Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, has announced its 2012–13 season, the organization's 107th, which will feature performances from a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass, Fatoumata Diawara, Sérgio & Odair Assad, and the Mark Morris Dance Company.

“This season, we celebrate creative relationships with some of world’s greatest artists and ensembles, we welcome new talents to our stages, and we restage an iconic masterpiece of modernism,” said Cal Performances Director Matías Tarnopolsky. “Our engaged and enthusiastic audiences, throughout Northern California and here in our own University community, embrace challenging cultural experiences, and this season truly offers us a journey through the stories, sounds and emotions that can only come from the performing arts, performed live by world-class artists.”

Kronos Quartet has been appointed the Artists in Residence for Cal Performances' 2012–13 season. The Quartet's campus-wide residency includes interaction with music students, a SchoolTime performance, and a performance at Fall Free for All, an event that kicks off the season as Cal Performances opens its doors to the community for a full day of free performances showcasing dozens of musical, theatrical and dance groups on Sunday, September 30.

Even prior to the Fall Free for All comes Laurie Anderson's return to Cal Performances with a September 18 performance of her new work, Dirtday!, which focuses on politics, theories of evolution, families, history, and animals. This is the third and last in her series of solo story works, which includes Happiness and The End of the Moon.

Cal Performances joins an international consortium of co-commissioners to bring Einstein on the Beach, the seminal work of director Robert Wilson, composer Philip Glass, and choreographer Lucinda Childs, to the campus of UC Berkeley for the only fully realized performances west of the Hudson River. Never performed fully staged in the United States outside of New York City, the five-hour opera will be presented three times in Zellerbach Hall, October 26–28. The three creators will participate in an artist talk that will be free and open to the public the afternoon of the final performance and will also each engage with UCB students in workshops and classes. (The international tour of Einstein on the Beach lands in London for a week of performances at the Barbican next week.)

Just in time for the holidays, the Mark Morris Dance Group returns to Zellerbach Hall with The Hard Nut, a retro-modern take on the beloved Nutcracker tale that has become a popular Bay Area holiday tradition. Performances begin December 14. The Washington Post recently called this seasonal favorite "something approaching a miracle ... The Hard Nut doesn't stop at cleverness and humor. By the work's effortlessly poetic end, all that energy ... is resolved in as honest and unsentimental a picture of love as you're likely to find in the theater." Nonesuch Records released The Hard Nut on DVD in 2007. Additionally, for the third year, Cal Performances joins with the Ojai Music Festival to present Ojai North!, of which Morris is this year's music director. (Dawn Upshaw was the festival's music director last year.)

The music-making continues in 2013 with two of the performances in the Cal Performances’ World Stage series: Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara, who was just awarded the Songlines Music Award for Newcomer of the Year, makes her debut in Afropop Spectacular, also featuring Zimbabwe's Oliver Mtukudzi, on March 30, 2013; and Brazilian guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad returning to Zellerbach Hall for a concert with clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera on April 10, 2013.

Subscriptions go on sale for the Cal Performances 2012–2013 season tomorrow, April 27, 2012, at noon. For additional details on the entire Cal Performances season and ticket information, go to calperformances.org.