2026 Schwabacher Recital Programs Announced

Banner for this year’s Schwabacher Recital Series (from the Web page for the Series)

This year the annual Schwabacher Recital Series will not begin until April (which, as some readers may recall, was the month of the last performance last year). This series of programs, presented jointly by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) Center and the Merola Opera Program, is now in its 42nd year. Regular readers probably know by now that the series is named after James Schwabacher, who was a co-founder of the Merola Opera Program; and it provides an opportunity to showcase the talents of the exemplary artists who have participated in the training programs of the Merola Opera Program and/or the SFO Center.

This year each of the performances will be held in a different venue. All of them will take place on weekdays beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets for the three-concert subscription will be $75, and single tickets will be sold for $30. A single Web page has been created for all ticket purchases. The Box Office is located in the lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue (across the street from City Hall).

Program specifics have not yet been finalized. Nevertheless, there will be the usual three recitals, and the pianists have been identified for all of them. Vocalists for the first two recitals have been announced, but only one of several has been named for the final performance. Current information for each of the dates is as follows:

Wednesday, April 1, Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater: The performers will be second-year Adler Fellows. Pianist Ji Youn Lee will accompany soprano Mary Hopkins and baritone Olivier Zerouali. The venue will be the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater, which is on the fourth (top) floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, adjacent to the War Memorial Opera House.

Tuesday, May 5, First Unitarian Universalist Society: Baritone Gabriel Natal-Báez will be the only vocalist. He will be accompanied at the piano by Tzu Kuang Tan. The venue is at 1187 Franklin Street, at the intersection with Geary Boulevard.

Tuesday, June 16, Barbro Osher Recital Hall: Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelson is currently Artist in Residence with SFO. He will perform with the Merola Artists he is currently coaching. The accompanying pianist will be Carrie-Ann Matheson. The venue is located on the eleventh floor (top) of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music building at 200 Van Ness Avenue.

The Bleeding Edge: 2/9/2026

This will be a busy week on the Bleeding Edge. Only two events have been previously announced:

1. Sarah Cahill’s Music History and Literature, which will take place this evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall on the eleventh floor of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music building at 200 Van Ness Avenue
2. The performance by Splinter Reeds at The Lab, located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street

With one exception, all other events will take place at familiar venues as follows:

Thursday, February 12, 8 p.m., Peacock Lounge: This will be the usual evening of four adventurous sets. Kristin Miltner is the composer and designer of video game consoles “designed to seize you by the roll of quarters and pull you headlong into unfolding multidimensional space.” This will be followed by Bevin Kelley, who is half of the duo Blectum From Blechdom. The next set will be performed jointly by PCRV and Appliancide, both based in Fargo, North Dakota. The final set will be taken by Dead Fern, with further information provided by its Bandcamp Web page.

The Peacock Lounge is located in the Lower Haight (sometimes known as Haight-Fillmore) at 552 Haight Street, between Fillmore Street and Steiner Street. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. to enable the first set to begin at 8 p.m. sharp. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $5 and $15. As in the past, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Friday, February 13, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: Details have not yet been announced for this week’s Other Dimensions in Sound program. As always, the venue is 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.

Friday, February 13, 8:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Jazz percussionist Kahil El'Zabar will lead a performance by The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. As usual, the venue is located in Glen Park at 653 Chenery Street. The cover charge is $35 with a student rate of between $10. Those wishing to make reservations can call 415-586-3733.

Saturday, February 14, 12:00 p.m., Center for New Music: This will be the usual G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S event with the usual opportunity to enjoy vegan pancakes while listening to “bleeding edge” music. It appears that this month there will be five sets with “bleeding edge” eccentricities in the names as follows:

1. Amphibious Gestures
2. Leyya Mona Tawil
3. Rot Diet
4. Adult Math
5. Kink Disposal Unit

Admission will be $10 with a $6 rate for members and students. For those that do not yet know, the venue is located at 55 Taylor Street, just north of Market Street.

Sunday, February 15, 2 p.m., Center for New Music: This will be the next performance to be presented by the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the National Association of Composers/USA (NACUSA/SF). Program details are not as specific as they were last year, but they will feature new works for piano, oboe, violin, flute, and electronics by John G. Bilotta, Monica Chew, James W. Cook, Mary Fineman, Robert Fleisher, John F. McGrew, Amy Stephens, Davide Verotta, and Ludmila Yurina. Admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for members and students.

Lorin Benedict, whose performance often involves only his microphone

Monday, February 16, 8 p.m., Harlan Records: This record store, located at 18 Harlan Place, will host a live (and free) performance by the duo of George Grydkovets and Lorin Benedict.

Bronfman Returns to SFS Great Performers

Pianist Yefim Bronfman (from the Web page for his SFS Great Performers Series recital)

Last night pianist Yefim Bronfman returned to Davies Symphony Hall to present another recital in the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Great Performers Series. His last visit was in April of 2024, when he presented a “usual suspects” program of solo piano compositions by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Frédéric Chopin. However, he also added Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Sisar” for a departure from the nineteenth century.

Last night’s departure was far less radical. The most recent work on the program was the second of the two “books” that Claude Debussy composed under the title Images. There are only three pieces in this collection, the first depicting the sound of bells, the second evoking the setting of the moon, and the last entitled simple “Poissons d’or” (goldfish). Each of these pieces presents the composer’s command of the evocative at its best. Sadly, while Bronfman gave a dutiful account of all the notes, any of the evocations of the “images” in the movement titles was not particularly compelling. That failure to seize and maintain attentive listening was equally evident at the beginning of the program with a performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 18, the “Arabesque” in C major, which rambled on with an uneven sense of the overall structure.

Each half of the program concluded with a sonata by one of the “three B’s,” Johannes Brahms prior to the intermission and Ludwig van Beethoven at the conclusion. The Brahms selection was an early one, his Opus 5, the third piano sonata in F minor. There was no shortage of expressiveness in the composer’s early compositions, but Bronfman seemed to do little more than ramp up that expressiveness with little sense of the overall content. The dynamics in the first movement were particularly extreme. The Beethoven selection was about half a century earlier (not in 1853 as printed in the program book). Opus 57, known as the “Appassionata,” was completed in 1805; and, like its recent predecessor, the Opus 53 “Waldstein,” it has received a generous amount of attention. Sadly, Bronfman did not invoke the attention it deserved with too much “hammering” in the first movement and too much blurring in the last.

There were two encores, neither announced and neither particularly compelling. I have come away from past Bronfman recitals with an abundance of satisfaction. This one left me with disappointment.

Chanticleer to Celebrate the City of its Origin

Next month will see the third of the four programs prepared for Chanticleer’s 48th season. The all-male ensemble made its debut on June 27, 1978 at the Old Mission Dolores in San Francisco. Since that time it has developed a prodigious repertoire extending from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Poster design for next month’s Chanticleer program, reflecting on its title

In that context the title of their next program will be I Left My Heart in San Francisco, reflecting on the ensemble’s origins. Specifics have not yet been finalized. However, the Web page for this event serves as a preview for the selections to come:

In this program, we honor the city’s diverse musical heritage, lifting up the works of Bay Area composers past and present, echoing the spirituals of resilience, the jazz of revolution, the folk of protest, and the contemporary sounds that continue to shape the cultural landscape. Interwoven through this program are tributes to the many identities that call this city home—voices of LGBTQ+ pride, immigrant spirit, and creative defiance.

This will be an afternoon performance, beginning at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 28. The venue will be the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which is located at 50 Oak Street, just west of Van Ness Avenue. Tickets are now available for purchase through a City Box Office Web page, which includes a diagram for both general admission and reserved seating. Ticket prices for general admission are $40 and specific reserved seats may be selected through the Web page for $71.

Calidore Shifts from Beethoven to Americana

The members of the Calidore String Quartet on the cover of their latest album

Having released their box set of the complete string quartets composed by Ludwig van Beethoven last year, the Calidore String Quartet has entered the new year with the release of an all-American album. The title of the new album is American Tapestry, and it will be released this coming Friday. However, as at least some readers probably already know, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

The press release for this new album describes the content as “a panoramic portrait of American musical expression across the 20th and 21st centuries.” The earlier century is represented by the “bookends” of the album. It begins with Samuel Barber’s Opus 11, his first string quartet, whose second movement was subsequently arranged for string orchestra under the title “Adagio for Strings.” The “program” concludes with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Opus 34, his third string quartet in D major, composed in Los Angeles after the end of World War II. This is preceded by “With Malice Toward None,” composed by John Williams for the biographical film Lincoln. Barber’s quartet is followed by Wynton Marsalis’ three-movement suite, At the Octoroon Balls.

This is clearly an ambitious undertaking, but the Calidore players serve up a convincing performance, particularly for those inclined to listen to an album from start to finish. One reason may be that the ensemble has maintained its membership. Violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan are still performing with Jeremy Berry on viola and cellist Estelle Choi. Having enjoyed their approaches to Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven, I definitely appreciate their “great leap forward,” having already whetted my appetite when they performed the Korngold quartet in Herbst Theatre in March of last year.

San Francisco Performances: March, 2026

Next month San Francisco Performances (SFP) will present two solo recitals. Each will be for a different instrument, taking place at a different venue. Each of the dates will be hyperlinked to a Web page for purchasing tickets. Specifics are as follows:

Thursday, March 12, Herbst Theatre: French pianist Lise de la Salle gave her third solo recital for San Francisco Performances in April of 2023. The second half of her program was devoted entirely to Franz Liszt’s monumental B minor piano sonata. Next month she will return to Herbst for another performance of this music. This time she will follow up with two additional Liszt selections. The first of these will be “Cantique d'amour,” the tenth of the compositions in Liszt’s Harmonies poetiques et religieuses. She will then conclude the program with Liszt’s “Réminiscences de Don Juan,” a fantasy based on themes from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527, Don Giovanni. The program will begin with the first and last of Frédéric Chopin’s “Ballade” compositions, Opus 23 in G minor and Opus 52 in F minor. The venue is located on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.

David Russell with his guitar (from the SFP Web page for his recital)

Saturday, March 14, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The Robert and Ruth Dell Guitar Series will present its fourth concert, a solo recital by David Russell. As is usually the case, this event will be shared with the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. Much of the program will be devoted to music originally composed for piano by Isaac Albéniz, including selections from his Opera 92, 97, and 165 collections. These will be preceded by “Prelude and Andante,” Russell’s transcription of music by Johann Sebastian Bach (without any further details announced). The program will begin with Mauro Giuliani’s Opus 61, entitled “Grand Overture.” The remaining works on the program will be “Don Quijote,” by Welsh composer (and guitarist) Stephen Goss, and selections from Homage to Charles Chaplin by Spanish guitarist Gabriel Estarellas. St. Mark’s Lutheran Church is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Doors to the lobby will open half an hour before the beginning of the performance.

Nicholas McGegan Returns to PBO Podium

Banner for the Web page for the program being discussed

Last night Nicholas McGegan returned to Herbst Theatre to lead the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO) & Chorale in a program of sacred and secular music entitled Baroque Garlands. Each half of the program consisted of a single composition, beginning with the sacred and concluding with the secular. The composer for the first half of the program was George Frideric Handel, followed by Jean-Philippe Rameau in the second half. There were only two vocal soloists, soprano Nola Richardson and tenor Aaron Sheehan.

The Handel selection was HWV 232, a setting of the Latin text of Psalm 110, whose title consists of the first two words, Dixit Dominus (“The Lord said”). Five of the nine movements are choral, and they are interleaved with a rich diversity of solo performances. The second and third movements were sung by countertenor Kyle Sanchez Tingzon and soprano Nola Richardson, respectively. They then joined the vocal quintet in the sixth movement, whose other members were soprano Victoria Fraser, tenor Aaron Sheehan, and bass-baritone Chung-Wai Soong. The penultimate movement was a soprano duo with Tonia D’Amelio joining Richardson. Taken as a whole, this was an engaging journey of diversity, given a delightfully upbeat account by McGegan.

The intermission was followed by Rameau’s “La guirlande, ou Les fleurs enchantée,” described in the program book as an “Acte de ballet with a libretto by Jean-François Marmontel.” There are only two characters in the narrative, Zélide (Richardson) and Myrtil (Sheehan). The “enchantment” is that both characters have garlands that will stay fresh as long as they are faithful to each other. As might be expected, the narrative involves the withering of the garlands and their eventual restoration. The “happy ending” is celebrated with dances by herdsmen,  shepherds, and shepherdesses.

As has been the case so often, the entire evening was carried by the enthusiastic attentiveness of McGegan on the podium. He was as committed to engaging listener attention as he had been over the course of his 34-year tenure as Music Director. (Having also seen him conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, I know this his commitment is not limited to any particular period in music history!) I also appreciated the way in which he prepared a program coupling the contrasting spirits of sacred and secular music. Hopefully, he will continue to visit PBO in future seasons.

