Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy in Antwerp

Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy, Reggie Workman, and Andrew Cyrille performing in Antwerp (from the booklet accompanying the album being discussed)

My final examination of a new album released in celebration of Record Store Day is The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp. This is another quartet album led jointly by pianist Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone. Rhythm is provided by Reggie Workman on bass and drummer Andrew Cyrille. The album accounts for the entire performance, which took place at De Singel Arts Center in Antwerp (Belgium) on September 30, 1995. Like Atlantis Lullaby, which was discussed yesterday, the album consists of two CDs. The overall duration is 100 minutes (again including time set aside for applause).

Also like Atlantis Lullaby, the tracks tend to be generous in duration. Indeed, the shortest track is “Epistrophy,” which Thelonious Monk composed with Kenny Clarke in 1941. (I always get a bit of a chill when I am listening to adventurous jazz that is older than I am!) I suspect that this was deployed as a “punctuation mark” for the longer opening selection, which was Waldron’s “What It Is.” Waldron’s more extended contribution is a medley lasting a little less than 25 minutes, which couples his “Snake Out” with his “Variations on a Theme by Cecil Taylor.” I found it somewhat interesting that, over the course of the thirteen pages of text provided by the highly informative booklet, no one identified Taylor’s theme; but, to be fair, it is usually not an easy matter to extract the theme from one of the tracks on a Taylor album!

Lacy contributed only one of his own originals to this set, “Longing,” which is one of the moderately shorter offerings. The more impressive undertaking is Workman’s “Variation of III,” which is almost half an hour in duration. Once again, the booklet provides no clues about what that title is meant to convey. To be fair, however, I do not think that much is to be gained from trying to overthink the listening experience. Ever since The Wire, many of us have had a tendency to fall back on the assertion that “It is what it is;” but, where adventurously inventive jazz is concerned, I can think of no better advice for how to approach performances and improvisations.

Sahba Aminikia to Present New Work at 836M

A page from The Concourse of the Birds, painted by Habiballah of Sava (from the Web page for the event being discussed, provided by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York)

Readers may recall that, this past March, the 836M Gallery hosted a celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which included a performance at the piano by the gallery’s composer-in-residence Sahba Aminikia. At the conclusion of this month, the gallery will host a performance of his latest project, The Language of the Birds. This will be based on the poem by the twelfth-century mystic Attar of Nishapur, which had previously been staged by Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière under the title La Conférence des oiseaux (the conference of the birds). (The script was published in 1979.)

In preparing this performance, Aminikia collaborated with the Living Earth Show duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson, both of whom had been “fellow students” during his studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The resulting score will also be performed by the ensembles of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and singer Marjan Vahdat, who had performed with Aminikia in the concert he had prepared for the Persian New Year this past March. Other contributors to the current project are media artist John Sanborn and multidisciplinary artist, musician, composer, director, and educator David Coulter. Translator Zara Houshmand contributed to preparing the text.

The Language of the Birds will mark the conclusion of Aminikia’s residency. It will be given two performances at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 31, and Saturday, June 1. The 836M Gallery is located in North Beach at 836 Montgomery Street, between Jackson Street and Pacific Avenue. The event is free, but an RSVP is necessary. That may be arranged through a hyperlink on the 836M Web site; but, as of this writing, that hyperlink has not yet been created. As a result, readers will have to make their reservations close to the end of the month, presumably through the Coming Performances Web page.

SFP: A Disappointing Close to the Season

Pekka Kuusisto and Gabriel Kahane (from the SFP event page for last night’s performance)

Last night San Francisco Performances (SFP) wrapped up its 2023–24 season with a disappointing conclusion. The final offering was taken by Council, the duo of Pekka Kuusisto and Gabriel Kahane, both of whom are vocalists and multi-instrumentalists. Their page in the program book cited: “The program will be announced from the stage.” There was a fair amount of babble, but much of it came across as if they were more interested in talking to each other than addressing the audience.

The twentieth century was a rich period when it came to musicians making fun of what they did in front of an audience. My favorite was the duo of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. Darlene could not hit a note on pitch if her life depended on it. (Some readers may recall that I cited her to express my disappointment with a vocal album released by Radha Thomas.) Jonathan was best represented by an album jacket showing three hands at a keyboard, suggesting that none of them could find the right notes. These were, of course, “stage names” for two major contributors to the pop scene, pianist and arrange Paul Weston and vocalist Jo Stafford. (Stafford also took on “Temptation,” singing “Tim-Tayshun” under the name Cinderella G. Stump with Red Ingle and his Hillbilly Band. Every vowel that she delivered had spine-cringing impact.)

The thing about those days was that those of us that knew about music knew how to laugh with Stafford and Weston. Last night it was hard to decided whether or not to laugh at Kuusisto and Kahane or simply to endure the experience in polite silence. My upbringing taught me that the latter was a preferred option, and I confined any groaning to the deeper recesses of my imagination. Nevertheless, I still have to wonder how it came to be that two individuals, who seemed to have little to offer other than self-indulgence, have achieved representation by serious promotional organizations.

As Kurt Vonnegut liked to say, “So it goes!”

SFCMP to Conclude Season with Vocal Offerings

Soprano Winnie Nieh (courtesy of SFCMP)

At the end of this month, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) will conclude its 2023–24 season with another program featuring vocal works, given the title RE:voicing 2: Worlds Apart. The instrumentalists will be joined by the Volti chamber choir, led by its founder Robert Geary, along with two vocal soloists, soprano Winnie Nieh and baritone Daniel Cilli. The featured work on the program will fill the second half of the evening, the cantata Worlds Apart, composed by Richard Festinger.

This piece was commissioned from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University in 2018. The plan was for the work to be given its first performance by Cantata Singers and Ensemble, based in Boston. The new work would provide the same instrumental accompaniment that Johann Sebastian Bach required for his BWV 78 cantata, Jesu, der du meine Seele. However, while BWV 78 required four vocal soloists (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), the new work would require (as can be seen above) only a soprano and a baritone. The text for the cantata drew upon an eclectic collection of sources from Bertolt Brecht, Stephen Crane, and Wendell Berry. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the originally scheduled world premiere had to be cancelled, meaning that this month’s concert will mark the composition’s first performance.

In the first half of the program, Volti will perform “De Profundis” (out of the depths), a setting of Psalm 130 by the rising young Bay Area composer Jens Ibsen. There will also be a performance of “Effortlessly, Love Flows,” one of the movements from Aaron Jay Kernis’ Ecstatic Meditations. The text is taken from the writings of the medieval mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg.

The first half will then conclude with the only instrumental work on the program. “Asko Concerto” was one of the last pieces to be composed by Elliott Carter. It was written on a commission for the Asko Ensemble, which is based in Amsterdam. Carter wrote the score for sixteen players, drawing upon the concept of a Baroque concerto grosso. The work is in six sections, which involve different combinations of instruments.

This program will take place on Thursday, May 30, beginning at 7:30 p.m. The venue will be the Brava Theater, which is located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street. As usual, the program will be preceded at 6:30 p.m. by a How Music is Made discussion with Artistic Director Eric Dudley in conversation with Festinger. General admission will be $35 with a $40 VIP rate, and $15 for students. Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page.

