Saturday, April 28, 2018

Choices for May 19–20, 2018

The third weekend in May promises to be just as busy as the second. Once again, Saturday and Sunday are the days that will offer the most difficult choices. On this particular weekend, activities at both the Red Poppy Art House and the Center for New Music will be limited to Saturday (at least as of this writing). On the other hand Itzhak Perlman’s visit to the San Francisco Symphony will involve performances on both Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Specifics for the other alternatives are as follows:

[added 5/14, 8:50 a.m.:

Saturday, May 19, and Sunday, May 20, 6:30 p.m., ODC Theater: Tomorrow (May 15) ODC will begin its 2018 Walking Distance Dance Festival. While the emphasis of this festival is on a diversity of approaches to dance, there will be one program that will be devoted entirely to free improvisation with simultaneous performances by both dancers and musicians. The dancers will be Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. The musicians will be Phillip Greenlief on saxophone and Shoko Hikage on koto, along with improvised recitation of text by Claudia La Rocco.

As can be seen above, this session will be given two iterations on two successive evenings. The ODC Theatre is located at 3153 17th Street on the northwest corner of Shotwell Street. Tickets for both performance will be $20. There will also be a $60 pass for those planning to attend all (or most) of the festival.]

Saturday, May 19, 8 p.m., SOMArts Cultural Center: SOMArts will provide the venue for the next concert to be given by Chad Goodman’s Elevate Ensemble. Goodman has prepared a program of contrasting revolutions in music. He will begin with a piece from a little over 100 years ago that significantly changed our ways of thinking about both making and listening to music, Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 9 chamber symphony, written for fifteen instrumentalists (five strings, eight woodwinds, and two horns). This will be followed by two world premieres. The first will be a commissioned chamber symphony created by composer-in-residence Julie Barwick. This will be followed by David Lipten’s “Tongue and Groove,” the winning selection from Elevate’s second annual call for scores.

SOMArts is located at 934 Brannan Street (in SOMA, of course). Both doors and the Center’s bar will open at 7:30 p.m. General admission will be $35. However, there is also a Premiere level of ticket that includes open bar service for $55. In addition general admission tickets purchased through May 5 will benefit from an Early Bird rate of $25. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an Eventbrite event page.

Saturday, May 19, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre: New Century Chamber Orchestra will conclude its 2017–2018 season with the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’ third piano concerto. The soloist will be Simone Dinnerstein, who will also serve as soloist in a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1058 keyboard concerto in G minor. The ensemble will be led by Guest Concertmaster Zachary DePue, who is currently Concertmaster with the Indianapolis Symphony. The remainder of the program will include the last of Francesco Geminiani’s six Opus 3 concerti grossi, written in the key of E minor, Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of a G minor chaconne by Henry Purcell, and “Aheym,” which Bryce Dessner originally composed for the Kronos Quartet.

Herbst Theatre is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices  will be $29, $49, and $61. These may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page. In addition, discounted single tickets will be available at the door. Patrons under the age of 35 will be admitted for $15, and students with valid identification will be charged only $10.

Saturday, May 19, 8 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: This will be another instance of Old First Concerts (O1C) departing from its usual plan of events taking place at 8 p.m. on Fridays and 4 p.m. on Sundays. The Friction Quartet of violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers, violist Taija Warbelow, and cellist Doug Machiz will return to O1C, where they had been Artists-in-Residence last season. However, for this special performance they will be joined by Thorwald Jørgensen, one of the world’s leading classical theremin players. Playing as a quintet, they will give the United States premiere of “The Invisible Singer” by Canadian composer Simon Bertrand. They will also play Dalit Warshaw’s “Transformations,” as well as other works composed for this unique combination of instruments.

Old First Presbyterian Church is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Boulevard. General admission will be $25 with discounted rates of $20 for seniors and $5 for full-time students showing valid identification. Children aged twelve and under will still be admitted for free. In addition there is a $2 discount for tickets purchased online in advance from the event page for this concert on the Old First Concerts Web site. There is also a discount available for those parking at the Old First Parking Garage at 1725 Sacramento Street, just up the street for the church.

[added 5/11, 12:30 p.m.:

Saturday, May 19, 2018, 9 p.m., The Lab: This will be an evening of free improvisations by Kevin Drumm and Cameron Shafi. Drumm established his reputation through his work on prepared guitar, but he has since expanded into live electronic music made with both laptop computers and analog modular synthesizers. Shafi specializes in digital synthesis.The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street. This is a short walk from the corner of Mission Street. This is particularly good for those using public transportation, since that corner provides bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel as well as a BART station. Admission will be $15 and free for members. Seats may be reserved through a login Web page for members and a guest registration Web page for others. Doors will open at 8:30 p.m., and it is usually the case that a long line has accumulated before then.]

Sunday, May 20, 3 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Chamber Music San Francisco will conclude its 2018 season with the San Francisco debut recital by Ukrainian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk. Gavrylyuk has organized his program around three distinctly different approaches to the piano sonata. The earliest of these will be Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken XVI/32 in B minor. The second will be Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 53 (fifth) sonata, a sonata the peregrinates through several different tonal centers and was the first one that he wrote as a single movement. Scriabin wrote this sonata in 1907, and Gavrylyuk’s final sonata selection will be Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 36 (second) sonata in B-flat major, written in 1913 and revised in 1931. The program will also include selections from Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 10 collection of études and Rachmaninoff’s Opus 23 collection of preludes. The opening selection will be Ferruccio Busoni’s transcription of Bach’s BWV 565 toccata and fugue in D minor. Ticket prices are $48 (Orchestra and Boxes), $39 (Dress Circle), and $30 (Balcony). Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page, which includes a floor plan that shows the number of seats available in the different sections.

Sunday, May 20, 4 p.m., Noe Valley Ministry: Noe Valley Chamber Music (NVCM) will present a recital by the Telegraph Quartet, whose members are violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. They will give repeat performances of two of the selections they played this past Thursday at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where they are currently Quartet-in-Residence. The first of those selections will be “Wave Upon Wave,” the quartet that completes a trilogy composed by Robert Sirota over a span of fifteen years, given its premiere this past February. The other will be Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet. The program will also include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 575 quartet in D major.

The Noe Valley Ministry is located in Noe Valley at 1021 Sanchez Street. Tickets are $30 at the door with a $25 rate for seniors and a $15 rate for students aged thirteen or older. (Those over the age of eighteen will be required to show valid identification as confirmation of full-time status.) Children younger than thirteen will be admitted for free. If purchased in advance through a Brown Paper Tickets event page, general admission will be discounted to $25. Tickets may also be purchased in advance by calling NVCM at 415-648-5236.

[added 4/8, 11:05 a.m.:

Sunday, May 20, 7:30 p.m., Musicians Union Hall: Once again, it is necessary to include the latest offering in the Static Illusion Methodical Madness (SIMM) Series concerts offered by Outsound Presents as one of the options for a busy weekend. The title of the first of the two sets of the evening will be The Deconstruction of What You Know, which is also the title of a self-produced album by saxophonist Joshua Allen. The album presented six improvisations by a quartet whose other members were Randy Hunt on acoustic bass, Henry Kaiser on electric guitar, and William Winant on drums. The quartet will reconvene for further improvisations. However, Hunt has left the group; and the fourth member will now be percussionist Aaron Levin. The second set will be taken by Skullkrusher, the performing name for Philip Everett, who creates soundscapes with analog gear and digitally processed electro-acoustic instruments. The Musicians Union Hall is located at 116 9th Street, near the corner of Mission Street. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $10 and $20.]

No comments: