Rob Sudduth to Return to Chez Hanny as Leader

Rob Sudduth playing his saxophone (courtesy of Jazz Chez Hanny)

If my archives are accurate, saxophonist Rob Sudduth gave his last performance for Jazz Chez Hanny in August of last year. On that occasion he was on the front line for a tribute concert for Gerry Mulligan led by Mulligan’s drummer Ron Vincent. Next month Sudduth will lead a quartet of his own called the Rob Sudduth Big Horn Quartet. To be fair, Sudduth’s baritone saxophone will be the only horn in the quartet; but there is no questioning that the baritone instrument is a big one! The repertoire that he will bring to his next appearance will include the partnership of Duke Ellington with Billy Strayhorn, Thelonious Monk, and Charles Mingus.

Sudduth will be joined by pianist Ben Stolorow, who had joined him in last year’s tribute concert. His bass player will be John Wiitala, who performed with the Dred Scott Trio at Chez Hanny towards the end of May of last year. The drummer will be Ron Marabuto, who has been a familiar face at Chez Hanny (even if I have no personal record of any of his performances).

As usual, the show will begin at Chez Hanny at 4 p.m. on Sunday, October 12. As always, the venue will be Hanny’s house at 1300 Silver Avenue, with the performance taking place in the downstairs rumpus room. Admission will be $25, payable by cash, by check made out to Jazz Chez Hanny, or by Zelle through jazz@chezhanny.com. There will be two sets separated by a potluck break. As a result, all who plan to attend are encouraged to bring food and/or drink to share. Seating is first come, first served; and the doors will open at 3:30 p.m. Reservations are preferred and may be made by sending electronic mail to jazz@chezhanny.com.

Madre Vaca Half a Decade Later

I first became aware of the Madre Vaca jazz collective a little over five years ago. This was when they released an album entitled Winterreise; and, as someone that believes that there is no such thing as too much of the composer Franz Schubert, I could not resist listening to it. (I assume that most, if not all, readers already know that the album title is taken from Schubert’s D. 911 song cycle of the same title!) My conclusion was that Madre Vaca has “repurposed Schubert for an objective he could not have possibly imagined;” but I still enjoyed listening to the results.

The cover of Madre Vaca’s latest album, courtesy of Jazz Promo Services

At the end of this past May, Madre Vaca released its latest album, entitled Yukon. Bassist Thomas Milovac has replaced Mike Perez. However, the other three members of the quartet on this album remain the same: Jonah Pierre on piano and keyboards, Jarrett Carter on guitar, and Benjamin Shorstein on drums. Shorstein is the only member of the quartet that does not contribute as composer to any of the album’s eight tracks.

There is definitely no quibbling over the musicianship of all four of these performers. Nevertheless, I have to confess that none of the three composers get the juices flowing. Mind you, the skills of the players serve up much to offer on any given track; but I suspect that many listeners will not sustain one-track-after-another listening to the entire album! That may explain why the only option on the Amazon.com Web page is for MP3 download. A CD for this content may appeal to some as a “journey” similar to that of D. 911; but, personally, I prefer to enjoy each of the individual tracks for its own virtues, independent of its “neighbors!”

Is Diplomacy Decided by Who Has Cooler Toys?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/30/saudi-fund-kushners-firm-to-buy-games-maker-electronic-arts-in-55bn-deal 

TwoSet Violin Finally Comes to Davies

Brett Yang and Eddy Chen taking a bow with their pianist Sophie Druml (photograph by Cecilia Tan, from The Strad)

Some readers may recall that the TwoSet Violin duo of violinists Brett Yang and Eddy Chen was scheduled to perform in Davies Symphony Hall during last July’s Summer with the Symphony season. That debut recital had to be postponed, but last night they finally made it to Davies to perform their Sacrilegious Games program. The “sacrilege” was, of course, their approach to the violin repertoire. The result was an engaging evening of physical comedy recalling the past antics of Peter Schickele and Victor Borge. Indeed, their (intentionally) delayed appearance almost served as an homage to Schickele’s frantic opening shtik.

In this case, however, the waiting was ameliorated by the appearance of their piano accompanist, Sophie Druml, who took the stage right on time. She warmed-up the audience with an arrangement (her own?) of the last of the “24 Caprices for Solo Violin” by Niccolò Paganini. This was followed by music from the “Winter” concerto from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons involving a charade of violin-playing.

Of course both of the violinists had a solid command of technique. When they were not poking fun at the classics in all directions, Chen delivered a thoroughly engaging solo account of the opening passage in Jean Sibelius’ Opus 47 violin concerto, and Yang was just as rock-solid in his delivery of Camille Saint-Saëns Opus 20 “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.” However, the heart of the program was the diversity of their takes on comedy. Most memorable, probably, was when both of them played the last of the Paganini Caprices while spinning hula hoops. The most ambitious undertaking, however, was probably taking “La campanella” (the theme of the final movement of Paganini’s second violin concerto) and performing it in a series of styles as a journey through music history: baroque, classical, romantic, twentieth-century, jazz, and K-pop.

It’s nice to know that Davies can be just as welcoming to physical comedy as it is to “serious music!”

The Bleeding Edge: 9/29/2025

October will get off to a relatively quiet start. Friday will see two events, each at a different bookstore, and the month will begin at The Knockout. Details are as follows:

Wednesday, October 1, 9 p.m., The Knockout: The next event at this venue will present three sets, each with its own “bleeding edge” motivation. YaM is the duo of guitarist Alex Yeung with Adam McClure on drums. They described their own innovative genre as “SF avant fusion.” More familiar to readers will be the appearance of Grex, currently led jointly by Karl Evangelista on guitar and vocalist Rei Scampavia. They will be joined by drummer Robert Lopez for a trio performance. The final events will be by the Inner Ear Brigade, which defines itself as a “might prog ensemble.” Vocalist Madeline Tasquin will join Joshua Marshall on saxophone on the front line. Rhythm will be provided by Stephen Wright on bass, keyboardist Evelyn Davis, and Time Row on drums. Admission will be $10. The venue is located  in Bernal Heights at 3223 Mission Street, one block south of Cesar Chavez Street.

The “digital cover” of Harold Carr’s digital album Jungo (from the Bandcamp Web page for the album)

Friday, October 3, 6 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Bassist Harold Carr will perform music from Jungo the album he released at the beginning of this month. This was a quartet album, with violinist Flavia Cerviño-Wood on the front line. Rhythm was provided by pianist Derek Coombs. For this week’s performance the front-line will be expanded to include two wind players, Andrew Voigt, alternating between saxophone and flute, and clarinetist Bruce Ackley. For those that do not yet know, the venue is a bookstore located in Glen Park at 653 Chenery Street.