Yusef Lateef’s Quartet in Avignon

Cover of the album being discussed (from the album’s Amazon.com Web page)

Following up on my examination of Sun Ra at the beginning of this month, my examination of new albums released in celebration of Record Store Day has led to Atlantis Lullaby: The Concert in Avignon. The concert took place on July 19, 1972 in the Cloître des Célestins and was presented by a quartet led by wind player Yusef Lateef. He was joined by pianist Kenny Barron, Bob Cunningham on bass, and drummer Albert Heath, one of three jazz brothers known to his friends as “Tootie.” The album consists of two CDs and accounts for about 90 minutes of music (give or take the time set aside for applause).

For the most part the tracks are of extended duration. The only brief one is “Lowland Lullaby,” in which Heath shifts over to Indian flute to play a duet with Cunningham. Most of the tracks are by Barron, including what was probably 25 minutes of free improvisation given the title “The Untitled!” On the briefer and more lyrical site, Barron plays a duet with Lateef for his composition “A Flower.” All the other tracks involve the entire quartet, providing each of the players opportunities for extended solo takes. That includes the “straight ahead” track for “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” which is one of the more generous platforms for Lateef’s own solo work.

Lateef enjoyed a relatively generous amount of attention during my time at the campus radio station for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, after I left with my doctoral degree, I found that there were few opportunities for me to encounter his work. That situation only changed a few months ago, when I wrote about his Eastern Sounds album at the end of this past February. As a result, I appreciated that Record Store Day provided me with another opportunity, which turned out to be a “full concert” document. Whether one has a taste for extended improvisation or the quiet brevity of “Lowland Lullaby,” this is a collection of tracks for which attentive listening will be richly rewarded.

Jonathan Biss Concludes Schubert Series

Pianist Jonathan Biss (photograph by Benjamin Ealovega, courtesy of SFP)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, pianist Jonathan Biss concluded his three-part series of recitals for San Francisco Performances (SFP) entitled Echoes of Schubert. The series was structured around the last three piano sonatas to be composed by Franz Schubert: D. 958 in C minor, D. 959 in A major, and D. 960 in B-flat major, none of which were published during the composer’s lifetime. Indeed, they remained out of sight for about a decade, after which A. Diabelli & Co. published all three of them in a single volume in 1838, given the title Franz Schubert’s Allerletzte Composition. Drei grosse Sonaten, which was dedicated to Robert Schumann.

Since the sonatas were performed in order of catalog number, the series concluded last night with D. 960. In many ways this is the most massive undertaking of the three. Furthermore, since the catalog of Otto Erich Deutsch is chronological, only five entries remain in the principal portion of the document. (The last is the final song, “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.”) Biss took all of the notated repeats, allowing the sonata to unfold into the full extent of its “heavenly length” (Schumann’s epithet). His command of both tempo and phrasing escorted the attentive listener through an extended journey well worth taking.

Having struggled with this sonata during my younger days, I have cultivated a genuine love for this music both for its inventive technical qualities and for the profundity of its expressiveness. (I happened to be working on this undertaking during a trip to Seattle for my first encounter with Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle in its entirety. I managed to find a piano near my hotel, and I pursued a path through the entire sonata every morning!) As a result, I try not to miss an opportunity to listen to this music in recital.

As might be expected, I have also accumulated a fair number of recordings. On that score, however, I have to say that I have cultivated an appreciation for the “historically-informed” performances that have been recorded. The fact is that, to put it bluntly, Schubert poured a lot of notes into D. 960. As they accumulate into larger masses, they tend to obscure each other when they are played on a contemporary keyboard (such as the Steinway Model D that San Francisco Performances offers to its recitalists). On the other hand, because the dynamics are not as overpowering, a performance on an instrument from the early nineteenth century is more conducive to accounting for every note that Schubert penned. For those of us that are sticklers for detail, that amounts to a significant asset.

However, if last night’s instrument did not allow Biss to do justice to every minute detail, he could still deliver a compelling account of the sonata in its entirety. Indeed, as the sonata unfolded, I found myself scribbling a note in my program book suggesting that Schubert might have had a “four seasons” plan in mind. There is something “autumnal” in the almost wistful rhetoric of the opening movement, which is then followed by the “winter chill” of the Andante sostenuto. The Scherzo, of course, is spring, while the concluding Allegro ma non troppo blazes in the heat of summer!

The program began with the third of the four impromptus collected in D. 935. Composed in the key of B-flat major, this is a sunny set of variations on a theme that Schubert had previously explored in earlier guises. Biss brought a light touch to his interpretation, which provided just the right “warm-up” for the more imposing sonata that would follow.

Prior to that sonata, however, he gave the second (ever) performance of Tyshawn Sorey’s “For Anthony Braxton,” which had been commissioned by SFP. Biss introduced this piece by discussing the interplay of composed and improvised music that one could find in Braxton’s compositions (many of which were given enigmatic icons as titles). He described the genre as “trans-idiomatic,” which is about as good an account as any!

He also observed that the music was not necessarily “directed.” I can definitely affirm that proposition. At my first classes in composition, the teacher liked to caution against the problem of “noodling.” Unfortunately, Sorey had a tendency to “noodle.” As a result, while he laid out a landscape of interesting territory at the beginning of his composition, it was not long before the journey through that landscape devolved into “more of the same.” Needless to say, it did not take long for D. 960 to blow away the cobwebs of that prior listening experience!

SFO: The First Spring Opera

One of the projected images for the new production of The Magic Flute (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

As was promised this past Tuesday, this site will attempt to provide “informative introductions” to each of the three operas to be presented by San Francisco Opera (SFO) between May 30 and June 23. The first of these will be a new production (at least for SFO) of a long-time favorite, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 620, The Magic Flute. The staging was conceived by Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky, and it was originally presented by the Komische Opera Berlin. Here in the United States, SFO is sharing the production with the Los Angeles Opera and the Minnesota Opera.

The producers were inspired by silent film, the Berlin cabaret of the 1920, and early Hollywood animation; and the latter will be included through the animation efforts of Paul Barritt. The stage design and costumes were created by Esther Bialas. SFO Music Director Eun Sun Kim will conduct, and she will participate is a post-performance talk following the matinee on Sunday, June 2.

Many readers probably know that the “hero” of this opera is the prince Tamino, whose role will be sung by tenor Amitai Pati, an Adler alumnus and Merola fellow. Those (if any) familiar with narratology know that the hero always has a sidekick. In this narrative he is Papageno, who (again following tradition) is a bit of a rascal and catches birds for the Queen of the Night. Those roles will be sung respectively by bass-baritone Lauri Vasar and coloratura soprano Anna Simińska. Pamina, the “heroine” sought by Tamino will be sung by soprano Christina Gansch. She is the daughter of the Queen of the Night; but Sarastro (bass Kwangchul Youn), who values wisdom above all else, sees the impetuous passions of the Queen as a bad influence. He has thus taken Pamina under his own aegis, charging his servant Monostatos (tenor Zhengyi Bai) to oversee her care. (This turns out to be mistaken judgment!) Taken as a whole, the narrative presents a diversity of characters with a diversity of motives.

