Omni: An “On Location” Duo Performance

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

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

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

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

SFP 2027 PIVOT Festival

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFP 2026–2027 Guitar Series

As I had observed this past Friday, during the coming season San Francisco Performances (SFP) will not share recitals with the Dynamite Guitars series presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. That said, there will be more diversity of instrumentation in the coming SFP Guitar Series, beginning with the very first recital to be presented. One of the five recitals will be performed at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street); and the other performances will take place in Herbst Theatre (on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue). All of the events will begin at 7:30 p.m., four on Saturday evenings and the last one on a Wednesday evening. Specifics dates and venues are as follows:

Saturday, October 24, Herbst Theatre: Guitarist Berta Rojas will make her SFP debut. She will be joined by clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, with whom she has collaborated frequently. Program specifics have not yet been announced.

Saturday, November 7, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: This will be a solo performance by Djiboutian-French guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre. He is a previous winner of the Guitar Foundation of America Competition. He has prepared a program with a rich diversity of composers: Francisco Tárrega, Isaac Albéniz, Miguel Llobet, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Domenico Scarlatti, Agustín Barrios, Antonio Lauro, Leo Brouwer, Sergio Assad, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Astor Piazzolla, and Roland Dyens.

Saturday, November 14, Herbst Theatre: Guitarist Antigoni Goni is a former SFP Artist-in-Residence. She will return with two other guitarists, Luca Isolani and Maarten Vandenbemden. Together they form the Volterra Project Trio. Isolani will also contribute as composer of the final selections on the program. All of the preceding selections will be arrangements, beginning with the eight Valses Poéticos, composed for piano by Enrique Granados. This will be followed by arrangements of orchestral sources: music composed by Edvard Grieg for the play Peer Gynt, the “Danse Macabre” composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, and selections of music that Leonard Bernstein composed for West Side Story.

Saturday, January 23, Herbst Theatre: Ziggy and Miles are Australian brothers (and guitarists), whose program has not yet been finalized.

The Dreamers’ Circus trio of Nikolaj Busk, Ale Carr, and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen (from the SFP Web page for their coming performance)

Wednesday, April 7, Herbst Theatre: Dreamer’s Circus last visited Herbst at the beginning of March in 2023. The guitarist of the group is Ale Carr from Sweden, who specializes in Nordic folk music; but, when he is playing with his Dreamers’ Circus colleagues, he plays a Nordic cittern. He is joined by Dane Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, a classical violinist in the Danish String Quartet, who plays fiddle for the trio’s repertoire, and Danish jazz pianist Nikolaj Busk, who will probably put more time into playing the accordion. They plan to announce their selections from the stage (which is what they did when they last visited in March of 2023).

SFS: Final 2025–26 Chamber Music Program

Yesterday afternoon Davies Symphony Hall saw the final chamber music recital the concert season performed by members of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). As usual, the program was an engagingly diverse one with music from the current century in the first half and selections from the twentieth in the second. It may also be interesting to note that the first half concluded with the newest work on the program, and the program ended with the oldest.

Cover of the first edition of the opera score that may have influenced Fauré (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Indeed, that “final gesture” was the only selection that was familiar to me. That is because the EMI complete-works collection of the chamber music of  Gabriel Fauré has been in my collection for longer than I can remember! The music itself portended some finality of its own, since Fauré composed his Opus 120 piano trio in D minor in 1923, the year before the year of his death. That said, there is nothing moribund about the music itself, which was clearly evident in the performance given by Samantha Cho at the piano performing with violinist Florin Parvulescu and Amos Yang on cello. Indeed, Fauré began the final movement with a “punch line” quoting the “climax phrase” from “Vesti la giubba,” the aria from Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci.”

The other twentieth-century work on the program was composed over half a century later, Joan Tower’s “Petroushskates.” Ironically, this music had previously surfaced in the 53rd season of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, when it was performed on April 21, 2024. Sadly, I was unable to attend that program; so yesterday afternoon was my “first contact.” Most memorable was the cello pizzicato performance by Amos Yang accompanying the saucy clarinet work by Yuhsin Galaxy Su. (Those familiar with the music of Igor Stravinsky know that his music for the “Petrushka” ballet had some saucy clarinet work.)

The most recent work on the program was composed by Sarn Oliver, a member of the SFS First Violin section. The full title of his offering was “CAT (Contemporary Artful Sonorities) String Quartet.” This was a four-movement composition inspired by the cats in Oliver’s house. He led the quartet with violinist Mariko Smiley, Leonid Plashinov-Johnson on viola, and cellist Davis You. They were joined by soprano Jesslyn Thomas delivering the text from (in Oliver’s program note) “cat-themed poetry by Emily Dickinson, Edward Lear and T.S. Eliot.” Unfortunately, Thomas had serious diction problems, which pretty much undermined all of those sources. (I was able to make out “Macavity” from Eliot’s Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and the Lear phrase about “a ring at the end of his nose” from “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.”)