Friday, October 3, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: This week there will be a solo performance by violinist Lucien Balmer. He has been experimenting with a genre that synthesizes the classical genres from both Europe and India. For those that do not yet know, the venue is a bookstore located in Glen Park at 653 Chenery Street.

Arturo O’Farrill Celebrates Carla Bley

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

While I have been aware of jazz composer Arturo O’Farrill through the recordings of other performers, the most recent being pianist Lara Downes on her This Land album, this weekend provided me with my first opportunity to listen to one of his own albums. Its full title is Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley; and it consists of three multi-movement suites, Mundoagua being the first of them. The titles of the other two suites are Blue Palestine and Día de los Muertos.

Mundoagua was commissioned by The Columbia School of the Arts in 2018 in commemoration of the Year of Water. Unfortunately, the novel coronavirus pandemic forced the postponement of the world premiere performance of this three-movement suite. Sadly, the accompanying booklet does not account for when (if ever) the music was first performed in concert; but the recording was made on June 6 and 7 of 2022. “Mundoagua” (world of water) is the title of the suite’s middle movement, preceded by “Glacial” (the source of the water) and followed by the (inevitable?) “The Politics of Water.” It would be unfair to call this “agitprop” music, but that final movement includes an unmistakably cynical reflection on our National Anthem. It goes without saying that those reflections continue through the three movements of Blue Palestine.

Back in the last century, there was a popular quip attributed to a variety of different sources: “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.” Mundoagua is clearly sending a message about taking water for granted. However, O’Farrill is very good about not overplaying his hand, allowing each of his three suites to direct the attentive listener to the music, rather than any political messages. The music certainly deserves that attention, with generous opportunities for solo takes by members of the ensemble.

Gerhard Reichenbach Plays BWV 827 on Guitar

Gerhard Reichenbach with his guitar (courtesy of the Omni Foundation)

Some readers may recognize from the headline that this will be the second time that the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will be presenting an OMNI on-Location video of Gerhard Reichenbach playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach on guitar. The last one took place this past Monday with a performance of BWV 825, the first of the six partitas that were included in the composer’s first Clavier-Übung (keyboard practice) collection. Tomorrow morning Omni will release another video of Reichenbach arranging music from Clavier-Übung. This will be BWV 827, the third of that same Clavier-Übung collection.

While BWV 825 followed a sequence of movements that was familiar to Bach, BWV 827 is a bit more adventurous. The opening “Praeludium” will be replaced by a “Fantasia.” The next three movements will follow a path that most Bach-lovers will recognize: “Allemande,” “Corrente,” and “Sarabande.” Then the “double-minuet” of BWV 825 is replaced by the coupling of a “Burlesca” and a “Scherzo.” “Business as usual” will then continue with a “Gigue” as the final movement.

As usual, the performance will be streamed through the Omni Foundation’s YouTube channel. The YouTube Web page for this program has already been created. However, the video itself will not be available for viewing until 10 a.m. tomorrow, Monday, September 29. There is no charge for admission, which means that these performances are made possible only by the viewers’ donations. A Web page has been created for processing contributions, and any visits made prior to the streaming itself will be most welcome.

Lislevand Shifts Attention from France to Italy

Those that recall my tenure with Examiner.com may recognize the name of lutenist Rolf Lislevand. Towards the end of May of 2016, I wrote about my first encounter with him through the ECM New Series album La Mascarade. That album presented music from the court of Louis XIV with attention to the French composer Robert de Visée and the Italian-born Francesco Corbetta. This coming Friday, ECM will release a new Lislevand album. This one “shifts the geography” from France to Italy with music composed for archlute and chitarrone composed by Giovanni Girolamo (or Johann(es) Hieronymus) Kapsberger, Giovanni Paolo Foscarini, Bernardo Gianoncelli, and Diego Ortiz. By of “full disclaimer,” I should let readers know that only the last of those four names was familiar to me, having encountered him in my college days when I subscribed to the Musical Heritage Society.

Cover of Rolf Lislevand’s latest ECM album

The title of the new album is Libro primo, and it will be released this coming Friday. Lislevand chose this title in dedication “to the works of Italian composers for the lute in the first half of the 17th century, largely published in their first printed books.” That explanation makes for a bit of a stretch, particularly since not all of the composers were Italian by birth! Furthermore, Lislevand injects one of his own compositions into the fray, a passacaglia with an easily recognizable nod to Ludwig van Beethoven! It is also worth noting that the two Ortiz compositions, “Recercada quinta” and “Recercada sesta,” are both variations on the same theme, one I recognized thanks to the Musical Heritage Society!

For the most part, the album is dominated by the Libro primo d’intavolatura di lauto, a compilation of compositions by Kapsberger. I must confess that my personal interest was inclined towards Ortiz, even though I had recently encountered Kapsberger in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at the end of this past March! Preferences aside, however, I was impressed by the diversity in repertoire that Lislevand selected for this album. I suppose I enjoy the experience of cultivating a bridge between “favorite tunes” from the past with the “new encounters” performed by Lislevand on his new release.

Artificial Intelligence Learns How to Drive Drunk?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/waymo-dui-police-stop-21071193.php 

SFCM Orchestra Off to a Disappointing Start

Last night I livestreamed the first performance of the season of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Orchestra led by Edwin Outwater. As usual, the concert took place in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall. Sadly, the audio delivery could not have been weaker, meaning that I had to crank up the audio on my screen to the maximum level. Even then, there were passages that just did not come across, particularly in the quieter moments in the concluding selection, the “Concerto for Orchestra” by Witold Lutosławski.

The “core” of the program consisted of two familiar works by Claude Debussy. The intermission was preceded by “Ibéria,” the second of the three compositions collected in Images pour orchestre. Following the intermission, student conductor Chih-Yao Chang took the podium to lead the ensemble in “Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.” His performance was disciplined, and his engagement with the orchestra could not have been better. However, neither of the Debussy selections rose above the level of a dutiful account.

2010 photograph of David Conte (from his Wikipedia Web page)

Most disappointing was the opening selection of David Conte’s “Sinfonietta for Classical Orchestra.” This got the program off to an energetic start. However, it was clear that the video team was not really acquainted with the music. As a result, the account tended to reduce the overall experience as one of busy-work, where video direction informed by previous experience with the music (and, perhaps, a copy of the score) could have given the entire program the benefit of an energetic start.

