Chanticleer to Bring Xmas to St. Ignatius Church

Banner for the Web page with the details of Chanticleer’s annual tour for the holiday season

As always, this is the month when Chanticleer celebrates the holiday season with its A Chanticleer Christmas program. This year the tour will begin in New York, but all the other venues will be in California. Petaluma, Santa Clara, and Carmel will all enjoy two performances on the same day, while all the other venues, including San Francisco, will be limited to a single performance.

As the event page states, the program will present “beautifully sung music of all centuries, from classical to carols.” To be a bit more specific, the earliest works will be Guillaume Du Fay and Tomás Luis de Victoria; and, as usual, the overall journey will include “spirited carols and uplifting spirituals.” These will include arrangements by Chanticleer members Adam Brett Ward, Jared Graveley, and Tim Keeler; and, as always, the spirituals will be taken from Joseph Jennings’ raucous arrangements.

The San Francisco performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Sunday, December 22, and run for about two hours without interruption.  As in the past, the venue will be Saint Ignatius Church, located on the campus of the University of San Francisco at 650 Parker Avenue on the northeast corner of Fulton Street. Ticket prices will be $76 for Preferred seating, $63 for Reserved seating in the Balcony, and $45 for general admission seating in the side sections of the sanctuary. All tickets are being sold online by City Box Office. Tickets can also be purchased by calling City Box Office at 415-392-4400.

California Bach Society: The Holiday Program

“The Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi,” painted by Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco, probably between 1325 and 1330

A little over a week ago the California Bach Society announced the plans for its holiday concert. Derek Tam will serve as guest conductor for this performance. The program will be framed by two settings of the “Ave Maria” prayer. It will begin with a monodic medieval chant setting and conclude with a much richer arrangement by twentieth-century composer Franz Biebl. These “extremes” will be bridged by a chronological unfolding of composers: Michael Praetorius, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Heinrich Schütz, Benjamin Britten, and Francis Poulenc. A Web page has been created with notes for the entire program.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 13. The venue will be the St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, which is located near Potrero Hill at 500 De Haro Street. Individual tickets are available for general admission at $40 with discounted rates for seniors and students. A Web page has been created for such tickets, as well as for three-concert subscriptions, which will also include From Tallis to Tavener and Brilliant Bach.  Doors will open at 7 p.m.

SFRV’s “Choral Renaissance” Continues

Last night at the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro, San Francisco Renaissance Voices (SFRV) presented a “second installment” of a program performed almost exactly a year ago at the same venue. At that time A Choral Renaissance was presented to highlight many of the significant performances that were given during the first sixteen years of this a cappella ensemble. Last night SFRV presented A Choral Renaissance II, once again reviewing highlights in the overall repertoire.

According to my records, I have not attended an SFRV performance since before the pandemic, more specifically in August of 2019. Much happened since then, including the tragic loss of the ensemble’s former Executive Director J. Jeff Badger. Nevertheless, I did my best to keep readers apprised of the SFRV schedule; and last night my wife and I were able to “get back on the track,” returning to Most Holy Redeemer.

Last night’s program was given the subtitle Passion, perhaps as an acknowledgement that Ash Wednesday will be celebrated three days from today. However, music appropriate for the Lenten season was performed only at the beginning and the conclusion of last night’s program. The evening began with Josquin des Prez’ setting of the “Stabat Mater” hymn and concluded with the “Libera me” portion from the six-voice setting of the Missa pro defunctis by Tomás Luis de Victoria. In other words the entire evening was framed by composers from earlier and later periods in the history of Renaissance music.

The other extended selections were the six-voice Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and the “Miserere” setting of Psalm 51 by Gregorio Allegri, which is probably best known for the (not necessarily true) story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart writing out the entire score from memory. Allegri composed the work for two choirs and was performed last night by four soloists in a balcony to the rear of the audience with the remainder of the ensemble in front of the audience accounting for the “primary” choir. There were also performances of three shorter sacred texts by William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and Thomas Tomkins.

Finally, the Victoria setting was preceded by three selections from Claudio Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals. Two of the texts were by Giovanni Battista Guarini, “O primavera, gioventù de l’anno” and “Occhi, un tempo mia vita.” The set concluded with the first madrigal in the book, “La giovinetta pianta.” I am so used to listening to this music in one-voice-to-a-part settings that I found myself disappointed with the thicker textures of last night’s choral performances. However, that was the only down-side of an otherwise highly stimulating survey of sacred music from the Renaissance period of history.

