatre (truth be told, this would be classifiable under theater if Cole did more theater this winter and spring).

Above all, there is dance, and I say that not because I’m a dance critic just now. Cole has made Zellerbach Hall the premier center for touring dance companies in the Bay Area, Mark Morris preeminently. Morris first came to Cal Performances in 1987, one year after Cole’s assumption of the directorship. He performs in Berkeley every season, is currently celebrating the 25th anniversary of his company, and on the side has done six new ballets for the San Francisco Ballet.

Since January there have been the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Noche Flamenca with the superb Soledad Barrio, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Julio Bocca’s Tango Argentina, the Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet and Orchestra (with Cole conducting Natalia Makarova’s version of Swan Lake), the Ballet Folklorica “Quetzalli” de Veracruz, and the Hubbard Street Dance from Chicago.

The plethora of world music and jazz reflects the evolution in taste that has affected performing arts nationally and internationally. Our ideas of what constitutes serious art have changed, and that doesn’t mean, as cultural conservatives lament, the debasement of art by commerce. It means an opening up of taste and awareness—and pleasure—to arts of quality created all over the world, up and down the social scale.

Cole’s programming is also tied to Berkeley’s own departments and their educational mission—especially, to be sure, to the music department, because he uses Hertz Hall and co-produces events with the department (not least the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition). And there are links to professional performing arts groups in the Bay Area, as with the flotilla of public events last fall surrounding the world premiere of the new John Adams/Peter Sellars opera, Doctor Atomic.

Educational tie-ins notwithstanding, as Cal Performances evolved over the last century, the series became increasingly independent of university control and increasingly professionalized. Betty Connors was the first salaried staff director, starting in 1945. By now, with Sacramento’s purse watchers more and more stringent in their overall support for the UC system, Cal Performances has stood more and more on its own.

More precisely, of this season’s $12 million budget, tickets accounted for half of that revenue. Another 12 percent is made up of other forms of earned income, such as rentals and concessions. The University provides about 13 percent (in addition to underwriting certain added hall costs), largely through endowments established to support the performing arts. The rest comes from contributions. Compared with still-generous European state support, public grants total a munificent .3 percent of Cal Performances’ budget.

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