Why Morton Feldman?

Some readers may wonder why I just decided that amateur pianists (such as those that will be performing at the Cadillac Hotel in about a month’s time) deserve to be better informed about composer Morton Feldman. One reason is that, at the beginning of next month, harmonia mundi will release an album of the four compositions that Feldman collected under the title The Viola in My Life. As most readers will expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Sadly, the last time I wrote about this music was when it was performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in October of 2009. That was back when I was writing for Examiner.com, and it was one of those articles that I had not yet backed up before that site was shut down! This is unfortunate since, by that time, I had accumulated two recordings of The Viola in My Life, one in the CRI American Masters series and the other released by ECM Records.

Violist Antoine Tamestit on the cover of his Morton Feldman album (courtesy of [Integral])

In the context of that background, readers may wonder why I wanted to add another recording to my list. The answer is simple enough: While Feldman provided the notes, he was not strict about how those notes should be interpreted. As a result, each recording provides its own unique listening experience. Furthermore, the CRI release only accounts for the first three of the four “parts” in the composition, each requiring different resources as follows:

1. viola, violin, cello, flute, piano, and percussion
2. viola, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, celesta, and percussion
3. viola and piano

Like the ECM release, the new album includes the fourth movement for viola and orchestra. The orchestra is the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by François-Xavier Roth, and the violist for the entire album is Antoine Tamestit.

In preparing to write about this new release, I made it a point to visit the booklet and see where it stands alongside the booklets of the two previous albums. I have to say that the essay accompanying Tamestit’s performance was more satisfying than the text sources I had previously encountered. The author was Jean-Yves Bosseur, translated into English by Charles Johnson. What is important is that Bosseur begins by establishing context, goes on to a rich description for each of the four parts, and concludes with the “punch line” that “Feldman’s language goes far beyond any unilateral psychological meaning.”

Mind you, I am not sure that “meaning” serves as an “issue” when one is listening to this music. I would just as soon follow the lead of T. S. Eliot, whose “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” includes the following couplet near the beginning:

   Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
   Let us go and make our visit.

In that vein, Bosseur seems to be saying: “Don’t waste time thinking, just shut up and listen!” (I had only a few opportunities to converse with Feldman, and he basically said the same thing while trying to be polite about it.) If we are to take that advice, then there is much to be gained from just listening to Tamestit’s music for what it is.

Cadillac Hotel to Host Something Different

Many readers probably know by now that this site does its best to keep up with the Concerts at the Cadillac events. These performances almost always include the Patricia Walkup Memorial Piano in the lobby of the Cadillac Hotel. Late next month, that piano will be the center of attention. Six amateur pianists, all living in the Bay Area, will contribute to a recital. As of this writing, the works to be performed and their respective performers will be as follows:

1. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Fantasia for keyboard in F-sharp minor, H 300 (Asako Tsumagari)
2. Frédéric Chopin: the sixth (E-flat minor) and eleventh (E-flat major) études from the Opus 10 collection (Christina Lee)
3. Franz Liszt: the last of the three nocturnes in the Liebesträume collection, S. 541/3 (Kaidi Zhang)
4. John Williams: the theme music for the film Schindler’s List (Daniel Abreu)
5. Sergei Rachmaninoff: the first movement of the Opus 36 piano sonata in B-flat minor (Jonathan Chu)
6. Alexander Scriabin: the last two movements in the Opus 23 piano sonata in F-sharp major (Calvin Huang) 

Photograph of Morton Feldman at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (from a Wikipedia Web page) 

I have to say that I am impressed by the breadth of repertoire prepared for this recital. My only misgiving is that I wish at least one of these pianists would have dared to be a bit more adventurous. For example, as can be seen on his Wikipedia page, there is a more-than-generous list of solo piano compositions by Morton Feldman. I have barely begun to account for them in my collection of recordings, and I am not sure I have experienced a performance by any of the local performers other than the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. (For those whose curiosity has been piqued, that performance can now be seen on a YouTube video.)

As usual, this show will begin at 1 p.m. on Friday, October 24. The Cadillac Hotel is located at 380 Eddy Street, on the northeast corner of Leavenworth Street. All Concerts at the Cadillac events are presented without charge. The purpose of the series is to provide high-quality music to the residents of the hotel and the Tenderloin District; but all are invited to visit the venue that calls itself “The House of Welcome Since 1907.”

Donald Runnicles Brings Mahler and Berg to SFS

I returned to the United States, after living in Singapore for about five years, to work in the new Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory on the northern edge of Silicon Valley. Unless I am mistaken, I purchased San Francisco Opera subscription tickets for my wife and I even before we left Singapore. We arrived in time for the beginning of the season in September of 1995, and we have been subscribers ever since then.

Readers probably know by now that, when I go to the War Memorial Opera House, I am as involved with what is happening in the orchestra pit as with what is happening on stage. As a result, it did not take me long to become acquainted with Donald Runnicles’ conducting technique; and I became more and more interested in his work the more I encountered it. Runnicles left his position at the San Francisco Opera in 2008, but he has made return visits since then. I have tried to keep up with them, and the most recent is currently taking place in Davies Symphony Hall.

For his visit to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) this week, Runnicles prepared a program with Alban Berg in the first half and Gustav Mahler in the second. Both of the works represented the composers at the beginning of their respective careers. The earlier of these was Mahler’s first symphony in D major, composed in 1888 and revised in 1906. The first half of the program was devoted to Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs, composed for piano and voice in 1908 and orchestrated in 1928. The vocalist for the performances was mezzo Irene Roberts.

Berg’s approach to orchestration was as rich as Mahler’s and decidedly more adventurous. The second of the songs was scored only for string quartet, harp, and bass, while instrumentation for the fifth song involved only winds. Since Runnicles is no stranger to vocalists, he knew exactly how to balance Roberts’ voice against the rich palette of sonorities in Berg’s score.

The songs themselves were originally composed for piano accompaniment when Berg was studying under Arnold Schoenberg in 1905. They were not orchestrated until after Berg had developed his own techniques for vocal composition in his Wozzeck opera. With those techniques under his belt, so to speak, he could find just the right instrumental coloration for each of the seven songs. Runnicles knew exactly how to elicit all of those colors from the SFS ensemble, always blending perfectly with the vast scope of dispositions in Roberts’ delivery of the texts.