Assad Brothers Returning to Dynamite Guitars

Odair and Sergio Assad (from the Web page for the performance being announced)

This month will conclude with the latest program of classical guitar duos performed by Brazilian brothers Sérgio and Odair Assad. As of this writing, the selections to be performed have not yet been announced. However, as on past occasions, they will be presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts as part of the current Dynamite Guitars concert season.

This event will take place in Herbst Theatre, which, as most readers probably know, is located on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the end of this month on Saturday, February 28. City Box Office has created a Web page for purchasing tickets, showing where seats are available at what prices.

Lively Bach Arranged for Two Guitars

Duo Aratik guitarists Jure Cerkovnik and Aljaž Cvirn providing a stimulating arrangement of Bach keyboard music (from a YouTube video released by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts)

There have been no shortage of arrangements for guitar of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Over the course of his career, Andrés Segovia added a generous number of Bach compositions to his catalog, the most impressive probably being the final Ciaconna movement from the BWV 1004 partita, originally composed for solo violin. This morning saw the release of the latest Omni on-Location video, a duo performance presented by two Slovenian guitarists who call themselves Duo Aratik: Jure Cerkovnik and Aljaž Cvirn.

The selection was another final movement: this time the Gigue that concludes BWV 816, the fifth of the six “French” suites, composed in the key of G major. This tends to be given a lively keyboard interpretation, and the Duo Aratik guitarists had no trouble rising to the same tempo. The camera tended to keep up with the give-and-take of the melodic phrases; but, for the most part, it kept both guitarists in the frame. What was most important, however, was the way in which the duo captured the composer’s approach to a theme known best for its liveliness.

Busy March at Two Venues

Next month promises to a busy one, particularly since two organizations will be overlapping twice over the course of that month. One of them, The Lab, has been covered on this site for many years, while the other, Zephyr Symphony is still in its early stages. Where the performance of music is concerned, The Lab will be busier than usual. Zephyr will be more modest, but it will account for two of the three programs remaining in its current season. For reader convenience, the events will be listed in chronological order:

Saturday, March 7, 6 p.m., The Lab: This will be a “dialogue” between two different artists with the shared goal of reframing sound as “both a tool for subverting power and a site of collective possibility.” Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste will repurpose Long Range Acoustic Device technology, which was designed to be used by military and police forces for crowd control. Evicshen will contribute to the performance with his own self-built instruments.

Tickets are now available through the Web page for this event. Those attending will be free to pay what they wish. For those that do not yet know, the venue is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street, a short walk from the 16th Street Muni station.

Saturday, March 7, 7:30 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Following up on the performance of the “Christmas portion” of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio Messiah, Zephyr Symphony will again be joined by the Zephyr Chorus for the performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah. The “title role” will be sung by baritone Andrew Thomas Pardini. The other vocal soloists will be soprano Mary-Hollis Hundley, contralto Leandra Ramm, and tenor Elliot James-Ginn Encarnácion.

A Web page has been created for seat selection. Ticket prices range from $26.06 to $67.76. There is a color-coded map on the Web page showing which seats are available at which prices. Most readers probably know by now that St. Mark’s Lutheran Church is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Doors to the lobby will open half an hour before the beginning of the performance.

Gwenifer Raymond with her guitar (from the Web page for her performance at The Lab)

Friday, March 20, 8 p.m., The Lab: Guitarist Gwenifer Raymond is based in Brighton (the one “on the other side of the pond”). She will present a full-evening performance entitled Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark. According to her Web page, she “has drawn international acclaim for her repurposing of Mississippi blues and John Fahey’s intricate Americana to embody her roots in rural South Wales and her interests in folk horror and the avant garde, inventing a new form dubbed Welsh Primitive.” (This reminds me of “Anything Can Happen Day” from the days of the Mickey Mouse Club!)

Tickets may be purchased in advance for $23 through the Web page for this event. Payment at the door will be $25. Members will be entitled to free or discounted admission.

Saturday, March 21, 7:30 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The final work on this Zephyr program will be “Après Moi, le Déluge,” a concerto composed by Luna Pearl Woolf for cello and a cappella chorus. This will be complemented by Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Mass in G minor,” scored for a double choir with four soloists. The Mass setting will be preceded by a Magnificat setting by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina scored for two four-part choirs. Each half of the program will begin with a shorter composition. “Hail, Gladdening Light” by Charles Wood is also scored for a double choir. The second half will begin with a setting of Emma Lazarus’ sonnet engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “The New Colossus,” composed by Saunder Choi.

Saturday, March 21, 8:30 p.m., The Lab: A Danger to Ourselves is the title of the latest album by Lucrecia Dalt. She is a sound artist, whose album includes guitarist David Sylvian and vocalists Juana Molina, Camille Mandoki, and Eliana Joy. Instrumentation is provided by bassist Cyrus Campbell and Chris Jones on saxophone. The second set will also reflect on a recent album, The Patterns Lost to Air, composed and performed by Marielle V. Jakobsons.

Tickets may be purchased in advance for $27 through the Web page for this event. Payment at the door will be $29. Members will be entitled to free or discounted admission.

Saturday, March 28, 8:30 p.m., The Lab: This will also be a two-set program. Moin is a trio that began as a duo. Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews created soundscapes with rapid percussion and interjections of haunted synthesizer. The trio was formed when they were joined by drummer Valentina Magaletti. The second set will be a solo performance by Ava Mendoza, who writes her own songs, which she sings with her own guitar accompaniment.

Tickets may be purchased in advance for $27 through the Web page for this event. Payment at the door will be $29. Members will be entitled to free or discounted admission.

SFS Programs for March, 2026

The third month of the year in Davies Symphony Hall will not only be a busy one but also more diverse than usual. There will of course be the usual regular Orchestral Series performed by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), as well as recitals and chamber music. However, there will also be events that depart from some expectations. Once again, I shall deal with the individual events in chronological order all taking place in Davies Symphony Hall. As in the past, each of the dates will be provided with a hyperlink to facilitate ticket purchases. Tickets may also be acquired at the Box Office, which is at the entrance to Davies on the south side of Grove Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street.

Sunday, March 1, 2 p.m.: This will be the last of the three SFS conducted by Manfred Honeck, the other two having taken place at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 26, and Friday February 27, 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, March 1, 7:30 p.m.: Once again, the Great Performers Series will host the return of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, led by violinist Joshua Bell. He will also be the concerto soloist in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 77 violin concerto in D major. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Robert Schumann’s Opus 38, his first (“Spring”) symphony in B-flat major. The program will begin with “Variations on ‘America’” by Charles Ives, originally composed for organ and arranged for orchestra by Iain Farrington.

