Old First Concerts: September 2026

Having accounted for Old First Concerts (O1C) hosting next month’s San Francisco International Piano Festival, it is not too soon to prepare listeners for the beginning of the new season in September. This year there will be three performances, all on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. Most readers probably know by now that O1C events take place at Old First Presbyterian Church. This is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Tickets are available for purchase through the hyperlinks attached to the dates, which are also available for live stream viewing. General admission is $30. with reduced rates for seniors, students, and children age twelve and under. The season will begin with the traditional Labor Day program as follows:

September 6: Those that have followed this site for some time have probably already guessed that the season will begin with the return of jazz pianist Mike Greensill, who has made this event a Labor Day tradition. Most likely, Greensill will continue to interleave his own original compositions with a generous share of selections from the Great American Songbook. Nevertheless, the show promises to be different from previous gigs because this year Greensill will celebrate his 80th birthday!

September 13: Pianist Kevin Lee Sun will present a program entitled Look to This Day. He will present music by two living composers. The first of these, Hyo-shin Na, may be familiar to those following past events; and she will contribute two solo piano compositions. The other is Daniel De Togni, who will accompany Sun on shakuhachi for the performance of Death Poems. His Songs of Becoming cycle will receive its West Coast premiere with a performance by soprano Wallis Lucas.

Noël Wan with her harp (from the O1C Web page for her recital)

September 20: For “something completely different,” Noël Wan will conclude the month with a solo harp performance. She turned to the French poet Charles Baudelaire for the title of her program: Les Fleurs du mal (the flowers of evil). Her program will pair music from the late nineteenth century with contemporary compositions.

The Latest “Guardian” Insight

Screen shot of Donald Trump’s televised address last night (photograph by Saul Loeb provided by UPI and Shutterstock, from a Guardian Web page)

For better or worse I find that it is difficult to avoid political news with particular attention to events in the District of Columbia. It has been almost exactly 24 hours since I found myself writing about how the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court reminded President Donald Trump that the Executive branch is not “in charge of everything.” This morning at least one member of the Legislative branch has added his voice, Democratic congressman Jim McGovern from Massachusetts. While Chief Justice Roberts distilled his position to a single sentence, McGovern chose to elaborate his argument in three:

Trump says Democrats forgot to rig the election in 2016, successfully rigged it while *he* was president in 2020, then forgot how to rig it again in 2024. So the only election Democrats supposedly stole was the one he himself controlled. You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe this bullshit.

Since Trump seems to have aspired to make his tenure a special one, McGovern seems to have found just the right semantics for “special!”

Will the Judiciary Hold the Executive in Check?

About three months ago, this site added an article that raised a single question:

Has the United States Congress forgotten that the Constitution established it as a division of the government independent of both the Judiciary and (of particular importance) the Executive (as in the President of the United States)?

Poster design of Chief Justice John Roberts  explaining the Constitution to President Donald Trump

Since that time, it seems as if the Congress has been reluctant to challenge the President over the Constitutional legitimacy of his management (so to speak) of the Executive branch. Fortunately, the Judiciary has been less reluctant. Chief Justice John Roberts has now gone “on the record” in reminding the Executive that it on the same plane (so to speak) with both the Legislative and Judiciary branches. He distilled his “record” into a single sentence:

Threatening the judges for doing their job is totally unacceptable.

In other words, any judicial decision must stand unless a subsequent decision can override it at the judiciary level.

As of this writing, the President is scheduled to give his latest speech to the American public. My guess is that it will be broadcast live on several channels. My wife and I shall probably watch the event on CNN, just because it is likely to provide the most informative analysis following the event. My guess is that this will be no ordinary evening of CNN content!

Voices of Music Announces 2026–27 Season

I see that it is almost exactly a year ago since I wrote an article about the four concerts to be presented for the 2025–2026 Voices of Music (VoM) season. Once again there will be two venues.Three of the new season’s performances will take place at the Old First Presbyterian Church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue, and the second of the four performances will take place at the 50 Oak Street building of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Subscriptions for the entire season are currently on sale for prices between $220 and $200. A single Web page has been created for processing both subscriptions and individual events. General admission for individual concerts will be between $63 and $10. All four events will take place at 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening. Program details have not yet been finalized; but dates and programs for the four concerts are as follows:

Gallery of the soloists for the four VoM programs: soprano Amanda Forsythe, flutist Emi Ferguson, and sopranos Andréa Walker and Danielle Reutter-Harrah

October 24: Soprano Amanda Forsythe will perform selections from her Baroque repertoire accompanied by the VoM period instruments.

December 12: The title of the program will be Virtuoso Concertos, and one of the concerto soloists will be visiting flutist Emi Ferguson.

January 23: This program has the lengthiest title: Pastime with Good Company: The Voice of the Viol. As might be guessed the program will highlight viol music from both the Elizabethan and Renaissance periods. The musical sources will be from Bohemia, England, France, and Spain. The ensemble will be joined by soprano Andréa Walker, making her VoM debut.

April 3: Soprano Danielle Reutter-Harrah, on the other hand, is likely to be familiar to those that follow VoM performances. The title of the program is A Musical Banquet; and, as might be expected, the selections be inspired by food, drink, and “the art of the feast.” There will also be a “feast” of instrumental sonorities. David Tayler will alternate between lute and archlute, while Hanneke van Proosdij will have her usual assortment of recorders, which she will alternate with her harpsichord. Similarly, Cheryl Ann Fulton will alternate among different harps, and Shira Kammen will account of other instruments in the string family. As in the past, percussion will be provided by Peter Maund.

