Past Vocal Standards Take it On the Chin (again)

Since I experienced the better part of my life during the twentieth century, I have enjoyed “first contact” experiences of popular and jazz compositions that are now recognized as “standards.” There now seems to be a generous interest in this repertoire as this new century progresses. Unfortunately, today’s vocalists do not seem to “get” the many “delivery” techniques that transformed often relatively simply lyrics into engaging listening experiences.

Regular readers probably know that this is not the first time I have vented my frustration. About half a year ago, I was so put off by Rhada Thomas’ As I Sing album that I found that my only basis for comparison was Darlene Edwards. (Given that Edwards was an icon of the last century, I figured it was necessary to provide a hyperlink to her Wikipedia page in order for readers to appreciate the depth of my aggravation!)

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

This morning I found myself listening to the recently released album Alright Okay You Win album of fourteen tracks of songs delivered by Doug Ferony. He is accompanied by a sixteen-piece big band and three background singers. He also conducts the entire ensemble in performances of standards that account for a rather generous span of the twentieth century. This amounts to my having encountered all of these tunes in the past but during different periods in my life.

Now, to be fair, any tune, no matter how popular the “original version” may have been in the past, is always “fair game” for reinterpretation. However, there is a difference between an inventive reconception and (to borrow a favorite phrase from John Cage) “cheap imitation.” Drawing upon that latter metaphor, I have to confess that none of the tracks on Alright Okay You Win delivered enough of an interpretation to seize, let also sustain, my attention.

Is this just a matter of the past now being too distant? Given that Ferony’s selections include Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter, I do not think that age is the issue. (We do not accuse Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as being “too distant!”) Rather, I think that Ferony never really figured out how to connect with the past, assuming, instead, that just delivering words and music would be sufficient. If that were all that mattered, then my guess is that there is already a software app that can deliver more engaging accounts than Ferony’s!

Zack Foley: “Adventurous” Vocalist to be Avoided

Frank Wagner, Zack Foley, and C.J. Everett (courtesy of Orange Grove Publicity)

It was through Orange Grove Publicity that I first learned about vocalist Zack Foley. This past Friday saw the release of his Silent Boomer X album, which is currently available for MP3 download through an Amazon.com Web page. On this album he leads a trio with rhythm provided by Frank Wagner on bass and drummer C.J. [sic] Everett.

I suppose that this album can best be described through a single sentence from the advance material I received:

On Silent Boomer X, Foley goes all-in on standard repertoire but in a non-standard way, departing from the conventional “crooner” sound and letting his tenor voice play a role traditionally filled by the saxophone.

What this sentence overlooks is that in “departing” from the “conventional,” Foley has also departed from any sense of pitch. For better or worse (mostly the latter), when he takes on familiar tunes by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter, he seems to assume that, due to that familiarity, listeners will not care what notes he happens to be singing, paying more attention to his rhythm of declamation. Well, for what it is worth, I happen to be one of those listeners that does care. Those in my camp should be careful about how much attention they pay to Foley’s vocal work!

Those that have followed my efforts back to my days with Examiner.com will not be surprised by this assessment. Back in 2014 I encountered an album by Carol Fredette entitled No Sad Songs For Me. While the content was true to the title, my account of the vocal work could be distilled as follows:

… Fredette never really comes up with a delivery that both shapes the melody and does justice to the words.

Apparently, things have not changed very much over the last decade!

The Bleeding Edge: 6/10/2024

This week only one event has been previously reported. That is the next two performances of The Depths, which will take place at Audium on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with tickets available from a single City Box Office event page. However, this will also be a busy weekend at Bird & Beckett Books and Records, which probably deserves special attention.

Friday, June 14, will be distinguished for offering two sets by two different performing groups. The first set will be taken by Eric & the In Crowd, who will present two hours of Cole Porter beginning at 6 p.m. They will be followed at 8:30 p.m. by The Lost Trio, whose members are saxophonist Philip Greenlief, Dan Seamans on bass, and drummer Tom Hassett. This is a group that is known for their adventurous originals. However, their “book” also includes more familiar tunes by the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, and Wayne Shorter. This will be the first in a pair of farewell concerts. The second will take place on the following evening, Saturday, June 15, beginning this time at 7:30 p.m. For this occasion they will have three special guests: Darren Johnston on trumpet and two multi-reed players, Beth Schenck and Sheldon Brown.

As regular readers probably know by now, Bird & Beckett is located at 653 Chenery Street, a short walk from the Glen Park station that serves both BART and Muni. Admission will probably be the usual $20 in cash for the cover charge. Given that only a limited number of people will be admitted, reservations are necessary and can be made by calling 415-586-3733. The phone will be answered during regular store hours, which are between noon and 6 p.m. on Tuesday through Sunday. Because these are weekend performances, they will probably be live-streamed for viewing on either the shop’s Facebook page or its YouTube channel.

If all that is not enough, there are three more events to consider:

Thursday, June 13, 8 p.m., Peacock Lounge: Since this is the second Thursday of the month, it will be time for the usual three-hour show consisting of four sets. As is usually the case, there will be four solo sets. All of the soloists will be familiar to those that have followed this site regularly: John Bischoff, Scott Arford, Anne Hege, and Julie Herndon.

The Peacock Lounge is located in the Lower Haight at 552 Haight Street. Doors will open at 7:45 p.m. to enable the first set to begin at 8 p.m. sharp. Admission will be between $5 and $15; but, as usual, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Friday, June 14, 6 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery: Reed player David Boyce will continue to host his regular Friday evening series entitled Other Dimensions in Sound. On this occasion he will host the somewhat unconventional quartet of trumpeter Darren Johnson, Larry Ochs on saxophone(s), cellist Ben Davis, and Lisa Mezzacappa on bass. Once again, 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.

