Sweelinck: From Keyboard Music to A Cappella

This morning I turned my attention to the second “category” in the ten-CD collection given the title Sweelinck Collection - Complete Keyboard Music & Psalms, released by Brilliant Classics. As most readers may already know, that category is Psalms; and it consists of three CDs of a cappella performances by the Netherlands Chamber Choir. This accounts for 39 tracks, not all of which are Psalm settings, distributed across three CDs. (For that matter, not all of the tracks are settings of texts from the Book of Psalms!) Conducting is shared across six conductors (in order of first appearance): Peter Phillips, Ton Koopman, William Christie, Jan Boeke, Philippe Herreweghe, and Paul van Nevel.

Having sung in several different a cappella choirs during my high school days, I can confess without embarrassment that I was a sucker for all three of these CDs! All six of the conductors provide a solid account of balance among the diversity of vocal levels; and, at least as far as my own opinion is concerned, each selection finds just the right rhetorical stance to take with the text being sung. The Books of Psalms is probably the most “upbeat” book in the Old Testament; and, to the best of my knowledge, nothing in the New Testament rises to such a joyous level.

The Oude Kerk church in Amsterdam, where Sweelinck worked for most of his mature life

My only regret is that my aging voice cannot keep up with the joyous rhetoric of this movement, but my ears are having a blast in listening to such enthusiastic energy! I have to wonder whether the congregation in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam was as joyous in listening to Sweelinck’s music as I was in encountering these new recordings. My guess is that the church was a dutifully solemn place but that many of the congregants may have left with a snap in their steps after listening to the choir!

The Bleeding Edge: 8/31/2026

It looks like summer will end with a whimper on the Bleeding Edge. There will be only two events this week, one of which will see the return of a venue that has not appeared on this site since the beginning of this past June. Fortunately, the balance will be stabilized by the other event, which is one of the most familiar of the “usual suspects!” Specifics are as follows:

Monday, August 31, 7 p.m., Bric A Brac: This is the venue that has kept itself quiet since June. The performance will be a trio performance of “Noise//Punk//Improv.” The performers will be Ethan Campa on drums, guitarist Isabelle Waldner Kalb, and Gianna Caudillo on acoustic bass. These names are followed on the Web page by “Micro Multi Hulls” and “Girl Into Destruction.” Those attending this event can decide whether or not these are the titles of the music being performed. The venue is located at 175 Leland Avenue.

David Boyce with his soprano saxophone (from this week’s BayImproviser Web page)

Friday, September 4, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: The only other event this week will be the next installment in Other Dimensions in Sound. As many readers probably already know, this is the Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinaire David Boyce. On this occasion Boyce will host a two-set evening. The first set will be a solo clarinet performance by Nikita Malinin. The second set will be by the Rainbow Eclipse duo with Boyce playing saxophones. He will be joined by Nader at a modular synthesizer. 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.

Ninth Annual International Piano Festival Finale

Sadly, my only encounter with this year’s San Francisco International Piano Festival, presented by Old First Concerts and curated by pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, was last night’s Finale. The title of the program was Symphonic Dances; but that only modestly suggested the diversity of the music that was performed (as well as the instruments doing the performing). Indeed, the “core” of the evening departed almost entirely from the keyboard in favor of the steelpan, which is the national instrument in the country in which it originated, Trinidad and Tobago. The performers were the father-and-son duo of Liam Teague and Jaden Teague-Núñez.

I must confess that I am not quite sure how these instruments were tuned, but it was definitely not equal temperament! That said, Liam Teague’s composition “A Visit to Hell” was scored for a duo of piano and steelpan; and he skillfully avoid any “clash” of “dueling intonations.” On the other hand, his performance of “raindrops” displayed a prodigious account of rich polyphony on a single steelpan. This was followed by a nostalgic (for me at least) account of John Lennon’s “Imagine” with Jaden on piano and Liam on steelpan.

Jeffrey LaDeur and Elizabeth Dorman at their respective instruments (screenshot from the YouTube video of yesterday’s performance)

The entire program was framed by two compositions for two pianos. Elizabeth Dorman made her Festival debut performing with LaDeur. Both of the selections were created in the United States by two decidedly different composers. The opening selection was George Gershwin’s “Cuban Overture,” inspired by the composer’s visit to Havana. Gershwin had originally titled the piece “Rumba,” and it is an energetic reflection on Caribbean rhythms and dance forms. I must confess that this music is a personal favorite; and, as overtures go, it definitely knows how to make the listener sit up and take notice!

The program concluded with the two-piano version of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 45 “Symphonic Dances.” I first came to know this music in its orchestral version when it was on the “flip side” of the album I purchased for Ottorino Respighi’s “Roman Festivals” tone poem. In that version there is a piano part; but it is decidedly secondary (if not tertiary). When limited to keyboards, the sonorities are not as rich; but the attentive ear will probably have a greater appreciation for the interplay of the thematic material. Yesterday was my first encounter with that version; and, while I had been familiar with the orchestral version for many decades, it was definitely an engaging journey of discovery!

San Francisco Performances: October, 2026

Having written about plans for the different San Francisco Performances (SFP) program series, it is now time to shift attention to monthly accounts of the events. Last year October was a busy month, alternating between Herbst Theatre and St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. This year there will be only four events, all of which will take place in Herbst (which, as most readers probably know by now, is located in the heart of the Civic Center at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street). Hyperlinks will lead to further details, including information about purchasing tickets. The specific events are as follows:

Thursday, October 8, 7:30 p.m.: The month will begin with the first Chamber Music Series recital. This will be the return of the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, which last performed for SFP in March of 2022. The musicians are violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobson, Nicholas Cords on viola, and cellist Michael Nicolas. Their repertoire favors the contemporary; but they will begin with the fifth of Joseph Haydn’s six Sun Quartets, his Opus 20, this one in the key of F minor. The other “numbered” string quartet on the program will be Don Byron’s third. These will be separated by Angélica Negrón’s “Our Children Speak English and Spanish.” Byron’s quartet will be followed by “We Are Working Tirelessly For A Ceasefire” by Ted Hearne. The program will conclude with Jacobsen’s arrangements of one of the best-known songs by Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are  A-Changin’.”

Thursday, October 22, 7:30 p.m.: The next recital will begin the Art of Song Series. Tenor Nicholas Phan will present a program entitled Fellow Citizens. His intention is to reflect on two enduring narratives in American history: one that asserts America is for Americans, and another that celebrates the country as a “Nation of Immigrants.” In the last century, Irving Berlin was about as American as a composer could get; and in Phan’s program he will rub shoulders with Franz Schubert to reflect on European influences. The program will also include a new work by Shawn Okpebholo. Phan will be accompanied at the piano by Myra Huang.