Tuesday, March 3, 1 p.m.: The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco will host a performance by SFS violinist Melissa Kleinbart and cellist Amos Yang. This will be a free chamber music concert, and tickets will not be required. The venue is located at 3200 California Street. Program details have not yet been announced.

Thursday, March 5, 7:30 p.m.: Violinist Itzhak Perlman will return to Davies. However, on this occasion, he will serve as conductor of SFS. Once again, there will be a symphony on the second half of the program, this time Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 88, his eighth symphony in the key of G major. This will be preceded by Johannes Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture.” Perlman will be soloist for the opening selection, Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1041 (first) violin concerto in A minor.

Friday, March 6, 7:30 p.m.: As was reported at the beginning of this month, actor John Malkovich will perform the title role in The Music Critic with violinist Aleksey Igudesman as his “target.”

Saturday, March 7, 1 p.m.: The next free chamber music concert will be hosted by the Linda Brooks-Burton branch of the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) in Bayview. The performers will be violinist Wyatt Underhill, Matthew Young on violin, and cellist Anne Richardson. The library is located at 5075 3rd Street.

Sunday, March 8, 2 p.m.: This will be the next performance by the SFS Youth Orchestra. The soloist will be soprano Hannah Cho, singing in the last of the four movements of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G major. The program will begin with Jean Sibelius’ “Finlandia,” followed by Jennifer Higdon’s “blue cathedral.”

Thursday, March 12, 5 p.m.: The next SFPL chamber music concert will take place at the Excelsior Branch. The performers will be cellist Anne Richardson and Daniel G. Smith on bass. The library is located at 4400 Mission Street.

Friday, March 13, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 15, 2 p.m.: This program will see debut performance by both the conductor and the cello soloist. Daniel Müller-Schott will perform Dvořák’s Opus 104 cello concerto in B minor. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Brahms’ Opus 73 (second) symphony in D major.

Sunday, March 15, 7:30 p.m.: Violinist Pinchas Zukerman has prepared an all-Brahms recital for his return to Davies. He will perform all three of Brahms’ violin sonatas: Opus 78 in G major, Opus 100 in A major, and Opus 108 in D minor. He will also perform the Scherzo movement that Brahms contributed to the “F-A-E Sonata,” whose other movements were composed by Robert Schumann and his pupil Albert Dietrich.

Friday, March 20, and Saturday, March 21, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 22, 2 p.m.: This will be the second overture-concerto-symphony program of the month, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. It will begin with the overture to Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Euryanthe, The concerto soloist will be Jan Lisiecki, performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 271, his ninth piano concerto, composed in the key of E-flat major. The program will conclude with Dvořák’s Opus 70 (seventh) symphony in D minor.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the final SFS soloist for the month of March (from the Web page for his performance)

Thursday, March 26, 2 p.m., and Friday, March 27, and Saturday, March 28, 7:30 p.m.: Conductor Philippe Jordan has prepared a program of music by French composers. The concerto soloist will also be French, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, serving as soloist for Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 103, his fifth concerto in F major, given the title “The Egyptian.” The program will begin with Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune.” The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Hector Berlioz’ “Symphonie fantastique.”

March to Begin with Outsound SIMM Series

BONK musicians Oliver Kogod and Bill Noertker (from the Outsound Presents Web page)

Outsound Presents will present the next installment in the SIMM (Static Illusion Methodical Madness) Series at the very beginning of next month. This will be a two-set evening, whose first set will be performed by Howard Ryan. He will present his latest project, Hauras, which is the Finnish word for “fragile.” His solo performance will involve strings and effects, vocals, and radio sounds. The second set will be the electric bass duo BONK. This will be an “intergenerational” performance, bringing jazz virtuoso Bill Noertker together with the younger Oliver Kogod, described as an “up-and-comer DIY punk bassist.”

As always, the SIMM Series performance will take place at the Musician’s Union Hall, which is located at 119 Ninth Street, just below Market Street. The first set will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 1. Each of the two sets will be somewhat less than an hour. Admission will be through a suggested donation of between $15 and $20.

Chez Hanny to Host Jerome Sabbagh Trio

Jerome Sabbagh with his saxophone

The next Jazz Chez Hanny event will take place one week from this coming Sunday. Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh will lead a trio, whose other two members are both familiar to Chez Hanny. Bassist Essiet Okon Essiet visited SFJAZZ in March of last year, providing rhythm for the Voice and Drums program curated by vocalist Fay Carol. Drummer Sylvia Cuenca will return to Chez Hanny, having last performed there in April of last year in a quintet led by trumpeter Ian Carey.

Regular readers probably know by now that these events begin at 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. This one will take place on February 15. The “house” for this house concert is located at 1300 Silver Avenue. This is best reached by public transportation, taking the Muni 44 bus going east from Glen Park Station. For those thinking of driving, parking tends to be available on Silver Avenue, Silliman Street, one block south of Silver, and Holyoke Street, which connects Silver and Silliman.

The Bleeding Edge: 2/2/2026

Last week there were only three Bleeding Edge events. This week there will be a fourth event, but it was announced a month ago this day! That will be pianist Sarah Cahill’s No Ordinary Light program, which will be performed in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a Vimeo livestream, beginning at 7:30 p.m. exactly one week from today: Monday, February 9. The other three events will be at familiar venues, but the offerings will definitely be diverse. Specifics are as follows:

Friday, February 6, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: Curator David Boyce will host a solo performance by Angelo Idrovo for the latest installment of Other Dimensions in Sound. His approach to that performance has been described as “some wavy spontaneous guitar pedal stuff and original songs.” The venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there probably will be no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Violinist Alexi Kenney, curator of this week’s SoundBox event (from the San Francisco Symphony Web page for this event)

Friday, February 6, and Saturday, February 7, 8:30 p.m., SoundBox: Violinist Alexi Kenney will curate the first SoundBox program of the new year, entitled Dream Awake. The setting for this program is described as “a realm infused with nocturnal energy and psychedelic fantasy.” Kenney will perform with soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon.

SoundBox events take place in Davies Symphony Hall, but there is a special entrance on Franklin Street at the southwest corner of Hayes Street. Tickets may be purchased through the Web page for this event created on the San Francisco Symphony Web site. General admission will be $80. Attendees must be 21 years old or older, and there is a limit of four General Admission tickets per person.

Friday, February 6, 8:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: This week’s performance will present the Alon Nechustan Quintet, led by Nechustan at the piano. The other four players will be saxophonists Jesse Levi and Matt Renzi with rhythm provided by Sam Bevan on bass and drummer Isaac Schwartz. As usual, the venue is located in Glen Park at 653 Chenery Street. Admission will be $25. Seats can be reserved by calling the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Payment will be in cash at the door, since there will be no advance sales.