Cover design for Drew McDowall’s A Thread, Silvered and Trembling album (from the Bandcamp Web page for the album)

Friday, June 14, 8 p.m., Gray Area Art and Technology: Drew McDowall, who grew up with punk gangs in Scotland in the Seventies, will give a solo performance of A Thread, Silvered and Trembling. This will reflect a shift from his past new-industrialized music into “a summoning of shrouded strings, shaken shudders, and disembodied voicings.” All tickets are priced at $25. Gray Area has created a Web page for online purchase of tickets. For those unfamiliar with the venue, it is located at 2665 Mission Street, between 22nd Street and 23rd Street.

Samantha Hankey’s Schwabacher Recital

Pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson accompanying mezzo Samantha Hankey (photograph by Matthew Washburn, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Last night in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theatre of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the annual Schwabacher Recital series concluded with a recital by mezzo Samantha Hankey, accompanied at the piano by Carrie-Ann Matheson. The program was performed without an intermission, but there was more than enough in the content to engage the serious listener.

Where my own tastes were concerned, what interested me most about the program was the inclusion of music by Alexander Zemlinsky. This composer has fascinated me ever since I read Alma Mahler’s Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. She had been a composition student of Zemlinsky, who (like many of the men of that time) fell in love with her. However, that relationship did not last. (She found him too ugly.) As well all know, Alma subsequently married Mahler.

Last night’s selection was composed after Zemlinsky had gotten over that relationship. The title (in English) is Six Songs to texts by Maurice Maeterlinck; and they set the texts in German between 1910 and 1913. (The texts were originally written in French, and the music was subsequently orchestrated in 1924.)

Hankey sang four of these songs:

• Die drei Schwestern (the three sisters)
• Die Mädchen mit den verbundenen Augen (the girl with bandaged eyes)
• Als ihr Geliebter schied (when her lover left)
• Und kehrt er einst heim (if he returns one day)

Her vocal delivery provided the perfect match to the darkness of the texts, while Matheson’s accompaniment enhanced the underlying rhetoric. To be fair, however, I know much of Zemlinsky’s music through cherished experiences of seeing several of his operas; and I can appreciate why he chose to orchestrate these settings. I have listened to them in that setting, and they are positively bone-chilling. Nevertheless, Hankey’s interpretations cut to the heart of each of her texts, leaving me on the edge of my seat as she advanced through her four selections.

The Zemlinsky offering was preceded by another set of selections. These were four of the seven canciones populares españolas (Spanish folksongs) composed by Manuel de Falla:

• El paño moruno (the Moorish cloth)
• Seguidilla murciana
• Asturiana
• Polo

I have encountered the full cycle in performance many times. (The most recent was almost exactly a year ago, when mezzo Sasha Cooke was accompanied by guitarist Jason Vieaux.) As was the case with all of the song texts, English translations were projected behind the performers; but Hankey’s body language was as expressive as the words she was delivering.

The program began with Claude Debussy’s settings of three of the poems from Pierre Louÿs’ collection of erotic poetry entitled (in English) The Songs of Bilitis:

• La flûte de Pan (Pan’s flute)
• La chevelure (the hair)
• Le tombeau des Naïades

Debussy worked with this music in a variety of instrumental settings. Matheson clearly appreciated the technique behind the composer’s keyboard music; but the focus was on Hankey’s interpretation which delivered the erotic qualities with just the right level of subtlety.

The program concluded with selections by Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and Kurt Weill. Arlen was represented by what is probably his best-known tune, “Over the Rainbow,” composed for Judy Garland to sing in the movie The Wizard of Oz. This was followed by Cole Porter’s “So in Love,” composed for the musical Kiss Me, Kate. Finally, there were two Weill selections. “Youkali” was a tango sung in French; and it was followed by “Speak Low,” composed for the musical One Touch of Venus. Hankey then returned for a single encore, once again in English: Samuel Barber’s “Sure on this shining night,” setting a poem by James Agee.

If the evening was shorter than usual, it could not have been more satisfying. I was glad to see that, in her credentials, Hankey has been making a name for herself in opera performances. Nevertheless, I was really drawn to her skills as a recitalist last night. I would be only too happy to have another encounter with one of her art song journeys.

Schwabacher Recitals to Conclude with Mezzo

Mezzo Samantha Hankey (courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

This year’s annual Schwabacher Recital Series began with mezzo and Merola Opera Program alumna Simona Genga. In a sort of nod to symmetry, the series will conclude with a solo recital by another mezzo, Samantha Hankey, who will be accompanied at the piano by Carrie-Ann Matheson. The program has been somewhat updated since it was first announced. The “core” of the program will still be Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Opus 13 settings of six poems by Maurice Maeterlinck; and the program will still conclude with three selections from musicals performed on Broadway, the first by Cole Porter and the other two by Kurt Weill. The program will now begin with Claude Debussy’s song cycle Trois chansons de Bilitis (three Songs of Bilitis), setting texts from Pierre Louÿs’ collection of erotic poetry entitled (in English) The Songs of Bilitis. This will be followed by selections from Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas (seven Spanish folksongs).

The performance will take place on Wednesday, April 3, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Like the previous two recitals, it will be held in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater. As most readers probably know by now, this is part of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, which is located in the Veterans Building (on the fourth floor) at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. General admission will be $30. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an event page on the San Francisco Opera Web site. Note that it is possible to select the option of Wheelchair Accessible seats. In addition, subject to availability, student rush tickets will go on sale at 7 p.m. at the reduced rate of $15. There is a limit of two tickets per person, and valid identification must be shown.