Saturday, October 24, 7:30 p.m.: The SFP Guitar Series will begin with the SFP debut of guitarist Berta Rojas. This will be a somewhat unconventional duo performance, since her accompanist will be clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera. As might be guessed, much of the program will involve arrangements, most of which will be by Mauricio Cardozo Ocampo, who also partnered with Néstor Zavarce for the penultimate selection, “Chogui—Galopera.” The program will conclude with Ocampo’s arrangement of one of D’Rivera’s compositions, “Contradanza.”

Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud (from the SFP Web page for this season’s Gala)

Thursday, October 29, 7 p.m.: The month will conclude with the annual Gala Performance for the 47th season. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras will be accompanied at the piano by Alexandre Tharaud. The program will be as diverse as it is imaginative. The earliest composer on the program will be Marin Marais with selections from the second of the five books of Pièces de viole. The most recent selection will be the first and fifth movements from the sonata for cello and piano, composed in the key of C major by Benjamin Britten.

“Loose Lips” About Artificial Intelligence

I just finished reading an online article from the Web site for The New York Times with the following headline: “Bill Gates Warns A.I. Is More Dangerous Than Big Tech Will Admit.” The author was Karen Weise, described in the header to the article as having “covered Microsoft since 2018.” The substance was the result of her conversation with Gates, which took place last week.

Some readers may know by now that, as an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I first had a desk at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory in my junior year. I wrote both my senior thesis and my doctoral dissertation under the support of Professor Marvin Minsky, one of the “founding fathers” of AI and author of “Steps toward artificial intelligence, “ published in the January, 1961 issue of the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers. As the old joke goes, if Minsky, who died in January of 2016, read Weise’s article, he would turn over in his grave!

I would like to take as a point of departure what I feel is a critical sentence in Weise’s article: “Mr. Gates conceded that he also might be a flawed messenger simply because of his vast wealth and history as Microsoft’s aggressive chief executive.” Indeed, Gates is definitely a “flawed messenger;” but the reason is that neither he nor Microsoft has ever been an authoritative source for any of the “steps toward artificial intelligence” in Minsky’s article. Indeed, I have to wonder whether or not Gates knew very much about MInsky (or even if he knew or met him at all).

Weise goes on the say that Gates was “stunned” by ChatGPT. To be fair, I would guess that few, if any, readers know very much about the origin of this software. That origin took place in the mid-Sixties, when Joseph Weizenbaum created a “chat” program called ELIZA. As Weizenbaum’s Wikipedia page puts it, the program, named DOCTOR, “was capable of engaging humans in a conversation which bore a striking resemblance to one with an empathetic psychologist.”

Anyone visiting the AI Lab was probably introduced to ELIZA. My own favorite story took place when the Merce Cunningham Dance Company visited Boston. By that time I had written a generous number of articles about that company, including a performance-by-performance account of a winter season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which appeared in Ballet Review. During the Boston visit, the stage director accepted my invitation to visit the AI Lab, and one of the dancers, Sandra Neels, joined him for that visit. Since I know that she would not be interested in “technical talk,” I sat her down at a workstation that was connected to ELIZA. After the “business” part of the visit was concluded, she was still typing away. When I asked her what she thought about it, she replied, “It’s like talking to Merce!”

I suppose it would be somewhat brash to suggest that a Cunningham dancer knew more about artificial intelligence that Gates does. Nevertheless, I have to wonder just how much Gates knows about how that discipline came to be and how it has advanced over the course of over half a century! Mind you, I am all for writing about artificial intelligence; but I am afraid that Weise has not yet established herself as an “informed source!”

Before Bach There Was Sweelinck

Early this month, I became aware of a ten-CD collection given the title Sweelinck Collection - Complete Keyboard Music & Psalms, released by Brilliant Classics. I had no trouble finding its Amazon.com Web page, from which I learned that it would be released this coming Friday (September 4). While the name of the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck has been familiar to me for as long as I have been involved with my writing gig, my encounters with his music have been few and far between. Indeed, the last time his name appeared here was about a year and a half ago, when harpsichordist Jonathan Salzedo played Sweelinck’s setting of music for Psalm 140 for a Noontime Concerts™ recital.

Cover of the first CD in the collection being discussed

The contents of the collection are somewhat uneven. The first six CDs have the subtitle Complete Harpsichord and Organ Music. To be honest, I am not sure if I can validate the completeness of this collection, particularly since there does not appear to be any systematic approach to the ordering of the compositions. The same can be said for the following three CDs, given the subtitle Psalms. The title of the final CD is Music from the Golden Age of Rembrandt, and only four of the thirteen tracks are Sweelinck compositions. My guess is that the other four composers will be totally unfamiliar to most readers: Cornelis Schuyt, Nicolas Vallet, Cornelis Thymanszoon Padbrué, Herman Hollanders, and Peeter Cornet. (Curious readers will be happy to know that all of them, except for Hollanders, have their own Wikipedia pages!)

Once again, I am reminded of an old motto from an advertisement for the Sunday edition of The New York Times: “You don’t have to read it all, but it’s good to know it’s all there!” To be fair, however, my only evidence of completeness comes from Sweelinck’s Wikipedia page, which cites a Complete Keyboard Works release from NM Classics (about which I know nothing!), consisting of nine CDs. Since this is consistent with the number of CDs in the Brilliant collection, I am willing to take it “on faith” that the new release is true to its title!

Thus far I have familiarized myself with those first six CDs. The keyboardist is Daniele Boccaccio. Each of the individual album jackets provides a generously thorough account of the instruments that he plays (another aspect of the Times motto).

It goes without saying that I am getting curious about getting to know some of this music for myself. Fortunately, four of the keyboard compositions found their way into The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, whose Dover edition has been on the shelf by my Yamaha Clavinova for as long as I have had the instrument. There is also one selection, “Fantasia in echo,” in the first volume (“Oriental, Medieval and Renaissance Music”) of the Historical Anthology of Music compiled by Archibald T. Davison and Willi Apel. On first glance, this one looks like it will require more than one keyboard!

That said, I appreciate this new release for reviving my interest in the pre-Baroque repertoire!

Paul Dresher Composing Music for Shakespeare

J Jha, who will perform the title role in King Lear (from the Web page for ticket purchases)

Next month the Dresher | Davel Invented Instrument Duo (Paul Dresher and Joel Davel) will provide the music for the performance of William Shakespeare’s play King Lear. This will be a co-production shared by the Oakland Theatre Project (OTP) and New Performance Traditions. The performance will be directed by Michael Socrates Moran. Rinde Eckert, who has performed in many of Dresher’s programs, will take the role of the Fool; and the title role will be assumed by J Jha, who has previously performed in Angels in America and Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata.