This Year’s Chanticleer Christmas Program

This year marked the first time I experienced A Chanticleer Christmas, the traditional seasonal program that Chanticleer performs across northern California with visits to (in order of performance) Oakland, Petaluma, San Francisco, Sacramento, Carmel, Santa Clara, and Berkeley. This all-male ensemble of countertenors, tenors, baritones, and basses, led by Music Director Tim Keeler, takes an inventive approach to seasonal programming. The most traditional offerings are given innovative arrangements, which are consistently engaging. This year the more familiar of those offerings were supplemented with two arrangements of traditional Catalan music, one prepared by Keeler and the other by Enrique Ribó.

Those inclined to “concert” offerings will probably be struck by the “bimodal distribution” of historical periods. Most of the works performed prior to the intermission date from the sixteenth century, intermingling Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria with less familiar names such as Bartomeu Càrceres and Mateo Flecha, whose four-voice villancico “Ríu Ríu Chíu” is much better known than his name. Following the intermission, the program leapt into the twentieth century with Arvo Pärt’s “Bogoróditse Djévo” (rejoice, Virgin) and Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria,” which sets not only the text of that prayer but also passages from the Angelus devotion.

There also was a significant element of “choreography,” particularly at the very beginning of the program. The opening selections were realized through a series of “stations,” beginning at the rear of the sanctuary in darkness, followed by a candlelight procession leading to the altar. While this made for a moving theatrical experience, it deprived the listener of consulting the program book to identify the first six selections! Nevertheless, this “theatrical” approach may well have been based on traditional liturgical practices in the sixteenth century; so there really was no need to quibble about listening to the music while putting off an opportunity to read the text until later!

At a time when the commercialization of Christmas is rearing its head again in a post-pandemic world, an evening of music with no market-based agenda was just what any attentively serious listener needed.

2022: Chanticleer’s Two Christmas Performances

The members of Chanticleer preparing for their annual Christmas program (from the Web page for A Chanticleer Christmas)

For much longer than I have been writing about them, the Chanticleer vocalists have been giving two performances in San Francisco of their traditional seasonal program entitled A Chanticleer Christmas. This program will be performed throughout many different venues in California between December 11 and December 23. San Francisco is one of two cities that enjoys the luxury of choosing between two dates. (The other is Carmel.)

This year’s program will be full of new arrangements of well-known tunes. However, it will begin in candlelight with selections by two leading Renaissance composers, Tomás Luis de Victoria and Orlande de Lassus. By the time the program has concluded, listeners will have journeyed through time all the way up to a new arrangement of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” provided by GRAMMY-nominated jazz arranger Amanda Taylor. The evening will be brought to a raucous conclusion with a set of spirituals arranged by former Music Director Joseph Jennings.

The two performances of this program will both take place at 8 p.m. The dates will be Saturday, December 17, and Sunday, December 18. As in the past, the venue will be Saint Ignatius Church, located on the campus of the University of San Francisco at 650 Parker Avenue on the northeast corner of Fulton Street. Ticket prices will be $80 for Premiere seating, $68 for Preferred seating, $54 for Reserved seating in the Balcony, and $36 for general admission seating in the side sections of the sanctuary. All tickets are being sold online by City Box Office with separate event pages for Saturday and Sunday. Tickets can also be purchased by calling City Box Office at 415-392-4400.

Clerestory to Cancel January Performances

courtesy of Clerestory

Readers may recall that, just before this past Thanksgiving, Clerestory, the professional all-male vocal ensemble, announced that it would return to live, in-person concerts later this month. Sadly, this morning Clerestory announced, with regret, that both of the January concerts (January 15 being the date of the San Francisco performance) would be postponed due to the current surge in coronavirus cases. As of this writing, new concert dates have not yet been finalized. Those holding tickets will be receiving refunds from Eventbrite. By way of compensation, the vocalists have created a YouTube video, recorded at the Noe Valley Ministry last month, of a performance of the “O magnum mysterium” motet composed by Tomás Luis de Victoria.

Two SF Venues for Chanticleer’s Xmas Music

The members of Chanticleer (photograph by Lisa Kohler)

Next month Chanticleer will present is annual holiday concert, A Chanticleer Christmas, at eight different venues throughout the Bay Area. While this will involve only two performances in San Francisco, our city will also host a special preview event, entitled A Very Special Chanticleer Christmas, before the full run of eleven performances gets under way. As usual, the full program will provide reflections on the Nativity through music composed as early as the thirteenth century and as recently as the present day. Indeed, Peter Bloesch’s “Behold, a Simple, Tender Babe” will be receiving its first round of premiere performances over the course of the tour.