SFP PIVOT Festival: the Final Program

Choreography and dancer Myles Thatcher (photograph courtesy of the artist, from the SFP Web page for last night’s program)

Last night in the Taube Atrium Theatre, San Francisco Performances (SFP) concluded its annual PIVOT Festival. Curator Andy Meyerson gave a solo percussion performance accompanying choreography by dancer Myles Thatcher. The title of the program was Parallel Play, reflecting the selections as a series of “parallel pairs.”

Those “parallels” involved the coupling of sound and movement. The program began with the now historic coupling of John Cage with choreographer Merce Cunningham. This was followed by Robin Dekkers performing a synthesis of ballet and modern dance to the sounds of Glenn Kotche. The first half of the program concluded with music by Nicole Lizée for choreography by Rex Wheeler. The second half began with “A Noticeable Pause,” Dani Rowe’s choreography set to Danny Clay’s “Still Cycles.” “Portrait” seems to have been a joint project setting movement by Babatunji to the music of Raven Chacon. Thatcher then concluded the program with his interpretation of the Chaconne movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 partita for solo violin, arranged for marimba performance by Meyerson and Jack Van Geem.

Taken as a whole, the program served up a rich panoply of music almost entirely from the current century. (The only exceptions were the “bookends” of the program: Cage and Bach!) The Bach arrangement made for a throughly engaging conclusion with unique marimba sonorities that still did justice to the music’s Baroque “roots.” While I found Thatcher’s performances to be somewhat variable, I was still drawn to his interpretation of Cunningham’s “Solo.” Perhaps this just cast too long a shadow over the choreography that would follow!

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“Something Completely Different” at Davies

Violinist Aleksey Igudesman and actor John Malkovich (courtesy of SFS)

Those old enough to remember Monty Python’s Flying Circus may be pleased to learn that the genre of off-beat comedy will be coming to Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will host violinist Aleksey Igudesman; but the ensemble will also have to contend with another guest artist seldom appearing in a concert hall, John Malkovich. I first encountered him when I was living in Stamford, Connecticut in 1982, making regular train rides into Grand Central Station.

While much of my time was spent in Lincoln Center, I also made regular visits to plays performed both on and off Broadway. It is probably fair to say that, even to this day, the most memorable of those plays was Sam Shepard’s True West. As the Wikipedia page puts it, the narrative involved a “volatile relationship between two brothers,” making for an uncanny mix of nostalgia and disaster. The role of one of those brothers was taken by Malkovich; and, after having seen him on the stage for the first time, I have done my best to keep track of every step in the advancement of his career.

Almost 45 years have elapsed; and, once again, I shall have the opportunity to see Malkovich on the stage. This time, however, the venue will be Davies. The title of his performance with Igudesman is The Music Critic. The violinist will perform works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Sergei Rachmaninoff with SFS. However, he will also share the stage with Malkovich assuming the “title role.” Once again, Malkovich will be performing a “volatile relationship,” this time unloading (in the words of the advance material) “a frivolous potpourri of musical insults” on Igudesman’s performance.

As most readers probably already know, this performance will take place in Davies Symphony Hall. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 6. The address is 201 Van Ness Avenue; but it occupies the entire block with Van Ness to the west, Franklin Street to the east, Hayes Street to the south, and Grove Street to the north. The entrance is on the Grove Street side, which is also where tickets may be purchased at the Box Office. Tickets are currently available at prices from $75 in the Second Tier to $275 in the Orchestra. Seats will not available in the Terraces above the stage. A Web page has been created for online purchases. Tickets may also be purchased by calling the SFS Box Office at 415-864-6000.

SFP PIVOT Festival: the Second Program

The three Satellite performers: Bucket List (left), Koollooꓘ (upper right), and Trust Me (lower right) (from the San Francisco Performance Web page for this event)

The title of the second of the three programs in this season’s annual PIVOT Festival was a bit more enigmatic than the first: Satellite. It was a three-set evening with The Living Earth Show duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson playing in all of those sets. (As some readers may recall, Meyerson is also the Festival’s curator this year.) Each set involved a different combo as follows (in order of appearance):

1. Bucket List is a trio with Andrews and Meyerson joined by Mark Applebaum (previously their mentor) on keyboards.
2. Koollooꓘ is a punk dance quartet with Babatunji and Dennis Aman playing with the Living Earth duo.
3. Trust Me is a trio with Lynnee Breedlove providing vocals to sing in a Living Earth setting.

All this made for a generous share of diversity. Nevertheless, I could have sworn that, somewhere along this full-evening event, one of the players managed to sneak in a reference to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust!” However, that was just a reminder of one of the more playful epithets in “the business:” “It’s all music!” What was more important was that, in this abundance of off-the-beaten-path invention, each of the three sets had its own way of both capturing and sustaining attentive listening.

Mind you, a more than generous amount of attention was in order. Fortunately, there were breaks each time the stage had to be reorganized, along with a fifteen-minute intermission prior to the final set. As a result, the entire evening proceeded at a manageable clip, having its full say without ever letting fatigue set in!

Opera Aloha to Return to San Francisco

Poster for the event being discussed (from the Grace Cathedral Web page for this performance)

Some readers may recall that last year pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg accompanied four vocalists in a program entitled OPERALOHA With Love. This took place at the beginning of February in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. This year Greenberg will again accompany several opera singers, but the music will be oriented around the traditions of the Hawaiian islands. As a result, while the program has not yet been finalized, three vocalists, joined by a choreographer, will perform in an extraordinary range of languages, including Italian, French, English, Māori, Samoan, Native Hawaiian, Portuguese, Tagalog, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

This year’s show will again begin at 7:30 p.m., this time on Thursday, March 5. General admission will be again $85; but, if two or more tickets are purchased, each will be $65. “Young professionals” (aged 30 and under) will be able to purchase tickets for $40. Eventbrite has created a Web page with further details through which these payments can take place. The performance will be at Grace Cathedral, which is located on Nob Hill at 1100 California Street, just to the west of Franklin Street.

Collegium 1704: Two Zelenka Mass Settings

Many of us are familiar with the “A to Z” game, which involves assigning the last name of a composer to every letter of the alphabet. Thanks to a recent release on the Accent label, listeners are likely to have less trouble dealing with that last letter. An album of two Mass settings by Jan Dismas Zelenka was released a little over two weeks ago, and it serves up a little over an hour’s engaging listening experience.