Why I Continue my Loyalty to Apple (and macOS)

What Windows users encounter (from the article being cited)

 https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-patches-570-vulnerabilities-exploited-zero-days/

Those Who Ignore Santayana

My guess is that just about any reader willing to pay attention to the texts on this site is well acquainted with the aphorism, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” This is one of those examples of the text being more familiar than the source, the source being the philosopher George Santayana, whom I first encountered when writing a high school term paper about Bertrand Russell. This morning my memory was triggered while I was browsing through the Al Jazeera Web site and found a NewsFeed Web page with the headline “Schumer slams Trump over Iran war.” This is a video summarized by a single sentence:

‘A recipe for utter disaster.’ Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has slammed President Donald Trump’s handling of the war on Iran, accusing him of repeating past mistakes without a clear strategy.

Mind you, expertise in history is not necessarily a prerequisite for holding any political office, particularly one selected by the electoral process; but these days, whether I am reading about the news or watching accounts on television, I keep feeling that I have already “seen the movie” and know that the ending is seldom a happy one.

The Bleeding Edge: 7/13/2026

Activity on The Bleeding Edge continues to be relatively quiet. This week the number of events will amble up to four (following last week’s three). Nothing is scheduled prior to Thursday, on which there will be two overlapping performances, the second of which will also take place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Once again, the venues will be familiar to regular readers; and, as is usually the case, the options are impressively diverse. Details are as follows:

Thursday, July 16, 7 p.m., Gray Area Art And Technology: Max Cooper is currently on a tour to showcase his latest album Feeling is Structure. The content of that album will provide the basis for the immersive audio-visual performance system called 3D/AV. The narrative thread of that performance will tell “ the story of the foundations of our world, and our place in it, as a living feeling experience.” Readers familiar with this venue probably already know that it is located in the Mission at 2665 Mission Street.

Roman Goron, Ben Sherman, Isaiah Bravo, and Daniel Song, who will be performing at the Black Cat Supper Club later this week

Thursday, July 16, and Sunday, July 19, 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., and Friday, July 17, and Saturday, July 18, 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Black Cat Jazz Supper Club: Tenor saxophonist Ben Sherman is based in New York City. He runs the jam session Close Up, which takes place every other Sunday. He leads a quartet, whose other members are pianist Roman Goron, Daniel Song on bass, and drummer Isaiah Bravo. Admission for all performances will be $30. The club is located in the Civic Center at 400 Eddy Street.

Friday, July 17, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: As usual, the Other Dimensions is Sound music series will be curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi-reed player David Boyce. This week he will provide reeds and special effects for a performance by the Red Fast Luck duo. The other performer will be percussionist PC Munoz, whose instruments include (among the usual) boom stick and “intergalactic hook rug.” As many (most?) readers probably know by now, the venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Saturday, July  18, 3 p.m., Project Artaud: Pamela Z will give her next performance of her own compositions for solo voice and electronics. The event will take place in The Sculpture Studio. She will also discuss her work, and the entire event is scheduled to last about two and one-half hours. The venue is located in Studio 123 at 401 Alabama Street.

Politics and Early Electronic Music at SFCM

Yesterday afternoon, the Ann Getty Center at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) hosted the first full-length workshop production of a new opera entitled Madame Theremin. The music was composed by Kennedy Verrett working with a libretto by George M. Kopp; and an instrumental ensemble, which included pianist Kymry Esainko, was conducted by Mary Chun. The opera was set in New York City in 1938 over the course of a single night. It had two acts, allowing the audience a ten-minute intermission.

Leon Theremin playing one of his instruments, which he called the Termenvox (photograph by Corbis Bettmann, December, 1927, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

The title refers to Lavinia Williams (Ariel Emma), a Black ballet dancer that married Leon Theremin (Eric Levintow), the inventor of an electronic musical instrument named after him. Patrick Blackwell sang the role of the Black movie star Nobel Washington, a character “loosely based” on Paul Robeson. The narrative is framed by episodes in Theremin’s apartment with much of the “action” taking place in an around the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel.

The libretto abounds with political narrative at a time where even the slightest sympathy for Soviet ideology could be taken as traitorous. Ironically, Theremin was at risk in Russia for his anti-Soviet ideology. He eventually ended up in one of Stalin’s gulags, survived, and went on to provide the Soviet authorities with sophisticated spyware. He only returned to his musical interests when Mikhail Gorbachev began to rise to power, bringing on the policy of glasnost. Towards the end of his life, he revisited the United States in 1991, where he was reunited with former pupil Clara Rockmore, who had promoted his instrument in our country.

Learning About Satoko Fujii from C4NM

I first learned about the Center for New Music (C4NM) right around the time that they established their home base at 55 Taylor Street, having signed a lease in October of 2012. This was not long after my retirement from Silicon Valley. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music had only recently made its move into the Civic Center, providing me with an abundance of listener experiences to keep me busy as a retiree. However, it was through C4NM that I first encountered pianist Satoko Fujii and her husband trumpeter Kappa Maki.

