Aminikia’s Multimedia Project Returning

Sahba Aminikia leading members of the cast of The Language of the Birds in last year’s performance (photograph by Yulissa Serrato, courtesy of John Hill)

Some readers may recall that, a little less than a year ago, Sahba Aminikia concluded his tenure as composer-in-residence at the 836M Gallery with a multimedia adaptation of The Language of the Birds, an epic poem by the twelfth-century mystic Attar of Nishapur. This production will revived in a concert version at the beginning of next month. The “original cast” will return for this performance. This will include Zara Houshmand, who prepared the libretto, The Living Earth Show duo of guitarist Travis Andrews with Andy Meyerson on percussion, multi-instrumentalist David Coulter and Aminikia at the piano, and vocal performances by soloist Marjan Vahdat and singers from the San Francisco Girl’s Chorus led by Valérie Sainte-Agathe.

This revival will be given one performance on Friday, May 2, beginning at 4:45 p.m. and lasting for about an hour and 45 minutes. Half an hour prior to the performance, there will be a discussion among Aminikia, Houshmand, and Sainte-Agathe. Both the performance and the discussion will take place in the Golden Gate Park Bandshell at 75 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. There will be neither charge for admission nor reservations. “Showing up” will be all that is necessary!

Aminikia’s 836M Project Ends with Performance

Yesterday evening at the 836M Gallery, Sahba Aminikia concluded his tenure as composer-in-residence by presenting the first of two performances of the project he developed during that residency. The title of that project was The Language of the Birds, and it involved a multimedia adaptation of an epic poem by the twelfth-century mystic Attar of Nishapur. Those of my generation that follow theatrical productions on a global scale probably recall that, roughly half a century ago, Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière collaborated on staging this narrative, presenting it under the title La Conférence des oiseaux (the conference of the birds).

My wife and I were fortunate enough to see this play when its “road show” took it to Singapore. We did not want to miss it, since we had been blown away by that pair’s staging of their previous nine-hour (three-evening) production, The Mahabharata. While this latter was, necessarily, of epic proportions, Conférence amounted to a straightforward account of a journey through seven valleys with almost minimal embellishment.

Last night Aminikia swung the pendulum in the opposite direction, developing a “rich media” approach to set Zara Houshmand’s translation of the poem’s text. This included an array of projections created by Media Artist John Sanborn, music by The Living Earth Show duo of guitarist Travis Andrews with Andy Meyerson on percussion, joined by multi-instrumentalist David Coulter and Aminikia at the piano, and vocal performances by soloist Marjan Vahdat and singers from the San Francisco Girl’s Chorus led by Valérie Sainte-Agathe. While these days texts are projected during vocal performances, last night, due to the unique physical layout of the production, they were available only through downloads to cell phones, which tended to work at cross-purposes to the overall flow of the narrative.

This was clearly the other side of the pendulum-swing from the Brook-Carrière approach. Nevertheless, in experiencing the full scope of Aminikia’s vision, I found to hard to ignore the old joke, “Nothing succeeds like excess!” That original journey through seven valleys turned into a one-thing-after-another structure, which left me with little sense of enlightenment, even if each episode clearly had its own virtues. Perhaps what was required was less diversity in resources and more distillation in content.

Sahba Aminikia to Present New Work at 836M

A page from The Concourse of the Birds, painted by Habiballah of Sava (from the Web page for the event being discussed, provided by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York)

Readers may recall that, this past March, the 836M Gallery hosted a celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which included a performance at the piano by the gallery’s composer-in-residence Sahba Aminikia. At the conclusion of this month, the gallery will host a performance of his latest project, The Language of the Birds. This will be based on the poem by the twelfth-century mystic Attar of Nishapur, which had previously been staged by Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière under the title La Conférence des oiseaux (the conference of the birds). (The script was published in 1979.)

In preparing this performance, Aminikia collaborated with the Living Earth Show duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson, both of whom had been “fellow students” during his studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The resulting score will also be performed by the ensembles of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and singer Marjan Vahdat, who had performed with Aminikia in the concert he had prepared for the Persian New Year this past March. Other contributors to the current project are media artist John Sanborn and multidisciplinary artist, musician, composer, director, and educator David Coulter. Translator Zara Houshmand contributed to preparing the text.

The Language of the Birds will mark the conclusion of Aminikia’s residency. It will be given two performances at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 31, and Saturday, June 1. The 836M Gallery is located in North Beach at 836 Montgomery Street, between Jackson Street and Pacific Avenue. The event is free, but an RSVP is necessary. That may be arranged through a hyperlink on the 836M Web site; but, as of this writing, that hyperlink has not yet been created. As a result, readers will have to make their reservations close to the end of the month, presumably through the Coming Performances Web page.

Concert to Celebrate Persian New Year

Poster design for the event being discussed showing (counterclockwise from left) Sahba Aminikia, David Coulter, Zara Houshmand, and Marjan Vahdat (from the Facebook Web page)

The 836M Gallery will host a celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, next week. The event will feature a performance by the Iranian singer and musician Marjan Vahdat. She will be accompanied at the piano by the gallery’s composer-in-residence Sahba Aminikia. He will also accompany British composer David Coulter, who will be playing a musical saw. The program will also include poetry readings by Zara Houshmand, an Iranian-American poet and writer.

The 836M Gallery is located in North Beach at 836 Montgomery Street, between Jackson Street and Pacific Avenue. The celebratory events will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 21 and will continue through 9 p.m. Food and wine will also be provided.

The Bleeding Edge: 3/6/2023

This week’s column is back on schedule. Once again, there are two events that were previously announced. One of these is the next installment in the New Voices programs being performed at Audium, which will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 9. The other is the only performance at the Center for New Music taking place this week, which will also begin at 7:30 p.m. but on Saturday, March 11. That leaves four new events with the following specifics:

Monday, March 6, 8:30 p.m., The Chapel: I must confess that I tend to avoid this venue because I am not up to the prevailing noise level. However, this particular evening will present a solo performance by Colin Stetson. Stetson plays the full complement of reed instruments, but he focuses primarily on bass and alto saxophones. He is also a songwriter, in addition to being a virtuoso instrumentalist. General admission will be $25, and The Chapel has created a Web page for purchasing tickets. For those unfamiliar with the venue, it is located in the Mission at 777 Valencia Street, located just north of the northeast corner of 19th Street.

Thursday, March 9, 8 p.m., Peacock Lounge: This will be the usual monthly offering of a three-hour show. On this occasion there will be four sets. The performer most likely to be familiar to regular readers will be Cheryl Leonard, who will perform on “sculptural instruments,” which she has created from bone, ice, stone, and any infinitely varied natural surfaces. It would not be an exaggeration to say that she has traveled the entire world to collect objects for her performances. Where the other three sets are concerned, readers are again invited to consult the following hyperlinks for further information: Foot SOS, Risa, The Human De-Selection and Realization Nature Group.

The Peacock Lounge is located in the Lower Haight (sometimes known as Haight-Fillmore) at 552 Haight Street, between Fillmore Street and Steiner Street. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. to enable the first set to begin at 8 p.m. sharp. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $5 and $15. As in the past, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. However, only those that have been “vaxed and rapid-tested” will be admitted for the sake of keeping all in attendance alive and well.

Friday, March 10, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery: This will be the next installment in the semi-regular Friday night residency curated by multi-reed player David Boyce. Boyce regularly hosts different musical guests, but the visitors for this Friday have not yet been finalized. The venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. There is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Friday, March 10, 7:30 p.m., Southern Exposure: This venue is an artist-centered non-profit organization committed to supporting visual artists. It hosts public performances by the Taneen Working Group, which presents live improvisational and collaborative events to support community organization and relief as part of a series exploring the ongoing Iranian feminist revolutionary movement. This particular performance will be prepared by violinist Thea Farhadian, who also works with interactive electronics. She will be joined by Brazilian electronic music composer Silva Matheus along with composers Sahba Aminikia and Adrienne Shamszad.

Southern Exposure is located in the Mission at 3030 20th Street, on the north side between Bryant Street and Harrison Street. There will be no charge for admission, but reservations will be required. Eventbrite has created a Web page for securing those reservations. Proceeds will benefit subsequent events by the Taneen Working Group.

Nicholas Phillips Second SFIPF Recital

Yesterday afternoon Nicholas Phillips presented his second solo piano recital in the fifth annual season of the San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF). While the first recital was devoted entirely to three works by Charles Tomlinson Griffes, the second showcased works by eight composers, all born during the second half of the twentieth century. Furthermore all the music had been composed during the current century, the oldest having been written in 2009. Finally, the program concluded with selections by three composers involved with the Bay Area, Mark Winges, Sahba Aminikia, and Gabriela Lena Frank. The host for this performance was Old First Concerts, allowing Phillips to perform for both the audience in Old First Presbyterian Church and those viewing the video stream.

Winges was one of three composers on the program whose music was given its world premiere performance. His piece was entitled “Year End Nocturne;” and, as might be guessed, he worked on it at the end of last year. I must confess that this was my first encounter with Winges’ solo piano music, since my primary exposure to his work has been through the Volti a cappella vocal ensemble. More recently I had written about the world premiere of his “Spun Light,” an ingenious conception of a “distanced concerto,” scored for violin accompanied by flute, viola, cello, bass, and piano. Presented by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, this involved separate recordings (video as well as audio) made by all six performers, which were subsequently mixed and presented through split-screen displays.

In such a context I was curious as to how Winges would approach solo piano music, composed under the same pandemic conditions that had inspired “Spun Light.” The music definitely took its own unique approach to the “nocturne” title, which has allowed for considerable flexibility where genre is concerned. Winges’ own note for the program book described the piece as “a hopeful contemplation of the year’s turning;” but, from the listener’s point of view, the music established itself through a subtle rhythm of quietude, which served effectively to calm the mind in the midst of tumultuous thoughts about dealing with COVID.

Winges’ “Year End Nocturne” was followed by Aminikia’s “Lullaby,” a perfect successor in an overall context of such quietude. However, Aminikia’s piece was longer in duration. Thus, he could take a single dispositional stance and then unfold a variety of thematic settings, each of which “examined” that stance from a different “point of view.” As a result, the juxtaposition of these two pieces had all the aesthetic judgement of a fine wine-pairing.

Frank’s “Karnavalito No. 1” then concluded the program with a livelier rhetoric. In her note for the program book, Frank declared her interest in cultures that “can co-exist without one subjugating another.” My favorite metaphor is that of a well-cooked gumbo in which one can recognize every contributing flavor while also appreciating the overall blend. Since Frank’s background is Andean, I realize that she might object to gumbo-as-metaphor. However, the virtue of that metaphor is that mind is required to tease out the individual flavors in gumbo; and the same can be said of recognizing the different layers of expression in Frank’s score. This is music that deserves multiple listening experiences and a freshness of attention not worn down by an entire concert program.

The other premiere offerings were not quite as engaging as “Year End Nocturne.” One was the recently completed “Sonata ’21” by Quinn Mason. Mason’s program note suggested that this was a response to the challenge of composing a piano sonata for the current century in the context of a genre that emerged in the eighteenth century. Personally, I found little to engage in Mason’s contemporary perspective. It seemed as if he was more interested in the legacy of durational scale than in guiding the attentive listener through the resulting durations of the individual movements.

The other premieres involved three short pieces by Mark Olivieri, all of which were probably composed under pandemic conditions. Here, again, there was little to draw or cultivate attention, although, to be fair, this music may hold up when one has the luxury to listen to it more than once. More appealing were the first two selections by Reena Esmail and Mary Kouyoumdjian, respectively. Each of these involved a personal reflection on the composer’s cultural background. In both cases that reflection emerged through well-defined thematic material and easily appreciated development techniques. I suspect that a similar cultural background sustained the Appalachian-inspired “She Steals Me” by Carter Pann; but the nuts-and-bolts of his own development techniques were never as engaging as the selections by Esmail (“Rang De Basant”) and Kouyoumdjian (“Aghavni”).

Berkeley Ballet Theater to Premiere 4 Dance Films

Tomorrow evening Berkeley Ballet Theater (BBT) will present Available Light, a livestream program of four new short films involving the collaboration of original dance, music, and film. The term “available light” refers to any naturally occurring light source, such as the sun. Each of the four offerings will provide its own unique take on the spirit of finding the light which is constantly available to all of us. The performers will be the dancers of BBT's Youth Division, Studio Company, and Adult Open Division, along with guest artists from Post:ballet. Program specifics are as follows:

1. “The Speed of Distance,” choreographed by Ky Frances for the Youth Division is set to music by Nicole Lizée with videography by Eric Koziol and editing by Loren Robertson.
2. Choreographer Maurya Kerr created “the beloveds who pound the earth” for the Studio Company. The music will be the aria “Ombre de mon amant” (the shadow of my beloved), an anonymous text set to music by the seventeenth-century composer Michel Lambert. This selection will be performed by Bay Area countertenor Matheus Coura accompanied by Jon Mendle on lute. The video work will be created by Alexander and Valentina Reneff-Olson.
3. The Reneff-Olsons also created the video for “Aleykom Salam,” choreographed by Keon Saghari. (Some readers may recall that Saghari provided choreography, which she executed on roller skates, for the “Nimrod” variation from Edward Elgar’s Opus 36 “Variations on an Original Theme” when One Found Sound performed the music for their annual fundraising gala.) The music will be by Sahba Aminikia, and the video will be edited by Pia Vinson.
4. The final selection will be choreographed by BBT Artistic Director Robert Dekkers. “This Kind of Love” will be set to music by Bay Area singer and songwriter Majerl Connery. The dancers will be Studio Company Apprentices. Studio Company member Elizabeth Inami will edit the video created by the Reneff-Olsons.

The livestream will begin at 7 p.m tomorrow, Saturday, December 19. The duration of the program will be about 90 minutes. Those planning to watch the livestream are invited to register through the Facebook Event Page for this performance. The video itself will be streamed through a YouTube Web page.

SFGC’s Annual Holiday Concert to Go Virtual

As was announced at the beginning of this season, the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) will go virtual for its annual holiday concert. The program, which will be streamed this month at 3 p.m. on Sunday, December 20, is entitled Island Holiday. The traditional holiday favorites will be supplemented by new music from the Caribbean and other islands.

There will be two world premiere performances. The first of these will be Angélica Negrón’s “Cosecha” (harvest), composed on an SFGC commission. The second will be the latest addition to the SFGC repertoire provided by local composer Sahba Aminikia. Followers of SFGC concerts may recall that his last offering was part of Rightfully Ours, the SFGC program presented less than a week before the first announcement of lockdown due to COVID-19. His latest composition, “Music of the Birds,” involves a special SFGC collaboration with Kronos Quartet, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Sirkane Social Circus School in Turkey. In addition, there will be a preview performance of the fourth scene from Matthew Welch’s choral-opera “Tomorrow’s Memories: A Little Manila Diary,” composed on an SFGC commission and scheduled for its world premiere during the 2021–2022 season.

Contributing instrumentalists will include Florante Aguilar on ukulele and organist Robert Huw Morgan, along with the members of the Kronos Quartet: violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Sunny Yang. Stage direction will be by Sean San José. The video will be produced by Joan Osato and New Art Media. While the performance is free and open to the public, there is a suggested donation of $25 to offset the cost of video production and guest artist appearances. Reservations are required through a hyperlink on the event page for this program.

Living Earth Profiles “American” Music at ODC

Last night at the ODC B.Way Theater, the duo that calls itself The Living Earth Show launched its 2018–19 season with a program entitled American Music. For those unfamiliar with this pair, the performers are guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson, both of whom are not only thoroughly skilled at their instruments but also proficiently adept at mastering alternative techniques. The program title could not have been more appropriate for these highly-charged times. It was explained by a single sentence at the top of the program book:

A concert of works written for The Living Earth Show by a collection of vital living composers, each of whom was born in, immigrated to, or utilizes the musical traditions created within the current borders of the United States.

