As in the past, the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Guitar Series for the 2023–24 season will be presented in partnership with the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. Specifics for the full Omni series were summarized this past April. As in the past, SFP will host five of the concerts with the venue alternating between two sites: St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, which is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, and Herbst Theatre, on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. All performances will begin at 7:30 p.m. The summary of dates, performers, and venues, along with a more specific account of program content, is as follows:
Saturday, October 7, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Australian guitarist Stephanie Jones will make her SFP debut. She has prepared an impressively diverse program, which will include an entire account of Ástor Piazzolla’s Estaciones Porteñas, known in English as The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, since the four collected compositions are associated with summer, winter, spring, and autumn. Like many guitar recitalists, she will begin with music by Johann Sebastian Bach, with arrangements of the “Gavotte” and “Gigue” movements from the BWV 1006 partita for solo violin in E major. She will then present works by five composers who, presumably, came to her attention in Australia: Richard Charlton, Ross Edwards, Jakob Schmidt, Quique Sinesi, and Rostislav Golubov. Following her Piazzolla performance, she will conclude her program with Roland Dyens’ arrangement of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “A felicidade.”
Friday, November 10, Herbst Theatre: The Dublin Guitar Quartet of Brian Bolger, Pat Brunnock, Chien Buggle, and Tomas O’Durcain had been scheduled to perform in February of 2022. This will be their rescheduled appearance. Much of the program will be devoted to arrangements of compositions by Philip Glass. This will include two of his string quartets, the second (“Company”) and the third (“Mishima”). They will also perform arrangements of four of the piano études (2, 9, 16, and 20). They will conclude the program with an arrangement of Arvo Pärt’s “Summa.” There will also be original compositions by Wojciech Kilar (“Orawa”) and Rachel Grimes (“Book of Leaves”), as well as a new arrangement by Marc Mellits, whose content has not yet been announced.
Saturday, December 2, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Prior to the pandemic, the Beijing Guitar Duo of Meng Su and Yameng Wang were relatively frequent and always welcome visitors. (I still have fond memories of the Salon performance that SFP arranged at the Hotel Rex.) They are particularly adept at reconceiving works that were originally composed for solo piano. It should therefore be no surprise that most of the composers on the program are represented by arrangements of piano works. In alphabetical order these are Isaac Albéniz, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, and Enrique Granados. The one selection for guitar duo will be the final work on the program, Piazzolla’s Tango Suite, which was originally composed for the duo of Sergio and Odair Assad.
Saturday, February 10, Herbst Theatre: Another welcome returning artist will be Pepe Romero. He will present a solo recital program to celebrate his 80th birthday. Specifics have not yet been announced, perhaps with the intention of offering his audience a few (if not more) surprises.
Tuesday, April 16, Herbst Theatre: Some readers may recall the jaw-dropping impact of the performance by George Hinchliffe’s Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain that took place in March of 2022. My guess is that anyone in attendance at that concert has been hoping for more. Those hopes will be satisfied by the final Guitar Series concert of the season. All of the selections will be announced from the stage for the sake of holding the audience in suspense.
Subscriptions are now on sale for $220 for premium seating in the Orchestra, the Side Boxes, and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $185 for the center rear of the Dress Circle and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $150 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. When single tickets go on sale, they may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.
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