Back in my Examiner.com days, I described their work as “their own distinctive approach to free jazz improvisation,” meaning that I had never encountered such an approach to jamming in most (if not all) of my previous encounters with “free jazz.” My earliest writing about them was with Examiner.com; and, because I was unable to backup all my articles before that site folded, I do not have any record of their work prior to February 10, 2015. Fortunately, I have been able to follow their releases; and, as of this writing, I find that I have 50 CDs to account for their performances since then.

John Coltrane on the cover of his Major Works album, the performance that guided my ability to listen to Fujii and Maki

I suppose that my interest in Fujii and Maki was piqued by reminders of my first encounter with free jazz at its freest, so to speak. That goes back to the first time that I listened to John Coltrane’s Ascension album on the radio. After that experience, I did not waste any time it getting myself a copy of that record! This was before the emergence of CD technology, meaning that the music was interrupted when I had to turn over the disc! Fortunately, the content has been remastered; and, as just about anyone would probably expect, the CD now has its own Amazon.com Web page. Furthermore, it is also available in two separate “editions” (otherwise known as “takes”) on the two-CD album The Major Works of John Coltrane.

It would be fair to say that my ability to focus and guide my attention to the many tracks I have encountered by both Fujii and Maki has been guided by my “training” through listening to Coltrane at his most adventurous.

Never Enough Thelonious Monk!

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of DL Media, Inc.)

It has been a little over a year since I last invoked my favorite precept delivered by the conductor Leonard Slatkin, “You can never conduct enough Haydn or Schubert.” My own variation on that “theme” is that, where my own collection of recordings is concerned, there is no such thing as too much Thelonious Monk. As a result, I was delighted that this month began with the release of a new Monk album. The title suggests that it is the first of more to come: Monk Live in Paris, 1967, Volume One.

My only disappointment is that there are only four tracks of music amounting to a little more than half an hour. However, the album is the first “official” release from the Thelonious Monk Estate, which is curated by Monk’s granddaughter, Sierre Barbara Monk. She has contributed a paragraph to the album jacket, followed by a Q&A exchange with Monk’s son, T. S. Monk. Personally, however, I am more interested in the music, whose four tracks are “Epistrophy,” Evidence,” “Ruby My Dear,” and “We See.”

Monk, of course, is at the piano for all of those tracks. Rhythm is provided by Larry Gales with Ben Riley on drums. Tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse is the only other musician to contribute to all of the tracks. The other performers are Phil Woods on alto saxophone, another tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, Ray Copeland on trumpet, and trombonist Jimmy Cleveland.

From a personal perspective, 1967 is about half a decade before I first went to a Monk performance. If my memory is not too faded, I believe I saw him at the Village Vanguard, after which I made as many return visits as my schedule would allow. (That schedule was based on trips I would make from Cambridge, Massachusetts!) I listened to everything Monk did with silent respect and never had the nerve to try to speak to him. As far as I was concerned, listening to the music was all that mattered; and that is exactly the way in which I have now approached this first Live in Paris release.

Those familiar with the Monk repertoire will know that all of the tracks on this album are familiar. However, repetition seldom rears its head in the performance of jazz. While all four of the tunes themselves are familiar to me, there was still much for me to absorb in the diversity of solo takes across all of the tracks. I am sure that I shall be making several return visits to this new album while waiting for “Volume Two” to appear!

Not Much Bite from Slow Tiger

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

One week from today Endectomorph Music will release the self-titled debut album of the Slow Tiger quintet. The front line is shared between trumpeter Kenny Warren and Adam Schneit, who alternates between tenor saxophone and clarinet. Rhythm is provided by organist JP Schlegelmilch, Andrew Dow on electric bass, and drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell. As is often the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page to process pre-orders.

The nine tracks were recorded in a basement studio in Nyack, New York, recalling the “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show” spirit of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The advance material describes the selections as “earthy, rock-oriented melodies with more atmospheric explorations of song and sound” (whatever that means)! The good news is that all five of the performers have a solid command of their instruments. The bad news is that there is little in the content of the tracks that makes for engaging listening. Mind you, they have received a generous endorsement from clarinetist Ben Goldberg, whose work I have appreciated for many years; but this is one of those times when I shall have to agree to disagree with him. Perhaps the tiger needs significantly more determination in the steps it takes!

Omni: An “On Location” Duo Performance

As I had previously observed, last month was a busy one for Omni on-Location videos to be released by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. This site wrote about those videos on the first and third Tuesdays of this past June. However, these have now been followed by a new video released on the fourth Tuesday of the month, June 23.

Mario To and Kaz Hudson playing To’s “Insomniac’s Dream”

This one is a duo performance by Mario To and Kaz Hudson. To is also the composer of the music being performed, “Insomniac’s Dream,” which he completed earlier this year. Both of them were guitar pupils under Meng Su at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and To also studied composition with Sergio Assad. The filming of the performance took place in the Cha Chi Ming Recital Hall of the Conservatory (on the ground floor with a view of Van Ness Avenue outside).

The program notes on the YouTube page for this video are relatively brief; but the composition is described as “the restless, cyclical struggle of a sleepless mind: the body longs for rest, but the mind refuses to quiet.” The music seems to have been inspired by the experience of a busy nighttime in downtown San Francisco. The overall duration is roughly six minutes. This is a modest amount of time; but, as so often seems to be the case with Omni videos, it is definitely time well spent!