Photograph of Gustav Mahler by Leonard Berlin (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

I found it interesting that the revised version of Mahler’s symphony should predate Berg’s undertaking by so few years. What makes this pairing interesting is that both compositions have prodigious rhetorical breadth. In Mahler’s case, however, it feels as if the rhetoric swings from one extreme to another. Furthermore, regardless of what any individual disposition may be, there is always a recognizable undercurrent of irony. Runnicles knew how to keep that undercurrent flowing, whether it involved a funeral march in a warped version of “Frére Jacques” or the thunder and lightning in the final (“Stürmisch”) movement.

Taken as a whole, this was a program that kept the conductor busy from beginning to end. It also called for expressiveness with operatic roots. (Remember, Mahler was Director of the Vienna Court Opera when he was working on his first symphony.) Who better to allow those roots to flourish in the concert hall than a conductor (like Mahler) with experience in performing opera? It may be early in the season, but I suspect that Runnicles’ visit will remain a memorable one.

BARS to Begin New Season Late Next Week

Donald Lee, who will conduct BARS in the SFCM Concert Hall

One week from tomorrow the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will host the first program in the new season of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS). For those that do not yet know, this ensemble was launched in 2008 as “a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer identified (LGBTQ) musicians and composers toward the goal of broad crossover appeal and excellence in the performing arts.” The first half of the program will be devoted to two California premiere performances, and the intermission will be followed by more familiar music by Ludwig van Beethoven. The conductor will be Donald Lee III.

The two composers whose works will be premiered will be Damien Geter and Joel Thompson. The opening selection will be Geter’s “Sinfonia Americana.” He has described this music as an exploration of the “American Sound” with “a nod to Black American Culture.” It will be followed by “To Awaken the Sleeper,” a setting of texts by James Baldwin, which will be narrated by Michael Mohammed. The Beethoven symphony will be his Opus 67 in C minor, better known just as “the Fifth!”

The performance of this program will take one week from tonight (October 4) at 7:30 p.m. The venue will be the SFCM Concert Hall at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. BARS has created its own Web page for processing ticket sales.Ticket prices range between $43.50 and $12. The Web page includes a chart showing which seats are available at what prices.

Bridge Releases Album of Cellist Louise Dubin

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Bandcamp Web page)

The beginning of this month saw the release by Bridge Records of the album Passages, a diversity of selections performed by cellist Louise Dubin, joined by another cellist, Julia Bruskin, and pianist Spencer Meyer. The subtitle of the album is “French Cello Works;” and it continues her interest in the music of Auguste Franchomme, which had previously been recorded on the Delos album The Franchomme Project, on which she also performed with Bruskin. The other composers represented on the album are (in order of appearance) Charles Koechlin, Gabriel Fauré, Frédéric Chopin (piano music arranged for cello and piano by Franchomme), Francis Poulenc (arranged by Maurice Gendron), Philippe Hersant, and Claude Debussy.

Most listeners will probably find this album a journey of discovery. Dubin saved the most familiar for the last, Debussy’s only sonata for cello and piano. Some readers may also recognize Franchomme’s name from when cellist Camille Thomas played his arrangements of Chopin for a San Francisco Performances recital in April of 2024. Dubin’s album includes another such arrangement, this time of the seventh the twelve études collected in Opus 25.

While it would be fair to say that Dubin is not shy about diversity, I found that both the selections for this new album and how they were ordered began to feel like “one thing after another” after the first few tracks. This is not to say that her technique lacks expressiveness. Nevertheless, after listening to the album several times, I found that my attention began to drift somewhere around the middle of the fourteen tracks. Perhaps if I sat in the audience for one of Dubin’s recitals, I would have come away with more positive impressions.

Noe Music to Begin Season with Wind Octet

If regular readers do not already know by now, I have to confess that keeping up with Noe Music events is, in the immortal words of Ira Gershwin, “a sometime thing.” Indeed, the only way I was able to find out about the first concert of the new season was when I encountered it on a Groupmuse Web page. To be fair, however, that is probably the most useful Web page for those interested in attending the performance, particularly since the site monitors how many tickets are still available.

The eight members of the American Wind Soloists (from the Classical Voice Web page for this event)

The performers for this occasion will be the American Wind Soloists. This is basically a “double quartet” of performers on oboe (James Austin Smith and Kemp Jernigan), clarinet (Alan Kay and Alicia Lee), bassoon (Gina Cuffari and Eleni Katz), and horn (David Byrd-Marrow and Eric Reed). Smith is the curator of the ensemble.

This happens to be the instrumentation for the first work on the program, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 375 serenade (called “divertimento” by Noe Music) in E-flat major. The program will then conclude of a suite extracted from the music of Bedřich Smetana’s opera The Bartered Bride. Between these two selections will be Ruth Gipps’ wind octet, her Opus 65, composed 1983.

Those familiar with Noe Music probably know that most performances take place on a Sunday afternoon, beginning at 4 p.m. In this case the date will be first Sunday of next month, October 5. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. When purchased through the Groupmuse Web page, the fee will be $20 with a discounted rate of $10 for “Supermusers.” Alcoholic drinks will be provided, which means that attendees should not bring their own drinks. Groupmuse has classified this as a “Kid-friendly event,” and the venue is wheelchair accessible. Ticket sales through Groupmuse will close at noon on Saturday, October 4. As of this writing, 26 of 30 tickets are available.

California Bach Society: Split-Choir Repertoire

Nate Widelitz, the new California Bach Society Artistic Director

Early next month the California Bach Society will begin its 2025–2026 season. This will mark the arrival of a new Artistic Director, Nate Widelitz. It will also be the month in which he receives his degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting, which he is completing at Yale University.

The full title of his first program will be Cori Spezzati: The Spatial Art of Split-Choir Sound. The one composition by Johann Sebastian Bach on the program will be the BWV 225 motet “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” (sing unto the Lord a new song). This is a three-movement composition scored for double-choir (eight voices divided into two four-part choirs). Three composers have been selected for the remaining works on the program:

• Adrian Willaert: “In convertendo,” an eight-voice setting of Psalm 125
• Dominique Phinot: “Lamentations” for eight voices in two groups of four
• Heinrich Schütz: Psalm 98: “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” (SWV 35)

As in the past, the San Francisco performance of this program will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 3. A Web page has been created for all information about ticketing, including season subscriptions as well as individual performances. The basic price for a single ticket is $35; but, as can be expected, there are several alternatives for discounts. Doors will open at 7 p.m. Because this is the first event of the season, the Web page also includes the purchase of four-concert subscriptions, whose standard price is $125. The page also allows for donations.