Cohen’s Schwabacher Recital Program

Last night in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the Schwabacher Recital Series presented the third of its four programs. This series is jointly enabled by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) Center and the Merola Opera Program; and last night’s vocalist, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, is a Merola alumnus and an SFO Adler Fellow. Cohen was accompanied at the piano by Carrie-Ann Matheson, the SFO Center’s Artistic Director.

The countertenor is associated primarily with the pre-classical repertoire. Cohen accounted for that period with two airs from George Frideric Handel’s HWV 53 oratorio Saul taken, respectively from the first and last acts and sung by the vocalist portraying David. One could also associate a countertenor with Roger Quilter’s Three Shakespeare Songs, which opened the program; but it is unlikely that he had that particular vocal quality in mind.

The fact is that Cohen seems to have planned his program around music that interested him, rather than dwelling only on the countertenor repertoire. Thus, the audience could enjoy the German poets providing texts for the four songs that he extracted from Clara Schumann’s Opus 13 collection and the three French poets whose works were set as songs by Henri Duparc. He even wrapped up the program with two popular songs, both with a decidedly male perspective: Errol Garner’s “Misty” (with lyrics by Johnny Burke) and Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You.”

He also reflected on his past experience as a synagogue cantor, a job he seems to have begun shortly after his bar mitzvah. Rather than drawing upon some of the chants of the service, he offered settings of liturgical texts by Max Janowski (“Avinu Malkeinu”) and Maurice Ravel (“Kaddish”). Ravel was, of course, not Jewish; but he seems to have had an interest in Hebrew folk traditions.

Taken as a whole, the program was an engaging tour of a diverse vocal repertoire. This inevitably culminated in an encore selection. Given that most of Cohen’s work these days involves considerable touring (primarily on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean), I suppose he can be forgiven for selecting “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which definitely went down very well with his admiring audience.

Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen Announces Recital Plan

Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (photograph by Jiyang Chen, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Next month the 39th season of the Schwabacher Recital Series will continue with a performance by countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen. He will be accompanied at the piano by San Francisco Opera Center and Merola Opera Program Artistic Director Carrie-Ann Matheson. Recognizing the limited repertoire of music composed for the high countertenor vocal range, Cohen released the following statement:

We will be presenting a wide-ranging program that showcases many of the styles and eras of music that I most enjoy singing. Though on the opera stage, my voice type means that I’m limited to Baroque and contemporary works, what I love about singing recitals is that they allow me to sing a broader variety of works that showcase an even wider range of my artistic passions.

At the risk of picking a nit, I would say that what Cohen means by “contemporary” amounts to music composed during the twentieth century! This includes two selections that draw upon the Jewish liturgy, Max Janowski’s setting of the prayer “Avinu Malkeinu” and Maurice Ravel’s setting of the “Kaddish” prayer for the dead. On the more upbeat side, he will conclude his program with major hit tunes from the last century, Erroll Garner’s “Misty” and Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You.” The other twentieth-century composers included on the program will be Roger Quilter (his 1905 Three Shakespeare Songs), Leslie Adams (the setting of Langston Hughes’ “Prayer,” which begins the Nightsongs cycle), and Florence Price (“Night” and “Sunset”).

There will also be two selections from opposite ends of the nineteenth century. The early side will be represented by four of the songs from Clara Schumann’s Opus 13 collection. At the “other end” will be three songs by Henri Duparc, “Chanson triste” (1868), “L’invitation au voyage” (1870), and “Phidylé” (completed in 1882). The selections specifically composed for Cohen’s vocal range will be two arias from George Frideric Handel’s HWV 53 oratorio Saul.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 12. Like the preceding Schwabacher recitals, this program will take place in the Taube Atrium Theater, which is part of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, located in the Veterans Building (on the fourth floor) at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. General admission will be $30. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an event page on the San Francisco Opera Web site. Note that it is possible to select the option of Wheelchair Accessible seats using the “Select Zone” pulldown menu. In addition, subject to availability, student rush tickets will go on sale at 7 p.m. at the reduced rate of $15. There is a limit of two tickets per person, and valid identification must be shown.

Revived Interest in Vocalist Susie Thorne

This past Friday I learned from one of my reliable sources about a revived interest in the album Blue Skies, Clear Day, which is the second CD recorded by jazz vocalist Susie Thorne. I am not quite sure what constitutes revival; but, as of this writing, Amazon.com has a Web page for the CD, which is currently only available as used, currently from seven different sources. However, that Web page also has a hyperlink to an MP3 Web page, which probably did not exist when the album was first released in 2006. Sadly, that Web page does not include the liner notes that were included in the CD release. Also missing is the back label, which provides the personnel information, as well as the composition credits for the eleven tracks on the album.

For the most part, there is a satisfying clarity in Thorne’s vocal work. This is particularly important where the three Cole Porter tracks are concerned: “Blue Skies,” “Night and Day,” and “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To.” Porter was the most important contributor to the Great American Songbook that consistently paid as much attention to the words as to the music, and Thorne clearly honors that versatility. That same versatility can be found in Paul McCartney’s “Can’t Buy Me Love;” and there is a certain comfort in recognizing that McCartney gets just as much respect as Porter.

The only real disappointment arises on the final track. Thorne decided to record Joseph Kosma’s “Autumn Leaves” using the original French lyrics by Jacques Prévert, rather than the more familiar English version provided by Johnny Mercer. While there is consistent clarity across the English texts on the first ten tracks, negotiating the French account of “Autumn Leaves” requires more than a little creative imagination on the part of the listener.

On the instrumental side Thorne is accompanied by the “standard” trio with Christine Hitt on piano, Tom Kennedy on bass, and Miles Vandiver on drums. Kennedy is particularly engaging when accompanying Thorne’s interpretation of “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To.”  Guitarist Rick Haydon contributes to six of the tracks, as does Jason Swagler on alto saxophone (but not the same six tracks). This amounts to highly satisfying accompaniment work, making for engaging listening (at least when the words are in English).

Harry Connick Jr.’s Cole Porter Album on Verve

courtesy of Play MPE

I have been listening to performances by Harry Connick Jr. on an occasional basis for about three decades. The sources of those occasions have primarily been radio and its streaming alternatives, primarily XM Radio and Music Choice. When I learned that the title of his latest album on Verve was True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter, my never-ending admiration for Porter got the better of me. I figured it was time to check out a full album.

Connick is literally all over the place on this album. While most of his work is vocal, he also takes a couple of solos at the piano. He also served as both arranger and orchestrator of all the tracks, as well as conductor of the Harry Connick Jr. Big Band. All this revives vivid memories of Oscar Levant’s dream sequence in the movie An American in Paris, in which he fantasizes himself as piano soloist, conductor, every member of the orchestra, and, as if that were not enough, a member of the audience shouting “Bravo!” at the conclusion of the performance.

To be fair, however, the instrumental backup is praiseworthy, evoking the best of the big band traditions; and Connick’s piano work tends to be well enough considered to draw the attention of more serious listeners. The vocal work, on the other hand, is another matter.

In the past I have enjoyed Connick’s relaxed style because he never tried to short-change either the tunes or the words. While his respect for the text (as well as an appreciation for vowel sonorities) is still, for the most part, intact, his respect for pitch is weaker than I recall from previous encounters. Porter could serve up some really daring intervallic leaps in his melody lines, and Connick does not always hit the mark when taking one of those leaps. Furthermore, when his arrangement calls for subtle modulation, his command of pitch sometimes muddles the distinction between source and destination. The fact is that Porter’s compositions demand more respect for pitch than Connick delivered, and that was a serious disappointment.

Equally problematic, but less disappointing, was the matter of choosing the words. My “bible” for Porter’s texts is The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball. However, Kimball’s annotations make it clear that Porter himself would change the words for later performances of some of his songs.

The opening track, “Anything Goes,” is a perfect example. There are any number of references in the “Urtext” that could only be understood by consulting a variety of historical documents! Connick clearly does not want his album to be a research project. Therefore, he goes with versions that make sense to current listeners; and I, for one, feel that he deserves praise for making that decision.

Roger Kellaway is Back with Straight-Ahead Jazz

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

At the beginning of last month, Roger Kellaway celebrated his 80th birthday. As a professional musician and alumnus of the New England Conservatory of Music, Kellaway has had his thumb in more pies than I could possibly enumerate; and he has managed to pull any number of tasty plums from many, if not most, of them. Nevertheless, “Remembering You,” the closing theme for All in the Family may have been his best shot at mass recognition.

However, those of us more interested in serious listening, rather than mass appeal, will probably gain more from listening to Kellaway’s latest album, released by IPO Recordings. The Many Open Minds of Roger Kellaway consists of seven tracks recorded from performances at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles. Kellaway is back in a straight-ahead jazz groove behind a piano keyboard, where he leads a trio whose other members are Bruce Forman on guitar and Dan Lutz on bass. As of this writing, Amazon.com is only distributing this as an MP3 album; and Google has not been particularly helpful in finding a source that is selling the album in a physical medium.

From the very first track, Kellaway seizes listener attention by going back to the basics of Thelonious Monk. Too many modern jazz artists have used Monk’s “52nd Street Theme” as “sign-off” music, meaning that too many listeners know the music through only one motif. (Grumbling about Miles Davis may now commence!) Kellaway’s trio deconstructs and reconstructs the full thematic richness of this composition, charging through the building blocks of the piece at a breakneck pace, the perfect way to get listeners on board for the diversity of selections that will follows.

The Monk track is coupled with music by one of his long-time colleagues. Sonny Rollins is represented with his tune “Doxy.” However, the overall scope of the album also reaches back to the book for Duke Ellington’s band, including one of Billy Strayhorn’s most familiar compositions, “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and “Caravan,” which Ellington wrote in partnership with Juan Tizol. There are also instrumental accounts of two “songbook” selections, “Night and Day” by Cole Porter and “Have You Met Miss Jones” by Richard Rodgers. Finally, there is one selection from the Dave Brubeck book, Paul Desmond’s “Take Five.”

For my money listening gets most interesting when Kellaway and his colleagues are not afraid to exercise prolonged improvisation. “Have You Met Miss Jones” runs longer than ten minutes, while “Take the ‘A’ Train” exceeds the twelve-minute limit. However, even when durations are shorter, this album consistently explores how trio work can mine considerable inventiveness out of even the most familiar of tunes. The Many Open Minds of Roger Kellaway is definitely an album for any lister serious about the scope of jazz improvisation; and, however marketing may currently be trying to shape the very practices of listening, this is an album that deserves beginning-to-end listening attention for what it is, a document of a gig in Los Angeles that has now be preserved for posterity.

Deborah Voigt to Conclude SFP Vocal Series

Soprano Deborah Voigt (from the SFP event page for her recital)

When San Francisco Performances (SFP) first released information about its Vocal Series for the 2018–2019 season, it was announced that the final recital would be given by leading soprano Deborah Voigt. The original plan was that there would be a heavy focus on American songs. In addition, at those early stages Voigt’s accompanist had not yet been determined.

Plans for Voigt’s program, which will be the first SFP offering next month, have now be finalized. Her accompanist will be pianist Steven Bailey. The overall focus of the program has been altered, with the American side of the repertoire distributed between a selection of songs by Cole Porter that will conclude the program and an opening of two of the songs that Frederick Loewe set to lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner for the musical Camelot, “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood” and “Follow Me.”