New Satoko Fujii Album Recorded a Decade Ago

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

Tomorrow will see the release of the latest Libra Records album of a performance by Satoko Fujii. (Presumably, it will then appear on the Bandcamp Web page for her albums.) Those that have followed my articles about her probably know that I usually refer to her as a pianist (as I did this past May with the release of Under the Water, her duo album with Myra Melford, who is also a pianist). However, the full title of the new album is Satoko Fujii’s Bunker Ulmenwall Orchestra; and, according to the details on the jacket, she performs only as conductor. Bunker Ulmenwall is a bar in Bielefeld, Germany that had been built as a bunker, presumably during one of the world wars of the last century. Now it hosts a diversity of music performances, as well as poetry slams; and the performance on this album was recorded there on November 22, 2014.

I have to confess that the use of the word “orchestra” leads me to follow Mister Spock’s lead and raise an eyebrow. (Yes, that probably dates me from the last century!) The string section of the symphony orchestra is represented only by a single cello (Willem Schulz) and a single double bass (Kevin Hemkemeier). On the other hand, there is a generous abundance of saxophones of all sizes, along with three trumpets and two trombones, one of whom doubles on tuba. There are also two drummers, along with Joel Köhn who works with electronics, both synthesized and sampled.

Fujii is also the first and last composer of the compositions on the album. “Shiki” occupies the entirety of the first of two CDs, running just shy of 47 minutes in duration. “Gen Himmel,” on the other hand, is the last track on the second CD, lasting a little more than six minutes. Three different composers account for the preceding tracks on that CD. “Yamantaka” was composed by Andres Kaling, the ensemble’s only bass saxophonist. This is followed by “Jasper” by Natsuki Tamura, who leads the trumpet section. The third track is “Antischwarm,” composed by Luise Volkmann, one of the two alto saxophonists.

Beginning-to-end listening runs slightly short of 90 minutes. That said, there is definitely a “density” to the way in which this music was composed and performed. Furthermore, I have to confess that, while there are a generous number of solos performed, I was not always able to associate what I was hearing with a specific instrument! However, once I put my obsession with details aside, I found that I could just “sit still and listen” and let the sonorities lead my imagination where they may.

Those that have followed past accounts of Fujii’s work probably know that this is not my first confrontation with an orchestral performance. At the end of last year, I wrote about Ninety-Nine Years performed by the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin. However, that turned out to be, as I put it, “a ‘small big band.’” There is nothing small about the Bunker Ulmenwall Orchestra, not in numbers nor in their capacity for full-force sonorities. However, now that I have listened to their album several times, I find that they are beginning to grow on me!

SFP 2027 PIVOT Festival

Next year will begin with the annual PIVOT Festival presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). This particular iteration will have a theme pervading the three concerts, all on successive evenings beginning at 7:30 p.m. That theme will be the celebration of the 90th birthday of composer and pianist Philip Glass. The first program will situate Glass’ music in a context spanning from the early nineteenth century to the immediate present. The other two will be devoted entirely to Glass compositions. All three of the offerings will take place in Herbst Theatre on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Specifics for each of the programs are as follows:

Wednesday, January 27: The Festival will begin with a solo recital by pianist Timo Andres. He will perform four selections from Glass’ Etudes. These will be preceded by the eleventh movement in Ann Southam’s Glass Houses collection. Andres will play his own Moving Etudes, separated from the Glass compositions by Jelly Roll Morton’s “Freakish.” The program will conclude with Franz Schubert’s D. 899 (Opus 90), the first of his two sets of four impromptus. This will be introduced by Impromptus II (after Schubert), composed by Samuel Carl Adams.

Thursday, January 28: Andres will return to accompany countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who has established himself as a leading interpreter of Glass’ vocal music; program specifics have not yet been finalized.

Kronos Quartet members Paul Wiancko, David Harrington, Ayane Kozasa, and Gabriela Diaz (photograph by Lenny Diaz, courtesy of SFP)

Friday, January 29: The Kronos Quartet, whose members are violinists David Harrington and Gabriela Díaz, Ayane Kozasa on viola, and cellist Paul Wiancko, will devote their program entirely to the string quartets composed by Glass.

A Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for the entire series with options for the different areas in Herbst Theatre. The hyperlinks attached to the individual dates above can be used for purchasing single tickets. Tickets can also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545. In addition, single tickets will be available for purchase at the door with a 50% discount for student rush tickets and 20% off for seniors.

Alister Spence’s Second Solo Recording

Alister Spence at his piano (photograph by Jordan K Munns, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

This morning saw my fourth encounter with Australian jazz pianist and composer Alister Spence. My first was in 2018: Intelsat, a duo performance with another jazz pianist, Satoko Fujii. This was followed by his four-movement suite Imagine Meeting You Here, which was performed by the Satoko Fujii Orchestras in Kobe, Nagoya, and Tokyo. In 2020 he released his solo album Whirlpool, a suite of 23 relatively short pieces.This past April saw the release of a new solo album, Always Ever, which is currently available for MP3 download through an Amazon.com Web page.

Like Whirlpool, Always Ever is an album of improvised solo performances. There are sixteen tracks, the shortest being about two and a half minutes and the longest extending to six and a half minutes. Spence is not shy when it comes to upbeat tempos and eccentric rhythms. The attentive listener is thus likely to be satisfied with the diversity of dispositions across the individual selections.