The earliest composed music will be the plainchant with which the program will begin. The earliest composed music will be represented by the “big three” composers from the end of the sixteenth century, Orlande de Lassus, his successor at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Tomás Luis de Victoria in Spain. The transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque will be represented by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck; and, at the other end of the timeline will be one of the four Christmas motets composed by Francis Poulenc, “Quem vidistis, pastores dicite.” The program will also include arrangements of traditional English and Spanish carols.

The preview performance, A Very Special Chanticleer Christmas, will be presented as part of the Salon Series at Trinity+St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, located at 1620 Gough Street on the northeast corner of Bush Street. The performance will last for only an hour and will take place on Monday, December 10, beginning at 7 p.m. There will also be a post-concert reception. All tickets are being sold for $100 and may be purchased through the Salon Series Order Form on the Chanticleer Web site.

The two San Francisco performances of A Chanticleer Christmas will take place at 8 p.m., the first on Saturday, December 15, and the second on Sunday, December 23. The venue for both performances will be Saint Ignatius Church, which is located on the campus of the University of San Francisco at 650 Parker Avenue on the northeast corner of Fulton Street. Ticket prices will be $75 for Premiere seating, $64 for Preferred seating, $51 for Reserved seating in the Balcony, and $35 for general admission seating in the side sections of the sanctuary. All tickets are being sold online by City Box Office with separate event pages for December 15 and December 23.

Last-Minute Announcement from Church of the Advent

Fra Angelico’s 1434 painting of the Annunciation (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

This evening the Church of the Advent of Christ the King will celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation with a Procession and High Mass. This is a last-minute announcement. However, because the music prepared by Director of Music Paul Ellison and performed by the church’s resident professional choir, Schola Adventus, always provides serious listening matter, I felt it necessary to put out this information while attentive listeners still have the opportunity to take advantage of it.

The Mass text will be sung in a four-part setting by Thomas Tallis. The Introit will be Francisco Guerrero’s setting of “Rorate caeli,” the Gradual will be Jacob Handl’s setting of the “Ave Maria” text, and the Anthem will be “Ne times, Maria” by Tomás Luis de Victoria. Schola Adventus will also sing the motet “I beheld her” by Healey Willan. Finally, the organ postlude for the service will be Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 733 fugue on the Magnificat chant.

This service will begin at 6:30 p.m. this evening, Monday, April 9. The Church of the Advent of Christ the King is located at 261 Fell Street, between Franklin Street and Gough Street. The entry is diagonally across the street from the SFJAZZ Center. There will, of course, be no admission fee for any church service; but those attending the service are kindly requested to leave something in the collection plate.

Music for All Saints and All Souls from Schola Adventus

 Fra Angelico's The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

November begins with two major Christian festivals celebrated on two consecutive days. In the Western calendar All Saints’ Day is celebrated on November 1, followed by the commemoration of the faithful departed on All Souls’ Day, November 2. Indeed, to be accurate about things, All Saints’ Day is preceded by a Vespers service at the end of the preceding day, October 31. That is known as the All Hallows’ Eve service, whose name would subsequently be shortened to Halloween. Thus, the services taking place on the three days from October 31 to November 2 are known collectively as Allhallowtide, during which prayers are said for the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and those aforementioned faithful departed.

The Church of the Advent of Christ the King will celebrate High Mass on both All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. As is always the case on such major occasions, resident choir Schola Adventus, under the leadership of Music Director Paul Ellison, will provide the music for both of these services. The Mass setting for All Saints’ Day will be Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Missa O quam gloriosum, and on All Souls’ Day Schola Adventus will sing Juan Vásquez’ setting of the Requiem text.

The All Souls’ Day service will also included the chanting of the Dies irae (day of wrath) sequence, along with additional Gregorian chant interpolations. On All Saints’ Day Schola Adventus will sing the Gregorian chant for the propers of the day. They will also sing an introit (“Rejoice we all” by Healy Willan), a gradual (“Holy is the true light” by William Henry Harris), and an anthem (“Give us the wings of faith” by Ernest Bullock). Finally, there will be a performance of Victoria’s “O quam gloriosum” motet, the thematic source for the Mass setting that will be sung on All Saints’ Day.