The program took in nine such composers, five of whom were born in the United States. Of the remaining four, two were from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Luciano Chessa from Italy and Sahba Aminikia from Iran, one was “north of the border,” Nicole Lizée from Saskatchewan, and one was from within our borders, Raven Chacon, born in Navajo Nation. Equally diverse was the gear that both players brought to the performance area. Andrews had about half a dozen guitars (one of which was a “standard” acoustic instrument), including one with twice as many frets to enable the playing of quarter-tones. Meyerson addressed that latter issue by having two vibraphones, one of which had all of its bars shaved down a quarter-tone. Meyerson’s gear also included about half a dozen electric toothbrushes, Dennis Aman’s Jellyphones, built from chucks of Jello-O, and a cast iron sink filled with broken glass.

As might be expected, this was a concert in which the visual experience was as stimulating as the auditory. Nevertheless, for all of the theatrical elements, the music was always primary; and each of the composers brought a unique voice to his/her contribution. Mind you, some of those contributions had been deliberately conceived to push the boundaries of audience expectations; but this was an evening that was right up there with any string quartet recital or concert by the San Francisco Symphony (which happened to be taking place at exactly the same time as this performance).

For my part I have been following Living Earth since April of 2012, when they presented one of the recitals in the 2012 Tangents Contemporary Guitar Series. I was hooked almost immediately; and, since then, I have done my best to keep up with both their performances and their recordings. As a result, I took a certain amount of comfort in the fact that three of the pieces on the program were familiar to me.

In order of “initial exposure,” the earliest of these was the last work on the program, Chessa’s “Inkless Imagination.” This was actually a solo piece in which Meyerson attached vibrators (the electric toothbrushes) to a variety of different objects. The piece was performed in total darkness with Andrews following behind Meyerson with a high-powered flashlight. This not only enabled Meyerson to see what he was doing but also allowed the audience to follow both those activities and the shadows cast on the walls. A version of this had been performed at the end of April of 2016 as part of the New Frequencies Fest at YBCA Forum and consisted only of Meyerson’s silent pursuit to elicit subtle sounds. Last night’s performance was framed by the text of a poem by William Wordsworth, “The Boy of Wonder.” One might associate Meyerson’s activities with that sense of “wonder” were it not for the fact that Wordsworth’s boy dies in the final stanza of the poem.

The second experience of recollection came from Lizée’s “Family Sing-A-Long and Game Night.” This was a composition commissioned by The Living Earth Show for the score they provided for Post:Ballet’s full-evening work, Do Be. While that first performance involved only the musicians and the dancers, last night’s excerpt dwelled entirely on the “audience participation” element of the composition, allowing Andrews to turn the affair into a real audience sing-a-long, at least for those with enough breath to hold a note across wildly sustained percussion cadenzas taken by Meyerson. This was last night’s opening selection, making it clear that this was a concert in which listening did not have to be a deadly serious intellectual pursuit.

The most recent of the pieces I knew came from an encounter a little over a year ago, when San Francisco Performances launched their new Hear Now and Then Series with “Echoes,” a one-hour spoken-word chamber opera. “Could never tell you East from West…” was the contribution of Youth Speaks poet Ashley Smiley, who joined Living Earth to give a reprise performance. Danny Clay provided the music that accompanied Smiley’s recitation. Hers evocation of disorientation within the San Francisco city limits seems to have become more relevant after a year has elapsed, particularly at a time when the city is having trouble with both homelessness and forces of nature making the air virtually unbreathable.

Not all of the works on the program were strictly original. Aminikia’s “Torkaman” was an arrangement of a solo for the tar, a six-stringed Persian instrument, composed by Hossein Alizadeh. Both Andrews and Meyerson had their own contributions to the melody line (the latter on vibraphone). However, the driving spirit of the rhythms of the theme were never compromised, making the arrangement an homage to, as the composer put it, “a landmark of Persian classical music.”

Timo Andres, on the other hand, provided an arrangement of a far more familiar landmark, Ludwig van Beethoven’s WoO 59 “Für Elise.” This began as an impressively adept rendering of Beethoven’s piano score on Meyerson’s vibraphone. However, as the arrangement progressed, quarter-tones “invaded” both the melodic line and its accompaniment. Meyerson’s management of his “double vibraphone” was as fascinating to watch as the “invading” quarter-tones were rhetorically powerful. The result was a throughly amusing rethinking of music too often dismissed as cliché.

As to the “first contact” experiences, there were so many of them that memory cannot do justice to all of them. The Jellyphones clearly stood out during the evening. They figured in one prelude and one fugue from Aman’s major cycle of 24 prelude-fugue couplings. (The prelude and the fugue selected for last night came from different pairs.) It was particularly interesting to consider how Aman could take such a rigidly traditional concept of fugue and repurpose it to reflect its imitative and episodic qualities without being tied down to the tonal relationship between fugue subject and response. Indeed, the couplings seem to be distinguished by sharing instances of a variety of different tuning systems, making for an approach that takes the spirit behind Johann Sebastian Bach’s prelude-fugue project and endows it with entirely new, and quite engaging, flesh.

The compositions by Chacon and Lynee Breedlove, on the other hand, seemed to be based on more political foundations. They deserve further listening; but, on “first contact,” it was a bit difficult to sort the music out from the agenda. More interesting was Christopher Cerrone’s attempt to develop a “landscape” composition in “Double Happiness.” This was inspired by field recordings made in the Italian countryside, and it was definitely the most pastoral contribution to the program. Ultimately, however, this was a lot of music for a single recital; and I hope that some of my new encounters will be followed by opportunities for second hearings.