Personally, I enjoyed the overdubbing of metal-on-metal percussion, which introduces the solo piano work in “Distant Cousins.” “Afternoon at Ranscom Street,” on the other hand, seems conceived to evoke the atonal abstractions encountered in improvisations by Cecil Taylor. It would be fair to say that Spence is never shy about adventurous improvisations, which is why I described the Whirlpool album as “a ‘laboratory notebook,’ in which Spence chose to document as wide a diversity of approaches to performance as his imagination would allow.” That documentation has now been continued and extended in Always Ever, which is as much a “journey of discovery” as Whirlpool was.

Chanticleer Announces 49th Bay Area Season

Once again, Chanticleer is an “early bird” when it comes to announcing its new season. As was the case last season, there will be four programs. Both subscriptions and single tickets are now available for the performances in the 2026–27 season. The first of these will be a fully-staged production, which will be given six performances. The remaining three programs will be given only single performances in San Francisco. As was the case last season, a Web page has been created for subscription purposes, which includes not only the entire season but also reduced subscriptions for either three or two of the programs. Program details have not yet been finalized, but currently available information for performances in San Francisco is as follows:

Sunday, September 13, 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., Thursday, September 17, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, September 19, 7:30 p.m., 2 p.m., and 5 p.m., and Sunday, September 20, 2 p.m., ODC Theatre: The season will begin with Chanticleer’s first fully staged production since its landmark performance of Curlew River. The full title of the offering is The Machaut Project: Devotion & Desire. This has been conceived as “an immersive, visually striking journey into the richly textured medieval world of Guillaume de Machaut.” Machaut’s Wikipedia page describes him as “the central figure of the ars nova style in late medieval music;” and he “has an unprecedented amount of surviving music, in part due to his own involvement in his manuscripts' creation and preservation.” I shall not even begin to speculate on how Elkhanah Pulitzer will stage this music!

Chanticleer’s annual banner for the Christmas season

Sunday, December 20, 8 p.m., St. Ignatius Church: A Chanticleer Christmas will follow the usual tour of the Bay Area with one performance in San Francisco. As usual, the program will present a vision of joy and transcendence through beautifully sung music of all centuries, beginning with a candlelit chant procession. In all likelihood the conclusion will be one of an upbeat gospel celebration.

Saturday, March 13, 2 p.m., Mission Dolores Basilica: Valentini Unveiled is named for the early Baroque composer Giovanni Valentini. His approach to composition was influenced by the clavicymbalum universale, an enharmonic keyboard with 19 keys per octave. The program will present the six Litaniae Lauretanae, along with selected motets. Instrumental accompaniment will be provided by the Baroque ensemble ACRONYM, which will perform selected sonatas.

Saturday, May 22, 2 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall: The title of the final program is Paradise, described as an exploration of “humanity’s eternal longing for the ideal: visions of a perfect world, perfect love, or perfect future.” The repertoire will extend from the Renaissance period of Jean Mouton and Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla to the recent past of Bobby McFerrin’s “The 23rd Psalm.” Other familiar composers on the program will include Darius Milhaud (“Psalm 121”) and Jean Sibelius (“Rakastava”).

Communism?

If I am not mistaken, the first time I encountered the word “communism” in this century was when Donald Trump gave his recent speech at Mount Rushmore. [added 7/9, 7:40 a.m.: It turns out this this was just the tip of an iceberg. This morning I encountered a NewsFeed article for Al Jazeera written by Soraya Lennie. The text for this article states, “Donald Trump has denounced communism more than 80 times in the past two weeks.”] I learned this through an Analysis article in The Guardian, which I encountered this morning. If anything, I find it ironic that Russia’s Vladimir Putin carries the same title as Donald Trump: President! This is not to say that governance in Russia is the same as it is here in the United States, but it serves as a reminder that we need to be careful about the words we choose and the semantics behind those words. Indeed, the very concept of diplomacy usually comes down to a battle of words and disagreements over semantics.

Georges Clemenceau (from his goodreads Web page)

This all reflects on the best known quotation of Georges Clemenceau from the last century: “War is too important to be left to the generals.” One might just as well substitute “heads of state” for “generals.” Disagreements can only be resolved through individuals with a solid command on knowing what they are talking about. Sadly, those individuals are few and far between. They are rarely heads of state and are more likely to serve as advisors. Nevertheless, disagreements can only be resolved through knowledge; and the real problem is finding the right individuals to enable such resolutions.

In that context, I have to confess that I cannot name any names, because, to be perfectly frank, I cannot think of any as I write this!

The Bleeding Edge: 7/6/2026

This will be a quiet week on The Bleeding Edge. There will be only three events, all taking place on the three days leading up to the weekend. All the venues will be familiar to regular readers; and, as is usually the case, the options are impressively diverse. Details are as follows:

Wednesday, July 8, 9 p.m., the Knockout: Not much information has been provided other than the performers. The order of appearance on the poster is as follows:

1. Ettrick (the duo of Jay Korber and Jacob Felix Heule)
2. Hair Grease
3. Daron Key
4. Solo Organ (That’s what it says on the poster!)
5. DJ Paul Costuros

The Knockout is located in the Mission at 3223 Mission Street (across from Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack). Admission will be $10.