As has already been observed, this production will be given nine performances at 7:30 p.m. on May 30 and June 4, 8, 14, 20, 22, and 26, and 2 p.m. on June 2 and 30. The performances will take place in the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street (across MTT Way from Davies Symphony Hall). Ticket prices range from $26 to $426, and a single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for all of the above dates and times. Tickets may also be purchased at the Box Office in the outer lobby of the Opera House or by calling 415-865-2000. The Box Office is open for ticket sales Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Web page also includes a hyperlink to an Opera Previews Web site and a second Web page with information about pre-performance talks.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century Russians

As was the case with the French composers, three Russian composers are taken into account in the anthology of recordings made by Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic. In chronological order of birth, those composers are Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. However, among the three of them, there are only six compositions; and Shostakovich is “leader of the pack” with three of them. Rachmaninoff has a single CD all to himself with two works, and Prokofiev is represented only by his first violin concerto (on an album that gives “top billing” to violinist Sarah Chang)!

The Saint Petersburg Conservatory, probably as it appeared when Shostakovich was a student (photograph by Karl Bulla, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

The Shostakovich selections are particularly interesting, since they serve as “snapshots” of different periods in his career. Indeed, his first symphony (Opus 10 in F minor), was completed in 1925 when he was nineteen years old. He had composed it as his graduation piece at the Petrograd Conservatory (which is now the Saint Petersburg Conservatory). At the other end of his career, his fourteenth (next to last) symphony (Opus 135 in G minor) was first performed in September of 1969, having been completed in the spring of that year. Between these “bookends,” the Opus 77 (first) violin concerto in A minor was completed in 1948; but, due to the composer’s denunciation by the Zhdanov Doctrine, the premiere performance did not take place until October 29, 1955, by which time Shostakovich and David Oistrakh had worked on several revisions.

As a result, to some extent, these selections can be approached as “snapshots” from an autobiography. Opus 10 practically overflows with ambitious confidence; and it is clear that the composer had no idea how many “hammer blows” (with a nod to the biography of Gustav Mahler) he would have to endure. Nevertheless, Opus 135 bears witness to the composer’s strength in endurance; but this is far from your usual symphony. It was scored for soprano (Karita Mattila), bass (Thomas Quasthoff), and a small string orchestra with percussion. Technically speaking, the music would be better classified as a cantata, since each of its eleven movements is a setting of a poem, all translated into Russian from texts by Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Nevertheless, the composer always has the last word on how each of his compositions is named! This departure from convention can also found in the composer’s decision to provide descriptive titles to his concerto movements (rather than tempo markings): Nocturne, Scherzo, Passacaglia, Burlesque. Taken as a whole, these three “snapshots” provide an informative perspective on the composer’s career.

The Rachmaninoff CD has a similar biographical perspective. It begins with “The Bells” (Opus 35), which is usually described as a “choral symphony.” When that description was applied to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 125 in D minor, the “choral” portion was limited to the final movement. In “The Bells” all four of the movements are “choral,” with solo vocal parts in three of those movements. The first movement features a tenor (Dmytro Popov), the second a soprano (Ľuba Orgonášová), and the last a bass (Mikhail Petrenko). While the title was taken from the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, the text is a Russian adaptation by Konstantin Balmont; and any suggestion of Poe’s rhythms is purely coincidental! In my distant past I seem to recall a recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra that tried to accommodate Poe’s original words, and the impact of that experience led to my avoiding that music for quite some time!

Opus 35 is coupled with Opus 45, given the title Symphonic Dances. It is the only work composed in its entirely in the United States, completed in October of 1940. Rachmaninoff corresponded with Michel Fokine about creating choreography, but Fokine died in August of 1942. Several choreographers have tried to set this music. I seem to recall having seen a performance of the Bat-Dor Dance Company that left me cold. Nevertheless, I have been listening to this music since my high school days, and it still gets the juices flowing!

The Prokofiev concerto (Opus 19 in D major) gets far less attention than Opus 63 in G minor. (Prokofiev composed only those two.) It receives relatively little attention. Unless I am mistaken, my only previous encounter came from the Violin Masterclass anthology of recordings made by David Oistrakh. My guess is that Rattle chose to add this to his repertoire because it had been so neglected; but I fear that, where “public opinion” is concerned, there is more than a little reasoning behind that neglect!

San Francisco Philharmonic Coming to Herbst

Poster for the concert being discussed (from its Facebook Events Web page)

According to my records, the last time I tried to announce a performance by the San Francisco Philharmonic, led by is Founder and Music Director Jessica Bejarano, was in March of 2020; and, thanks to COVID, that concert never took place. Since that time, I have experienced radio silence from the group, which was only broken at the end of last month. The orchestra now announces its concerts through Groupmuse, which I am now set up to track by virtue of my need to follow other performers.

Yesterday afternoon, Groupmuse put up a Web page announcing that, towards the end of this month, the San Francisco Philharmonic will be performing in Herbst Theatre. The major work on the program will be Felix Mendelssohn’s third symphony, known to many (including those familiar with the ballets of George Balanchine) as the “Scottish.” The program will, with one addition, follow the usual overture-concerto-symphony format. The overture will be the one for the five-act opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, composed by Mikhail Glinka. The “concerto” will be the single movement “Romance” in the key of F minor, the orchestrated version of music originally composed for violin and piano by Antonín Dvořák. (The violin soloist has not yet been announced.) The program will include the “Phaéton” tone poem by Camille Saint-Saëns.

Tickets for this performance are on sale for $17, and they may be purchased through the Groupmuse Web page for this event. “Supermusers” will be able to purchase tickets for $12. The performance will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 25. Ticket sales through Groupmuse will close at noon on Friday, May 24. Seating will be general admission (first come first served). Tickets may be collected at the Box Office in the lobby.

Sun Ra: Chicago Sets from 1976 and 1977

Sun Ra on the cover of the album being discussed

In reviewing my archives, I discovered that, on several occasions, I would conjecture the influence of Sun Ra on a particular jazz artist that was the subject of my article. Sadly, it seems that I have not yet written anything about Ra himself. Fortunately, he was one of the artists to benefit from the plethora of new albums released in celebration of Record Store Day last month. The full title of the album that can introduce listeners to Ra’s unique approach to performance is Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago. The Amazon.com Web page in that preceding hyperlink provides options for both MP3 and a two-CD set.

All of the selections on the second CD were recorded on February 21, 1976. This includes the longest of the tracks, “The Shadow World,” clocking in short of eighteen minutes in duration. The tracks on the first CD were recorded at two different performances on November 4 and 10, 1977. The ensemble for all of these performances was a large one, and all of the reed players alternate among different instruments. That includes oboist James Jackson, whose other instrument is the Ancient Ihnfinity Drum. The brass section is limited to three trumpeters (Ahmed Abdullah, Emmett McDonald, and Vincent Chancey), joined by Richard Williams on French horn. There are also three vocalists: June Tyson, Cheryl Banks-Smith, and Wisteria (Judith Holton).