Living Earth to Launch Season at ODC Theater

Travis Andrews and Andy Meyerson with a representative sample of Americana (photograph by Roger Jones, from the ODC Web page for this event)

Next month The Living Earth Show, the duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson, will launch its 2018–19 season with a program entitled American Music. As is often the case, the program will consist entirely of works written for the duo. Participating composers will be Raven Chacon, Timo Andres, Sahba Aminikia, Nicole Lizée, Luciano Chessa, Christopher Cerrone, Lynnee Breedlove, Ashley Smiley, and Danny Clay. They constitute a representative sample of those who were born in, have immigrated to, or utilize the musical traditions created within the current borders of the United States. Furthermore, those familiar with Living Earth know that instrumentation will involve more than a guitar and drums. Performance of these pieces will also require electronics, toothbrushes, Jell-O, and a cast iron sink (so much for “everything but”). Both compositions and resources will further Living Earth’s mission to investigate the responsibility of “American” identity in shaping musical language and in dragging the classical tradition into the future.

The American Music program will be given only one performance, at 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 15. The venue will be the ODC B.Way Theater at 3153 17th Street on the northwest corner of Shotwell Street. All tickets are being sold for $20. They may be purchased through the event page on the ODC Web site.

innova Releases Second Areon Flutes Album

courtesy of Naxos of America

At the end of last month, innova released its second album of performances by Areon Flutes (following up on their first two albums, which were self-produced). This is the trio of flautists consisting of founding member Kassey Plaha, along with Jill Heinke Moen and Meerenai Shim. The title of the new album is No Era; and it presents three compositions, each by a different composer, all of whom are San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) alumni and are still based in San Francisco. I first encountered the group in January of 2015, when they were part of an Alumni Recital Series concert at SFCM; and I subsequently wrote about their Innova debut album, Thrive, at the end of 2016.

Those who follow this site regularly know that I covered Areon Flutes’ release concert for No Era, which took place a little less than a month ago. As a result I came to this new album with a basic familiarity with the three compositions being presented, Danny Clay’s “broken birds”, Sahba Aminikia’s “Bāde Sabā”, and Ryan Brown’s “Get Go!” Furthermore, I had already encountered “broken birds” at that 2015 recital. Therefore, I should begin by observing that, for two of the compositions on the disc, the concert performance was as much visual and spatial as it was auditory.

The strictly auditory composition is “Get Go!” The advance material from Naxos described the piece as using the flutes as a drum kit, and this is definitely a score that is all about the rhythm. There is a joyous quality to Brown’s ability to unfold the interplay of different rhythmic patterns. For those of my generation, the rhetorical effect is likely to recall Steve Reich’s “New York Counterpoint.” (I still remember watching Richard Stoltzman playing this in a recital setting, looking for all the world like some sort of New Age Benny Goodman.) Both the score and its performance by Areon are infectiously cheerful; and making “Get Go!” the final selection on the album was definitely a shrewd move.

Clay’s piece requires the performers to play a variety of toys and wine glasses in addition to their respective flutes. This is a case in which visual input guides the mind behind the ear to recognize the “alien” sonorities. However, most listeners are likely to identify most of those sonorities without visual cues. As the result the only element whose absence really signifies in the “choreographic” one. Performance takes place on all sides of the area where the audience is seated, and sometimes the players are in motion. Those spatial effects do not translate well to the recording efforts, but there is more than enough to Clay’s playful rhetoric across his six short movements to compensate for the loss of that one performance factor.

Aminikia’s piece, on the other hand, was conceived as a soundtrack for a fifteen-minute excerpt from a documentary by Albert Lamorisse commissioned by the Shah of Iran. In this case the visual rhetoric is highly significant, particularly since it is reflecting on many aspects of Iranian life that no longer exist. (On the other hand there is also a shot of a nuclear power station that induces an irony that the filmmaker could not have anticipated.) Because Lamorisse’s style tended to remind me of the films by Godfrey Reggio for which Philip Glass provided music, I found myself thinking of how I can now listen to the Glass scores without seeing the films at the same time. From that point of view, I can argue that Aminikia’s music has the same strength to stand on its own with an individuality that no sensitive listener would confuse with Glass.

As a result No Era can be as engaging a listening experience as that of a “multimedia” concert performance. Furthermore, the listener has the luxury of getting to know these three selections individually, rather than as elements of some larger program. The technical work of capturing the sounds from each of the three performers is right up there with each of those player’s technical command of her respective instruments. Given the upbeat rhetoric of all three selections, this album has no trouble leaving one with satisfying listening experiences.

Areon Flutes Present Three Recent Compositions

Last night at the Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church, Seventh Avenue Performances concluded its 2018–19 season with a recital by the Areon Flutes trio, whose members are Jill Heinke Moen, Kassey Plaha, and Meerenai Shim. The event was a release concert for the trio’s latest album on the Innova label, entitled No Era, which will become available on May 25. The program consisted of commissioned works by three local composers, Danny Clay (“broken birds”), Sahba Aminikia (“Bāde Sabā”), and Ryan Brown (“Get-Go”).

Upon entering the church’s sanctuary, one saw not only the expected three music stands but also a variety of other objects. Looking around the space, one also saw that two music stands had been set up behind the audience area, one near the right rear corner and the other on the left. This arrangement was for Clay’s “broken birds,” which Areon had previously performed in January of 2015, when they gave an Alumni Recital Series concert at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM).

