Alameda resident Donna Stoering began playing concerts when she was five years old and teaching professionally when she was just 10. She grew up in the Bay Area, but after receiving a Marshall Scholarship, Stoering has lived most of her adult life in Europe.

Alameda resident Donna Stoering began playing concerts when she was five years old and teaching professionally when she was just 10. She grew up in the Bay Area, but after receiving a Marshall Scholarship, Stoering has lived most of her adult life in Europe.

Cue the fireworks and dancing boys: I have an announcement. The Gin Game is the best show I have ever seen at Altarena, in 15 years of reviewing. Top notch, stellar, outstanding: What else can I say?

The Alameda Theatre & Cineplex will be showing a free simulcast of Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7. The event will be presented live on one of the complex’s movie screens.  

Alameda’s Tomorrow Youth Repertory presents Into the Woods Jr., a retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ classics. The show intertwines the plots of several traditional fairy tales, with characters lifted from Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. 

Alameda’s own Island City Opera is currently presenting five performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s finest operatic masterpiece Rigoletto.

Altarena Playhouse lights up the East End with its latest offering, Ring of Fire, a musical revue of Johnny Cash tunes that also tells his life story in broad strokes.

For the second year in a row, Alameda resident Andy MacKay and Team Pipe-A-Thon visited 19 bars in Alameda on New Year’s Eve, bagpiping “Auld Lang Syne” to enthusiastic patrons. In the process they collected more than $3,200 for the American Cancer Society.

The 21st annual Sing-It-Yourself Messiah will be hosted this year by Christ Episcopal Church at 1700 Santa Clara Ave. (at Grand Street). The long-standing Island City tradition continues Saturday, Dec. 19, at 4 p.m.