I had the good fortune to see Ra at least once in performance during the time when my wife and I were living in Los Angeles. It was clear that the visual experience was as important as the musical one, particularly to the extent that performances took place in a broader context of ritual. Nevertheless, the music was still jazz, even if the improvisations were wilder than anything one might encounter from any other ensemble.

Now, of course, those improvisations can be experienced only through recordings. Nevertheless, there are some advantages to that limitation, particularly for those listening with gear that includes access to time codes. It would not be out of the question to “parse” any given track for the sake of homing focus in on an extended solo or trying to tease out just how many instruments are doing how many different things during an ensemble episode. (Also, it may take several listenings to figure out some of the words being sung!)

I realize that some of these observations may be contrary to Ra’s own inclinations. Extended improvisations tend to develop around relatively simple building blocks, suggesting that the attentive listener should simply take things as they come to pass. While I had no trouble grooving on such spontaneity when in the presence of Ra and his ensemble, at the present “historical distance,” I am more inclined to take “deeper dives,” not necessarily for the entire album but at least for specific episodes that I feel deserve more attention.

Nevertheless, those without background experiences may have some trouble deciding whether this is noise masquerading as music or music masquerading as noise. My guess is that, if anyone would have put that choice to Ra himself, his answer would have been “Both and neither!” I suppose the appropriate metaphor is that Ra rolls the dice, and it is up to the listener to play it as it lays.

Daniel Hope’s Violin Recital for CMSF

Last night in Herbst Theatre, violinist Daniel Hope gave his San Francisco recital debut in a performance presented by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). He was accompanied at the piano by Simon Crawford-Phillips. The program spanned music from the nineteenth to the current century, including the United States premiere of Jake Heggie’s Fantasy Suite 1803, completed in 2022. There was also a last-minute augmentation, which did not appear on the program sheet.

The high point of the evening came in the second half, which was devoted entirely to César Franck’s A major violin sonata. I first became acquainted with this music in the late Seventies during my time in Santa Barbara. I had a neighbor on the faculty of the Music Departments at the University of California, and she was preparing this sonata for a recital. Since I was a frequent visitor to her unit, I heard a wide diversity of excerpts from the sonata each time I came to her door; so I was well prepared for my first encounter with the sonata in its entirety. It remains one of my favorites, and the expressiveness that both Hope and Crawford-Phillips brought to their interpretation triggered many fond memories.

The same could be said of the encore selection, Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” (love’s sorrow), the second of the two pieces collected under the title Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen (old Viennese melodies). This is music I have known from childhood, probably because it was often injected into soundtracks for silent cartoons! Hope’s delivery captured the nostalgia of the music without letting the rhetoric get too syrupy.

The first half of the program did not leave as strong an impression. The opening selection was George Enescu’s “Impromptu Concertante.” Enescu was a major figure in the twentieth century, not only as a composer but also as a violinist, a conductor, and a teacher. “Impromptu Concertante” was one of his earliest works, composed in 1903 but not published until 1958. In retrospect I would call it one of those pieces by an up-and-coming-talent throwing everything but the kitchen sink into his efforts. Hope had a solid command of the technical demands, but the overall rhetorical framework left much to be desired.

This was followed by Maurice Ravel’s first violin sonata, composed in the key of A minor and not published until after his death. This was a relatively short single-movement composition, and one can appreciate why Ravel never published it. Hope chose to segue it into Suite populaire espagnole, six of the seven Spanish folksongs (Siete canciones populares españolas) composed by Manuel de Falla, who made the arrangement with Paul Kochanski. I never fail to enjoy these pieces, regardless of setting; but I did not think that Hope quite caught the spirit of the music.

The first half of the program concluded with the Heggie suite, and the composer was on hand to introduce the audience to its four movements. Considering its relatively brevity, this music was, as they say, “all over the map,” which may have been foreboded by an opening movement entitled “Constellations.” The following movements capture the aggressive nature of Ludwig van Beethoven, the rise and fall of his relationship with George Bridgetower (for whom the “Kreutzer” sonata was written), and Heggie’s own opera Dead Man Walking. (I am surprised that the kitchen sink did not show up in the midst of all that diversity!)

Fortunately, the second half of the program compensated for any shortcomings encountered during the first.

SFO: The Spring Operas of the 101st Season

This month will conclude with the remaining three operas scheduled for the 101st season of the San Francisco Opera. As in the past, this site will provide previews for each of these operas in individual articles. However, this article will provide the “nuts and bolts” summary accounting for composers, opera titles, and date-and-time summaries of the performances as follows:

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Magic Flute: 7:30 p.m. on May 30 and June 4, 8, 14, 20, 22, and 26, and 2 p.m. on June 2 and 30
2. Kaija Saariaho, Innocence: 7:30 p.m. on June 1, 7, 12, 18, and 21, and 2 p.m. on June 16
3. George Frideric Handel, Partenope: 7:30 p.m. on June 15, 19, 25, and 28, and 2 p.m. on June 23

Information about plot and casting will follow soon on an article-by-article basis.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century France

The account by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic of twentieth-century music by French composers is decidedly shorter than the collections for Gustav Mahler and the “Schoenberg-Stravinsky axis.” There are, of course, the “usual expected suspects,” Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, each represented by the entirety of a single CD. Only one other CD remains, which consists of a single composition by Olivier Messiaen.

The Debussy CD begins with two of his own “usual suspects.” The first of these is the “Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune” with the flute solo taken by Emmanuel Pahud; and it is followed by his La mer (the sea), which the composer described as “three symphonic sketches.” The remainder of the CD is devoted to orchestral versions of piano music. The first of these is the score for the ballet “La boîte à joujoux” (the toy-box), whose piano score was orchestrated by André Caplet. The remaining three tracks presented three of the piano preludes in orchestrations by Colin Matthews. I must confess that I was particularly drawn to “La boîte à joujoux,” simply because I was so unfamiliar with it; and it did not take long for listening to emerge as a what-have-I-been-missing event.

Marie-Therese Gauley in her costume for the title role of “L'enfant et les sortilèges” (photograph by Henri Manuel, public domain in France, from Wikimedia Commons)

The Ravel disc begins with the complete performance of the one-act opera “L'enfant et les sortilèges” (the child and the spells), setting a libretto written by Colette. The whole affair is shamelessly silly, which is probably why I find it irresistible! Since this was a studio recording, multiple roles were taken by all but one of the vocalists. As readers might guess, that “one” was mezzo Magdalena Kožená (Lady Rattle), singing the title role! I have had many encounters with this music; and it always leaves me with a smile (along with a few belly-laughs as the plot unfolds). Rattle’s account definitely allowed the music to stand up on its own without staging. It was then followed by the orchestral version of the Ma mère l'Oye suite, which had originated as a piano duet performed by six-year-old Mimi Godebski and her seven-year-old brother Jean. Having performed that four-hand version with one of my neighbors, I am a sucker for any opportunity to revisit the music!

The Messiaen selection is one of his massive undertakings inspired by the New Testament. The Wikipedia page for “Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà…” translated the title as “lightning over the beyond.” However an entire paragraph is devoted to explaining both the denotations and connotations of the title. This is one of those compositions inspired by the New Testament Book of Revelation, which may well be the deepest dive into imaginary rhetoric to be found in any sacred writings.