Thursday, July 9, 8 p.m., Peacock Lounge: For those familiar with the venue, this will be the usual four-set evening. Euphotic is a trio that euphonizes natural, physical, and imaginary sound sources. All three of the performers are likely to be familiar to Bleeding Edge followers: Cheryl E. Leonard, Tom Djll, and Bryan Day. Headboggle is a solo set by Derek Gedalecia. The description of his performance is worth quoting: “the manifestation of Derek Gedalecia's acoustic/electronic performance-art research utilizing his very own kitchen sink which at any moment might uncork with Moog, Harmonica, Banjo, Harpsichord, Irish Harp, EMS Synthi, Violin, Drums, Clavinet, Serge Modular, field recordings, or your very own squirming brain.” Sean Keenan also draws upon diverse resources, including percussion, electronics, and what he calls “bizarre reeds.” Finally, Wizardmaster is a solo performance by Mark Stramaglia, working with his own custom synthesizers. The Lounge is located in Haight-Ashbury at 552 Haight Street. Admission is between $5 and $15, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Francis Wong with his saxophone (from the Web page for his performance this week)

Friday, July 10, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: “Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce,” who curates the Other Dimensions in Sound performances will contribute to a saxophone trio. The other two performers will be Nora Free and Francis Wong. As many (most?) readers probably know by now, the venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

SFP 2026–2027 Shenson Piano Series

This coming season, the Shenson Foundation will support San Francisco Performances (SFP) through The Shenson Piano Series. This will consist of four solo piano recitals, all of which will take place in Herbst Theatre, beginning at 7:30 p.m. The entrance to Herbst is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. The specific dates and their related performers are as follows:

Thursday, November 12: The season will begin with the return of Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, who will be presenting his fourth SFP piano recital. Program details have not yet been finalized, but the program will be one of “dance-inspired works.” The contributing composers will be Bohuslav Martinů, Manuel de Falla, Karol Szymanowski, Franz Schubert, and Béla Bartók.

Pianist Elisabeth Brauss (from the SFP Web page for her solo recital)

Friday, January 22: Unless I am mistaken, German pianist Elizabeth Brauss last visited San Francisco when she accompanied Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut in the third of the four San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Spotlight recitals performed in Davies Symphony Hall. Brauss will return with a program spanning the period from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth. She will open her program with those two extremes, beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 331 sonata in A major, followed by seven of the pieces in Béla Bartók’s “14 Bagatelles.” According to the Web page for those pieces, “Bartók adopted some techniques of Debussy and Schoenberg;” and the “Bagatelles” will be followed by Claude Debussy’s “Pour le Piano.” The second half of the program will reflect on the “partnership” of Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann. Brauss will begin with the first five of the eight solo piano pieces Brahms collected in his Opus 76. They will be followed by the full performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 9 “Carnaval.”

Friday, February 26: Vikingur Ólafsson also last visited San Francisco in Davies, where he was a recitalist in the Great Performers Series. He will begin with two pieces by Philip Glass: the “Opening” movement on his Glassworks album and the fifteenth of his set of twenty études. This will be followed by three short Debussy pieces: “Ondine,” the eighth prelude in the second book, “Serenade for the Doll” from the Children’s Corner suite, and “Jardins sous la pluie” (gardens in the rain), the last of the three movements in his Estampes suite. He will devote the second half of the program to selections from two suites collected by Jean-Philippe Rameau, the third in D major followed by the second in E minor.

Friday, May 7: I know pianist Fazil Say best for his release of the six-CD set of all of the piano sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For his visit to San Francisco, he will shift his attention to Ludwig van Beethoven with performances of two of the sonatas given names: Opus 13 (“Pathétique”) and Opus 57 (“Appassionata”). He will devote the rest of his program to presenting his own compositions.

Subscriptions are now on sale for $360 for premium seating in the Orchestra, the Side Boxes, and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $315 for the remainder of the Orchestra and the Dress Circle, and $270 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. When single tickets go on sale, they may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.

“Stars and Stripes” When it is Needed Most!

San Francisco Ballet dancers performing “Stars and Stripes” (photograph by Lindsay Thomas, courtesy of the Balanchine Trust, from the SF Classical Voice review of last February’s performance written by Steven Winn)

Some readers may recall this past February, when I wrote about Balanchine: Father of American Ballet when it was performed by the San Francisco Ballet in the War Memorial Opera House. That program concluded with George Balanchine’s best known “Americana” ballet, “Stars and Stripes,” set to music by John Philip Sousa, orchestrated by Hershy Kay. I cannot think of a better way to celebrate Independence Day than with choreography created by a man often recognized as the father of American ballet. This was Balanchine’s way of thanking the government for granting his citizenship. Mind you, I am sure there are good reasons why the War Memorial Opera House would not be able to support this timely undertaking, so I may just have to resort to recordings of Sousa’s music to tweak my memory of the many past performances I have enjoyed, not only here in San Francisco, but also in New York City and Boston!

Aaron Bennett to Bring Trio to Chez Hanny

Saxophonist Aaron Bennett (right) with his trio colleagues Dan Seamans (bass) and Tim Bulkley (drum kit) performing Bird & Beckett Books and Records (courtesy of Jazz Chez Hanny)

Saxophonist Aaron Bennett is likely to be familiar to those following announcements of jazz performances on this site. His most recent “appearance” took place at the end of this past May, when he was on the front line at Bird & Beckett Books and Records in a septet led by bass guitarist Dave Parker. In a little over two weeks’ time, he will be leading a trio of his own for this month’s first Jazz Chez Hanny performance. Rhythm will be provided by Dan Seamans on bass and drummer Tim Bulkley, both of whom have performed at previous Chez Hanny gigs.