The remainder of the program will be devoted to that period of transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century in Europe. At the very center of the program will be Edvard Grieg’s Opus 48 collection of six songs, some composed in 1884 and the rest in 1889. These will be flanked on either side by early twentieth-century music. The Grieg selection will be preceded by Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Opus 13, also a collection of six songs, completed in 1913. At the other end, Grieg will be followed by the piano version of Gustav Mahler’s cycle of settings of poems by Friedrich Rückert, known as the Rückert-Lieder and composed between June of 1901 and August of 1902.

This recital will take place at 7:30 p.m on Thursday, May 2. Tickets are on sale for $70 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front of the Dress Circle, $55 for the remainder of the Orchestra, the remainder of the center Dress Circle, and the Boxes, and $45 for remaining seats in the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Tickets may be purchased online in advance through a City Box Office event page.

Pershall Brings Diverse Repertoire to Schwabacher

Baritone David Pershall (courtesy of San Francisco Opera Communications Department)

Last night in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater, the Schwabacher Recital Series presented the second of the four concerts of its 2019 season. The recitalist was baritone David Pershall, an alumnus of the 2008 Merola Opera Program, who has gone on to establish himself in both the United States (including the San Francisco Opera) and Europe. His accompanist last night was pianist John Churchwell.

Readers probably know that I place high value on any program that turns out to be a journey of discovery. I would hazard the guess that many in last night’s audience had not previously encountered the name of Gerald Finzi, let alone the music he composed. Pershall devoted the second half of his program to Earth and Air and Rain, Finzi’s Opus 15, a collection of ten settings of poems by Thomas Hardy composed between 1928 and 1932. Over the course of his career, Finzi wrote six song cycles based on Hardy poems; and his Opus 15 was the second of them.

Reading Hardy on the printed page can be quite an adventure. His rhyme schemes tend to seek out new ways of thinking about symmetry; and, while his underlying metrical structures are straightforward, the text itself often inclines to being read as prose. The words themselves frequently suggest that the poem is about to relate a narrative, but then it emerges as multiple reflections on a single image or instant. (Cynics might accuse Hardy of having written long-winded haiku.) One way of approaching Hardy’s poems is to read them as “establishing the scene” for the imagined Wessex setting of his novels; but, as last night’s performance made clear, the texts have enough virtues to stand by themselves.

The title of the cycle is Finzi’s rather than Hardy’s. Perhaps Finzi was struck by the elemental nature of many (but not all) the poems he had selected for his Opus 15. To some extent the texts reflect on relations between human nature and the elements; but those reflections emerge as individual images in each of the songs, rather than beads strung on a common thread. Ultimately, each poem captures a moment; and the essence of that moment then emerges through Finzi’s writing.

Pershall seemed to be well aware of this relationship between music and words. His diction was always right on the money; but, since Hardy’s turns of phrases were not always straightforward, having a text sheet at hand was decidedly an asset. Pershall endowed each of the songs with its own unique sense of personality, but he seemed to appreciate that Finzi’s music had its own unique strategy for leading the reader on a discovery of meaning behind each of Hardy’s poems. This is not what one usually expects of a vocal recital, but Pershall’s performance left at least this listener with curiosity about Finzi’s other approaches to Hardy’s texts.

All of the composers selected for the first half of the program were decidedly more familiar. Nevertheless, when compared with his piano and orchestral music, the songs of Sergei Rachmaninoff deserve more attention than they usually get, at least in this country. Pershall selected two from his Opus 14 collection and one each from Opus 21 and Opus 26. Those who know Rachmaninoff only from his symphonic side are likely to be struck by the brevity of his songs. Indeed, like Finzi (who was roughly a contemporary), Rachmaninoff knew how to capture “the moment” in the structure and delivery of a single song. Pershall clearly understood the impact of Rachmaninoff’s brevity and endowed each of the four selections with its own unique rhetorical impact.

Rhetoric also figured significantly in his performance of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (songs of a wayfarer). The chronology suggests that this cycle began in a version for voice and piano, which was then orchestrated. However, the first performance seems to have been of the orchestral version. This tends to be the way in which it is usually performed; but the piano version allows the listener to pay more attention to the words themselves, rather than the instrumental fireworks. The words are Mahler’s own, and many would probably dismiss them as being a bit much. Fortunately, Pershall knew how to avoid overplaying his hand, allowing the attentive listener to appreciate details of the relations between music and words that are often washed over by the thick orchestral contexts.

The only real weakness of the program came at the beginning with a performance of An die ferne Geliebte (to the distant beloved), Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 98, often credited as being the first song cycle. Unfortunately, Beethoven’s vocal writing rarely rises to the level he attains in other genres. Indeed, he is at his best in presenting the cycle not as isolated songs but as a continuous unfolding of the poetic texts linked by interstitial thematic material. Pershall’s account was not particularly convincing, but there was not much need for being convinced.

Overall, the recital was a richly endowed journey with any number of impressively weighty moments. One can appreciate that Pershall wanted to lighten things up a bit for his encore. Dispensing with any vestiges of formality, he launched into an impassioned account of “So in Love” from Kiss Me, Kate that could easily have brought a smile or two to Cole Porter’s face. Whether or not Pershall appreciated the many layers of parody that make Kiss Me, Kate such a delight (even after if emerged from the “Hollywood treatment”), Porter’s spirit was definitely alive and well last night; and many in the audience seemed delighted to appreciate its presence.