Justina Gringyte Sings Bizet’s Art Songs

Georges Bizet tends to be known almost entirely as the composer of the opera Carmen. Those more familiar with his catalog probably also think of the incidental music he composed for Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne; and many concert-goers have probably encountered one of his earliest compositions, his four-movement symphony in C major. However, in the period prior to L’Arlésienne, he composed a set of twenty art songs first published in 1873 as his Opus 21.

Justina Gringytè on the cover of her new album (from its Amazon.com Web page)

The performance of this collection was recently recorded by mezzo Justina Gringytè, accompanied at the piano by Malcolm Martineau. It was released on the Ondine label, and is now available through an Amazon.com Web page. To put this in a more familiar historical context, Bizet began his work on Carmen in 1873; but it would be fair to say that none of the Opus 21 songs presage the vocal writing for that opera. Indeed, if one is to go by the Wikipedia page of Bizet’s compositions, no further art songs were written after Carmen.

Listening to Gringytè’s performances, I am definitely impressed with her delivery. I also found myself wondering if these songs were a “warm-up” for the music that would eventually be sung by Carmen herself, who is also a mezzo. Nevertheless, I felt that Bizet was more in his element in a narrative setting, rather than dealing with the poets (such as Victor Hugo) that provided the texts for the Opus 21 collection. Indeed, I had previously discussed that feeling this past May when harmonia mundi released its three-CD album accounting for all of the Bizet art songs composed for voice and piano. On that occasion, I cited Winton Dean’s assessment of “an unimaginative repetition of the same music for each verse;” and, as far as I am concerned, that assessment still stands!

Brahms’ Legacy?

Johannes Brahms definitely deserves to be remembered for the prodigious diversity of genres in his catalog of compositions. That said, many of us also remember him for this remark:

If there is anyone I have not offended in this room, I beg their pardon.

President Donald Trump addressing the United Nations General Assembly (photograph by Timothy A. Clary, Agence France-Presse, from Al Jazeera Media Network article)

It was hard for me to ignore this memory while reading Al Jazeera’s account of the speech that Donald Trump gave to the United Nations yesterday. The good news is that I continue to enjoy listening to Brahms (which is definitely more satisfying than keeping up with reports of international relations).

SFCM Orchestra will Open Season with Conte

Edwin Outwater conducting the SFCM Orchestra in March of 2023 (from the SFCM event page for the concert being described)

Readers may recall that, about a month and a half ago, Pentatone celebrated composer David Conte’s 70th birthday with the release of the album whose full title is Intimate Voices: Chamber Music of David Conte. Conte is Composition Chair at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM); and, this coming Saturday, the SFCM Orchestra will offer its own celebration by beginning the first concert of the season with Conte’s “Sinfonietta for Classical Orchestra.” As usual, the conductor will be Edwin Outwater.

Conte’s sinfonietta will be complemented at the conclusion of the program with the concerto for orchestra completed by Witold Lutosławski in 1954 (after about four years of effort). Between these “bookends” Outwater will conduct compositions by Claude Debussy on either side of the intermission. The first half of the program will conclude with “Ibéria,” the only multi-movement piece in the composer’s Images pour orchestre collection of three works, each inspired by a different European country. The intermission will then be followed by what is probably the most-performed of Debussy’s orchestral pieces, the “Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune” (prelude to the afternoon of a faun). Student conductor  Chih-Yao Chang will take the podium for the performance of this work.

As of this writing, all tickets to the performance in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall at 50 Oak Street have been sold. The good news is that there will be a Vimeo livestream of the event. The Web page for this site has been created; but (obviously) the connection to the Concert Hall has not yet been activated. I plan to attend the performance through this site; and, in my past experiences, activation usually takes place about five or ten minutes prior to the beginning of the event.

Gerhard Reichenbach Plays BWV 825 on Guitar

Gerhard Reichenbach playing Bach in the Chapel of the Baroque Castle Saalfeld in the city of Thüringen (from the OMNI on-Location video of his performance)

This morning saw the release of the latest OMNI on-Location video produced by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. This was a solo guitar performance by Gerhard Reichenbach, filmed in the Chapel of the Baroque Castle Saalfeld in the city of Thüringen in Germany. Reichenbach played his own transcription of keyboard music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The selection was BWV 825, the first of the six partitas that were included in the composer’s first Clavier-Übung (keyboard practice) collection. As is the case for all of the partitas, there is an introductory movement (in this case “Praeludium”), followed by a series of dance movements. With the exceptions of the “Praeludium,” the “Sarabande,” and the second “Menuet,” all the movements consisted of two-voice counterpoint. It would be fair to say that, taken as a whole, Bach conceived of the composition as a study in both harmonic progression and counterpoint.

Reichenbach’s interpretations of these two genres could not have been more faithful to Bach’s intentions. One of the things I have learned from listening to guitar music is the way in which each of the six strings has its own unique sonority. Reichenbach could thus exploit that diversity of those sonorities to provide a clear account of each of the polyphonic voices, while also finding just the right sonorities for the “journey” of a harmonic progression. In other words, Reichenbach could deploy his guitar in such a way as to highlight the structural details of each of the partita’s movements through techniques that would have eluded a keyboard performance!

I have been listening to guitar performances of Bach going all the way back to my first encounter with Andrés Segovia’s All-Bach Program album. It would be fair to say that many of the tracks on that album prepared me for Reichenbach’s transcription of the BWV 825 partita. I also hope that Omni will, sooner or later, provide further examples of how Reichenbach has realized further transcriptions that are just as faithful  to Bach’s original keyboard sources.

The Bleeding Edge: 9/22/2025

The final Bleeding Edge of the month will be a busy one. It will include the two previously reported events that will take place at the Center for New Music at the end of the month. It will also introduce a new venue into the list of “usual suspects.” Specifics are as follows:

Thursday, September 25, 6 p.m., Asian Art Museum: This will be the next program of electroacoustic improvisation during the museum’s extended hours on Thursday evenings, performed by Yan Jun and Kevin Corcoran.