As usual, the show will begin at Chez Hanny at 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 19. 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. Vaccination is required on the honor system, and masks are optional. 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.

New Century Chamber Orchestra: 2026/27

As was the case last year, the 2026/27 season of the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) and its Music Director and Concertmaster Daniel Hope will begin this coming November. This season there will be five concerts performed in San Francisco at three different venues. Dates, times, and location specifics are as follows:

Saturday, November 7, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Following up on their last collaboration with NCCO, the Marcus Roberts Trio will return for performances of music by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin in a performance entitled GROOVE. Roberts leads the trio on piano, joined by drummer Jason Marsalis and Rodney Jordan on bass. They will join NCCO for a suite of Ellington tunes. The program will also include a string ensemble performance of “Entr’acte,” originally composed for string quartet by Caroline Shaw. The other contributing composer will be Rhiannon Giddens with her “At the Purchaser’s Option.” For those that do not already know, Herbst is in the Civic Center on the ground floor of the Veterans Building, across the street from City Hall at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.

Saturday, December 12, 2 p.m., Taube Atrium Theatre: Violinist Benjamin Beilman will be the visiting soloist. He will perform the arrangement for violin and string orchestra of Eugène Ysaÿe’s “Rêve d’enfant” and Jean Sibelius’ Opus 117, a suite for violin and string orchestra. The program will begin with Olli Mustonen’s second nonet, which he completed in 2000. The final work on the program will be the oldest: Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4 “Verklärte Nacht,” which he originally composed as a string sextet. The venue is located on the top floor of the Veterans Building.

Saturday, January 30, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Pianist Lara Downes will join the ensemble for the world premiere of “Beauty Has No Borders,” just composed by Clarice Assad. The earliest work on the program will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 201/186a, his 29th symphony composed in the key of A major. (He was eighteen years old at the time.) The program will conclude with the strings-only music for “Apollo,” the ballet choreographed by George Balanchine in 1928 when he was only 24 years old.

Saturday, April 17, 2 p.m., Presidio Theatre: The soloist will be bandoneonist Omar Massa, performing the world premiere of his double concerto for bandoneon and violin. The entire program will present music from “south of the border.” The most familiar work is likely to be Astor Piazzolla’s suite, The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The remaining selection will be “La Calaca,” composed by Gabriela Ortiz in 2021. The venue is in the southwest corner of the Presidio at 99 Moraga Avenue.

Thomas Hampson and Daniel Hope (from the NCCO Web site for the San Francisco Rising concert)

Friday, May 14, and Saturday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, May 16, 2 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The title of this program is San Francisco Rising, and it will be jointly curated by Hope and baritone Thomas Hampson. The program has not yet been finalized, but particular attention will be given to Ernest Bloch. Bloch was Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the 1920s, after which he became Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California in Berkeley. His compositions will “rub shoulders” with traditional songs from China, Ireland, Mexico, and Africa. Sources will date back to the 1849 California Gold Rush and advance to the 1945 signing of the United Nations Charter (which took place in San Francisco … check out the painting in Herbst).

As of this writing, single tickets do not appear to be on sale. However, there is a Subscriptions Web page which allows for purchases for not only all five concerts but also four, three, and even two concerts. These will all involve 25% discounts from single-ticket purchases, which will probably become available in the coming fall.

LIEDER ALIVE!’s 2026/27 Liederabend Series

LIEDER ALIVE! now has a Web page that provides the dates for its Liederabend Series, which will run from November of 2026 through May of 2027. There will be four recitals, all taking place on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. The first of these will be the Autumn Opening Concert followed by three “Anniversary Concerts” celebrating twenty years of presenting vocalists and their respective repertoires. As in the past, all performances will take place as part of the Old First Concerts (O1C) series at Old First Presbyterian Church (1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue). All of them will be on Sunday afternoons, beginning at 4 p.m. Hyperlinks for purchasing tickets will be attached below to the specific dates. In all likelihood there will also be hyperlinks for live streams of the performances. Specific dates are as follows:

November 8: The season will begin with a performance by baritone Olivier Zerouali, accompanied at the piano by Ji Youn Lee. Both of them are San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows. Program details have not yet been finalized; but the contributing composers will be Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, and Gabriel Fauré (often known as “the usual suspects!”).

January 17: Dramatic soprano Heather Hjelle will make her LIEDER ALIVE! debut with a program devoted entirely to Richard Wagner. Her accompanist will be John Parr. She will begin with WWV 91, the five songs the Wagner collected for female voice and piano often given the title Wesendonck Lieder. This will be followed by the “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde with piano accompaniment arranged by Franz Liszt. The program will conclude with the piano transcription of the funeral march from Götterdämmerung; and, as many readers will expect, Hjelle will perform the entire concluding Immolation Scene of that opera.

February 28: Two vocalists will make return appearances: soprano Charlotte Kelso and tenor Thomas Kinch. They will perform selections from Ludwig van Beethoven, Giuseppe Verdi, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Once again, details (including accompaniment) have not yet been finalized.

Peter Grünberg accompanying soprano Esther Rayo at the piano (from their LIEDER ALIVE! Web page)

May 16: Just as familiar will be the return of soprano Esther Rayo with her accompanist Peter Grünberg. Her selections will include works by Schubert, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina, and Giacomo Puccini. Specifics will, again, be forthcoming.