OTP will “migrate” across the Bay to bring this production to the Steindler Stage at Z Space in San Francisco. This is located in the Mission District at 450 Florida Street. Opening night will be at 7 p.m. on Sunday, September 27. This will be followed by further 7 p.m. performances on Thursdays, October 1 and 8, Fridays, October 2 and 9, and Saturdays, October 3 and 10. There will also be Sunday matinee performances at 2 p.m. on October 4 and 11. The performance will run for three hours with two intermissions. A single Web page has been created for all online purchases.

Satoko Fujii’s “Second Attempt” In Berlin

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

This coming Friday will see the release of the second album of performances by the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin. When I wrote about the first album, Ninety-Nine Years at the very end of 2025, I observed that the ensemble was more of a “small big band,” rather than an orchestra. In the new album, entitled Second Attempt, the ensemble has grown, but only marginally. The primary difference involves the introduction of Liz Kosack performing on a synthesizer. The album will be released this coming Friday, and it can currently be purchased through a Web page on the CDs Vinyl Japan Store Web site.

While Ninety-Nine Years consisted of five independent tracks, one of which was entitled “Ninety-Nine Years,” Second Attempt is basically a full-length “suite” in five “parts,” each of them having its own track on the album. Does this offer a significant change from the five “independent” tracks on Ninety-Nine Years? To be perfectly honest, I am not sure! I have now accumulated a generous number of Fujii albums; and I usually listen to any of them from beginning to end, rather than dwelling on individual tracks.

I suppose that the title of Second Attempt reflected Fujii’s desire to get this particular band “back together again.” Adding Kosack’s synthesizer does not make for a significant change in the overall dispositions of the performers and the music they create. In other words, I came away from listening to Second Attempt, with the satisfaction of listing to a band I had previously enjoyed in Ninety-Nine Years getting back together again!

Monteverdi Songs from Voices of Music

Laura Heimes, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, and John Taylor Ward singing with the Voices of Music instrumental ensemble, led from an organ keyboard by Hanneke van Proosdij

I had to wait until the end of the week; but, because this past Sundays at Ten video compiled by Voices of Music (VoM) presented songs by Claudio Monteverdi, I was determined to view and listen, even if it was later rather than sooner! Monteverdi was prolific in composing vocal music for both solo and group performances. This week’s video brought together excerpts from six different VoM programs; but I was particularly interested in the selection that featured two sopranos (Laura Heimes and Jennifer Ellis Kampani) and one baritone (John Taylor Ward).

I must confess that the entire program was new to me. (I am more familiar with the collection of Monteverdi’s madrigals.) All three of the vocalists shared only one of the selections on the program, “Cantate Domino.” The source was Monteverdi’s Libro primo de Motetti, which was published by Giulio Cesare Bianchi in 1620. The text itself mines passages from Psalms 95 and 97.

Watching these six videos reminded me of how seldom my encounters with Monteverdi has been in the recent past; but, to be frank, I find that I often feel this way about other composers after viewing other VoM videos!

Free Concerts at Noe Valley Town Square

Some readers may recall that Noe Music had finalized its Mainstage series of ten concerts this past May. However, I only recently learned that there will also be four free concerts taking place at 5 p.m. on Friday evenings in the Noe Valley Town Square, which is located at 3861 24th Street. As might be guessed, the title of this series will be Noe Music in the Square! I suspect that these will all be shorter in duration, so as not to interfere with plans for dinner! Also, the programs have probably not yet been entirely finalized. Nevertheless, I feel it is important to let readers know what the dates will be and what little further information is currently available.

Sunday, September 11: The title of the program will be Mozart Divertimento. More specifically, this will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 563 divertimento for string trio in E-flat major. Both co-artistic directors will perform: Owen Dalby on violin and Meena Bhasin on viola. As of this writing, the cellist has not yet been announced.

Sunday, September 18: The second performance will be by a cello quartet with performances that will traverse musical traditions involving Sudan, India, Southern Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Friday, October 2: Yacouba Sissoko will lead a trio playing the kora, a plucked string instrument, usually with 21 strings. He will share music from Mali, along with American folk and jazz sources, with cellist Mike Block. Percussion will be provided by Idrissa Koné. The trio will return the next morning for a Noe Music Kids performance. Sissoko and Block will then give a Mainstage recital on Sunday afternoon.

Le Jazz Hot performing at the Freight & Salvage coffeehouse (from the Noe Music Web page for their coming performance)

Friday, October 23: The title of the final program will be Le Jazz Hot. The performers will be the Hot Club of San Francisco, which specializes in Manouche jazz. In contrast to any of the American genres of jazz, the Manouche style was created in the café and courtyards of Paris roughly a century ago.

I’m Glad Canadians Have a Sense of Humor!

Al Jazeera has just the right video to respond to President Donald Trump’s executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America:”

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/8/28/typical-trump-silly-joke-lake-america-has-canadians-laughing

That said, I noticed that, as of this writing, the “play” button on the above Web page was been disabled when I first tried it! Does the United States now have a “Hacker Corps” to make sure that nothing in the digital world offends our President? (To be fair, after I loaded the Web page on a different site, I could view the video!)

Thea Musgrave Opera Returning to SF Opera

Mary, Queen of Scots, a full-length opera was composed by Thea Musgrave (herself a Scot, as well as the author of the libretto) in 1977. It was first performed at the Edinburgh International Festival for that year. The following year it was given its United States premiere by the Virginia Opera. Peter Mark was the Artistic and General Director of this company from 1975 to 2010. He was also Musgrave’s husband at the same time that she was a faculty member at the University of California in Santa Barbara. This led to San Francisco Opera (SFO) giving Mary, Queen of Scots its West Coast premiere in April of 1979, the performance taking place at the Curran Theatre.

Soprano Heidi Stober in the title role of Mary, Queen of Scots (photograph by Ellie Kurttz, courtesy of the English National Opera)

Next month, this opera will return to SFO performing at the War Memorial Opera House. Most narratives about Mary involve the tension between her and her cousin, Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Elizabeth never appears in this opera. Instead, she has to contend with three men, all of whom think that they can appropriate her authority. In Musgrave’s opera, Mary is a soprano, who will be sung by soprano Heidi Stober. The three ambitious men are Mary’s husband Lord Darnley (tenor Christopher Sokolowski), James Stewart, Mary’s half-brother and Early of Moray (baritone Thomas Mole), and James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell (tenor Thomas Kinch). It is also interesting to observe that Mary has four ladies-in-waiting, all of whom are named Mary: Mary Seton (mezzo Sadie Cheslak), Mary Beaton (soprano Sofia Gotch), Mary Livingston (soprano Mary Hoskins) (obviously with no connection to Jack Benny!), and Mary Fleming (mezzo Alexa Frankian).