I must confess that, when I listen to Messiaen, I rarely commit myself to teasing out all of those denotations and connotations in either the music or the text that inspired that music. I am content to “go along for the ride,” and I am seldom disappointed. Rattle’s recording (which was also included in the Warner Messiaen anthology) was a teasing reminder that I should take that ride more often.

The Bleeding Edge: 4/29/2024

This will be a busy week. However, much of it has been included in the “busy weekend” article for May 3–5, including the addition of one more event at the very end of that weekend. In addition, there have already been articles that account the entire new month for both Outsound Presents and the Center for New Music. As a result, this is the first time that all of the events to be considered this week have been accounted for by hyperlinks! 

A Pair of (Sort of) Singing Trumpeters

This month saw the celebration of Record Store Day on April 20. As most readers might guess, I spent the evening at a recital, rather than with my album collection. Nevertheless, a generous number of “historically significant” jazz albums were reissued for the occasion. Now that they have made it to the head of my queue, I feel it appropriate to deal with them on a one-by-one basis.

Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon on the cover of the album being discussed

I shall begin with the Jazz Detective album entitled In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album. The source of that album was a collection of studio performances recorded in 1972, which was shared by two West Coast trumpet icons, Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon. Both of them also provided vocals, and I suppose the polite way of putting it is that each one had his own unique approach to vocalizing. For the record, as they say, I have had enough exposure to get used to Baker’s voice; but I am not as sympathetic to Sheldon’s efforts!

The album has ten tracks; and rhythm is provided by the quartet of pianist David Frishberg, Joe Mondragon on bass, drummer Nick Ceroli, and Jack Marshall on guitar. For the most part, the vocals prevail over the instrumental work; but, as many readers know by now, I am always a sucker for following the bass line, even when the bass player does not venture into any extended improvisations. I was also drawn to Frishberg’s work, both in the background and on the occasions in which he took the foreground. Unless I am mistaken, this was my first contact with Sheldon; and, while I appreciated some of his stylistic turns, it is unlikely that I shall be actively pursuing any of his other recordings.

Baker’s history, on the other hand, was a variable one (to be polite about it). In reviewing my archives, I discovered that my collection includes two of his Pacific Jazz releases, the quartet album with Russ Freeman, recorded in Los Angeles in 1953, followed by Picture of Heath, six tracks recorded at a single session on October 31, 1956, also in Los Angeles. There are then two additions to my collection from recordings made in Europe, Early Chet, a “lost tapes” anthology of sessions in Germany between 1955 and 1959, and Blue Room, compiled from a series of sessions at the Vara Studio in Holland in 1979.

I must confess to one bit of frustration. While I had no trouble distinguishing the vocalizations of the two leaders, I was never quite sure who was taking which of the trumpet solos! It would not surprise me if those details were never documented (or if any documentation made at the time was subsequently lost). As a result, while the tracks on this album are, for the most part, engaging, I am more likely to return to the other Baker albums in my collection, if only for my personal obsession with specifics!

Pocket Opera’s Staging of Janáček’s Vixen

The monument for Sharp Ears erected in Janáček’s home town of Hukvaldy (photograph by Kazuo Ikeda, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from Wikimedia Commons)

Yesterday afternoon at the Legion of Honor, Pocket Opera presented the San Francisco performance of the latest installment in its 2024 season, Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. This opera, which explores the parallels between human nature and forest animals, requires a substantial cast, led by the title character (given the name “Sharp Ears”), sung by soprano Amy Foote. The cast also included two dancers, Bela Watson and Stephen Fambro, both with dual roles. The production was directed by Nicolas A. Garcia.

Those familiar with the venue know that its performance area is limited; and, in the absence of an orchestra pit, the musicians are required to perform in a narrow space behind the “action” on the stage. This layout could not accommodate the full extent of Janáček’s instrumentation techniques. Fortunately, Jonathan Lyness created an orchestration of the full score requiring only thirteen instrumentalists (four of whom played multiple instruments); and the Mid-Wales Opera was kind enough to share that score with Pocket Opera.

While the full cast accounts for a rich diversity of both animal and human personalities, the entire narrative revolves around Sharp Ears. As a child she is captured by the Forester (baritone Spencer Dodd); but it does not take long for him and his wife (mezzo Mary Rauh) to realize that she cannot be domesticated. By the time the vixen has matured at the beginning of the second act, she has her first encounter with the fox Goldstripe (mezzo Hope Nelson); and it is not long until the stage begins to fill up with five fox cubs. By the end of the opera, both the vixen and the Forester’s wife have died. However, the Forester encounters a frog, which turns out to be the grandson of a frog that appeared at the beginning of the opera, affirming that life goes on in cycles.

This makes for a rather elaborate plot line. However, Janáček’s score keeps the action moving, so to speak. The libretto, which was also by Janáček, was sung in a clearly-delivered English translation by Pocket Opera founder Donald Pippin. It was thus easy to negotiate the characters of the large cast and the rich extent of the action. My own quibble would be that an opera with such a rich abundance of imaginative content deserved a setting more conducive for the orchestra, the performers on stage, and (to at least some extent) the audience. Given the many challenges of financing, this is an ensemble that deserves deeper pockets!

Clerestory to Explore Schumann(s) and Brahms

Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, and Clara Schumann (courtesy of Clerestory)

Tickets are now available for the second concert to be presented in the current Clerestory season. (It has been a bit of a wait, since the first concert was performed this past November!) The full title of the program will be Notes and Letters: Music of Brahms and the Schumanns. Note the plural at the end of the title. The program will present choral music by not only Johannes Brahms but also both Robert and Clara Schumann. Specific selections have not yet been announced, but the program has been conceived to express this three-way relationship in terms of themes of longing, love, loss, and redemption. While Clerestory usually performs a cappella, for this program pianist Kymry Esainko will provide accompaniment for some of the selections.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place next month on Sunday, May 26, beginning at 7 p.m. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Tickets may be purchased through an Eventbrite Web page with prices of $35 for general admission, $25 for seniors, and $5 for students.

The Latest Discovery of Art Tatum Recordings

Cover of the album being discussed

Some readers may have observed that, every now and then when writing about pianists, I find of a way of injecting the name of Art Tatum into the context. To call him a jazz pianist of prodigious inventiveness would be selling him short. Indeed, since he was a contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff, I like to fantasize over what might have happened had the two of them been in the same place at the same time. (To the best of my knowledge, this never happened; but I can still wonder whether each listened to recordings of the other!)

As a result, even though I have both of the “Complete” box sets released by Pablo (one for solos and one for combos), I never miss an opportunity to add recordings of Tatum performances to my collection. So when I learned that Resonance Records was releasing a three-CD collection of live performances from the Blue Note jazz club in Chicago, recorded between August 16 and 28 in 1953, I was as happy as a pig in you-know-what. The title of the collection is Jewels in the Treasure Box, and it could not be more accurate.

With the exception of a few solo tracks, all of the performances are of a trio that Tatum led. He was joined by guitarist Everett Barksdale and Slam Stewart on piano. Every now and then, each of them gets an opportunity for a solo take or two; but, for the most part it’s Tatum’s show. My guess is that almost all of the tunes are familiar and have been previously recorded, but Tatum’s inventiveness knows no bounds. It seems as if, every time he returns to a tune, he has another way of approaching it.