The interior of the chapel for the Dresden court, for which Zelenka’s first mass setting (ZWV 1) was probably composed (from a Wikipedia Web page, taken from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

This may be a bit of a jolt for those that associate a setting of the Mass ordinary with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 232 version, which has come to be known simply as the “Mass in B minor.” Ironically, Bach not only knew Zelenka but also, according to the latter’s Wikipedia page, held him “in high esteem. Furthermore, Bach entrusted his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, to copy the “Amen” movement from Zelenka’s third Magnificat setting (ZWV 108); and Bach performed it at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he was cantor. Bach, of course, composed four additional Missae breves, limited to the Kyrie and Gloria sections, while Zelenka was more productive, composing approximately twenty Mass settings.

The two Zelenka settings are (in “order of appearance”) ZWV 11 (“Missa Circumcisionis Del Nostri Jesu Christi”) and ZWV 3 (“Missa Corporis Domini”). Both of these were composed during Bach’s lifetime, but any connection between either of these pieces and Bach’s sacred music would probably be coincidental! Mind you, my experiences with BWV 232 go back to my undergraduate days; and I rarely shy away from an opportunity to listen to a full performance in either a church or a concert hall. Nevertheless, I had no trouble keeping my long-standing interest in Bach from interfering with a more recent acquaintance with Zelenka.

In that context I found myself readily drawn to Václav Luks and his leadership of Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704. At that time Bach was based in Thuringia, providing music for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, although he tends to be better known for his work as an organist at the courts in Weimar and the composition of chamber music for the reformed court at Köthen. In spite of that rich context, most attentive listeners are likely to find both ZWV 11 and ZWV 3 refreshing experiences!

SFP PIVOT Festival: the First Program

Andy Meyerson, Tanner Porter, and Travis Andrews (courtesy of The Living Earth Show)

Yesterday evening Herbst Theatre saw the first of the three programs in this season’s the annual PIVOT Festival. This year the curator is Andy Meyerson, who will probably be known to many readers as the percussionist of The Living Earth Show, playing with his partner, guitarist Travis Andrews. For the opening performance, Living Earth was joined by vocalist Tanner Porter (occasionally contributing her own guitar accompaniment).

The title of the program was Legacies and it consisted of twelve songs, each written by a different composer. Six of those composers were members of the Sleeping Giant Composer Collective: Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Ted Hearne, Robert Hornstein, and Andrew Norman. Each of those composers selected a former student to contribute to the program. That program was performed without an intermission, presenting the six teacher-student couplings as follows:

1. Andrew Norman/Anuj Bhutani
2. Jacob Cooper/Christina J. George
3. Ted Hearne/Rohan Chander
4. Robert Hornstein/Akshaya Avril Tucker
5. Timo Andres/Daniel Castellanos
6. Christopher Cerrone/Nathaniel Parks

This presented a more-than-generous serving of “new music.” Indeed, even the most attentive listener probably had some difficulty sustaining so much novelty. For my own part, I must confess that I was beginning to feel overwhelmed as I followed the program and realized that I had only approached the halfway mark! This morning, as I reflected back on the experience, I discovered that I could not recall any of the selections. Sometimes, there is weakness in large numbers, rather than strength.

March 1, 2026: Definitely “in Like a Lion!”

Last year, I invoked the epithet of March going in like a lion as it applied to the diversity of performances taking place during the first weekend of that month. This year the lion will roar on the first day of the month to announce four concerts taking place in the afternoon. The starting intervals will be one hour apart, meaning that there will definitely be overlap. Specifics are as follows:

2 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: This is the annual Chopin Birthday Gala concert. The program will present solo piano compositions by Frédéric Chopin performed by Jason Chiu, Omri Shimron, Robert Schwartz, Ariel Chien, and others yet to be announced. As a result of that qualifier, the program has not been finalized; but it will include a full account of the 24 Opus 28 prelude compositions (covering all major and minor keys) and at least two of the ballades, Opus 23 in G minor and Opus 52 in F minor. As usual, this performance will be available for live stream viewing as well as seating in the church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue. This will be the first of four performances scheduled for March at that venue, the other three of which will be as follows:

Pianist Ava Nazar (from her Old First Concerts Web page)

1. Saturday, March 14, 2 p.m.: The Princeton Nassoons serve as ambassadors of Princeton University’s musical tradition, performing both choral and jazz selections from the early twentieth century.
2. Sunday, March 15, 4 p.m.: This will be the annual Junior Bach Festival. The Junior Bach Festival Association has been presenting these concerts at Old First for over a decade. The ages of the performers usually range from eight to eighteen; and, as of this writing, the program has not yet been finalized.
3. Sunday, March 29, 4 p.m.: Iranian pianist Ava Nazar will present a program entitled Nahoft. She will perform music by Aso Kohzadi, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Nina Barzegar, and Yassaman Behbahani, all women from the Iranian diaspora. The title of the program is the name of a melodic motif that arises in Iranian music.

3 p.m., Taube Atrium Theater: This will be the latest annual installment in the West Edge Opera Snapshot series; the four operas to be showcased were announced about two months ago.

3 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Pianist Tiffany Poon will return to Chamber Music San Francisco. The earliest work on her program will be Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Les tendres plaintes.” At the other end of the “time line,” she will play selections by Maurice Ravel, his “Jeux d’eau” and two of the movements from his Miroirs suite. She will conclude her program with Lili Boulanger’s “D’un jardin clair.” As might be expected, there will also be “obligatory appearances” by Frédéric Chopin and Claude Debussy with nods also to Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré.

4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The title of the next Discovery Series program presented by American Bach will be The Harmonic Labyrinth. This is a reference to the “Labyrinth” concerto by Pietro Locatelli, the last in his collection of twelve violin concertos entitled L'arte del violino, which bears the inscription: “Laberinto armonico: ‘Facilis aditus; difficilis exitus’” (harmonic labyrinth: easy to enter, difficult to escape). YuEun Gemma Kim will be the solo violinist for this performance. The program will also include solo vocal performances by soprano Maya Kherani and mezzo Sarah Coit. It will begin with Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s setting of the Stabat Mater sequence. The second half of the program will begin with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 209 cantata, Non sa che sia dolore (he knows not what sorrow is). The program will then conclude with Giovanni Pergolesi’s setting of the Stabat Mater hymn to the Virgin Mary. As many (most?) readers probably know by now, the church is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just to the west of Franklin Street.