Staging will be directed by Stewart Laing, who will be making his SFO debut. Also making an SFO debut will be the conductor, Clelia Cafiero. There will be two Sunday afternoon performances at 2 p.m. on September 20 and October 4. The remaining performances will be at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 24, Saturday, September 26, Tuesday, September 29, and Friday, October 2. A single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for all six of these events.

Harnoncourt on Teldec: the Journey Begins

1980 photograph of Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in September of 1980 (photograph by Marcel Antonisse for Anefo, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

A little less than one month from today, Warner Classics will release its next anthology. The Amazon.com Web page lists the title as The Complete Teldec Recordings, identifying the artist on all of the 42 CDs as the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on all of these recorded performances. The release date is scheduled for next month on September 25. However, because Amazon takes pre-orders, I decided to account for the contents in this collection sooner rather than later!

The first 30 of the CDs account for three of the four “First Viennese School” composers, the “order of appearance” being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Franz Schubert. (I was struck by the absence of the most familiar of those composers, but Harnoncourt may have decided that there are already enough, if not too many, recordings of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven!) Mozart accounts for the “lion’s share” of those CDs; and it is large enough that I decided that it deserves two separate articles, one for the instrumental music and one for the operas. Having established my plan, let me begin (as they say) at the beginning!

That “beginning” accounts for Mozart’s orchestral compositions. There are nine CDs, the last two of which involve piano concertos performed by Friedrich Gulda. The other seven account for fifteen of the 41 symphonies, the earliest of which is the K. 183 (25th) symphony in G minor. It is paired with the “other” (and better-known) G minor symphony, K. 550 (number 40). These are coupled on the first CD in the collection, beginning with the more familiar K. 550. I have to say that I rather liked this ordering. Pretty much everyone knows K. 550, but I always enjoy an opportunity to listen to the freshness of K. 183.

Sadly, my past encounters with Harnoncourt have been limited. Nevertheless, I have Warner Classics to thank for my last article about him, which goes back to October of 2021. This was when I was writing about another Warner Classics anthology: Gidon Kremer: The Warner Collection. Harnoncourt was the conductor for all of the Mozart performances, which, sadly, were more limited than I would have wished! I was reminded that, as I put it in my Kremer article:

Harnoncourt was an early champion of historically informed performances, having founded the Concentus Musicus Wien in the Fifties. These recordings [of Mozart] were made in the Eighties, by which time Harnoncourt had expanded his repertoire to music from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, while the instrumentation may not be “historically informed,” there is no questioning that the spirit of the music has been honored.

The “next stage” in listening to this new anthology will involve five of the Mozart operas, and I am definitely looking forward to all of them!

What Donald Trump Cannot Do

Image provided by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee 

I hate to disappoint him, but the Constitution of the United States devotes an entire article to what the President can and cannot do. (Obviously, this document does not tell the reader to ignore anything it says!) If President Trump has not yet taken the trouble to understand this document and use it for guidance, is there anyone persuasive enough to explain it to him?

SFS Great Performers: 2026–2027

Having used this past weekend to prepare readers for San Francisco Symphony (SFS) performances of both its Chamber Music Series and the “special solo piano recital” by pianist Lang Lang, this seems to be a good time to prepare listeners for other events in Davies Symphony Hall that do not involve SFS. The Great Performers Series will present ten programs, most of which will be solo recitals. However, the season will begin with a piano trio followed by an orchestral performance.

All performances will take place in Davies Symphony Hall. Tickets will be available for purchase through the hyperlinks for the dates; as usual, 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. Specifics are as follows:

Thursday, October 15, 7:30 p.m.: The series will begin with a piano trio, each of whose members is also a major solo recitalist. Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will share the program with Lisa Batiashvili on violin and cellist Gautier Capuçon. The program will begin with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 8, his first piano trio, composed in the key of C minor and originally given the title “Poème.” This will be followed by Claude Debussy’s only piano trio. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 65, his third piano trio, in F minor.

Sunday, October 25, 2 p.m.: Rafael Payare will conduct the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal following his visit as a guest conductor for SFS in May of 2023. The first half of the program will be devoted entirely to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s only violin concerto, his Opus 35 composed in the key of D major. The second half of the program will shift to the key of E minor for Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 93, his tenth symphony.

Tuesday, November 10, 7:30 p.m.: The first solo piano recital in the Series will be performed by Hélène Grimaud. She has prepared a program of two “last” piano sonatas, each of which is a major undertaking unto itself. The first half will be devoted to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 111, composed in the key of C minor. The intermission will be followed by Franz Schubert’s D. 960, composed in the key of B-flat major. It is worth noting that Grimaud prepared a title for her program, which could not have been more informative: The Last Testament!

Monday, November 30, 7:30 p.m.: Violinist Hilary Hahn will be joined at the piano by Yekwon Sunwoo. They, in turn, will be joined by baritone Matthias Goerne for the world premiere of Wir, composed by Reena Esmail on a commission by SFS. The text weaves together German poems by Paul Celan with “interstitial verse by Rebecca Gayle Howell.” The program will begin with Sunwoo accompanying Hahn in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 24 (fifth) sonata in F major, often known as the “Spring” sonata.

Sunday, January 10, 7:30 p.m.: Pianist Emanuel Ax will devote the second half of his program entirely to Frédéric Chopin. He will reflect on a diversity of genres, beginning with the Opus 61 Polonaise-Fantasy in A-flat major followed by the Opus 60 Barcarolle in F-sharp major. Ax will then “turn back the clock” for the two nocturnes in Opus 27 and the Opus 31 scherzo, the second piece in this genre, composed in the key of B-flat minor. The first half of the program will also have a “reverse chronology,” beginning with Robert Schumann’s very early (Opus 2) Papillons suite, followed by the four impromptus collected in Franz Schubert’s D. 899, composed towards the end of the year prior to his death.

Tuesday, January 19, 7:30 p.m.: The title of this event is An Evening with Itzhak Perlman. It was conceived by director Dan Sullivan as a multimedia program. Violinist Perlman will be accompanied at the piano by Rohan De Silva. However, under Sullivan’s direction, he will interweave storytelling with personal photographs, along with clips from the documentary film entitled Itzhak.

Monday, March 1, 7:30 p.m.: Each half of pianist Seong-Jin Cho’s solo recital will conclude with music by Sergei Prokofiev. The intermission will be preceded by a selection of ten of the movements in the score for the Romeo and Juliet ballet; and the program will conclude with Prokofiev’s Opus 84, his eighth piano sonata composed in the key of B-flat major. This will make for a more-than-generous abundance of notes, so the program will begin with Jörg Widmann’s “Sonatine facile.” The second half of the program will open with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 396, his second “Fantasia,” a fragment composed in the key of C minor and completed by Maximilian Stadler.