It is also worth noting that those approaches often involved a radical shift in connotation. One of Tatum’s favorite sources from the classical repertoire was Jules Massenet’s “Élégie” (which the composer himself repurposed several times). As the title suggested, the composer conceived this as a musical evocation of melancholia. The score page I found through IMSLP gives the tempo as “Triste et très lent.” In this Chicago collection, Tatum’s performance is anything but “triste,” since he performs it at an eye-popping breakneck pace!

Since these are club performances, there is no shortage of “background noise.” Nevertheless, the recording technology consistently keeps the music in the foreground. When any imposition from the background finds its way onto the recording, it is inevitably a sign of appreciation from the audience that is bound to concur with anyone listening to that particular track. It is also worth noting that the album includes a fifteen-page booklet, which includes a diverse collection of retrospective reflections by other musicians with first-hand experiences of Tatum’s talents, such as Ahmad Jamal and Sonny Rollins. I also rather liked Rollins’ reflection that, when Earl (“Fatha”) HInes was at one of Tatum’s performances, he said, “God is in the house!”

Enjoy the journey!

One Found Sound Takes on Beethoven’s “Eroica”

Last night in the Swedish American Hall, One Found Sound (OFS), which performs without a conductor, took their repertoire “to the next level” with a program entitled Waveform. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 55 (third) symphony in E-flat major, usually known by the name “Eroica.” The composer was originally inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte’s acts of liberation, and had planned to name the symphony in his honor. However, when the liberator devolved into a tyrant, Beethoven’s struck out Napoleon’s name, replacing it with that single word “Eroica.”

Some may have wondered if OFS was too small an ensemble to perform this work of extended proportions in instrumentation, as well as duration. While it is true that the string section was smaller than the one that is usually encountered in Davies Symphony Hall, it would be fair to say that it was on a scale similar to the size of the ensemble Beethoven himself had conducted. While there may have been more brass and winds than usual, these were also instruments that were part of orchestras in the early nineteenth century, even if their roles in the performances tended to be modest. As far as the strings were concerned, there were enough of them to give due credit to the music in a space that perfectly suited the scale of the ensemble.

Those whose listening activities are dominated by recorded sources to the detriment of attending performances do not know what they are missing. In last night’s performance there were so many gestures of subtle interplay among the string section, winds, and brass that made the event totally superior to an “experience through a loudspeaker,” even for a listener hooked on score-following! Ensemble music has been spatial for as long as there have been ensembles, and the very layout of an orchestra reflects a commitment to sonorous interplay captured by all those marks on paper. As the old joke goes, the attentive listener is consistently clued in as to who is doing what and to whom. As a result, however many past experiences of recordings a listener has encountered, being “in the presence of performance” is always a source of fresh observations and insights.

Thus, while this is Beethoven’s second-longest symphony (shorter only than the “Choral”), there is never a dull movement over the course of its extended duration (which, last night, included OFS taking all the repeats)!

As might be expected, the impact of Beethoven towered above the two shorter compositions on the first half of the program. The program began with Ruth Gipps’ Opus 53, “Seascape,” composed in the middle of the last century. One could appreciate her approach to evocative qualities, but the listening experience was not a particularly enduring one.

This was followed by the world premiere of Sam Wu’s “Hydrosphere,” which had received last year’s Emerging Composer Award from OFS. The work was clearly a reflection on current “environmental consciousness;” but I must confess that I was left in the dark when it came to figuring out what the composer had intended to reflect. The fact is that, where premieres are concerned, “first contact” experiences do not often register very well; and the music is better served by opportunities for further listening.

MOR to Premiere New Heggie-Scheer Opera

Gene Scheer, Megan Marino, Jake Heggie, and Ryan McKinny (from the MOR Web page for the opera being discussed)

Next month will see the latest world premiere of an opera composed by Jake Heggie working with a libretto by Gene Scheer. This will be the fifth work by Heggie commissioned by Music of Remembrance (MOR), which is based in Seattle. The premiere performances will be given over the course of a three-city tour, beginning in Seattle on May 19, followed by a visit to San Francisco, and concluding with two performances in Chicago on May 25 and 26.

The title of the opera is Before It All Goes Dark. The narrative is a true story based on reporting by the Chicago journalist Howard Reich. It follows the life of a troubled Vietnam veteran who discovers his Jewish heritage on a journey to recover art stolen by the Nazis during World War II. The role of the protagonist will be sung by bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, and the cast will also include mezzo Megan Marino. Joseph Mechavich will conduct a chamber orchestra. Staging will be directed by Erich Parce.

The San Francisco performance will take place at the Presidio Theatre, located in the Presidio (of course) at 99 Moraga Avenue. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 22. Tickets are being sold for $75, $55, and $40. The venue has created its own Web page for purchasing tickets, which includes an interactive “map” for seat selection. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-960-3949.

Owen Broder’s Hodges Tribute Continues

Some readers may recall that, back in October of 2022, saxophonist Owen Broder launched a project that would serve as a tribute to another saxophonist, Johnny Hodges, through a series of albums of tunes that Hodges performed either as the lead alto saxophonist in Duke Ellington’s big band or on his own. The second album was released this past April 19, and it is available through an Amazon.com Web page for MP3 download and the purchase of a vinyl album. Once again, Broder alternates between alto and baritone saxophones, leading a quintet whose other members are Riley Mulherkar on trumpet, pianist Carmen Staaf, Barry Stephenson III on bass, and drummer Bryan Carter.

The new release has eight tracks, only two of which are familiar to me. One of them is, as its Wikipedia page puts it, “a fundamental part of jazz musicians' repertoire,” W. C. Handy’s “Saint Louis Blues.” The other is one of Ellington’s most lyrical creations, “The Star-Crossed Lovers,” which he composed in 1957. (This was given poignant choreography by Talley Beatty in his “The Road of the Phoebe Snow.”) The remaining six tracks are “Used To Be Duke,” “Wabash Blues,” “Back Beat,” “Big Smack,” “Shady Side,” and “Stompy Jones.”

All of this makes for thoroughly engaging listening. My only quibble is that the advance material I received included some very informative liner notes by Willard Jenkins. Sadly, these are not available through the download site; and I have no idea whether they are included with the vinyl release. Those that take their listening seriously deserve the benefits of “background knowledge.” There is no question that Hodges is worthy of this tribute project, but such a tribute decidedly deserves context as well as content!

ZOFO Echoes Gamelan Practices

ZOFO pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi (photograph by Keith Saunders, courtesy of Old First Concerts)

This morning I was somewhat saddened to discover that I had not encountered a performance by the ZOFO duo of pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi since May of 2016 until I live-streamed their latest recital in the Old First Concerts series last night. I remember when this four-hands-on-one-keyboard duo made its debut and the innovative approach they took to repertoire that subsequently followed. That approach surfaced last night with a program entitled Echoes of Gamelan.