Summer Begins at Davies Symphony Hall

Conductor Chloé Van Soeterstède on the Web page for last night’s performance

Yesterday evening saw the beginning of the Summer with Symphony series of concerts in Davies Symphony Hall. A few performances by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) are interleaved with a diversity of “pops” repertoire event. Fortunately, things got under way with a Summer Classics SFS performance. Chloé Van Soeterstède made her debut on the Davies podium; and the concerto soloist was violinist Paul Huang, who made his SFS debut in February of 2024. The overall program followed the usual overture-concerto-symphony structure, with the intermission between the concerto and the symphony.

The concerto selection was Max Bruch’s Opus 26 violin concerto in G minor. I am not sure I can account for how many recordings I currently have of the concerto, but I am pretty sure I first came to appreciate it through my “complete works” collection of the recordings Jascha Heifetz made for RCA. My guess is that there are many discophiles that would declare that the Heifetz version is the “gold standard” of recordings of Opus 26. While I appreciate its historical significance, I am always interested in what new soloists bring to the table, so to speak.

Sadly, Huang did not have very much to bring, but, to be fair, neither did Van Soeterstède. Mind you, I have had many enjoyable encounters of performances of Opus 26; and I always appreciate a violinist with enough inventiveness to “go beyond Heifetz.” Last night, on the other hand, was little more than a here-we-go-again account of a warhorse. Mind you, the audience, as a whole, was receptive; but Huang’s performance left me hungry for a more engaging listening experience, which, sadly, was not delivered in the encore selection, whose title he failed to announce.

Following the intermission, my quibbles about Huang transmogrified into quibbles about Felix Mendelssohn. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to his Opus 107 symphony in D major, given the title “Reformation.” The title of this symphony is realized in the final movement, which involves a fantasia on Martin Luther's hymn “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.” However, where musical rhetoric is concerned, the overall succession of four movements is more than a bit of a slog or, as I scribbled in my program book, “desperately in need of ‘reformation!’”

The overture for the program was given its first SFS performance. It was a concert overture written in the key of D major in 1873 by the Swedish composer Elfrida André. This perfectly served its role as a “warm up” for what was to follow, but it turned out to be the most engaging selection on the entire program! This is a composer that deserves a good biography to provide further examination of her musical talents. Of course, that biography would have to account for how she persuaded the Swedish government to hire women as telegraph operators!

Pocket Opera to Conclude Season this Month

The 2026 season of Pocket Opera performances in San Francisco will conclude on the final Sunday of this month. The opera to be presented will be Giacomo Puccini’s three-act La rondine (the swallow). This is one of the few comic operas in the Puccini catalog, the best-known being the one-act “Gianni Schicchi.”

Angela Gheorghiu singing the “Doretta” aria during a gala concert for the Silver Jubilee of Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands

I have to confess that I have never seen this opera in its entirety, and I suspect that most readers are just as unfamiliar with any of the arias in it. At best, there is probably one exception, “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta,” which the courtesan Magda de Civry (soprano Michelle Allie Drever) sings in the first act. The poet Prunier (tenor Alex Taite) presents himself as an authority on love. He is the author of the words for that song, but he never manages to finish it until Magda takes over to prove a love-conquers-all conclusion. All of this takes place at a salon in Paris, but it is only the first of the three acts.

The overall narrative accounts for Magda’s relationship with the young Ruggero (tenor Maxwell Ary). In the first act we learn that he meets Magda on his first visit to Paris and is smitten by her. By the end of the second act, they have decided to begin a new life together. That “new life” takes them to the French Riviera in the final act. It that setting Magda eventually concludes that she is just not the right women to be Ruggero’s bride. She goes back to Paris to maintain her social life; and Ruggero is devastated at having been abandoned. Nevertheless, he is still young and will probably be better equipped for any future romantic encounter!

A Web page has been created for purchasing tickets at prices from $45 to $89. The performance will begin at 1:30 PM on Sunday, July 26. in the Gunn Theater at The Legion of Honor. For those that do not yet know, this building is located in Lincoln Park, which involves following 34th Avenue into the Park after it crosses Clement Street.

Buster Williams’ 1975 Debut Album Reissued

Cover of the album being examined

This past Record Store Day, April 18, Time Traveler Recordings released three albums, along with digital copies, of three particularly adventurous jazz performers from the second half of the last century. One of them was bassist Buster Williams, whose name always seemed to come up whenever I was in conversation with San Francisco performers particularly devoted to contemporary music. Ironically, my first encounter with Williams’ music (as both composer and performer) came from one of those albums released on Record Store Day. The title of the album is Pinnacle, consisting of five tracks amounting to a little less than 45 minutes of music.

Williams leads a septet with a front line of trumpeter Woody Shaw and two saxophonists. The first of them, Earl Turbinton, doubles on clarinet, and the other, Sonny Fortune, also plays both flute and alto flute. Rhythm is provided by percussionist Guilherme Franco, Billy Hart on drums, and Onaje Allan Gumbs, who divides his time across acoustic and electric piano, Moog synthesizer, and an ARP String Ensemble. (I suspect I am not the only one to find Shaw the only familiar name!)

I came away from this album feeling that the overall duration was just about right for the listening experience. The diversity of instruments allows for an engaging variety of approaches to improvisation. Williams has performed with the likes of Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Miles Davis; but there is much to engage the attentive listener as he finds paths to improvisation of his own. As I write this, the album is available from Amazon.com only on vinyl; but I am hoping that it will be available to “digital listeners” in the near future.