Wednesday, December 9, 2020

SFGC’s Annual Holiday Concert to Go Virtual

As was announced at the beginning of this season, the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) will go virtual for its annual holiday concert. The program, which will be streamed this month at 3 p.m. on Sunday, December 20, is entitled Island Holiday. The traditional holiday favorites will be supplemented by new music from the Caribbean and other islands.

There will be two world premiere performances. The first of these will be Angélica Negrón’s “Cosecha” (harvest), composed on an SFGC commission. The second will be the latest addition to the SFGC repertoire provided by local composer Sahba Aminikia. Followers of SFGC concerts may recall that his last offering was part of Rightfully Ours, the SFGC program presented less than a week before the first announcement of lockdown due to COVID-19. His latest composition, “Music of the Birds,” involves a special SFGC collaboration with Kronos Quartet, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Sirkane Social Circus School in Turkey. In addition, there will be a preview performance of the fourth scene from Matthew Welch’s choral-opera “Tomorrow’s Memories: A Little Manila Diary,” composed on an SFGC commission and scheduled for its world premiere during the 2021–2022 season.

Contributing instrumentalists will include Florante Aguilar on ukulele and organist Robert Huw Morgan, along with the members of the Kronos Quartet: violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Sunny Yang. Stage direction will be by Sean San José. The video will be produced by Joan Osato and New Art Media. While the performance is free and open to the public, there is a suggested donation of $25 to offset the cost of video production and guest artist appearances. Reservations are required through a hyperlink on the event page for this program.

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