Choices for April 6–8, 2018

According to my records, this is the first article of the year to list choices that have to be made over a full three-day weekend (Friday evening through Sunday evening). Furthermore, both Friday and Sunday evenings are already “on record” with events at the Red Poppy Art House; and the Center for New Music has one on Saturday evening. So, as far as concert-going is concerned, it appears to be April, rather than March, that will be coming in like a lion. Specifics for the other options are as follows:

[added 4/29, 3:10 p.m.:

Friday, April 6, 6 p.m., Community Music Center (CMC): The next Concert with Conversation event will feature Nicholas Phan. However, this will not be the usual song recital, since he will be joined by the members of the Alexander String Quartet (ASQ), violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist Paul Yarbrough, and cellist Sandy Wilson. Readers may recall the announcement that Phan will be performing with ASQ and San Francisco Performances (SFP) Music Historian-in-Residence Robert Greenberg during the following afternoon, as has already been announced; so this may be a preview event for that occasion. This event will be free thanks to SFP support. CMC is located in the Mission at 544 Capp Street, between Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue and between 20th Street and 21st Street.]

Friday, April 6, 7:30 p.m. to Saturday, April 7, 8 p.m., Noe Valley Ministry: Over the course of these two days, Bard Music West will present its second festival. The title of this one will be The World of Henry Cowell. Over the course of three concerts and two auxiliary events, the festival will offer an in-depth examination of the life, influences, and legacy of this visionary Bay Area composer, who transformed the musical landscape of his time. In addition to providing an extensive account of Cowell’s own music, programming will reach all the way back to the eighteenth-century of Wiliam Billings (whose choral works included a piece entitled “Modern Music”) and forward to subsequent innovative composers such as George Crumb. The auxiliary events include a conversation with Cowell biographer Joel Sachs and a pre-concert interview with composer Eugene Birman and choreographer James Sofranko, whose commissioned work, “The Sound of Your Solitude and Mine,” will be given its world premiere.

The full list of compositions to be performed at each concert will be found through hyperlinks on the Festival home page. There is a hyperlink for each of the programs, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 6, and at 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 7. There are also hyperlinks for the auxiliary events, which will take place at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 7, respectively.

All events will take place at the Noe Valley Ministry, located in Noe Valley at 1021 Sanchez Street, near the corner of 23rd Street. There are several options for ticket prices. General admission for the entire festival will be $90 with $125 for premium seating. There will also be a “marathon option,” covering the two concerts on Saturday and one of the two auxiliary events. The prices for be $60 for general admission and $85 for premium seating. For individual concerts the price will be $35 for general admission, $50 for premium seating, and $20 for students. Admission to the auxiliary events will be $10 for free with the purchase of tickets to any program. A single Web page has been created with hyperlinks to account for all the alternatives for purchasing tickets.

Friday, April 6, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The next event to be presented by the San Francisco Civic Music Association (SFCMA) will be the spring concert given by the San Francisco Civic Symphony. The title of the program will be Russian Delights, and it will consist of a concerto and a symphony without an overture. The concerto will be Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 18 (second) piano concerto in C minor. The soloist will be Serene. The symphony will be Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opus 35, the symphonic suite in four movements entitled Scheherazade. The conductor will be Jessica Bejarano.

Herbst Theatre is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. As is the case for all SFCMA events, admission will be free. Registration is appreciated but not required. Those who wish may register through an Eventbrite event page. Seating is on a first-come first-served basis. Doors open half an hour before the performance begins. Donations are gratefully accepted, with a $10 donation suggested for each person.

Saturday, April 7, 7:30 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The next guitar program to be presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will be a solo recital by Japanese classical guitar virtuoso Shin-ichi Fukuda. The program will include the first United States performance of Daisuke Suzuki’s transcription of Toru Takemitsu’s “Nami no Bon.” The full scope of the program will reach from contemporary composer Keigo Fujii all the way back to dance music by Michael Praetorius (as arranged by John Williams).

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Tickets will be sold for $45 in the balcony and $55 in the orchestra section. Both sections will have general admission seating. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page.

[added 3/21, 7:55 a.m.:

Saturday, April 7, 7:30 p.m., Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church: The April installment in the Seventh Avenue Performances recital series will be a duo recital by Meerenai Shim, playing contrabass flute, and Kris King, playing contraforte, the lowest instrument in the bassoon family. They call their recitals Keyed KONTRAptions, and the program for this one involves a collaboration with the Guerilla Composers Guild (GCC). As in past such collaborations, each of four GCC composers, Joseph Colombo, Lily Chen, Bryan Lin, and Sarah Wald, have created a new work for the duo; and the program will be devoted entirely to those four composition.

The Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church is located at 1329 Seventh Avenue, about half a block south of the stop for the Muni N trolley line. General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for students and seniors and $5 for children aged twelve and under. Tickets are available in advance online through a Brown Paper Tickets event page.

Sunday, April 8, 3 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall: The next organ recital to be presented under the auspices of the San Francisco Symphony will be the return of Paul Jacobs, a regular vistor to the Hall's Ruffatti Concert Organ. Most of the program will be devoted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, including the ever-popular BWV 565 toccata-fugue coupling in D minor, the BWV 528 trio sonata, two prelude-fugue couplings, BWV 539 in D minor and BWV 532 in D major, and the Arioso from the BWV 156 cantata. The program will then conclude with Franz Liszt's fantasy and fugue on the chorale theme “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam,” as it was set in Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Le prophète. Ticket prices range from $28 to $38. They may be purchased online through the event page for this program on the SFS Web site, by calling 415-864-6000, or by visiting the Davies Box Office, whose entrance is on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street.]

Sunday, April 8, 4 p.m., Church of the Advent of Christ the King: The full title of the April concert to be presented by the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS) will be Wildcat Viols – The Magnifick Consort of Four Parts: Fantasies, Suites and Sonatas for Viol Quartet. The members of the quartet are Elisabeth Reed on bass and Joanna Blendulf, Julie Jeffrey, and Annalisa Pappano all on treble. The program will focus almost entirely on the music of Henry Purcell and Matthew Locke with one appearance by Giovanni Legrenzi.

The Church of the Advent of Christ the King is located at 261 Fell Street, between Franklin Street and Gough Street. The entry is diagonally across the street from the SFJAZZ Center. General admission will be $45 with discounted rates of $40.50 for seniors, $38.25 for SFEMS members, and $15 for students. A Web page has been created for online purchases of single tickets.

Sunday, April 8, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The next subscription series concert by the American Bach Soloists (ABS) will celebrate the music of seventeenth-century Venice. The program will be divided between Claudio Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli. The latter will be represented by a Magnificat setting in fourteen separate vocal lines and the “In ecclesiis” motet. The Monteverdi selection will be his monumental Vespro della Beata Vergine, the so-called “Vespers of 1610.” The ABS instrumental and choral forces will be joined by ten superb vocal soloists. The prices of single tickets range from $25 to $89. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through the single Tickets Web page on the ABS Web site.