Friday, September 26, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: This will be the next Other Dimensions in Sound performance curated by reed player David Boyce. For this particular evening, Boyce will give a duo performance with Juan Almiñana Obando serving as DJ. There will also be a second set of music by Funkonya. As always, the venue is the bookstore located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. There is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Poster design for Red Clay Sound Haus (from its BayImproviser Web page)

Friday, September 26, and Saturday, September 27, 7:30 p.m., Audium: Apparently, last week’s announcement of the final performance by Red Clay Sound Haus was premature. In the immortal words of Bullwinkle Moose, “This time fer sure!” (presumably). For those that do not already know, this performing space has 176 loudspeakers. It is located at 1616 Bush Street, and the price of admission will be any amount between one and thirty dollars.

Friday, September 26, 8:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Bassist Lisa Mezzacappa will lead a sextet given the somewhat coy name 5(ish). The front line will be shared by Aaron Bennett on tenor saxophone and Kyle Bruckmann, who alternates among different sizes of oboe and synthesizer. They will be joined by Mark Clifford on vibraphone. Rhythm will be provided by pianist Brett Carson and Jordan Glenn on drums. For those that do not yet know, the venue is a bookstore located in Glen Park at 653 Chenery Street.

Saturday, September 27, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Darren Johnston will lead his Standard Issue quartet performing on a “peace cannon.” (Those wondering just what that is should be prepared to join the audience.) The other members of the group are Kai Lyons on guitar, bassist John Wiitala, and Lorca Hart on drums. This will be at the same venue as last night’s performance. However, in this case there will be a cover charge of $20 (cash at the door). Reservations may be arranged by calling 415-586-3733.

Sunday, September 28, 6 p.m., Noc Noc: Future Perfect SF is a monthly performance of music based on live electronic hardware. The contributing performers will be Mister Unruly, Aquamoon, A.K.aye, Minus Man, and David Leikam. There will apparently be “atmospheric” audio between the sets provided by DJ Clairity and Pixelpusher. Admission will be free.

Revisiting Verdi at the Opera House

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I returned to the War Memorial Opera House for a second encounter with the San Francisco Opera (SFO) production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, this time on our subscription tickets. We were subscribers long before I began this writing gig. Our box seats are so satisfying that we have never wanted to lose them.

One of the things I like about the vantage point is that my view of the conductor leading the orchestra is as satisfying as that of the stage. I particularly enjoy watching Music Director Eun Sun Kim on the podium with her command of both the vocalists and the musicians. Indeed, there was much to enjoy just off the podium with a rapturous solo by Principal Cello Sunny Yang at the beginning of the second act and the engaging flute performance for “Caro Nome” by Susan Kang in the first. After all, opera is not just about how the narrative is staged; it is also about how the music informs the listener of what is happening!

Both the narrative and the staging have become more than familiar over the course of my visits to the Opera House. Many readers probably know by now that Verdi is far from my favorite composer. Nevertheless, I appreciate his impact on opera: In the context of his predecessors, he knew how to transform flimsy melodrama into dramatic narratives in which the music and text drive the attentive listener to anticipate how the plot will reveal itself. Mind you, Richard Wagner would subsequently endow his narratives with even further substance; but it would probably be fair to say that Verdi started the wheels rolling in the right direction! (After all, that direction eventually led to operatic settings of the plays of William Shakespeare!)

Tenor Yongzhao Yu as the Duke of Mantua looking forward to his tryst with Maddalena (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

At this point readers may wonder that the only names I have called out have been musicians. The fact is that there was too much of a sense of the routine in the staging of the narrative. The climax comes in the quartet in which the Duke of Mantua (tenor Yongzhao Yu) is embarking on his latest conquest, Maddalena (mezzo J’Nai Bridges), while Rigoletto (baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat) is showing his daughter Gilda (soprano Adela Zaharia) the Duke’s “true colors.” The musical delivery could not have been better, but the staging never quite captured the tension that Verdi expressed so eloquently in his counterpoint.

Mind you, this is a narrative that never ascends beyond melodrama; so perhaps it is just as well that the music communicates more than the staging!

SFCA Announces 2025–2026 Season

Many readers are probably aware that my articles about San Francisco Choral Artists (SFCA), led by Artistic Director Magen Solomon, tend to be a “sometime thing.” Fortunately, a little over a week ago, I received a dispatch accounting for the three programs that will be performed over the course of this season. Program details have not yet been released; but there will be the usual offerings of new works by both the Composer-in-Residence (Max Marcus) and the Composer-Not-in-Residence (Perter Hilliard).

Venues will alternate over the course of the season. The first and last concerts will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. The “middle” program will be held at the Noe Valley Ministry at 1021 Sanchez Street. All of the performances will take place on a Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. General admission at the door will be $35 with a $30 rate for seniors and $15 for those under the age of 30. There is no “subscription rate;” but all hyperlinks for individual concert performances are now available on the SFCA Web page that summarizes the three concerts. Program specifics have not yet been released, but here is a brief overview of what each of the programs will offer.

The “season appropriate” poster for the December concert (from the Web page for purchasing tickets)

December 14: This will be a “seasonal” program, entitled Mystery, Magi, and Mittens. Works by both Marcus and Hilliard will be included. As might be expected, the earliest music on the program will be by Johann Sebastian Bach. The other living composers on the program will be American jazz musician Roger Dawson and Norwegian Trond Kverno, who specializes in church music.

March 15: The title of this program will be L’Chaim! A Celebration of Life. As might be guessed, the selections will draw upon music from the Jewish tradition on a global scale. That means that the most familiar composer on the program will be Felix Mendelssohn. However, at the other end of the time-line (so to speak), there will be world premiere offerings by both Marcus and Hilliard.

May 31: The season will conclude with a program entitled Love, Lost and Found. The winning work in the New Voices competition will be featured. The full scope of the program will go all the way back to the Renaissance with music by the Spanish priest Sebastián de Vivanco. More familiar composers will include Claudio Monteverdi, César Franck, and Samuel Barber.

Leave the Games to the Gamers!

Sixth Station Trio members Anju Goto, Katelyn Tan, and Federico Strand Ramirez performing last night at Old First Church (screenshot from the YouTube video feed)

Last night Old First Concerts hosted a return visit from the Sixth Station Trio. The ensemble is a piano trio, all of whose members have had experiences with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). The pianist is Katelyn Tan, who received her Masters degree from SFCM in 2020 and now serves as a staff accompanist there. That same year, violinist Anju Goto completed his SFCM undergraduate degree. Finally, cellist Federico Strand Ramirez holds both a Bachelor of Music and an Advanced Certificate degree from SFCM.