The High Mass for All Saints’ Day will be celebrated by Father John Porter, and the Requiem Mass for All Souls’ Day will be celebrated by Father Rod Thompson. Father Paul Allick will assist as Preacher for both services. The Church of the Advent of Christ the King is located at 261 Fell Street, between Franklin Street and Gough Street. The entry is diagonally across the street from the SFJAZZ Center. This is an inclusive parish of the Episcopal Church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Those wishing further information may call 415-431-0454. Those driving will be able to use the parking lot adjacent to the church whose entrance is on Hickory Street.

“Makers” After the Emergence of “Composers”

Exactly a week ago, I wrote an article on this site in which I cited the research results that Rob C. Wegman published in 1996 in an article in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. The full title of the article was “From Maker to Composer: Improvisation and Musical Authorship in the Low Countries, 1450–1500.” Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s observation that “author” is the root of the noun “authority,” I interpreted Wegman’s article as a study of a “shift in authority,” arising from the impact of the publication of music, a practice that began to take root when Ottaviano Petrucci printed his first volume of the masses of Josquin des Prez in 1502. Prior to Petrucci, performers, by virtue of not only their skills of execution but also their capacity for memory, were the only “authority figures” in the practice of music. Thanks to Petrucci, composers could take on that “mantle of authority” and could maintain it after they had died. (Considering the attention that Josquin still receives, one can even say with confidence, “long after they had died!”)

This past Friday ECM New Series released a new album by vocalist John Potter entitled Secret History. Prior to his retirement, Potter was the Director of a postgraduate program in Vocal Studies in the Music Department at the University of York; and he has remained at that university as a reader emeritus. He is no stranger to the ECM label, having sung with the Hilliard Ensemble on many ECM New Series albums, including their highly imaginative Officium release with improvisations by saxophonist Jan Garbarek. He has also made ECM New Series recordings with The Dowland Project.

The title of his latest release reflects some of that playfulness encountered when Foucault wrote his “What Is an Author?” essay. The essay that Potter provided for the booklet that accompanies his new album begins with the assertion, “Music history is traditionally written in terms of composers and the first appearance of their significant works,” where “first appearance” tends to be tightly (but not exclusively) coupled to “publication.” However, when viewed from the practices of the “makers,” particularly in that early sense of the performers, one encounters a “secret life” beyond that authority of authorship.

This new album investigates one dimension of that secret life developed by the performers of plucked-string instruments, such as the vihuela and the lute. The documents used by these makers, once publication became a fixture in the world of making music, were inevitably in tablature, rather than using any system of notes on a staff that would have been found in that first published volume of Josquin’s masses. Tablature notation represented which fingers pressed down on which strings at what position along the next, and it was usually familiar only to those who played plucked-string instruments. An example is provided in the booklet, although it does not appear to be one of any of the selections on the recording:

It is only when the reader reaches the end of Potter’s essay that one discovers that the selections on this album come from intabulations collected by the English antiquarian Edward Paston, who lived from 1550 to 1630. These consist primarily, if not exclusively, of transcriptions into tablature of music previously published in staff notation, including several of Josquin’s motets and a complete setting of the Mass by Tomás Luis de Victoria. One might call this music one of the earliest examples of “inauthentic arrangement;” but “secret history” gives the practice a much more positive connotation!

The result makes for a fascinatingly intimate account of how music originally created for sacred purposes found its way into a secular setting. While this may be Potter’s album, the “motivating force,” so to speak, behind the performances can be found among the three vihuelistas contributing to the performance, Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman, both of whom contributed to Potter’s Amores Pasados ECM New Series album, and Lee Santana. The vocal performances are both solos and duos with Anna Maria Friman (also on the Amores Pasados album). Two of the Josquin settings also include a bass line performed on gamba by Hille Perl.

Another element of intimacy can be found in the introduction of five solo vihuela preludes that separate the movements of the Victoria Mass setting. Heringman is listed as the composer of these preludes. Each is extremely brief (less than a minute in duration); and it is not hard to imagine that all five of them arose out of some improvisatory “goofing off” (as Pete Seeger would have put it). The attentive listener is thus reminded that there is always a place for present-day practices that will not compromise music of the past and may actually honor it as much as the earlier “makers” did.

Music for Tomorrow’s Corpus Christi from Clare College

Where my personal work practices are concerned, the winding down of the 2016–2017 concert season marks a time when I can begin to devote more attention to recordings that have been sitting on my queue for some significant time past their respective release dates. This morning, however, I realized that one of those albums that had been waiting patiently could not have had better timing as a result of the delay. The album is the latest harmonia release of the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, led by its Director Graham Ross. The title of the recording is Pange lingua: Music for Corpus Christi; and, as a result of a recent decision made by Pope Francis, it turns out that the Feast of Corpus Christi will be celebrated tomorrow! (Do procrastinators have a patron saint?)

courtesy of PIAS

Since 2013, when the album Veni Emmanuel: Music for Advent was released, Ross has been planning a series of recordings, each of which involves a significant date and/or celebration in the liturgical calendar. Regular readers know that my own vantage point is a secular one, so the significance of occasion has not registered very deeply with me. Nevertheless, the project is an interesting one to the extent that Ross plans each album as a survey of a generously wide swath of music history.

As had been the case when Veni Emmanuel began this program, that swath begins with plainchant. The text is the Latin hymn written by Thomas Aquinas specifically for the Feast of Corpus Christi: “Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium” (tell, tongue, the mystery of the glorious Body). This is the chant that provided the cantus firmus for the Missa Pange lingua, which is generally taken to be the last Mass setting composed by Josquin des Prez. Indeed, the work was so late that it did not appear in Ottaviano Petrucci’s published collection of Josquin’s Mass settings, which appeared in 1514. Furthermore, while Josquin was a prolific composer of Mass settings (his Wikipedia page lists eighteen of them), only four of them were based on plainchant (Missa Pange lingua being the last of them).

The program for the album then continues with another Aquinas text. “Lauda Sion Salvatorem” (Sion, praise your Saviour) is a sequence also written for the Feast of Corpus Christi. Furthermore, both this sequence and the “Pange lingua” hymn were written (probably around 1264) at the request of Pope Urban IV for the same service. However, the musical setting was probably written about half a century later than Josquin’s Mass setting by Tomás Luis de Victoria.

Indeed, the texts of Aquinas provide the “spinal cord” for most of the selections on this album, extending all the way from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century of Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Villette, both of whom composed settings of “O Sacrum Convivium” (O sacred banquet), an antiphon that is attributed “with some probability” (as its Wikipedia page puts it) to Aquinas. The album then concludes with Gerald Finzi’s anthem “Lo, the full, final sacrifice,” whose text is based on two poems by the seventeenth-century poet Richard Crashaw, one of which is based on Aquinas’ “Lauda Sion Salvatorem” text. The scope of the entire album actually extends into the 21st-century with the world premiere of Ross’ own setting of the Corpus Christi hymn “Ave verum corpus” (hail, true body).

The result is an album that is decidedly impressive in its historical scope and in the scholarship behind the establishing of that scope. Nevertheless, I have one quibble with how this recording was produced. The recordings were made in two different cathedral settings in England, Norwich Cathedral in Norfolk and the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire. While I have no problem with the underlying technical discipline, whether it involves the balance of the resources or the actual audio capture, I have to say that, as a serious listener with a strong interest in the pre-Baroque repertoire, I find the sonorities to be a bit too rich.

Ross clearly has a keen ear for the underlying harmonies; but, for just about every selection on this album, the virtues of the music reside in the voice leading. For better or worse, I have developed a preference for such music performed by radically reduced resources, often with little more (if any) than one-to-a-part singing. It is only by thinning out the overall texture that the attentive listener can effectively tune in to the individual parts, both as melodic lines and for the harmonies they form with the other parts. This is, admittedly, a highly personal opinion; but I am far from the only one to espouse it. It thus seems fair to alert like-minded readers to this weakness in the overall impression made by the album. Those who are not so minded are free to disregard this paragraph!

Finally, it is important to observe that the above hyperlink to this album is for the Audio CD page on Amazon.com. Those interested in the options for Streaming and MP3 download will discover the availability of a “Bonus Track.” This is a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 618 setting of the “Ave verum corpus” text with organist Michael Papadopoulos providing the accompaniment. This track may be accessed separately by those who prefer having a physical copy of this album.

Music Selections for Holy Week at Church of the Advent

Today is Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday next week. At the Church of the Advent of Christ the King, Schola Adventus, under the leadership of Director Paul Ellison, has prepared an extensive repertoire of music for both the solemn and celebratory aspects of the occasion. Here is a summary of the musical offerings that will be encountered between this morning and the celebration of Easter Sunday:

Sunday, April 9, 11 a.m.: The Palm Sunday service will include the plainsong incantation of the Passion text from the Gospel According to Matthew; choral selections will be by Thomas Weelkes, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Orlande de Lassus.

Wednesday, April 12, 6:30 p.m.: There will be a Choral Tenebrae service held for Holy Wednesday, which will include motets by Manuel Cardoso and Tomás Luis de Victoria.

Thursday, April 13, 6:30 p.m.: There will be a High Mass and Procession for the Stripping of the Alter on Maundy Thursday; there will also be a performance of William Byrd’s setting of the “Ave Verum Corpus,” as well as motets by both Byrd and Maurice Duruflé.

Friday, April 14, 6:30 p.m.: The Good Friday service will include the plainsong incantation of the Passion text from the Gospel According to John. The Mass of the Presanctified will also be celebrated. Once again, there will be motets by Victoria and Lassus, as well as music by Carlo Gesualdo and John IV of Portugal.

Saturday, April 15, 10:30 p.m.: The night of Holy Saturday will be celebrated with the Great Vigil, leading up to the First Mass of Easter; music will be by Palestrina, Heinrich Isaac, Felice Anerio, and Jean Langlais.

Sunday, April 16, 11 a.m.: Music for the High Mass of Easter Sunday will include the selections by Isaac, Anerio, and Langlais performed for the First Mass of Easter; there will also be another Victoria motet and Charles Wood’s arrangement of the Dutch hymn “This joyful Eastertide.”

The Church of the Advent of Christ the King is located at 261 Fell Street, between Franklin Street and Gough Street. The entry is diagonally across the street from the SFJAZZ Center. This is an inclusive parish of the Episcopal Church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Those wishing further information may call 415-431-0454. Those driving will be able to use the parking lot adjacent to the church whose entrance is on Hickory Street. A hosted reception will follow the First Mass of Easter.

The Last Sunday in March will Require Choices

The final weekend in March will not be quite as hectic as some of its predecessors. However, the last Sunday will require making some choices. Fortunately, the options tend to appeal to different tastes. Here are the specifics for Sunday, March 26:

3 p.m., Fort Mason: The title of this year’s fundraising Gala for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (SFCO) will be SFCO Goes to the Movies! The entertainment for the occasion involves silent movies screened at the Cowell Theater. The “feature film” will be Charlie Chaplin’s 1916 The Pawnshop, preceded by an early animated short. That short will be Walt Disney’s 1928 “Plane Crazy,” which was Mickey Mouse’s very first appearance. Donald Sosin has composed scores for both of these films, and his music will be performed live by SFCO. The screening will be preceded by a reception at which “bites and bubbly” will be served. There will also be a raffle. The screening will be followed by a three-course seated dinner at Greens Restaurant, followed by a live auction.

Fort Mason is located in the Marina District with an entrance at 2 Marina Boulevard. Movie tickets are on sale for $50, $20 of which is tax-deductible. There is also a youth rate for those aged twelve and under. Admission is only $35; and, again, $20 is tax-deductible. Tickets may be purchased online at the Registration Web page for the Gala. As of this writing, all Red Carpet Tickets for both the screening and the dinner have been sold. However, those interested in the dinner are invited to call 415-463-6718 for any last-minute availability.

3 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The Prague-based Pavel Haas Quartet will return to San Francisco, where their visits have been welcome for many years. The group consists of violinists Veronika Jarůšková and Marek Zwiebel, violist Pavel Nikl, and cellist Peter Jarůšek; and this season’s visit has been arranged by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). Over the course of its visits, the ensemble has offered a broad account of its diverse repertoire; but, unless I am mistaken, this will be their first San Francisco recital devoted entirely to Czech composers.

They will present these composers in reverse chronological order. They will begin with the third of the seven string quartets of Bohuslav Martinů, which he composed in Paris in 1929. This will be followed by what will probably be the most familiar work on the program, Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 96 (“American”) quartet in F major. This was written during the composer’s tenure as Director of the National Conservatory in New York City. However, he worked on it during the summer vacation he spent in 1893 with the Czech immigrant community living in Spillville, Iowa. The program will then conclude with Bedřich Smetana’s retrospective string quartet (his first) in E minor. He composed this piece in 1876 after having been consumed by total deafness; and the final movement is haunted (through harmonic bowing of a high E) by the attack of tinnitus that preceded the onset of that deafness.

The entrance to Herbst Theatre is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices are $55 (Orchestra and Boxes), $46 (Dress Circle), and $37 (Balcony). Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page, which includes a floor plan that shows the number of seats available in the different sections. In addition, it is still possible to save $4 on each ticket with the purchase of a mini-series of four or more concerts. The best way to do this will be to contact CMSF by phone at 415-392-4400.

4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: This will be the next San Francisco performance that Artistic Director Magen Solomon has prepared for San Francisco Choral Artists. The full title of the program is Witches, Saints, and Mothers: Music By and About Women. The program will feature settings of poems by H.D. (the pen name for Hilda Doolittle) by the winners of the New Voices Project competition, James May and Ben Zucker. There will also be premieres of new works by both Composer-in-Residence Elinor Armer and Composer-Not-in-Residence Paul Chihara. Other composers to be included will be Tina Harrington and Linda Mankin (both from the Bay Area), Leanne D. Veitch (New Zealand, born in Australia), Chen Yi (Missouri, born in China), Patricia Julien (Vermont), and Alice Parker (Massachusetts).

St. Mark’s is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the intersection with Franklin Street. Tickets will be sold at the door for $33 with a $29 charge for seniors and $15 for individuals under 30 with identification. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a Brown Paper Tickets event page. The reduced rates for advance purchase are, respectively, $28, $25, and $12.50.

[added 3/8, 7:50 a.m.:

4 p.m., St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church: Another choral offering, on a slightly smaller scale, will be taking place at exactly the same time. The next program that has been prepared by the eight male vocalists of Clerestory is entitled Gemini: Music for Double Choirs. This will be an extensive survey of music for pairs of four-voice choirs, all sung one-to-a-part to provide the clearest possible account of the intricate development of both counterpoint and harmony. The program will include a setting of the “Stabat Mater” hymn by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, as well as motets based on the Song of Songs by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Sebastián de Vivanco, and Francisco Guerrero. The major work from the twentieth century will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ G minor setting of the Mass text. Other composers on the program will be Benjamin Britten, Paul Crabtree, Herbert Howells, and James MacMillan.

St. Gregory's is located at 500 De Haro Street, at the foot of Potrero Hill. General admission will be $25 with a $15 rate for students. Tickets are available in advance online through an Eventbrite event page.]

5:30 p.m., Taube Atrium Theater: This day will also present the first of the four concerts being offered in the 34th season of the Schwabacher Debut Recitals. This series is presented jointly by the San Francisco Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program, both of which are committed to the cultivation of emerging talents. The season will begin with a program entitled Expressionism, Icons and the Exotic. Pianist Mark Morash, San Francisco Opera Center Director of Musical Studies, will accompany two Merola alumni from this past summer, mezzo Taylor Raven and bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum. The composers to be presented on this program will be (in order of performance) Antón García Abril, Xavier Montsalvatge, Claude Debussy, Jacques Ibert, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Alban Berg.

The Taube Atrium Theater is part of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, which is also located in the Veterans Building (on the fourth floor) at the corner of Van Ness Avenue and 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, because much of the seating is raked, it is possible to select the option of Wheelchair Accessible seats. In addition, subject to availability, student rush tickets will go on sale at 5 p.m. at the reduced rate of $15. There is a limit of two tickets per person, and valid identification must be shown.

The remaining three programs will also take place on Sundays at 5:30 p.m. at the same venue. Dates and artists are as follows:

• April 2: Baritone Sol Jin will give a solo recital accompanied by pianist Kirill Kuzmin.
• April 9: An American Pastiche, a compilation of songs by American composers, will be presented by mezzo Renée Rapier and bass Anthony Reed, accompanied by John Churchwell at the piano.
• April 30: Pianist Warren Jones will accompany 2017 Adler Fellows Amina Edris (soprano), Amitai Pati (tenor) and Andrew Manea (baritone).

Subscriptions for the entire four-recital series are available for $100. However, these are not available online. They may be purchased in person at the San Francisco Opera Box Office, located in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue, on the northwest corner of Grove Street. They may also be purchased by calling 415-864-3330.

[added 3/21, 9:30 a.m.

5:30 p.m., Concerts by the Square: The last of the four house concerts that Robert Howard has prepared for the 2016/17 season of a series he calls Concerts by the Square will take a decidedly innovative turn. He will team up with pipa virtuoso Shenshen Zhang for a program that will explore traditional Chines music, its 2000 year history, and recent Western collaborations. Composers on the program will include Bright Sheng and Zhou Long, both of whom now live in the United States.