Palmertree’s Imaginative Schwabacher Recital

Toni Marie Palmertree (courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Last night in the Taube Atrium Theatre of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the third of the four programs in the 35th anniversary season of the Schwabacher Recital Series was a solo recital by former San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow and alumna of the 2015 Merola Opera Program Toni Marie Palmertree. This past November Palmertree demonstrated to those fortunate enough to have attended her Salon series concert for San Francisco Performances (SFP) that she was as comfortable in a recital setting as she was on the opera stage. Indeed, she displayed a taste for departing from familiar paths to explore more adventurous domains of repertoire.

For last night’s recital, Palmertree returned to a composer-author pairing that had been a high point of her Salon performance, Benjamin Britten setting poems by W. H. Auden. For her Salon program, appropriately enough, she sang three of the four poems from Cabaret Songs. Last night she turned to On this island, which was Britten’s first song cycle for voice and piano.

Auden tends to be a poet of elegant opacity, more talked about than read. Britten selected five poems from a collection whose typescript title was simply Thirty-One Poems. Auden’s publisher, Faber & Faber, wanted him to provide a more engaging title but could not reach Auden while he was traveling in Iceland. So the poems were published under the title Look, Stranger! without his permission. Because Auden disliked the title, he asked Random House to call the American edition of the book On This Island.

Does it matter that we have no idea what island Auden had in mind? Not really. The five poems in Britten’s set (from which Palmertree selected four) each have a distinctively individual voice. Each of those voices tends to be elegantly convoluted, each an example of that aforementioned opacity. Leonard Bernstein even admitted that his “The Age of Anxiety” symphony never took in much more than the title and the general plan of Auden’s poem of the same name. Britten, on the other hand, had a keener sense of using music not only to establish the context of each poem but also to provide a vocal line that would negotiate some of the more peculiar twists and turns of the content.

By the time the listener has come to the final song in On this island, (s)he has become familiarized with Auden’s way with words and Britten’s way with Auden. The reward for that endurance is a setting of “As it is, plenty” that bops along with a jaunty pop rhetoric that one seldom encounters in Britten. Auden’s words for this poem were clearly playful, but Britten turns them into an almost raucous romp. Palmertree could not have been more comfortable with this “surprise ending,” just as she had been in following the path of the more serious poems leading up to this conclusion; and that journey through different spirits was perfectly matched by her accompanist, pianist Mark Morash.

The remainder of the program was just as adventurous with a series of selections one rarely encounters in recitals. Morash even went as far as to provide a bit of background about Federico Mompou, although similar preparations probably would have helped for Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Fernando Obradors, and John McCabe. Even the selection by Claude Debussy ventured down a rarely-traversed path; and Morash made it a point to observe that he was setting his own texts.

Nevertheless, each of Palmertree’s selections had its own cache of features to be treasured. The Debussy selection was a set of four songs entitled Prose lyriques; and, while each of them looked like a poem on the printed page, it did not take long to realize that these were prose sentences with line-breaks appropriately inserted. As with the Britten set, each text had its own distinctive mood; and some of Debussy’s turns of phrase with the words were as convoluted as Auden’s. Yet Palmertree’s delivery consistently guided the listener through all of the text’s twists and turns, turning unfamiliar music by a familiar composer into an engaging journey of discovery.

Mompou’s Combat del somni (dream combat) may have been the first time many of us had to follow texts in Catalan, three poems by Josep Janés. Palmertree seemed perfectly comfortable with negotiating Janés’ texts, as well as the dark perspective on dreams established by both poet and composer. The same could be said of her approach to the Spanish texts set by Obradors, whose musical rhetorical drew upon more familiar Spanish tropes.

The remaining selections on the program were trio performances with the participation of clarinetist Jose Gonzalez Granero. Griffes’ Opus 11 setting of three poems by Fiona MacLeod (the pen name of William Sharp) was originally written for voice and piano and then orchestrated. A single clarinet could not make up for full orchestral textures, but Granero’s clarinet work enhanced the Scottish rhetoric behind the texts Griffes had set. The same could be said for the folk-like qualities of the three folk songs set by McCabe.

As if the perspectives of her recital were not already expansive enough, Palmertree turned to Cole Porter for her encore. She had sung Porter (as well as Hoagy Carmichael and Kurt Weill) at her SFP Salon. This time she sang “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.” As is necessary in delivering a Porter song, she made every word count, reminding all in the audience of just how much artistry Porter could put into a song that seems to straightforward on the surface.

Palmertree Brings Engaging Cabaret to the Rex

courtesy of San Francisco Performances

Yesterday evening San Francisco Performances continued its Salon series at the Hotel Rex with a recital by soprano Toni Marie Palmertree. Currently an Adler Fellow, Palmertree was featured in the role of Liù in the season-opening production by San Francisco Opera (SFO) of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot this past September. She was accompanied at the piano by Ronny Michael Greenberg, currently a member of the SFO music staff.

The prevailing atmosphere of Palmertree’s program was one of cabaret. Indeed, she performed selections from two collections by two different composers both published under the title Cabaret Songs. The earlier of these was Benjamin Britten’s settings of four poems by W. H. Auden, three of which were selected by Palmertree. The other was the larger collection of 24 songs that William Bolcom published in four volumes, and Palmertree sang only two of those songs.

Both of these sets were archly witty. Delivery is as much a matter of convincing acting as it is one of musical dexterity, and Palmertree definitely had the acting chops required by each set. Auden’s rhetoric tended towards irony; and Palmertree knew how to convey that the voice of the singer was intended as a target, rather than a subject. Bolcom, on the other hand, was more inclined to levity for its own sake; and Palmertree knew how to make the ongoing joke of “Amor” work without ever overplaying her hand. Humor with a bit of an edge was also evident in the opening selection, “Shy,” which was Carol Burnett’s first big solo number in the musical Once Upon a Mattress.