The title of last night’s program was Genshin Impact in concert. Genshin Impact is an action role-playing game, which was first released on September 28, 2020 for Android, iOS, PS4, and Windows platforms. Since that time it has extended to other platforms, and the software is updated regularly. The music was created by a team led by Yu-Peng Chen; and it has received concert performances by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Presumably, this means that Genshin Impact has made a significant impact (so to speak) on the gaming community to a point where they are willing to attend a concert performance of the music emerging from their game consoles.

Sadly, last night did not live up to the expectations of such a concert performance. There was no questioning the skills of all three of the performers, nor was there any doubt that they played perfectly well as a trio. Nevertheless, the music they were playing emerged as little more than consistently bland, engaging at “first contact” but discouraging as the evening progressed. By the time the musicians had advanced to the intermission, I had decided that I had experience enough of what one of my composition professors liked to call “noodling.” There were only so many noodles I could digest before my stomach would begin to revolt!

Choices for November 14, 2025

As of this writing, the first time that a choice will have to be made will be in a little less than two months’ time. As seen above, the date will be November 14, when four performances will be taking place simultaneously. The good news is that the first of those events will have two subsequent performances on the following days; but the other three will be one-time-only offerings. One of them, the performance by the Modigliani Quartet, was included in the summary of San Francisco Performances events, which appeared on this site about a month ago. Specifics for the other three are as follows.

Friday, November 14, and Saturday, November 15, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 16, 2 p.m., ODC Theater: As in the past, Ars Minerva will revive a long-overlooked opera from the past. Previous productions have presented operas from the seventeenth century, but this year Director Céline Ricci is taking a “great leap forward,” presenting Ercole Amante (Hercules in love), which was composed by Antonia Bembo in 1707! The good news is that this opera has not been overlooked by Wikipedia, where it has earned its own Web page (which cites Ars Minerva as presenting its first staged performance).

The ODC Theater is located in the Mission at 3153 17th Street on the southwest corner of Shotwell Street. Ticket prices are $125 and $80. Students will be admitted for $25. All tickets may be purchased through a single ODC Web page with hyperlinks for each of the three dates. The Box Office can also be reached through electronic mail at boxoffice@odc.dance, and the telephone number is 415-549-8534.

Pianist Tanya Gabrielian (from her Old First Concerts Web page)

Friday, November 14, 8 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: Pianist Tanya Gabrielian will perform a solo recital. Her program will be framed by the nineteenth century with a contemporary work by a San Francisco-based composer in the middle. That composer will be Sahba Aminikia, and Gabrielian will play his “Lullaby.” The program will begin with Robert Schumann’s Opus 15 Kinderszenen (scenes from childhood) set of thirteen short pieces. The final work will be Alfred Cortot’s solo piano transcription of César Franck’s A major sonata for violin and piano.

As usual, this offering will be “hybrid,” allowing both live streaming and seating in Old First at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue. General admission tickets continue to be sold for $30, with reduced rates for seniors, students, and children age twelve and under. The Web page for this event enables both ticket purchases and the hyperlink for the live stream.

Friday, November 14, 8 p.m., Swedish American Hall: The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale will present its first Philharmonia Sessions program. This will be a solo lute performance by Thomas Dunford. His repertoire is surprisingly broad, since the program he has prepared will span from the Baroque period to the music of The Beatles. The venue is located at 2174 Market Street, roughly halfway between Van Ness Avenue and Castro Street. Ticket prices (including fees) will be $65.05 for General Admission and $85.05 for Premium General Admission. A Web page has been created for online purchases.

Marin Alsop Conducts Anna Clyne for Naxos

Anna Clyne and Marin Alsop on the cover of the album being discussed

This coming Friday, Naxos will release an album entitled Abstractions, which presents four compositions by Anna Clyne performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. As most readers will expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page to process pre-orders of this new release, currently available as an MP3 download. The first of the four works on the album, “Within Her Arms,” was composed for string ensemble. The other three, the Abstractions suite, “Restless Oceans,” and “Color Field,” are performed by full orchestra.

I am pretty sure that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra provided me with my first encounter with Clyne’s music. When they visited Davies Symphony Hall in February of 2012, Music Director Riccardo Muti presented a “three centuries of modernism” program, which included the West Coast premiere of her “Night Ferry,” inspired by Seamus Heaney’s memorial poem for Robert Lowell, “Elegy.” My reaction at that time was that Clyne had “too much to say” in that composition.

On Abstractions Clyne shows a better sense of saying her piece without dwelling on it. This is best represented by “Restless Oceans,” which is slightly less than four minutes in duration. As was the case with “Night Ferry,” this is music with visual connotations. Those connotations can also be found in both Abstractions and “Color Field.”

“Within Her Arms,” the opening track, is the only departure from the visual. Instead, it is memorial. Clyne began work on it after the death of her mother in 2008. It was composed on a commission by conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which first performed it on April 7, 2009. It is a single-movement composition, scored for a string orchestra consisting of fifteen players.

I must confess that my past encounters with Clyne’s music (all of which took place in Davies) have been, to put it politely, variable. I can say the same about listening to the tracks on Abstractions. By now I have cultivated some familiarity with her rhetorical stances. I find it easy to adjust to each encounter with one of her compositions; but, as I continue listening, I keep remembering one of my favorite mottos coined by John Cage and Merce Cunningham: “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t!”

Beth Schenck Quintet on Queen Bee Records

Today is the release date for the latest album produced by Queen Bee Records. The title of the album is Dahlia, and several of the performers will probably be familiar for those following releases on this label. The leader is saxophonist Beth Schenck (also composer of all ten of the album tracks), who was last encountered on this site when the Sifter quartet released its Flake/Fracture album.

Beth Schenk (center) performing with her quintet members (left-to-right) Cory Wright, Jordan Glenn, Lisa Mezzacappa, and Matt Wrobel (photograph by Dyanne Cano, courtesy of Queen Bee Records)

On Dahlia Schenck plays alto saxophone, joined on the front line by tenor saxophonist Cory Wright. As on the Sifter album, rhythm is provided by Lisa Mezzacappa on acoustic bass and drummer Jordan Glenn. For Schenck’s quintet album they are joined by Matt Wrobel on guitar.