Ax Returns to SFS under van Zweden’s Baton

Last night conductor Jaap van Zweden returned to Davies Symphony Hall to lead the San Francisco Symphony in a program coupling an eighteenth-century concerto with a nineteenth-century symphony. Both works were completed nearing the end of their respective centuries. The program began with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 503 piano concerto in C major, composed in 1786. The soloist for the performance was Emanuel Ax. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Anton Bruckner’s seventh symphony in E major (WAB 107), composed in 1883 and revised in 1885.

Pianist Emanuel Ax (photograph by Nigel Parry, courtesy of SFS)

C major tended to be Mozart’s key for high spirits, and Ax definitely delivered a spirited account. He last visited Davies in October of 2024 to give a Great Performers Series Concert divided equally between Ludwig van Beethoven and Robert Schumann. Particularly memorable, though, was his duo performance with Itzhak Perlman in Davies in January of 2016, when they gave a delightfully fresh account of Mozart’s K. 296 sonata in C major. Ax was clearly “on the ball” last night, and his engagement with van Zweden was consistently attentive. Nevertheless, for all the many times he returned for bows, it seemed as if his heart was not in the music as it had been in past visits.

Fortunately, van Zweden’s heart was definitely in his approach to Bruckner. Just about any Bruckner composition requires more than a few listening encounters before one can begin to appreciate his efforts. Having experienced that journey myself, I felt as if I could share my own appreciation with van Zweden’s. Mind you, I encounter performances of Bruckner’s music so seldom that I usually need a bit of time to “settle into” his rhetoric at the beginning of any of his compositions. Under van Zweden’s direction, that “settling” did not take very long. Once I could establish the “terrain” of his interpretation, I could appreciate the vast expanse of the composer’s rhetoric; and I found myself leaving Davies with the wistful reflection that I needed to hear more of this music.

SFCO Beginning 2nd Half of Season Next Month

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (SFCO) concluded the first half of its season at the very end of last year. The title of that program was The Revolutionary Artist, and it would be fair to wonder if that “revolution” involved a departure from the usual holiday spirit of that time of the year. In any event I would say that the next concert, which will be performed at the end of next month, may be even more revolutionary, beginning with the program’s cryptic title Seeing Double!

Jory Vinikour at the harpsichord

The fact is that the closest the program gets to the concept of “double” is the concerto for harpsichord and orchestra (a “duo of sorts”) by Philip Glass, which happens to be the second of the three works on the program! The harpsichordist will be Jory Vinikour; and, as usual, the ensemble will be led by Jory Fankuchen. The evening will begin with the world premiere performance of Jens Ibsen’s “Scene Symphony.” The program will conclude with the most familiar composer of the evening, Joseph Haydn. The selection will be the Hoboken I/49 symphony, given the title “La Passione.” Perhaps the “passionate” rhetoric of this symphony can be viewed as the more “revolutionary” side of Haydn’s approaches to composition.

As many readers probably know by now, the San Francisco performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 27. The venue will be the Taube Atrium Theater, which is located on the fourth (top) floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue. As always, there is no charge for admission; and all that is required is an RSVP, which is conveniently achieved on a concert-by-concert basis through the Eventbrite Web page for this performance.

Junction Trio Couples Past and Present (again)

Junction Trio musicians Conrad Tao, Stefan Jackiw, and Jay Campbell (photograph by Shervin Lainez, courtesy of Noe Music)

According to my records, the Junction Trio was formed in 2015. All three of the musicians have also presented recitals for San Francisco Performances (SFP). Violinist Stefan Jackiw made his SFP debut in April of 2014 and cellist Jay Campbell made his debut in January of 2020 performing with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Pianist Conrad Tao made his first live performance with SFP towards the end of 2022. For the trio’s first performance, Tao composed what amounted to a tone poem entitled “Eventide,” which he regarded as his “Opus 1.”

In a little less than a month’s time, Noe Music will welcome this trio to the Noe Valley Ministry. The “pillars” of the program will be two piano trios from that period of music history known as the First Viennese School. The first half of the program will conclude with the first of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 70 trios, given the title “Ghost” and composed in the key of D major. The second half will conclude with Franz Schubert’s D. 898, the first of his two piano trios, this one composed in the key of B-flat major. Each of these compositions will be preceded by three of the six pieces for violin and keyboard instrument by John Cage, given the collective title Six Melodies. In addition, John Zorn’s “Ghosts” will be interjected in to the Beethoven trio, following the Largo assai movement, which inspired the “Ghost” title of the trio.

This will be the next Noe Music event of the season, taking place at the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. The concert will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, February 22. General admission will be $45 with a $15 rate for students. They may be purchased online through a Noe Music Web page.

Schedule for the CMSF 2026 Season

Two weeks ago I received information about the 2026 season in San Francisco that will be presented by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). As in the past, the full schedule will consist of ten recitals, five of which will also be given performance in Walnut Creek and Palo Alto. This year only six of those recitals will take place in Herbst Theatre, which is located in the Veterans Building on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. The other four will take place in the Presidio at 99 Moraga Avenue. Only one of the concerts will take place on a Saturday, March 28 at 7:30 p.m.; and all the others will be Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Specifics are as follows:

February 22, Herbst Theatre: The Aris Quartet made its Bay Area debut with CMSF in February of 2023. The members are still violinists Anna Katharina Wildermuth and Noémi Zipperling, violist Caspar Vinzens, and cellist Lukas Sieber. This time they will frame their program with quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. They will begin with the second of Beethoven’s six Opus 18 quartets, composed in the key of G major. The Brahms selection will also be a “second quartet,” composed in the key of A minor from his Opus 51 set. The Beethoven quartet will be followed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 110, his eighth quartet, composed in the key of C minor.

Tiffany Poon (photograph by Remy Holwick)

March 1, Herbst Theatre: Hong Kong born pianist Tiffany Poon made her debut with CMSF in 2022; program details for her return have not yet been announced.

March 8, Presidio Theatre: Violinist Stella Chan, violist Matthew Lipman, and cellist Brannon Cho formed their trio in 2023. They will present the United States premiere of Andreia Pinto-Correia’s “Cantares.” The program will begin with music by Ernst von Dohnányi, his “Serenade,” composed in the key of C major and conclude with a trio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his K. 563 divertimento in E-flat major.

March 15, Herbst Theatre: Pianist Angela Hewitt will use the second half of her program as a reflection on François Couperin. She will play selections from Ordre 6ème de clavecin in B flat major, the first of the seven “ordres” in the Second Livre. (Four of these “Livres” were published between 1713 and 1730.) She will follow those pieces with Maurice Ravel’s tribute to the composer, his suite entitled Le Tombeau de Couperin. The program will begin with one of Couperin’s contemporaries, Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 829 partita in G major. Hewitt will then shift to G minor for a performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 22, his second piano sonata.