The earlier composers on the program were Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, and Kurt Weill. Carmichael’s “Skylark” provided an excellent platform for the more affectionate side of Palmertree’s delivery. Both Porter and Weill, on the other hand, followed up on the more edgy selections she had programmed. Her delivery of Weill’s “The Saga of Jenny” (from Lady in the Dark) was particularly effective, playing up the repetition of the punch line while putting a unique twist on each iteration.

Most affectionate was Palmertree’s delivery of two songs by Jake Heggie setting texts by Frederica von Stade, both about mother-child relations. These were relatively lightweight from a musical point of view, but Palmertree used the narrative behind each song as an opportunity to work her acting chops to the max. (She also confessed to the audience that she had similar experiences as the mother of her own child.)

Taken as a whole, the entire program could not have gone down better. A full house in the “salon” room of the Hotel Rex listened to each number with rapt attention; and Palmertree had the chemistry to hold that attention for the entire recital. Naturally, that meant that an encore was in order. Her selection was Jeanine Tesori’s “The Girl in 14G.” Written for Kristin Chenoweth, this is a no-holds-barred satire of those who aspire to sing professionally; and Palmertree pulled off the gags with just the right self-effacing stance.

Adam Shulman Launches SFP’s 2017–18 Salon Season

courtesy of San Francisco Performances

According to my archives, last night was my third encounter with jazz pianist Adam Shulman (pictured above) at the Hotel Rex presenting a one-hour Salon series recital for San Francisco Performances (SFP). At my first encounter, which was in April of 2014, he led a trio with John Wiitala on bass and Smith Dobson on drums to wind up that season’s Salon programming. The following November Shulman returned to accompany trumpeter Sean Jones, who was giving his first performance in his new capacity as jazz Artist-in-Residence.

Last night Shulman returned to the Rex for another trio gig. Wiitala was again on bass, but this time the third member was Lyle Link playing alto saxophone and taking one tune on soprano saxophone. The program sheet described the event as “an evening of the Great American Songbook.” However, allowing for all of the impressive and extensive improvisation work, an hour was barely enough time for only six numbers; and half of them were by Shulman himself.

This was far from a problem. Shulman is as imaginative in coming up with tunes as he is in improvising on them, and the other trio members had no trouble working with his material. He also disclosed what I found to be a throughly engaging approach to invention.

Reader’s may recall my having written about Frank Tirro’s “silent theme” thesis, according to which many bebop “originals” were products of elaborate embellishments of older favorite tunes. (The best-known example is probably Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology,” whose “silent tune” is “How High the Moon.”) Listening to Shulman’s own pieces, it struck me that he, too, was drawing on older favorites. However, rather than “disguising” them with thick embellishment, he would simply pick up the incipit, tweak the tempo, and then point it in an entirely new direction. Thus, when listening to Link play the first statement of the tune for Shulman’s “Full Tilt,” one could almost think that he had started to play John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and then decided to play something else. The wide descending intervals were still there, but they bounced around to a more eccentric beat and almost immediately staked out new territory.

Another possible source was even more surprising. Shulman wrote “Katy” for his girlfriend (or so he said). This left me wondering if she was a dancer, because, in this case, the incipit seemed to come from the “Flowers” waltz music that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed for the second act of the ballet The Nutcracker. Needless to say, any resemblance to Tchaikovsky was held off at football-field length; but the incipit spoke for itself as Shulman guided it off into another field.

Link took out his soprano saxophone for “The Peacocks,” a piece by Jimmy Rowles that was first recorded by Stan Getz on an album of the same name. Link clearly had his own approach to conveying bird-like connotations, although those who really know their Maurice Ravel scores will probably always find it hard to shake the haunting quality of the bird’s call that must be summoned up by a soprano vocalist. Rowles took the “middle ground” of the three “songbook” composers, much younger than Cole Porter and slightly older than George Shearing. Shulman opened with a Porter rarity, “Dream Dancing;” and it is always fun to encounter an unfamiliar piece by a familiar composer.

At the other end the program concluded with Shearing’s “Conception.” This was also the title of the Prestige album that Miles Davis released after having recorded Birth of the Cool. Shearing’s piece was one of the tracks. Shulman’s decision to close with it reminded jazz lovers of just how broad Shearing had been in the music he created and how amenable his tunes have been to adventurous interpretations by others.

90 Minutes of Paula West at Yerba Buena Gardens

This afternoon the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival presented a 90-minute concert by Paula West, in the course of which she sang fifteen songs all compacted into a single set:

Paula West, courtesy of the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival

Her rhythm section was a trio led by Adam Shulman, which presented one instrumental selection before West took the stage. The other rhythm players were Owen Benjamin on bass and Greg Wiser-Pratt on drums, both of whom had opportunities for solo takes during several of West’s songs.

West’s repertoire is eclectically extensive, which could not have provided better refuge on such a politically-charged day. Early in the set West dropped the line, “No fascists here.” However, she kept her selections relatively apolitical until the end of the set, after which, as an encore, she sang the traditional song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” which became a major civil rights anthem among the followers of Martin Luther King.

Nevertheless, time has ways of playing tricks on us. Through a shift in context, a song that was once sentimental can acquire sharper edges. West chose to acknowledge the death of Glen Campbell at the beginning of this month by singing one of his best-know hits, “Wichita Lineman.” The trouble is that, when we listen to Jimmy Webb’s lyrics, they no longer seem quite as poignantly sentimental as Webb probably intended them to be. Rather, it is almost impossible to listen to those works without thinking of the National Security Agency (NSA); and the song could almost be adopted as NSA’s “corporate anthem.” Hence that judicious used of the adverb “relatively” in the last paragraph! Mind you, I doubt that West intended to stress the fascist connotation this song has now assumed; but today’s world is definitely not the one in which Webb and Campbell lived.