Structured in six short movements, the piece is a study in the dual semantics of “play,” developing a sonorous environment (spatially demarcated) through both musical instruments and sound-producing toys. The effects are often uncanny, particularly during the interplay of the flexible pitches of a slide whistle blending with the flute sounds. This allowed for the creation of beat frequencies, which I would like to assume were intentional. (In the larger physical space of the SFCM Concert Hall, I had wondered if requiring the musicians to move while playing induced a Doppler shift; but the Seventh Avenue sanctuary was considerably smaller in overall space.) Most important is that this music was as engaging the second time around as it had been on “first contact.”

Aminikia’s piece amounted to a soundtrack for a fifteen-minute excerpt from a documentary by Albert Lamorisse commissioned by the Shah of Iran. The images captured panoramic desert landscapes punctuated by movements of animals and wind, historical structures, people from both urban and desert settings, and the move into modernism (ironically, depicted by a nuclear power station). Lamorisse’s style was similar in nature to that of Godfrey Reggio; but Aminikia’s music captured his own distinctive voice, rather than reflecting on Reggio’s filmmaking colleague, Philip Glass. His approach to flute sonorities provided an effective way to contrast the ancient and modern elements of Lamorisse’s film, offering the sort of experience that is likely to evoke new insights on subsequent viewings.

As the title suggests, Brown’s piece was an upbeat lyric with strong connotations of three musicians in an intimate jam session. Indeed, the bouncy quality of the rhythms recalled the rhetoric of Steve Reich’s “New York Counterpoint;” but, here again, Brown had clearly found his own voice for reflecting on practices that are as old as music-making itself. Furthermore, to the extent that the two previous works on the program had captured different approaches to inquiry, there was a sense of finality and resolution in Brown’s rhetorical approach, if not a veiled reference to the classic punch line, “That’s all, folks!”

Circadian String Quartet to Return to O1C

Readers may recall that the Circadian String Quartet (CSQ), consisting of violinists Sarah Wood and David Ryther, violist Omid Assadi, and cellist David Wishnia, made a deep (and decidedly positive) impression when they gave an Old First Concerts (O1C) recital at the Old First Presbyterian Church in September of 2016. The title of the program was The Sound and the Fury: The Rite of Spring Re-imagined; and the major work was Ryther’s transcription of the first part of Igor Stravinsky’s score for the ballet “The Rite of Spring,” choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Since that time Ryther has completed his arrangement, which requires members of the quartet also playing a few percussion instruments, to account for the entire ballet score.

from YouTube

Later this month CSQ will return to O1C to perform Ryther’s arrangement in its entirety. This time the title of the program will be Mystic Circles, a reference to one of the opening sections of the second part of Stravinsky’s score. That title is intended to convey that the program, as a whole, will explore the mysteries of love, paganism, and sacrifice. This will include establishing a context for Stravinsky through the performance of several Russian folk songs. Folk singer Lily Storm will present these selections, joining CSQ in further arrangements by Ryther. There will also be two pieces by Sahba Aminikia, “The Weight of the World” (written on a CSQ commission) and “Winter’s Leaving.” The remaining musical selection will be the string quartet by Reza Vali numbered as “11B.” However, master storyteller Nickolaus Hohmann will also contribute to this eclectic evening.

Unfortunately, Wood will not be able to perform at this concert; so the first violin chair will be taken by Monika Gruber.

This performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 13. The Old First Presbyterian Church is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. If purchased in advance online from an O1C event page, general admission will be $23 with a discounted rate of $18 for seniors aged 65 or older. Tickets for full-time students showing valid identification will be $5; and children aged twelve and under will be admitted for free. There is also a discount available for those parking at the Old First Parking Garage at 1725 Sacramento Street, just up the street from the church.

Kronos Quartet will Return to SFJAZZ Center for Third Annual “Home Town” Music Festival

Because the Kronos Quartet (violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Sunny Yang) enjoys an international reputation, it is not always easy to find opportunities to listen to them in their home town of San Francisco. However, for the past two years the Kronos Performing Arts Association has provided such opportunities in the form of a “long weekend” festival held at the SFJAZZ Center. The first of these festivals was an extended celebration of the 80th birthday of Terry Riley. The second, held this past February, was entitled Kronos Festival 2016: Explorer Series; and it offered a worldwide perspective of music-making of impressively prodigious breadth.

This series will continue this coming February. This time the title will be KRONOS FESTIVAL 2017: Here and Now, and it will feature the innovations of the Bay Area music community. Particular attention will be given to the Iranian-American composer Sahba Aminikia, who has been designated artist-in-residence for the festival. Aminikia holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), where he studied composition with Daniel J. Becker, David Garner, David Conte, and the late Conrad Susa. His music has been performed by local ensembles. His works have been composed on commission from not only Kronos but also local ensembles such as Symphony Parnassus, Mobius Trio, Delphi Trio, and The Living Earth Show, was well as the SFCM New Music Ensemble. Ten of Aminikia’s pieces will be performed over the course of the festival.