Because seating is very limited, reservations must be made prior to the performance date. All reservations require a donation, which is tax-deductible as allowed by law. (Concerts by the Square is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.) A Reservation Web page has been created with a hyperlink for $60 donations. The venue is a Victorian flat near Alamo Square (hence the title of the series), which is 42 stairs above street level. Unfortunately, no elevator is available. Specific details regarding the address of the venue are provided once a reservation has been confirmed.]

Voices of Music will Bring its Holiday Concert to St. Mark’s Next Saturday

Once again Voices of Music will begin its season, the 2016–2017 concert series, this month with a holiday-themed program. The title will be Virtuoso Concertos; and the composers will be Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli, and Georg Philipp Telemann. Presumably, the Corelli contribution will be the so-called “Christmas” concerto, the eighth (in G minor) in his Opus 8 collection of concerti grossi, with solo parts for two violins. (This concerto was included on Voices of Music’s Concerto Barocco album, which is still available for download from Amazon.com.) Vivaldi will be given the most attention with his RV 531 concerto in  G minor for two cellos, the RV 565 concerto in D minor for two violins and cello from his Opus 3 collection L’estro Armonico (harmonic inspiration), and the RV 564 concerto in D major for two violins and two cellos. Telemann will be represented by a recorder concerto in F major. Additional festive music for the season will include selections by Michael Praetorius and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer.

Participating musicians will be Maria Caswell, Lisa Grodin, Carla Moore, Maxine Nemerovski, and Gabrielle Wunsch (violin and/or viola), Elisabeth Reed and Tanya Tomkins (cello), Farley Pearce (violone), David Tayler (archlute), and Hanneke van Proosdij (recorder and keyboards).

The San Francisco performance of this program will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 17. As in past seasons, the venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Single tickets are $40 for adults, $35 for seniors and members of SFEMS, EMA, or ARS, and $5 for students with valid identification. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an Arts People event page. In addition, because this is the first concert of the season, subscriptions are still on sale for the entire three-concert series. Prices are $100 for adults and $85 for seniors and members of the aforementioned early music organizations. Arts People has also created a shopping cart Web page for subscriptions.

Readers may also recall that this past October Voices of Music inaugurated a new project called The Voice of the Viol, specializing in solo and ensemble music for the viola da gamba. Because Voices of Music has distinguished itself by making performances available through its own YouTube channel, this project is now represented on that channel by a playlist of 41 videos from past performances entitled A celebration of viols. In addition, Adaiha MacAdam-Somer, Director of The Voice of the Viol, has begun to arrange new consort performances; and two new videos have been uploaded, taken from a recent recital at the historic Ansel Adams house here in San Francisco. MacAdam-Somer plays tenor viol on the recordings, joined by Joanna Blendulf on treble, and both Pearce and Reed on bass. Both recordings are of viols playing four-part vocal music, the motet “O magnum mysterium” set by Tomás Luis de Victoria and the hymn “Pange Lingua Gloriosi” set by Juan Bermudo.

Victoria's "O magnum mysterium" (from the Voices of Music YouTube channel)

Schola Adventus will Sing at Both Feast Services this Coming Week

This week there will be two Feast celebrations at the Church of the Advent of Christ the King, and Director of Music Paul Ellison has prepared the resident choir Schola Adventus to sing at both of them.

The Feast of All Saints will be celebrated on Tuesday, November 1. There will be an Evening Prayer at 6 p.m., followed by the High Mass at 6:30 p.m. Music for the Mass will be by Tomás Luis de Victoria, his O quam gloriosum setting, included in his second book of Mass settings published in 1583 and set for four voices. The choir will also sing “Give us the wings of faith,” which is probably the best-known anthem by the twentieth-century English composer Ernest Bullock. They will also sing William Harris’ “Holy is the true light.”

The next day, Wednesday, November 2, will be the celebration of the Feast of All Souls. This will again begin with an Evening Prayer at 6 p.m., followed by the High Mass at 6:30 p.m. The Mass will be the Mass for the Dead, and the musical setting will again be by Victoria. The choir will also sing the appropriate Gregorian Propers, including the “Dies Irae” hymn, which is probably the best-known plainchant.

The Church of the Advent of Christ the King is located at 261 Fell Street, between Franklin Street and Gough Street. The entry is diagonally across the street from the SFJAZZ Center. This is an inclusive parish of the Episcopal Church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Those wishing further information may call 415-431-0454.