This is yet another Queen Bee release that is a little less than an hour in duration. While Schenck is the composer of all of the tracks, improvisation is shared generously among all five of the performers. I have to confess to a personal interest in Wright when he is playing bass clarinet. I had an opportunity to try playing that instrument in high school, and I quickly fell in love with its low-register sonorities. Indeed, when taken as a whole, the album tends to reflect on the interplay of the different registers in which the tunes unfold.

I have to confess that I am no stranger to this quintet. I had the opportunity to see them perform at Mr. Tipple’s Jazz Club in March of 2024. I was particularly taken with the performance of “Dinner with Carla,” which Schenk had recently composed as a memorial to Carla Bley. Fortunately, Schenk included this piece as the final track on her new Dahlia album. It would thus be fair to say that this new album reverberates into my own personal experiences, but isn’t any listening experience a personal one?

SFCCO Coming to Old First Church

SFCCO in performance (from the ensemble’s home page)

This year Old First Church will host the next program of new compositions prepared by the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra (SFCCO). The title of the program will be Unanswered, Forbidden, Unforgettable. The announcement of the performance describes the offering as “a journey through questions, voices once silenced, and music that refuses to be forgotten.” To be fair, many (if not most) listeners are likely to have “first contact” experience with the composers on the program. Those composers and their works to be performed are as follows:

• Hussein Al-Nasrawi, Moroccan Splendor & New York Wonders
• John Beeman, the Finale (Act II, Scene 6) of the opera Ishi, depicting the last survivor of the Yahi tribe
• Michael Cooke, the Finale of his fourth symphony, entitled “Deconstructing Beethoven”)
• Ben Dorfman, Two Movements for Chamber Orchestra with the titles “In the Silence” and “The Unanswerable Question”
• Vance Maverick, Lights Out
• Stardust, Les Fleurs Interdites: Les Bijoux

This concert will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, October 18. The venue the Old First Church at 1751 Sacramento Street, just east of Van Ness Avenue. General admission is $25 with a sliding scale available for students and seniors, and tickets will be available at the door. Further information is available by calling 650-667-0160.

SFS: A Satisfying Opening Night at Davies

Pianist Hélène Grimaud (photograph by Mat Hennek, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Following up on the All San Francisco Concert late last week, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) subscription season got under way last night in Davies Symphony Hall. James Gaffigan led a program that presented compositions by George Gershwin on either side of the intermission. The first half of the evening concluded with that composer’s three-movement “Concerto in F,” written in 1925 the year after his best-known “Rhapsody in Blue.” The intermission was followed by the other familiar Gershwin composition, “An American in Paris,” composed in 1928. The Gershwin selections were followed by Duke Ellington’s extended jazz composition “Harlem.” He wrote this for his own band, but Luther Henderson subsequently orchestrated a full symphonic version. The evening began with the newest work on the program, “The Block,” composed by Carlos Simon in 2018. The piano soloist for “Concerto in F” was Hélène Grimaud, who departed from the overall jazzy repertoire with an encore performance of the second (in the key of B-flat minor) of the three intermezzi published by Johannes Brahms as his Opus 117.

The season could not have gotten off to a better start. Gaffigan’s command was consistently attentive, suggesting that he had connected himself to every single member of the ensemble. The concerto was last performed in Davies in February of 2023 with Edward Outwater conducting piano soloist Conrad Tao. Unfortunately, I missed that particular event (which was also the case with the first SFS performance of the concerto, in January of 1937, before I was born, with Pierre Monteux conducting Gershwin at the keyboard). According to my records, Grimaud’s last visit was a little less than a year ago, when she played Maurice Ravel’s G major piano concerto; and I rather enjoyed the way in which her approach to Gershwin almost seemed to hint at the Gershwin-Ravel friendship.

Gaffigan was also clearly right at home on Gershwin’s “turf.” The pairing of the concerto with “An American in Paris” almost suggested another reflection on the Gershwin-Ravel connection. If Gershwin is known for bringing the jazz age to the concert hall, towards the end of his life, Ellington began to explore for “symphonic” approaches to the jazz that he had been creating for many decades. This led to the creation of several works which, for all intents and purposes, can be given the academic classification of “suite.” Unless I am mistaken, “Harlem” is the only one of them to have been subsequently arranged for a symphony orchestra, with the arrangement provided by Luther Henderson. There is a spirit of fun in this music, which coupled nicely with the high spirits of “An American in Paris;” but “Harlem” tried to do too much with its resources to match Gershwin’s diverse command of technique.

Simon shared an SFS program with Gershwin back in the summer of 2021 when Edwin Outwater conducted a Fourth of July Program at the Stern Grove Festival. Those of us on this side of the continent are probably best informed about Harlem through the telecast of Godfather of Harlem. Narratives of that region of Manhattan tend to have very sharp edges; but Simon’s on that setting seems to have veered away from those sharp edges, thus blunting the contextual rhetoric, so to speak. However, if Simon’s rhetoric did not get the juices flowing at last night’s performance, Gaffigan’s approach to Gershwin had no trouble making up for lost time!

Outsound Presents: October, 2025

Outsound Presents’ iconic three-leaf clover logo (from the Outsound home page)

I do not seem to have received word of any Outsound Presents concert this month. The good news is that next month will see the performance of the next concert in the SIMM (Static Illusion Methodical Madness) Series. My most recent mailing suggested that this will be the usual two-set evening; but, when I checked my Google Calendar, there was an announcement of only a duo performance by pianist Thollem McDonas and Rent Romus on his usual diversity of saxophones, given the title Bloom Project.

As usual, the concert will take place at the Musicians Union, located in SoMa at 116 9th Street. Admission will be by a suggested donation between $15 and $20. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. around the middle of next month on Sunday, October 19.

Another Brouwer Opportunity Now on YouTube

Italian guitarist Nino D’Amico performing a brief but engaging account of music by Leo Brouwer (screenshot from the YouTube video of this performance)

Those familiar with this site probably know that I try not to miss any opportunity to listen to the music of Cuban composer Leo Brouwer. Yesterday provided such an opportunity with the release of the latest OMNI on-Location video on YouTube. This was a solo guitar performance of Brouwer’s “La Gran Sarabanda,” performed by the Italian guitarist Nino D’Amico. In spite on the “Gran” title, this is a relatively short composition, very much in the spirit of sarabande movements from Baroque suites. Like those predecessors, the music begins with a stately rhetoric; but no one would confuse Brouwer’s approach to expressiveness with any of those predecessors! The entire composition is only about five minutes in duration, but D’Amico’s focused account leads the attentive listener through the full scope of that expressiveness.