Fortunately, West’s repertoire had relatively little to do with such dark sides. Personally, I was particularly glad to see her include Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “The Waters of March” (for which Jobim wrote the English lyrics, as well as those in Portuguese). Also, readers may recall that last week I concluded my account of the Jazz Herstory Collective at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival by citing my “ongoing quest for singers who can do justice to the legacy of Bessie Smith.” West turned out to be such a singer with an account of Wesley Wilson’s “Gimme A Pigfoot” that could not have been truer to Bessie’s memory. For that matter, the legacy of Bob Dylan fared just as well with her interpretation of “Like a Rolling Stone.”

The one weakness that emerged from time to time had to do with West’s sense of pitch. This was probably just a matter of the physical conditions that confronted her, whereby those on the audience side of the loudspeakers could hear the instrumentalists better than she did. For the most part West held her own about as well as could be expected; but her account of Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris” ran the risk of straying into the territory of the stylizations of Darlene Edwards.

Last-Minute Announcement: Candlelight Concerts Presents One Great City Duo

I just realized this morning that I have not yet written about the One Great City Duo on this site, even though I had tried to follow them closely back when I was writing for Examiner.com. The group consists of guitarists Timothy Sherren and Alexandra Iranfar, who first met when they were students at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore but only began to play as a duo when they were in the Master of Music program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). However, they are not just a pair of guitarists, because Iranfar is also a soprano. who continued her vocal studies at SFCM.

Tomorrow evening One Great City Duo will be the featured performers at The Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin as part of the 2016–2017 Candlelight Concert Series. This series, which was established in 1978, is now being run by its Interim Director of Music, Eric Choate, another SFCM graduate, this time in Composition. The program that the One Great City Duo has prepared will feature a work composed for them by their former SFCM teach Sérgio Assad.

The program will also include original guitar duo music by Celso Machado, whose compositions were included on the pair’s debut album Excursions. That album also demonstrates Iranfar’s talent as a song stylist with a selection of three songs by Cole Porter, and the Porter canon will also figure in the duo’s Candlelight Concert program. They will also perform music by former SFCM guitar teacher Dušan Bogdanović and Chick Corea. The group now plays on a matching pair of Glenn Canin guitars.

The Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin is located in Cow Hollow at 2325 Union Street at the corner of Steiner Street. All concerts in the series are early evening events, beginning at 6 p.m. The One Great City Duo recital will take place tomorrow, Saturday, April 1. Admission will be free, and no reservations will be required.

A New Voice in San Francisco

I spent the better part of the day at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, since a Graduate Piano Recital at 11 AM was followed by a San Francisco Performances event for which I had purchased tickets at the beginning of the season. This latter performance was the final event in their "Young Masters Series," consisting of the San Francisco debut recital of mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard. Ms. Leonard certainly deserves to be called a "young master," since she has already made her Metropolitan Opera debut (as Stéphano in Charles Gounod's Roméo et Juliette) and has sung Zerlina in the Chicago Opera Theater production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni and will sing Cherubino this summer in the new Santa Fe Opera production of Le Nozze di Figaro. Nevertheless, the circumstances of her schedule make her new to San Francisco.

Her selection for a program was particularly interesting. For one thing all the selections fit within the span of a single century, although that century happened to begin in 1890. For another it was refreshingly polyglot, with songs in Spanish (Joaquin Nin and Manuel de Falla), German (Hugo Wolf and Arnold Schoenberg), French (Reynaldo Hahn), Russian (Serge Rachmaninoff), and English (Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Meredith Wilson, and Richard Rodgers). I tend to be skeptical about opera singers venturing into both cabaret songs and show tunes. However, Leonard did both (Schoenberg providing the cabaret repertoire) and pulled it off more than effectively, first by recognizing that these songs were not the same as the other "art songs" on the program and second by endowing her performance with a level of theatrical smarts that was neither too much nor too little.

Since some of that skepticism came from my recently recorded impressions of Heidi Melton's Schwabacher Debut Recital last month, I should also observe that Leonard did not have that problem of scale that had frustrated me at the Melton recital. The Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music is on a scale comparable to the Temple Emanu-El auditorium (the site of Melton's recital); but Leonard had a good sense for how to project into this space without overwhelming it with an intensity intended for a full-sized opera house. Indeed, she was so good at maintaining a proper level of energy that she had enough strength at the end of the recital to give three encores, two of which featured music that she had prepared for Roméo et Juliette and Don Giovanni. Those theatrical smarts also cultivated a well-understood sense of the diversity of the program she had prepared, which made for a much broader sense of variety than I had experienced at the Melton recital.

When programs are so diverse, I tend to dwell, as I did in writing about Melton, on those selections that are personal "old favorites" (usually associated with memories of first hearing them at recitals during my concert-going days in Manhattan). The "old favorites" that Leonard offered to me were six selections from Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch (which I had the joy of hearing performed in its entirety at one 92nd Street Y recital) and Falla's Siete canciones populares españolas (for which, at the latest count, I have two recordings). Leonard had an excellent feel for the Falla songs, which are definitely "art songs" rather than "popular songs," that feel being one of an almost impetuous spontaneity. There was less of that variety in the Wolf selection, but she still endowed each song with a distinctive personality. These "old favorites" helped whet my appetite for the works that were unfamiliar to me and left me hoping that Leonard will be returning to San Francisco for further performances in recital, with the San Francisco Opera, or with the San Francisco Symphony.