Sunday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the first of two consecutive evenings of solo piano recitals. The soloist will be Yuja Wang, who has been visiting Davies almost as long as I have! As of this writing, she has not yet finalized her program.

Monday, April 19, 7:30 p.m.: The pianist for the second evening will be Evgeny Kissin. He has prepared an all-Beethoven program. The second half will be devoted entirely to one of the later compositions, the Opus 120 set of variations, usually known as the “Diabelli Variations.” The first half will begin “almost at the beginning” with the first of the three Opus 2 piano sonatas, composed in the key of F major. This will be followed by the first of the two Opus 27 sonatas, given the title “Quasi una fantasia” and composed in the key of E-flat major.

Alisa Weilerstein with her cello (from the Web page for this season’s Davies performance)

Sunday, May 16, 7:30 p.m.: Cellist Alisa Weilerstein will perform a duo recital with Inon Barnatan at the piano keyboard. Each half of the program will conclude with a sonata for cello, which is the only one written by its respective composer. The first of these will be Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 65 in G minor; and the evening (and series) will conclude with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 19 (which also happens to be in G minor). The program will begin with Suite populaire Espagnole, an arrangement of six of the songs from Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas (seven Spanish folksongs), which Falla arranged with the assistance of Paul Kochanski. Maurice Maréchal subsequently adapted this arrangement as a duo for cello and piano. The second half of the program will begin with selections from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 34, as set of short pieces given the title 24 Preludes. Those selections were arranged for cello and piano by Lera Auerbach.

“Woke” Art?

I just finished reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle written yesterday by Aidin Vaziri for the Arts & Entertainment category. The title was somewhat lengthy: “Kehinde Wiley painting removed from embassy after officials call it ‘woke’.” The venue in question was the United States Embassy in the Dominican Republic. Wiley was commissioned to create this painting in 2013.

The result was “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960.” It depicts four Dominican models against a lush floral background. Given the controversy over the painting, the Chronicle did not provide a photographic reproduction.

Kehinde Wiley’s painting being installed in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic in 2015 (photograph courtesy of Roberts & Tilton for Art in Embassies, from the article about the painting in The Art Newspaper)

What troubles me is that most of the rest of the Chronicle article involves support for the removal of the painting. It turns out that our State Department has an Art in Embassies program directed by Erin Scavino, who (in the words of the article) “described the painting as ‘very woke’ and ‘aesthetically terrifying.’” This was followed by the assessment by Ambassador Leah Campos: “In the Trump Administration and under my leadership we are turning away from globalist and woke ideologies and instead embracing American patriotism and the beauty of our great country!”

(Note how many times the word “woke” is quoted in the above paragraphs!)

This struck me as the latest trope on one of the oldest clichés in the book: “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like!” In other words, the painting was removed because too many of the individuals in charge did not like it. Sadly, Vaziri did not give Wiley much say in the matter, observing only that he “spent two years studying the work of Dominican artists Celeste Woss y Gil and Gilberto Hernández Ortega and worked with art students in the country.”

Perhaps the State Department should turn its attention only to “matters of State” and leave art to the artists and qualified art critics!

Center for New Music: September, 2026

Next month is when the concert season “officially” gets under way. As of this writing, “first out of the gate” will be the Center for New Music (C4NM). As usual, the month will serve up the unusual and the familiar, the latter including the monthly G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S event. As most readers probably know by now, the venue is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. Each of the below dates is hyperlinked to an event page through which tickets may be purchased as follows:

Saxophonist Nora Free, Alex Heigl with his guitar, and bassist Chris Trinidad (poster design for the performers that will open the new season)

Friday, September 11, 7:30 p.m.: The season will begin with a one-off night of improvised music performed by a quartet. The “front line” will be taken by saxophonist Nora Free, accompanied by three “rhythm” musicians: guitarist Alex Heigl, Chris Trinidad on bass guitar, and drummer Ian MacKenzie. Those familiar with the wild improvisations by saxophonist Pharoah Sanders may detect his influence on Free. It is also worth nothing that McKenzie tends to prefer a “minimalist” approach to drum work. General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for students and C4NM members.

Saturday, September 12, 7:30 p.m.: The title of this program is 2x2, because two duos will contribute to the program. After each of them takes a set, the program will conclude with their joining forces for a quartet performance. The program will begin with percussionists Kevin Corcoran and Jacob Felix Heule. They will be followed by James Fei and Bill Hsu, both working with electronic gear. Once again, general admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for students and C4NM members.

Saturday, September 19, noon: The first G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S event of the new season will be the usual two-hour performance. The entrance fee will be $10 general admission with a $6 rate for students and C4NM members. There will be no further charge for the gourmet pancakes being served. There will be five sets of performances, most of which will be identified by what I have previously called “bleeding edge eccentricities.” Those sets will be as follows:

1. Dimmer is a duo of performers that depart from “the usual instruments.” Thomas Dimuzio is a pioneer in live sampling technology. He will be joined by Joseph Hammer who creates and works with tape loops.
2. Medicine Cabinet is the name for a solo performance by Marc Schnieder, who is based in Tracy, California; he creates is own networks of electronic gear for his shows.
3. Connor Tomaka has performed at C4NM in the past. At the end of April of 2022, he released an album entitled Mathematical Structuralism, currently available through a Bandcamp Web page. This was a duo performance with Eric Schmid involving a prodigious diversity of genres: metal, rock, alternative, hip-hop/rap, experimental, punk, pop, and ambient.
4. No information is currently available for the set taken by Impact Design.
5. The final set will be taken by Mabbie Bug & Company, described as “an alias or creative moniker associated with live music and experimental performance events.”

Saturday, September 26, 6:15 p.m.: Pianist Patrick Anderson will give a solo performance of the five numbered compositions by Philip Glass given the title Metamorphosis. The piano will be accompanied by live electronic and ambient effects. Glass selected the title because it was named for a novella by Franz Kafka. He composed his music to capture the book’s themes of isolation, emptiness, and despair. General admission will again be $15 with a $10 rate for students and C4NM members.

Stratigou’s 5th Album of Farrenc’s Piano Works

Portrait of Louise Farrenc on the cover of the fifth Naxos album of her piano music (which is the same as the portrait on previous albums)

This past Friday I received an announcement from the Naxos of America PR Team that the latest installment in recordings of the complete piano works of nineteenth-century composer Louise Farrenc, performed by Maria Stratigou, was ready for release by Grand Piano. This is the fifth volume given the title Fugues • Mélodies • Valses, which does not quite account for the entirety of the album. That said, the six tracks of fugues and one of the waltzes are all world premiere recordings.