The festival will run over the course of three days with both evening and matinee concerts as well as a Family Concert held on a Saturday morning. As in previous festivals, Kronos will be joined by a diverse variety of guests for this occasion, some of whom will be familiar from past festivals. (Memorable selections from the past will also be revisited.) A summary of the six events is as follows:

Thursday, February 2, 7:30 p.m., The Sun Rises: The festival will kick off with the first of Aminikia’s pieces to be performed. “Grandma’s House” is a joyous fanfare inspired by Iranian children’s television programming during the 1980s. Students from the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) will join Kronos for the performance. The first guest artist of the evening will be Iranian vocalist (now residing in Oakland) Mahsa Vahdat. (The title of this concert comes from Vahdat’s recent album, The Sun Will Rise.) She will sing her own songs accompanied by Kronos, playing arrangements prepared by Aminikia. The other guest appearance will be by the San Francisco Girls Chorus, giving the world premiere of Aminikia’s “Music of the Spheres,” based on lullabies from three different regions of Iran. [updated 1/12, 10:45 a.m. The program will also include two composed under commission for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire by Bay Area composers Trey Spruance and Kala Ramnath, as well as a composition involving both choreography and music by Mark Applebaum, and "Pinched," a new work by Ryan Brown.] The program will also revisit an encore selection from the 2016 festival, Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Pete Townshend’s “Baba O’Riley,” composed as a tribute to Terry Riley.

Friday, February 3, 7:30 p.m., Carrying the Past: This program will survey the diversity of past and present influences. In the spirit of recognizing Townshend, Van Dyke Parks, best known for this work in the rock world, will join Kronos for the first performance of A Coney Island of the Mind, readings of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti against an “underscore” played by Kronos. Parks will deliver the readings. The other world premiere on the program will be “Yessori” (sound from the past), composed for haegeum (two-stringed Korean fiddle), which will be played by composer Soo Yeon Lyuh, along with the Kronos. Also new to the Bay Area will be Kronos’ performance of Riley’s “The Sequent Risadome. The Fifty for the Future selection on the program will be Aleksandra Vrebalov’s “The Desert, My Rose,” which will be performed by the SOTA-based Dragon String Quartet. Kronos will also play Tohru Ueda’s realization of Hamza El Din’s “Escalay” (featured on the album Pieces of Africa) and Becker’s “Carrying the Past.” Finally, Aminikia has provided an arrangement of “Rain,” by Kayhan Kalhor and Mohammad Reza Shajarian.

Saturday, February 4, 11 a.m., Around the World with Kronos: This will be an hour-long family-friendly concert that will survey the wide international tastes of the Kronos repertoire.

Saturday, February 4, 2 p.m., Persian Dances: Music of Sahba Aminikia: This will be a broad survey of Aminikia’s past works composed between 2010 and this year. Each piece will feature one or more local performers. The program will include both a piano solo, “Lullaby,” played by Jeffrey LaDeur, and a piano trio, “Shabo Meh” (night and fog), played by the Delphi Trio, in which LaDeur joins violinist Liana Bérubé and cellist Michelle Kwon. The most recent work will be “The Wind Will Blow Us Away,” played by the Amaranth Quartet of violinists Emily Botel and Abigail Shiman, violist Erika Zappia, and cellist Helen Newby. The opening selection will be the earliest work on the program, “Persian Dances,” performed by the Mobius Trio of guitarists Robert Nance, Mason Fish, and Matthew Holmes-Linder. These performances will be followed by an informal conversation and Q&A with Aminikia.

Saturday, February 4, 5 p.m., Thalea String Quartet Plays Kronos’ Fifty for the Future: This will be an opportunity to listen to works commissioned by Kronos performed by a “next generation” string quartet. Those who read this site regularly already know that Thalea is the first SFCM quartet-in-residence, consisting of students Christopher Whitley (first violin), Kumiko Sakamoto (second violin), Luis Bellorin (viola), and Bridget Pasker (cello). The Fifty for the Future works that will be performed on this program will be by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, “Rǝqs” (dance), Garth Knox, the third movement (“Dimensions”) of his Satellites suite, and two of the movements from Wu Man’s Four Chinese Paintings, arranged for string quartet by Danny Clay. Thalea will also open the program with the first piece that Riley wrote for Kronos, “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector.” In addition the program will include Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte,” which Thalea played at SFCM last season.

Saturday, February 4, 7:30 p.m., The Odyssey: Those who follow the performances of new works in this city may recognize this title as being that of a 40-minute staged suite by Vân-Ánh Võ, whose full title was The Odyssey – from Vietnam to America. Created to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, Võ created an exploration of the personal and spiritual journeys of the Vietnamese boat people; and the result was given its world premiere this past January at the YBCA (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) Forum. Võ has now arranged excepts from this work for Kronos to perform at this final program of their festival. She will join Kronos, playing traditional Vietnamese instruments in these arrangements. This quintet will also perform “My Lai Lullaby,” the instrumental prelude that Jonathan Berger wrote for a monodrama about the efforts of Hugh Thompson to prevent the My Lai Massacre. The program will also include the world premiere of of Aminikia’s “Pareeshan” (abstracted), inspired by the Persian violinist Parviz Yahaghi. In addition, The Living Earth Show duo of Travis Andrews (electric guitar) and Andy Meyerson (percussion) will play Aminikia’s “Sooge Sohrab,” an interpretation of a popular Persian myth. The program will begin with the world premiere of “Knock,” a recent composition by Kronos’ founding cellist, Joan Jeanrenaud. The Fifty for the Future composer for this program will be Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq with an excerpt from her “Sivunittinni” (voices). Tagaq made this piece by first recording several of her own vocal performances, and the results were transcribed and arranged for string quartet by Garchik. The program will also include Kevin Villalta’s arrangement of “Y Soy Llanero,” a Columbian cowboy joropo (the national dance of Venezuela, whose musical style resembles the fandango) made famous by Cholo Valderrama.