Many readers probably know by now that gamelan refers to both a genre of traditional Indonesian music and the ensemble that performs the music, consisting primarily of metallophone instruments, augmented by hand-drums to keep the beat, and occasionally joined by vocalists, both male and female. While a piano keyboard cannot match the sonorities of those instruments, Colin McPhee, who spent much time in Bali, transcribed gamelan music for two pianos; and roughly half of last night’s program consisted of four-hand arrangements of McPhee’s efforts. The remainder of the program then involved works by recent and twentieth-century composers reflecting on gamelan practices.

Sadly, some of those reflections seemed to be rather remote, if not distorted. I have not yet come up with a good reason for why Nakagoshi’s arrangement of the “Saturn” movement from Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite, The Planets, was included; and the “Sirènes” movement from Claude Debussy’s collection of three orchestral nocturnes, also arranged by Nakagoshi, was similarly opaque. However, these were outliers in a program that explored how the thematic content of the gamelan repertoire could hold up under the limitations of a piano keyboard.

For the most part, the results were satisfying. Mind you, my wife and I had the good fortune to experience gamelan performances in both Java (Yogyakarta) and Bali (Ubud). These were not “concert” experiences. It would be better to say that we had the good fortune to be in the presence of music being made. This is not to say that there were not situations that involve “stage” and “audience.” However, more often than not, the music is associated with particular occasions; and it is the nature of the occasion, rather than a “concert setting,” that matters.

Nevertheless, last night’s “concert setting” made for an engaging account between traditional and contemporary practices, leaving the attentive listener with a feast of food for thought.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: Schoenberg and Stravinsky

Simon Rattle on the cover of one of his Stravinsky albums (from the Amazon.com Web page for the single-disc release)

Readers familiar with the history of music in the twentieth century may accuse me of being a bit prankish in my decision to couple Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky in a single article accounting for performances by the Berlin Philharmonic led by Simon Rattle. Both of them spent the last years of their lives in Los Angeles County. However, as far as I can tell, the two of them were never in the same place at the same time (at least knowingly)! Indeed, the closest they ever came involved the fact that Robert Craft worked with both of them and may well have engaged in conversations in which each asked about the other! Thus, in accounting for the new Rattle anthology released by Warner Classics, I decided to take a compare-and-contrast approach to the two individuals that were clearly leading figures in the history of twentieth-century music.

Sadly, the grounds for comparison are more limited than I would have wished. Stravinsky is represented by only two CDs, while Schoenberg has three, one of which includes music that he arranged, rather than composed. Furthermore, each composer went through a series of stages, each of which involved a different approach to composition; and, in neither case, is the full extent of those stages given a fair shake. However, as is always the case where “the business” is concerned, one must work with what one has; and I shall try to do my best in accounting for both of these “rival” composers on this new anthology.

As is often the case such anthologies, I tend to follow where my strongest memories lead me. Therefore, I would like to begin with Stravinsky’s rather innovative approach to composing symphonies. After his initial undertaking, the 1905 symphony in E-flat (sometimes identified as his Opus 1), Stravinsky put the very idea of a symphony aside for over a decade. After that, each of his compositions had its own unique qualities, which reflected what he thought a “symphony” should be. The first of these was the 1920 “Symphonies of Wind Instruments.” Ten years later he composed the “Symphony of Psalms;” and, in the following decade, he composed the “Symphony in C” (1940) and the “Symphony in Three Movements” (1945).

In the Warner collection, the “Symphonies of Wind Instruments” is situated between “Le Sacre du printemps” and “Apollon musagète.” All three of these were recorded in concerts on dates very distant from each other; and my guess is that the producers (Stephen Johns and Christoph Franke) had a “compare and contrast” album in mind. Nevertheless, these are all early compositions, even though the two ballet scores were recorded using their respective 1947 revisions. (Stravinsky seems to have known how to keep his checkbook healthy when a copyright was about to expire!)

The other three symphonies are grouped on a separate CD but not ordered chronologically. Nevertheless, they do account for the composer’s “later thoughts” about what he wanted a symphony to be; and I, for one, enjoyed listening to how they had been grouped when the CD was pressed. On the other hand, where the ballet scores are concerned, I think that I still prefer listening to the recordings that Stravinsky himself made.

Schoenberg is represented by only three original compositions. However, the first of these is also his longest! Gurrelieder requires both solo vocal and choral resources, and its full duration requires two CDs. I actually purchased this as a two-CD set when it was first released. I felt that listening to this music frequently would be the only way I could get my head around what had struck me as a sprawling undertaking. I never quite succeeded, but there are definitely moments that still send a chill down my spine, particularly when they are sung by Karita Mattila!

Another work that requires a fair amount of exposure before the listener begins to appreciate the content is the first (Opus 9) chamber symphony. This was subsequently rescored for a full orchestra (still keeping “chamber” in the title), published as Opus 9b. Personally, I still prefer the original version; but Rattle seems to have found just the right way to guide the attentive listener through the orchestral version’s plethora of enigmatic cadences. Where that genre is concerned, I was far more satisfied with Opus 34. The full title of this composition (including the parenthesis) is “Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene (Drohende Gefahr, Angst, Katastrophe),” which translates as “Accompaniment Music for a Light Play [as in “the interactive play of lights] Scene (Threatening Danger, Fear, Catastrophe).” All of those parenthetical qualities are clearly evident, and one does not need visual stimuli to reinforce them!

The remaining Schoenberg selection is his orchestration of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 25 (first) piano quartet, composed in the key of G minor. Schoenberg clearly had fun in deploying instrumental qualities that one would never encounter in Brahms’ own orchestral undertakings. Nevertheless, it is clear that, in composing the concluding “Ronda alla Zingarese” movement, the composer wanted to have some fun; and I always break out in a grin when Schoenberg deploys a xylophone to add to the “fun factor!”

Schoenberg really did have a sense of humor. (The family car had a horn that was tuned to play the opening motif of his second string quartet.) On the recordings that he made in Berlin, Rattle seems to have an effective grasp on the composer’s full extent of dispositions!

Lamplighters to Present Dickens Musical

Poster from the production discussed in this article (from the City Box Office Web page)

Having presented (as I put it at the end of last month) “Sullivan Before Gilbert” for this month’s performance, next month Lamplighters Music Theatre will depart from both W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan to present Rupert Holmes’ musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Those that did not fall asleep in the classroom (either in high school or as undergraduates) probably know that this is the title of Charles Dickens’ final novel, which was left unfinished at the time of his death. Staging this narrative, with or without music, clearly poses some serious challenges.

Holmes rose to those challenges in a particularly innovative way. The narrative itself is basically a whodunit involving a murder, so the climax occurs when the murder is revealed. Holmes decided that, rather than trying to second-guess Dickens’ intentions, he would write multiple versions of the final scene, each revealing the murderer to be a different member of the cast. He then decided that the best way to engage the audience would be to invite them all, at the appropriate moment, to vote on who they think the murderer should be. As a result, Holmes created a “confession song” for each of the characters in the narrative. The Lamplighters production will be staged by M. Jane Erwin, and the Music Director will be Brett Strader. The show will also feature choreography by Vivian Sam.