That waltz is the Opus 51, the second “Valse Brillante,” which is coupled with the first, Opus 48. Whether or not Stratigou selected that title from Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 18 can be left as an exercise for the musicologists! That said, Chopin never shows up on her Wikipedia page, from which we learn that her composition teacher was Anton Reicha. Personally, I find both of these waltz compositions engaging; and, if there are occasional tropes reminiscent of Chopin, they are still perfectly capable of speaking for themselves!

More interesting (for me at least) were six of the fugues from the Opus 22 collection. These ran from the sixth to the eleventh, and they are world premiere recordings. Sadly, Farrenc’s Wikipedia page does not enumerate these fugues. This makes me all the more curious about how many she composed and when Grand Piano will account for the rest of them in future releases!

The Bleeding Edge: 8/24/2026

Compared to last week, this week will be relatively quiet. As will be seen below, there will be another three performances by Hidden Currents. These will be complemented by three new events on the first two of the three Hidden Currents dates. Specifics are as follows:

Thursday, August 27, 6 p.m., Exploratorium: It has been over a year since I wrote about an After Dark event at this venue. Dr. Desiré Whitmore will introduce the audience to the LASER Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. Lest readers wonder what this has to do with music, her lecture will be embellished with clarinet performances by Ben Goldberg. There will be no charge beyond the fee for entering the Exploratorium, which is located at Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, across from the intersection with Green Street.

Thursday, August 27, Friday, August 28, and Saturday, August 29, 7:30 p.m., Audium:  This will be the next installment of performances by Hidden Currents. As some readers may recall by now, the audience will sit in the center of the space in total darkness surrounded by 176 loudspeakers. For those that do not yet know, the venue is located at 1616 Bush Street. Pay-what-you-can tickets are available at the door for each show, on a first come, first served basis; but the preferred cost is between $20 and $30.

Friday, August 28, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares:  The next Other Dimensions in Sound offering, curated and hosted by Boohaabian reed player David Boyce, will be another two-set evening. The first set will be performed the Ark of Bones, the name given to the duo of cellist Chris Evans and Boyce playing a variety of saxophones. In the second set dummer Jordan Glenn will provide rhythm for two front-line players, Darren Johnston on trumpet and clarinetist Ben Goldberg. 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.

A 29-stringed concert kanklės (photograph by Rimantas Lazdynas, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Friday, August 28, 8:30 p.m., The Lab: Merope is the duo of Bert Cools alternating between guitar and electronics and vocalist Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, accompanying herself with the kanklės, a Lithuanian plucked string instrument. They will perform with multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, whose primary instrument is bass guitar. In the second set pianist David Wesley Golightly will celebrate the release of his debut solo album, Seven Songs for Solo Piano. For those that do not yet know, the venue is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street, a short walk from the transit stop at 16th Street and Mission Street.

Lang Lang Returning to Davies with Diversity

Lang Lang (from the Web page for purchasing tickets to his October recital)

The first solo piano recital of the season in Davies Symphony Hall will take place at the beginning of October. Some may think that this is a bit far in the future; but, since the pianist will be Lang Lang, there is likely to be a high (and early) demand for tickets! He has prepared a “two centuries” program with an engaging breadth of diversity.

The first half of the program will be shared by two of the four major composers of the Classical period. The opening selection will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 485 Rondo in D major. This will be followed by two piano sonatas from the different ends of Ludwig van Beethoven’s career. The earlier of these will be Opus 13 in C minor, best known as the “Sonata Pathétique.” The second will then be the composer’s penultimate sonata, Opus 110 in A-flat major.

The second half of the program will present composers from two different countries. The first two are Spanish: excerpts from Isaac Albéniz’ Opus 47 Suite española and “Quejas, o La Maja y el ruiseñor” (complaint, or the girl and the nightingale), which concludes the first of the two “books” in the Goyescas suite composed by Enrique Granados. The program will then conclude in Hungary with two compositions by Franz Liszt. The first of these will be the second (in E major) of the six S. 171a pieces collected under the title Consolations. The second will be the Tarantella that concludes the S. 162 Venezia e Napoli collection, a supplement to the second suite (Italie) in the Années de pèlerinage (years of pilgrimage) collections composed between 1835 and 1838.

The performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 4. The San Francisco Symphony has created a Web page for online ticket purchases. Ticket prices range from $250 to $399. As of this writing, “prime seats” in the center Loge are no longer available. Lang Lang has been popular with San Francisco audiences, so it would be fair to say that seats in all the available sections will be “going fast!”

SFS Chamber Music After the Gala

Some readers may recall that, next month, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will get the jump on the Opening Gala, when pianist Garrick Ohlsson will join SFS musicians in the first Chamber Series program of the season beginning at 2 p.m., on Sunday, September 20 in Davies Symphony Hall. This will be the first of six such recitals in Davies, all beginning on Sundays at 2 p.m. Programs for the remainder of the series have been finalized, and participating performers can be found on the Web pages for the individual dates as follows:

November 1: The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Johannes Brahms’ Opus 114, his only clarinet trio. The largest ensemble will be required for Richard Strauss’ “Metamorphosen.” This will be preceded by the least-familiar offering” “Chants d’arrière saison,” composed by Bernard Andrès.

January 17: Two pianists will join the SFS musicians. Elizabeth Dorman will perform Robert Schumann’s Opus 47, his piano quartet in E-flat major. Parker Van Ostrand will advance to the twentieth century with the performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 57 piano quintet in G minor.

February 21: The least familiar work on the program will be a septet composed by Alexandre Tansman. It will be preceded by Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 80, his sixth string quartet, composed in the key of F minor. The second half of the program will feature Franz Schubert’s most familiar chamber music composition. This will be the D. 667 piano quintet in A major, best known as the “Trout” quintet, named after one of the song Schubert composed, which provides the theme for a set of variations.

April 25: This program will be organized chronologically. As might be expected, it will begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with oboist Brooks Fisher joining the musicians for the K. 370 oboe quartet. This will be followed by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 25 serenade, composed in the key of D minor. The second half of the program will advance to the twentieth century in Benjamin Britten’s Opus 36 (second) string quartet.

Richard Gerstl’s portrait of Mathilde Schönberg, wife of Arnold Schoenberg (before he Americanized his name!) (from the Wikimedia Commons Web page for the painting)

June 20: Ironically, the next (and final) program will begin with one of Britten’s contemporaries “on the other side of the pond.” This will be the sonata for two clarinets composed by Francis Poulenc. Those two clarinets will be followed by the “Double Sextet” composed by Steve Reich. The season will then conclude with one of Arnold Schoenberg’s earliest efforts, his single-movement string sextet Opus 4, given the title “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night). The composer was inspired by Mathilde Zemlinsky (who would become his future wife).