All of these concerts will take place at the SFJAZZ Center, located at 201 Franklin Street, on the northwest corner of Fell Street. The family concert will be held in the Robert N. Miner Auditorium. Adult admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for youth under 16. Seating will be general admission. Tickets may be purchased in advance through an event page on the SFJAZZ Web site. Both Saturday afternoon concerts will be performed in the Joe Henderson Lab. Seating will again be general admission, and all tickets will be sold for $20. Separate event pages have been created for the Persian Dances program and the Thalea String Quartet recital. All three evening concerts will be held in Miner Auditorium. Ticket prices range from $20 to $65; and there are separate event pages for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 866-920-5299 or by visiting the Box Office on the ground floor of the SFJAZZ Center.

Adventures in New Listening

Considering the scope of my listening experience, it is very rare that I come across a program that covers a period from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century in which I am familiar with only one composition. Even more curious is when that one composition is one with which I have become only recently acquainted, Amy Beach's Opus 67 piano quintet in F sharp minor. However, this particular program came from last night's Graduate Viola Recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; and my entire knowledge of the Beach quintet comes from two performances (one professional, one student) that I previously heard at the Conservatory. Furthermore, some of the oddity of the evening was blunted by the fact that the Beach performance was actually a repeat of the student performance I heard last November. There is little I can add to my past writing about both the composition and the students who performed it, other than the obvious observation that this is a work that deserves to be performed more frequently. The only thing that may bear repeating is that, probably only by virtue of my own listening experience, performances of this quintet continue to tweak my memories of Edward Elgar's piano quintet. However, Elgar wrote his quintet in 1919, about a dozen years after Beach completed hers; and it is hard to imagine his having been influenced by it. Had he, for example, visited the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, we would have known about this from some biographical account; but there does not appear to be any evidence of his having been in North America. Indeed, Elgar's most serious connection to the United States probably came from Yehudi Menuhin, who recorded Elgar's violin concerto with Elgar conducting. However, Menuhin was born in 1916; and, for all his reputation as a child prodigy, it is hard to imagine his having influenced Elgar's composition work in 1919, even in the extremely unlikely event that he had heard Beach's music while still in utero! (For the record, while Menuhin was raised in San Francisco, he was born in New York.)

Returning from this digression, however, the most important aspect of last night's recital was the framing of the entire program. It began with two miniatures for viola and piano by a composer sitting in the audience (Sahba Aminikia) and concluded with the Opus 1 (a string quartet in D major) by a composer (Josif Andriasov) who died in 2000 but was represented by a thorough set of program notes by his musicologist widow (Marta Andriasova-Kudryashova). Both of these composers received their initial music education in Russia, Aminikia at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and Andriasov at the Peter I. Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory. Andriasov was born in Moscow to an Armenian family, while Aminikia was born in Tehran. While the two composers were separated by half a century, they both vividly illustrated Robert Mann's precept that a composer is best understood in terms of the music to which he has been exposed; and, in this case, there could well have been a common exposure that could be traced back to origins along the banks of the Caspian Sea. Both compositions captured a certain "Armenian spirit," which is probably best associated with Aram Khachaturian but was displayed in a more "earthy" rendering than Khachaturian ever delivered. Indeed, Aminikia seemed more interested in capturing the sound qualities of these folk sources, rather than the tunes themselves, which would put him closer to Béla Bartók than to Khachaturian. Furthermore, Aminikia is currently a graduate student in composition at the Conservatory; and this was the first performance of his miniatures. So this was probably a case of one student composing for another and probably working closely together on this emphasis on the nature of the sound itself.

The "other end of the time-line," so to speak, was represented by the Opus 94 of Johann Nepomuk Hummel. What the program listed as a fantasy for viola and orchestra is probably what (according to Wikipedia) the British Library Integrated Catalogue calls his "Potpourri for Viola and Orchestra," based on "Il mio tesoro." Many of us gave our first serious listening to Hummel when Wynton Marsalis recorded his trumpet concerto, and this work made it clear that Hummel was a great admirer of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Its first movement seemed to take the first movement of the K. 385 ("Haffner") symphony and turn it on its head, while its second movement came off as a fantasy on the second movement of the K. 467 piano concerto. Thus, it was no surprise that Hummel would have also turned to Don Giovanni for inspiration; and, since the viola is the "tenor" of a string quartet, what better source than the most famous tenor aria from the opera? In many respects this work can be heard as a harbinger of the sort of salon music that would flourish throughout the nineteenth century, much of which involved such homages to the spirit of the preceding century.

Similarly, Max Bruch's Opus 85 romance for viola and orchestra may be heard as a reflection on Ludwig van Beethoven's two similarly-titled works for violin and orchestra (Opera 40 and 50); but Bruch's work is anything but a mere homage. Rather, it is likely the work of a composer who, like Johannes Brahms, had to live with the influence of Beethoven without succumbing to that influence. Bruch's result certainly exhibited a unique voice, which served the voice of the viola as well as his more popular works for violin and cello served those respective instruments.

Finally, after the Andriasov quartet the evening concluded with an encore. The string quartet returned to perform Astor Piazzolla's "Four for Tango," which he had composed for the Kronos Quartet in 1987. Piazzolla provided a sharp contrast to that "Caspian" sound that began and ended the formal program; but it also ended the evening with a playful gesture, which always makes for good programming!