March 28, Presidio Theatre: This will be a less “standard” trio performance. Flutist Demarre McGill and violist Che-Yen Chen will be joined at the harp by Julie Smith Phillips. The program will conclude with Ami Maayani’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Opus 25 Serenade in D major. This will be preceded by “Elegy,” composed for those three instruments by Lita Grier. Details have not been provided as to whether or not the opening selections of keyboard compositions by Jean-Philippe Rameau will be performed as a harp solo. The program announcement also includes Jan Bach’s “Eisteddfod;” but, as of this writing, that composition does not appear on his Web site.

April 12, Herbst Theatre: Quatuor Danel is the string quartet led by violinist Marc Danel. The second violinist is Gilles Millet, joined by Vlad Bogdanas on viola and cellist Yovan Markovitch. Their program is framed by the different ends of the nineteenth century, beginning with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 13 (second) quartet in A minor and concluding with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 11 (first) quartet in D major. These selections will “frame” Ravel’s F major quartet.

April 19, Presidio Theatre: The piano accompanist for violinist Nathan Meltzer has not yet been announced. However, the program will conclude with Franz Schubert’s D. 934 Fantasia, which includes variations on the composer’s D. 741 song “Sei mir gegrüßt.” The first half of the program will conclude with Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 108, second violin sonata. This will be followed, after the intermission, by Sky Macklay’s “FastLowHighSlow.” The announcement I received claims that the program will begin with music by Francis Poulenc, an “Improvisation” based Johannes Brahms’ best known song, “Wiegenlied” (cradle song), the fourth in his Opus 49 collection.

April 26, Herbst Theatre: The members of the Carion Wind Quintet are Dóra Seres (flute), Egils Upatnieks (oboe), Egīls Šēfers (clarinet), David M.A.P. Palmquist (horn) and Niels Anders Vedsten Larsen (bassoon). They are geographically diverse with Upatnieks and Šēfers based in Riga, Palmquist and Larsen in Copenhagen, and Seres in Malmö. The most familiar work on the program will probably be Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken II:46 in B-flat major, the sixth “Feldparthie,” whose second movement is the “Chorale St. Antoni,” the source of the familiar set of variations composed by Brahms. There will also be an arrangement of Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances suite. The other composers contributing to the program will be György Ligeti, Medaglia Belle, and Gene Cavadlo. Carion has a YouTube Web page on which they perform Cavadlo’s Klezmer Dances for Wind.

Sunday, May 10: Pianist Olga Kern will return performing two works with the Dalí Quartet. The first of these will be Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Ballet, which will be coupled with the second of Antonín Dvořák’s two piano quintets, Opus 81 (B. 155) in A major. Kern has not yet announced her solo performances.

Sunday, May 17: The Escher Quartet will return, joined by flutist Brandon Patrick George. The quintet will begin the program with Amy Beach’s “Theme and Variations” Opus 80 and conclude it with Alberto Ginastera’s “Impresiones de la Puna.” George will also contribute to Mozart’s K. 285 flute quartet in D major. The two quartet selections will be Giuseppe Verdi’s string quartet in E minor and the second movement of Samuel Barber’s Opus 11 quartet, best known under the title “Adagio for Strings.”

The Bleeding Edge: 1/26/2026

This week’s Bleeding Edge will be a relatively quiet. There are only three events to report, two of which will overlap. Specifics are as follows:

Wednesday, January 28, 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., Black Cat Jazz Supper Club: I have not been able to account for avant-garde vocalist Lorin Benedict since this past October. He will perform with a jazz trio led by Rumi Abe on piano, joined by bassist Alan Jones and Miles Turk on drums. I have previously cited Benedict’s “imaginative command of his microphone,” which results in a genre that might be called “avant-garde scat!” Admission will be $30. The address for the venue is 400 Eddy Street.

Friday, January 30, 6 p.m.,  Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Trumpeter Erik Jekabson last introduced his original works to this venue at the beginning of October of 2023. On that occasion he was joined by Matt Clark on piano. For his latest visit he will perform on the front line with Kasey Knudsen playing alto saxophone. Clark will be joined in the rhythm section by John Wiitala on bass and drummer Jeff Marrs. As usual, the venue is located in Glen Park at 653 Chenery Street. As of this writing, the venue’s home page does not provide information about a charge for admission.

Karl Evangelista with his electric guitar (from this week’s BayImproviser Web page)

Friday, January 30, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: Guitarist Karl Evangelista will give a solo performance of the music from Sonny Sharrock’s Guitar album. There will also be a somewhat unconventional trio set with vocalists Elango Kumaran and David Israel Katz engaging with trumpeter Ari Brown. This will be the latest installment of Other Dimensions in Sound curated by the venue. The venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there probably will be no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Red Norvo’s “Secret” Session

Vibraphonist Red Norvo was one of the leading figures in “swing” jazz prior to the United States involvement in World War II, but I am embarrassed to admit that he has received almost no attention on this site. Indeed, it may well be the case that the only time I wrote about him involved his contribution to the Benny Goodman Orchestra on an SWR JAZZHAUS album in its Big Band Series. Fortunately, this Friday will see the release of an album with Norvo as leader.

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

The title of the album is The Secret Session; and, as readers can probably guess, there is a story behind that title. In the early Forties, Norvo was leading a septet performing with trumpeter Shorty Rogers, Eddie Bert on trombone, Aaron Sachs on reeds (clarinet and alto saxophone), pianist Hank Kahout, Clyde Lombardi on bass, and drummer Specs Powell. However, once it was evident that the United States would enter the war, Norvo would lose at least some of those musicians to the draft. As a result, he arranged a recording session in late 1942, knowing that it would be the last for some time. All seven of these musicians can be seen in the photograph on the above album cover.

Most important is that Norvo was generous in giving all of his musicians solo opportunities. As a result, the album is a “snapshot” of how jazz was improvised during the “swing era.” Mind you, listeners that are more interested in the “high fidelity” of the recording than they are of the content itself are likely to be disappointed. Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that any attentive listener will be able to appreciate the many nuances that emerged from this “secret session.”

The good news is that, exactly one year after D-Day (June 6, 1944), Norvo was back in action at the WOR Recording Studios in New York. On that occasion he led his “Selected Sextet,” whose other members were trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker on alto saxophone, and Flip Phillips on tenor saxophone on the front line with rhythm provided by pianist Teddy Wilson, Slam Stewart on bass, and drummer Specs Powell. One of the selections at that session was Harold Arlen’s “Get Happy.” which could not have been more appropriate for the end of World War II.