New ECM Album Reflects on Past History

This coming Friday, ECM will release a new trio album entitled Windflower. Ayumi Tanaka leads from the piano with rhythm provided by Thomas Morgan on bass and drummer Thomas Strønen. There are nine tracks, eight of which are “group compositions” by the entire trio. Only the second track, “La Source” was composed only by Tanaka.

At the end of this past April, I wrote about the ECM album Homage, a jazz quartet led by tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano with the Marcin Wasilewskl Trio. On that occasion I revived an old (from 2012) trope describing the album as “an introspective quietude, rather than a more superficial retreat into ‘easy listening.’” It would be fair to describe the relationship between Windflower and Homage by the age-old-trope: “This is the sort of thing that people who like that sort of thing will like!”

To be fair, I am one of those “people.” Half a year after enjoying my first encounter with Homage, I am definitely ready for more! After all, my last encounter with Morgan was the article I wrote in November of 2024 about the ECM release of a ten-year old recording session. On the other hand, both Tanaka and Strønen were new to me, even though they were part of a combo here in my home town of San Francisco at the Red Poppy Art House back in June of 2018.

Mind you, I found the booklet photograph of Tanaka wistfully staring off into space to be a little bit too much. Fortunately, I was able to find one of her focused on her piano performance:

As far as I am concerned, that photograph provides just the right context for anyone listening attentively to any of the tracks on this album!

The Lab: September, 2026

Hopefully, at least some readers may recall that most of the activity at The Lab will take place at the end of the last full week of September. This will be the 25th Annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival with three performances at 8 p.m. on Thursday, September 24, Friday, September 25, and Saturday, September 26. The only other offerings at the venue will take place about two weeks earlier. There will be two performances, each beginning at a different time.

My guess is that regular readers know by now that The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street. This is particularly convenient for those using public transportation, since it is a short walk to the corner of 16th Street and Mission Street. Busses stop at that corner for both north-south and east-west travel, and downstairs there is a station for the BART line running under Mission Street. Doors open half an hour in advance of the performance; and specific information for each event provides a hyperlink to the Web page that accounts for both background material and a hyperlink for ticket purchases as follows:

Friday, September 11, 8 p.m.: Heart Trio consists of three musicians (of course), whose debut album, also called Heart Trio, was released in 2024. All three of them are multi-instrumentalists, and it is likely that at least some of those instruments will be unfamiliar to some of the listeners. William Parker covers the “front line,” performing a diversity of instruments in the flute family: guembri, shakuhachi, bass duduk, Serbian flute, and ney flute. Cooper-Moore plays the first instrument he built for himself, an eleven-tone xylophone called the ashimba. Hamid Drake provides a diversity of percussion instruments with a preference for the frame drum.

Michelle Lou at the controls of her electronic gear with Stefan Maier standing in the shadows behind her (from the Web page for their performance)

Saturday, September 12, 8:30 p.m.: The second program will consist of two sets, both of which will be duo performances. The first set will be a multichannel project with electroacoustic composition and performance by Michelle Lou and Stefan Maier. The second set will be taken by 100,000,000 Unread Messages. This is also an electroacoustic duo, whose performers are Connor Tomaka and Isabelle Waldner Kalb.

Sin of Omission?

Al Jazeera seems to be “on a roll” this morning when it comes to relations between the United States and the rest of the world. The latest “News” article has the subcategory “Occupied West Bank.” I would guess that most readers know that this refers to the territory between the Jordan River and the eastern boundary of Israel. It would not surprise me that many readers know about Israel’s attempts to occupy this territory. So it was that the Al Jazeera headline “Europe, Canada condemn Israeli plans for new West Bank settlement” came to my attention.

A Palestinian flag placed as a memorial for three Palestinians killed by Jewish settlers occupying West Bank territory near Ramallah (photograph by Zain Jaafar for Agence France-Presse)

Apparently, Israeli does not want Palestinians to settle anywhere west of the Jordan River. Put another way, they want the Palestinians to be “Jordan’s problem,” rather than theirs. Unless I am mistaken, however, I do not think that many (if any) Palestinians settled to the east of the Jordan. Does Israel think that problems of settlement will be resolved if the Palestinians “just went away?” That is a proposition that is at least absurd, and I would not blame any Palestinian to dismiss it as downright obscene!

Does Israel want to “get even” with the suffering of Jews in Europe during the last century? The Palestinians have every right to settle somewhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. By all rights, such settling should take place with “good neighbor” relations. This leaves me wondering whether or not “good neighbor” can be translated into Hebrew!

Buyer’s Remorse?

This morning I found myself wondering whether all of those voters that elected Donald Trump into the office of United States President (most of them, presumably, for the second time) might begin to be feeling at least some sense of “buyer’s remorse.” Bearing in mind that those voters probably do not turn to Al Jazeera as a news source (assuming that they know anything at all about Al Jazeera), these days even our domestic news sources are beginning to recognize that all is not well when it comes to our country’s economic well-being. Personally, I make it a point to check out the Standard & Poor’s 500 index every morning; and things have not been looking good, even if there seem to be some signs of recovery this morning.

Today’s news presented by an Al Jazeera news reader (from the YouTube Web page)

Nevertheless, this morning’s visit to Al Jazeera got my morning off to a rocky start. This morning I read an “Explainer” article, classified as “News” with the subcategory “US-Israel war on Iran.” The headline was merciless: “Trump’s ‘economic D-Day’ claims first victim: Not Iran, but US markets.” It was reinforced by an equally dire sub-headline: “The US and Israel’s war on Iran has upended global financial and energy markets.”

By way of context, a generous share of my student days were involved with the war in Viet Nam and the many instances of organized resistance to our involvement. For me, the most memorable slogan was “War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things,” a slogan created for a poster by Los Angeles artist Lorraine Schneider to support opposition to the war by Another Mother for Peace. These days, that slogan applies to what is currently happening in Iran, suggesting that Viet Nam history seems to be pretty much forgotten.

These days I not only follow my Al Jazeera “feed source.” I often watch a half-hour of news on their television station. I have limited access through an xfinity channel, but I discovered that I could get the “full feed” through the “Al Jazeera English | Live” Web page on the YouTube Web site. (As I write this, the display shows that 7561 viewers are visiting that Web page!) Mind you, I do not dismiss news sources based here in the United States. Nevertheless, multiple points of view, particularly from countries other than our own, tend to be more informative than a single one!

