Saturday, February 1, 2020

SFCM: February, 2020

Enough of the major concerts to be presented at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) are in place that a summary for the new month is now in order:

Thursday, February 6, 7:30 p.m., Concert Hall: Kronos Music: The Future is Now is a special program organized around a visit by the Kronos Quartet. 75 student musicians from SFCM, the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA), and the Oakland School for the Arts will perform works commissioned by Kronos under their project 50 For the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Among them, SFCM student Matthew Park will substitute for cellist Sunny Yang (currently on maternity leave) to perform with Kronos players David Harrington and John Sherba on violin and Hank Dutt on viola. The performance will present nine 50 For the Future compositions written between 2015 and 2018. In addition to Kronos, the performers will be the SOTA Chamber Orchestra, the Dragon String Quartet, the SFCM Woodwind Quartet, the Oakland School for the Arts Quartet, the SFCM String Quartet, and a full orchestral ensemble.

The usual approach to attendance will not apply for this event. Admission will be free and open to the public; but tickets will be available on a first come, first served basis. They will be distributed by the SFCM Box Office beginning at 6:30 p.m. The doors to the Concert Hall will open at 7 p.m.

Monday, February 10, 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall: Cellist Amos Yang will give his Faculty Artist Series program. He will be joined by two pianists, Elizabeth Schumann and Taylor Chan, as well as by mezzo Isabel Yang. Yang will be featured in a performance of the “Geistliches Wiegenlied” (holy lullaby), the second of the two Opus 91 songs that Johannes Brahms originally composed for alto, viola, and piano. (Yang will take the viola part on his cello.) The entire program will be framed by two of the five cello sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, beginning with the first of the Opus 102 sonatas in C major and concluding with Opus 69 in A major. Other selections on the program will be by Ottorino Respighi, Libby Larsen, Leonard Bernstein, and Aaron Jay Kernis.

Saturday, February 15, 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall: Violinist Krista Bennion Feeney will present the next Alumni Artist Insights program. The title of her program will be Chinoiserie, From Beijing & Versailles: Baroque Music from the Forbidden City. François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau are likely to be the only composers on the program familiar to most listeners; but among the many less familiar names one will find Marie Antoinette, represented by a “Portrait charmant” scored for violin and harp. Feeney will be joined by the period-instrument ensemble Ars Antiqua, which includes Cheryl Ann Fulton on baroque harp. The other performers will be Bethanne Walker on traverso (the transverse flute from the Baroque period), Mark Kramer on gamba, and Corey Jamason on harpsichord.

[added 2/13, 7:30 a.m.:

Monday, February 17, 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall: Viola student Alexandra Simpson will give a recital of works not all of which were composed for viola but all of which suit the instrument. The second half of the program will be devoted to the works actually written for viola, the most significant of which will be William Walton's piano concerto. This will be followed by a “Concertstück” for viola and piano, which Georges Enescu composed in 1906. Young Lee will provide piano accompanist for both of these selections. The program will begin with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1011 suite in C minor, composed for solo cello. Simpson will then take on the clarinet part in Johannes Brahms’ Opus 114 trio, joined by James Jaffe on cello and Cynthia Sun on piano.

Tuesday, February 18, 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall: This will be the annual Music for Food concert, a musician-led initiative for local hunger relief. There will be no charge for admission, but donations will be appreciated. All proceeds will benefit Starcross Community, whose food pantry hopes to offset the lack of basic resources for residents of Sonoma County. Both students and faculty will participate in the performances. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 97 (“Archduke”) piano trio in B-flat major. The first half will begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 493 (second) piano quartet in E-flat major, followed by Toru Takemitsu’s “A Bird Cam Down the Walk,” scored for viola and piano.]

Friday, February 21, 7:30 p.m., Concert Hall: Nicole Paiement will conduct the next performance by the SFCM New Music Ensemble. The soloist for the evening will be guitarist David Tanenbaum, who will be featured in a performance of “Cuban Landscape with Rain” by Leo Brouwer. The other works on the program will be “Winter Music” by Alexina Louie and “Nourlangie” by Peter Sculthorpe.

Monday, February 24, 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall: Violinist Cordula Merks will give her Faculty Artist Series recital, for which program specifics have not yet been announced.

When any further details become available, they will be found on the Performance Calendar Web page at the SFCM Web site closer to the scheduled dates. The above hyperlinks will lead to concert-specific Web pages. The individual event pages will specify whether a concert is free and/or whether a reservation is required. If there will be a charge for admission, there will be a hyperlink to a Web page for purchasing tickets. (There will also be hyperlinks for making reservations for free concerts.) For those who do not already know, the SFCM building is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station.

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