SFCMP: Sharing Rituals with Little Engagement

The title of the final Mainstage Concert presented by San Francisco Contemporary Music Plays was Shared Rituals. The sharing presumably reflected on the Latinx background of the five composers on the program, four of whom were women: Tania Léon, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ana Lara, and Gabriela Ortiz. The one male composer was Chilean-American Miguel Chuaqui.

All five works on the program were relatively short, the longest of which was the final selection, Ortiz’ “Corpórea,” which clocked in at eighteen minutes duration. This involve the diverse sonorities of a nonet performed by Tod Brody (flute), Peter Josheff (clarinet), Alica Telford (horn), Daniel Norris (trumpet) Jennifer Ellis (harp), Divesh Karamchandani (percussion), Kevin Rogers (violin), Stephen Harrison (cello), and Richard Worn (bass). The title emerged only in the last of the four movements, “Ritual mind,- corporeous pulse,” in which the “pulse” evoked memories of Igor Stravinsky’s “L'Histoire du soldat.” However, when taken as a whole, the spirit of “Corpórea” never rose to a level of engagement that Stravinsky could evoke so consistently.

Diverse sonorities were also the order of the day for Léon, Lara, and Chuaqui. Each of their selections was a premiere: Bay Area (Léon), United States (Lara), and West Coast (Chaqui). This also involved an impressive diversity of instrumentation, but that impression did not extend into the listening experience for any of them. Indeed, the most engaging work on the program was also the shortest, the six-minute “Lamento del Panaca” by Frank, given a solo performance by guitarist David Tanenbaum. The reader may now reflect on how it was that this particularly impressive offering had to do with loss, rather than sharing.

The portrait of Dante Alighieri in Luca Signorelli’s fresco for the Chapel of San Brizio in the Orvieto Cathedral (photograph by Georges Jansoone taken on April 30, 2008, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Somewhat more engaging was the Prelude Concert for the evening. Paul Mortilla’s “Comedía” was composed on a Friction Quartet commission (with support from Chamber Music America). The title was a reflection on Dante Alighieri, but the scope of influences was far broader. The quartet members (violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers, Mitso Floor on viola, and cellist Doug Machiz) were joined by the vocal quartet of soprano Cara Gabrielson, mezzo Kindra Scharich, tenor Eric Dudley, and baritone Ryan Bradford with Sun Chang on an electric keyboard with harpsichord setting. Sadly, no text source was provided for the audience, neither in print nor in projection. Nevertheless, there was more about both the music and its performance to sustain attention than had surfaced over the course of most of the Mainstage Concert.