This production will be given five performances. The venue will be the Presidio Theatre Performing Arts Center, which is located (as one might expect) in the Presidio at 99 Moraga Avenue. Ticket prices are $80, $70, and $65. The evening shows will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 11, Friday, May 17, and Saturday, May 18. The matinees will begin at 2 p.m. on Sundays, May 12 and May 19. The final production will be given a simulcast for a fee of $25. City Box Office has created a single Web page for all performances, including the simulcast option. For those that want to be thorough about the production, all eight of the confessions will be sung at the opening night performance!

Piano Quintets Conclude SFP Chamber Series

Leif Ove Andsnes at his keyboard (photograph by Helge Hansen, courtesy of SFP)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances (SFP) concluded its Shenson Chamber Series with a program structured around two piano quintets. Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who has been giving SFP performances since November of 1994, performed with members of the Dover Quartet (first appearing for SFP in October of 2016), violinist Bryan Lee, violist Julianne Lee, and cellist Camden Shaw. First violinist Joel Link was indisposed and was replaced by Adam Barnett-Hart, first violinist of the Escher Quartet. The first of the quintets performed was Ernst von Dohnányi’s Opus 26, his second quintet in E-flat minor. The intermission was then followed by Johannes Brahms’ Opus 34, the more familiar quintet in F minor.

It would be fair to say that the Brahms quintet is a major icon in the chamber music repertoire. By now I have lost count of the number of times I have heard it in performance, but it never fails to get the juices flowing. If I were to speculate, I might even guess that there is something about the score that brings out the best in the musicians, possibly because, over the course of the composition, every one of them has many opportunities to stand out among his/her colleagues. (Yes, that includes the second violin!) Even with the last-minute substitution, the chemistry exuded by the full ensemble could not have been richer; and I found it a joy to let my eyes wander from one player to another, making note of how each of them could express both individuality and group membership. Last night’s performance was, indeed, “one for the books!”

The Dohnányi selection was another matter. According to my records, I have not encountered one of his pieces in recital since March of 2020, when his Opus 10 serenade in C major was performed in a Music in the Mishkan program. I have been a bit more fortunate in finding recordings of his music; but I am almost certain that Opus 26 was a “first contact” for me. His rhetoric tends to be affable, but what really locked in my attention was the fugue around which the final movement was structured. I really need to get to know this music better in the hope that I shall find it again in future piano quintet recitals!

The program began with Joaquín Turina’s string quartet entitled “La oración del torero” (the bullfighter’s prayer). Curiously, the music was first composed for a quartet of lutes for members of the Aguilar Quartet, formed in 1923 by four of Dr. Francisco Aguilar’s six sons: Paco, Ezequiel, Pepe, and Elisa. As might be expected, the string quartet version receives more performances; and, while I had been familiar with the title, this was a “first contact” experience for me. The music is episodic, traversing a rich variety of dispositions reflecting what must be going through a bullfighter’s mind before he enters the ring. Indeed, the breadth of expressiveness in this music was rich enough that I would hope to encounter another performance of this music sooner, rather than later!

SFIAF to Present Piano-Percussion Improvisation

At the end of last week, this site announced that the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble would present the first concert of this year’s San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF). While the program will introduce an engagingly adventurous repertoire, there will be another concert later in the month that promises to be even more adventurous. This will be the latest production by the New Arts Collaboration (NAC), which describes itself as “an interdisciplinary art project for sound and multimedia.”

Ting Luo in performance (from the SFIAF Web page for this event)

The full title of the program to be presented is KEYSCAPES 2024: New Identity in Improvisation for Piano and Percussion. Percussionist Kevin Corcoran will join forces with three pianists, Ting Luo (curator of NAC), Motoko Honda, and Kevin Lo. The program will consist entirely of improvised performances with a duration of 75 minutes including an intermission.

The performance will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 12. General admission tickets are currently being sold for $25 through an SFIAF Tickkl Web page. The performance will take place in the Mission at the Community Music Center, which is at 544 Capp Street. Admission at the door will be $28.

Noah Haidu Releases Second Standards Album

Jazz pianist Noah Haidu (photograph by Jimmy Katz)

Readers may recall that, a little less that two years ago, Sunnyside Records released Noah Haidu’s Standards album, conceived as a tribute to the Standards Trio that Keith Jarrett formed with Jack DeJohnette on drums and Gary Peacock on bass. As I observed at the time, the release was not, strictly speaking, a trio album, involving a variety of different combinations of players, including four quartet tracks. Furthermore, however much Haidu chose to honor Jarrett, he definitely has a voice of his own, which encouraged the same from the other players on the album.

Earlier this month, Standards II was released. This one really is a trio album, with Billy Hart on drums and bassist Buster Williams, who had appeared on four of the Standards tracks. (This was the same trio that can be found on the SLOWLY: Song for Keith Jarrett album.) Once again, the tunes are, for the most part familiar; and each track lasts long enough to allow for a generous span of exploratory improvisation. Haidu is particularly accommodating in sharing those explorations, a gesture which is particularly rewarded in Williams’ expressively inventive bass work. Hart, on the other hand, is rarely in the foreground; but, when he occupies it, his inventions are just as engaging.

Haidu has stated that he plans to make his Standards Trio “a regular part of my touring schedule.” I would agree with him that inventive elaboration on the familiar can have just as much impact as “original” invention. Indeed, some “originals” are often so exploratory that even the most attentive listener develops a yearning for a more recognizable “frame of reference.” That frame of reference is always clear on Standards II, but there is more than enough vibrant creativity to make for a satisfying experience.

Dave Bass Has a New Trio

Cover design for the album being discussed (from the Amazon.com Web page)

The last time I wrote about jazz pianist Dave Bass was when he released  the third installment in a series of albums entitled simply The Trio. The other members of his trio were Kerry Kashiwagi on bass and Scott Gordon on drums. This past Friday Tiger Turn released his latest album. This is yet another trio album, but the title is Trio Nuevo; and, as of this writing, it is available through an Amazon.com Web page that provides only an MP3 download. As readers may have guessed, this is a new trio album; but Bass is joined by two new players. The bass is now played by Tyler Miles, and Steve Helfand is the drummer.

As usual, Bass is the composer for the lion’s share of the tracks. This includes the latest effort of a “meeting of the minds” with Johann Sebastian Bach (who was no slouch when it came to improvising). The title of the track is “Three Views of Bach;” and, while I am not yet sure of the enumeration, I found the interleaving of Baroque and jazz riffs to be more engaging than I anticipated.

While Bass dominates as composer, there are also highly imaginative tracks based on tunes by Charlie Haden (“Sandino”) and Denny Zeitlin (“Offshore Breeze”). For those that may still be nostalgic for Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, there is a setting of Herman Hupfield’s “As Time Goes By,” which eases its way into the tune. Personally, I rather like the way in which Bass keeps the listener guessing about when the tune will actually show itself explicitly. Ironically, however, such a listener is likely to be disappointed by the time the track concludes, realizing that the tune has revealed itself only through its most telling of its fragments. This implicit approach to familiarity makes for an engaging contrast with the more explicit Bach riffs.

In other words these are tracks that are likely to please particularly attentive listeners. Some might wish to dismiss such an attitude as “snob appeal.” I prefer to call it just “having fun with the music!”