Think Twice Before Saying “Silly Goose!”

 https://abc7.com/videoClip/19708804/

Opera Parallèle Announces 2026–27 Season

Some readers may recall that, earlier this month, this site announced the participation of Opera Parallèle (OP) in the fifth annual Expansive showcase. Around that same time, OP finalized its own coming season of three operas, all of which will be premiere productions, all sung in English. The first of these will be a world premiere, and the remaining two will be West Coast premieres. Specifics are as follows:

Saturday, November 14, Thursday, November 19, and Saturday, November 21, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 15, 3 p.m., Z Space, Salt & Spirit: Tenor Victor Ryan Robertson developed this theatrical work inspired by the musical traditions of the Gullah-Geechee people of the Carolinas. The score is based on Gullah spirituals reimagined through classical, jazz, and traditional influences. This will be the world premiere performance, staged by Brian Staufenbiel. Details have not yet been finalized, but there will be an on-stage pianist. The venue is located in the Mission at 450 Florida Street.

Thursday, March 11, and Saturday, March 13, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 14, 3 p.m., Blue Shield of California Theatre, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: The narrative is based the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was both journalist and editor for the French Elle magazine. He suffered a massive stroke, after which he could only communicate by blinking his left eye. Gene Scheer created a libretto for this story, working with composer Jody Talbot. Ben Foskett provided a chamber orchestration of Talbot’s score on an OP commission. The opera will be sung in English with English supertitles. The venue is located in Yerba Buena Gardens, south of Mission Street and west of 3rd Street.

Poster design for Taking Up Serpents (from the OP Web site)

Saturday, May 8, Wednesday, May 12, Thursday, May 13, and Saturday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, May 9 and May 16, 2 p.m., Z Space, Taking Up Serpents: Librettist Jerre Dye created an original story based on his family roots in the Deep South. He partnered with Indian-American composer Kamala Sankaram to create “an eclectic folk-inspired score.” This one-act chamber opera was first performed by the Washington National Opera, followed by productions at the Glimmerglass Festival and the Chicago Opera Theater.

As of this writing, OP has not yet created Web pages for ordering tickets for anything other than the Expansive showcase, cited on this site at the beginning of this month; presumably, further information will be forthcoming through the OP home page.

E4TT Announces 2026/27 Season Plans

I see that it was almost exactly one year ago when I wrote about Ensemble for These Times’ (E4TT) plans for the 2025/26 season. Yesterday’s electronic mail brought me the announcement of the 2026/27 season. This will be the nineteenth Home Season, and it will launch a two-year initiative entitled The HOME Project, which will explore (in E4TT’s own words) “the meaning of home.”

The E4TT home page has now been updated with hyperlinks for the five concerts to be presented. Each of those Web pages provides a summary of the works to be performed, as well as hyperlinks for ticket purchases. All of the performances will also be live-streamed. Each of the programs in San Francisco has its own Web page including a hyperlink to the date-and-time summary as follows:

Sunday, October 18, 3:00 p.m., Community Music Center, Call for Scores: Solo Piano, Vol. 3: Thirteen composers were selected. Pianist Dale Tsang will perform their contributions as follows:

1. Jinjoo Choi: "Cogwork Rhapsody"
2. Gilad Cohen: "Pulse"
3. Michael Coleman: Seville Rag
4. Andrew Davis: "Album Leaves - III. Pulse Train"
5. Xinyuan Deng: "Autumn Landscape"
6. Isaiah Diaz-Lopez:"Magenta - The First to Dream
7. Arturo Fernandez: "Pedro's Come Home Suite - Conga en forma di Corrente"
8. Matthew Lam: "Fragments of Rain"
9. Joao Oliveira: "ff - I. Frozen Fred"
10. Luca Pasquini: "Dispositions - 1. Leggiero, flickering"
11. Josh Rodriguez: "LUZ ENTRE AGUAS - II. Estancia"
12. Louis Rosen: "ACT ONE SUITE - 1. Opening - The City" and "3. Traveling Music"
13. Brady Wolff: "Evoke Stardust"

For those that do not yet know, the venue is located in the Mission at 544 Capp Street. Tickets may be purchased for $30, $15, and $5. A Web page has been created for both tickets and livestream connection.

Poster design for the November concert (from its E4TT Web page)

Sunday, November 15, 4:00 p.m., Old First Concerts, Exile | Banishment | Home: The program will begin with selections for soprano and mezzo from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 79, From Jewish Folk Poetry. Vocalists will be sopranos Nanette McGuinness and Carina Kahane and mezzo Melinda Martinez Becker. There will also be two world premiere performances: a duo for cello and piano by Mary Bianco and “Skazka,” composed for narrator and piano ensemble by Alex Malinas. The second half of the program will begin with the cello solo “Armadura,” composed by Andrea Casarubbios. This will be followed by two further vocal compositions: David Garner’s “Unter dayne vayse Shtem” for soprano and piano and “Stories of My Mother,” composed by Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby for mezzo and piano. This is another familiar venue, located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Tickets will be available for purchase through an Old First Concerts Web page.

Friday, April 9, 7:30 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), HOME: This will be E4TT’s seventh multimedia collaboration with the Conservatory. There will be four world premiere performances. One of them will present the winner of the E4TT/SFCM Composition Department multimedia student composition competition. The other three will be recent works commissioned by emerging composers Max Marcus, Max Tafoya, and Zoe Yost. Clarice Assad will contribute one of her works to the second half of the program, which will also see a visual montage for a setting of four “responses” to "America the Beautiful,” composed, respectively, by Tyson Gholston Davis, Reena Esmail, Jake Heggie, and Juri Seo. The specific SFCM venue has not yet been announced.

Saturday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., Center for New Music, Inspiración: Music by Women and Nonbinary Composers: The program will feature three works commissioned by Luna@10, marking the tenth anniversary of the Luna Composition Lab. Those works will be a piano trio by Ilaria Hawley, a string duo by Peyton Neleson, and a piano trio by Ebún Ogúntola. The remainder of the program will be devoted to chamber music by more familiar composers: Chen Yi, Gabriela Lena Frank, Edna Alejandra Longoria, Ann Thorvaldsdottir, and Gabriela Mari Esabel Valverde. Most readers probably know by now that the venue is located at 55 Taylor Street, just north of Market Street.

Once Again, Hate Makes the World Go ’Round!

Dearborn police try to control protest against “Christian Crusaders” (photograph from Al Jazeera video clip)

The latest protest against Muslims in the United States was reported by Al Jazeera this morning. It took place in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb northeast of Detroit. The organizers described the event as a “Christian Crusader march.” This is the latest disturbing reminder that many of those reading the Declaration of Independence interpret “all men are created equal” to apply only to Christians (probably limited to white Anglo-Saxon). I assume that this event will be reported by other sources; but I am not surprised that Al Jazeera was “first out of the gate!”

If that were not enough, an Al Jazeera “News Feed” article had the following one-sentence summary:

A gym owner in Bali, Indonesia has posted a video on social media explaining why he refused service to three Israeli tourists, before kicking them out of his gym in Ubud. 

(I sometimes think that Arthur Sullivan is turning over in his grave for having composed the music for “Onward, Christian Soldiers!”)