Clarity was much more solid in the opening selection. “Taheke” is the Māori word for “waterfall” and the title of a three-movement composition by Gareth Farr. Each movement depicts a different waterfall in New Zealand, the second being on the grounds of the composer’s home. The music is a duo for flute (Blair Francis Paponiu) and harp (Katherine Siochi); and the clarity of their interplay could not have been better. They provided the perfect overture for the high spirits of Oliver’s composition.

Let the summer season begin!

Plans for Other Minds Festival 30

The beginning of this month saw the release of the plans for the Other Minds Festival 30. It will again take place in October, somewhat earlier than last year. The venue will be the same, but the name has expanded to the Brava Theater for Women in the Arts. (It is still located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street. As was observed last year, the venue is a few blocks to the east of the Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery.) Concerts will again begin at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, Friday, October 9, and Saturday, October 10, with a Sunday performance at 4 p.m. on October 11. Panel discussions will precede each performance, beginning an hour before the concert. City Box Office has created a single Web page for purchasing tickets for each of the events, as well as a single Festival Pass for all performances. The works to be performed will be as follows:

• October 8: This will be an evening-length multimedia performance created by Joseph Bohigian entitled I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment. The title refers to the Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov. Vocalist Khatchadour Khatchadourian will also play duduk with electronic accompaniment by Ensemble Decipher.
• October 9: This will be a three-set performance. Sylvie Courvoisier will begin the program with a solo piano set influenced by both European chamber music and American avant-garde jazz. Vocalist Mahsa Vahdat will perform original settings of Persian poetry, accompanied on the setar by Atabak Elyasi. The program will conclude with Friction Quartet performing works by Juri Seo.

Photograph of King Britt by Colin Kerrigan

• October 10: The three sets will present two duos and one solo. Elizabeth Gaver will alternate between Hardanger fiddle and rebec to accompany vocalist Kristin Nordeval, who will augment her performance with live electronics. In the second duo drummer John Diaz will perform with  guitarist Zachary James Watkins, who augments his performances with electronics. The title of the final set is “Blacktronika,” performed on live electronics by King Britt.
• October 11: The Festival will conclude with a solo performance by pianist Charlemagne Palestine.

SFP 2026–2027 Chamber Music Series

Yesterday morning this site wrote about the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Great Artists & Ensembles series, whose first recital will begin the 2026–2027 season. A little less than a week later will see the first performance in the Chamber series. This will also consist of four programs, three of which will be performed by string quartets. The “outlier” for the season will be a piano trio. For this series, all of the events will, as usual, take place at 7:30 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.  Selections for all of the programs have have been finalized as follows:

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

Saturday, February 6: The Junction Trio will begin with a new work by Andrew Norman. There will be only two other works on the program from the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, respectively. The more recent offering will be Maurice Ravel’s only piano trio. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Robert Schumann’s first piano trio, his Opus 63 in D minor. The performers are violinist Stefan Jackiw, Jay Campbell on cello, and pianist Conrad Tao.

Isidore Quartet members Joshua McClendon, Devin Moore, Adrian Steele, and Phoenix Avalon (from their “Members” Web page)

Thursday, February 18: The Isidore Quartet will also perform a new  composition, this one the fourth quartet by Billy Childs. The violinists are Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon with Devin Moore on viola and cellist Joshua McClendon. The new quartet will be “framed” by two selections from the Classical period. The program will begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 575 quartet in D major. Mozart will be coupled with Ludwig van Beethoven at the conclusion of the program. The quartet will perform the second of his Opus 59 (Razumovsky) compositions in the key of E minor.

Thursday, April 8: The series will conclude with the return of the Jerusalem Quartet, which last visited SFP in November of 2024. The members of that quartet are still violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov; and the program will begin with a Haydn quartet. This will be the fifth of the Opus 76 quartets in the key of D major. This will be followed by Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 92, his second quartet. The second half of the program will be devoted to the first of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 51 quartets, composed in the key of C minor.

SFP 2026–2027 Great Artists & Ensembles

Having provided the “overview” for the San Francisco Performances (SFP) 2026–2027 season this past Sunday, current events are quiet enough that this site can begin to account for the individual series. In the coming season, the first performance will be in the Great Artists & Ensembles series. This will involve one solo violin recital, two duo programs for cello and piano, and the opening concert, which will be one of the events in the Gala Benefit that will begin the season. Not all program details have been finalized, but the current specifics are as follows:

Friday, October 2, 7 p.m.: Violinist Geneva Lewis will be accompanied at the piano by Joshua Mhoon. The program will be structured around three duo sonatas at the beginning, middle, and conclusion of the program. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will be the first composer on the program with a performance of his K. 379 duo sonata in G major. The program will conclude with Richard Strauss’ Opus 18, his only sonata for these two instruments, composed in the key of E-flat major. The “middle sonata” will be Mieczysław Weinberg’s Opus 53, his fifth sonata composed for these two instruments. This selection will be preceded by two pieces for violin and piano composed by Valentyn Silvestrov in 2010. The Strauss sonata will be preceded by Anton Webern’s Opus 7, four pieces for violin and piano, all usually shorter than 90 seconds in duration.

Jean-Guihen Queyras with his cello (photograph by Marco Borggreve, courtesy of SFP)

Thursday, October 29, 7:30 p.m.: Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras last visited SFP in February of 2020, performing in a trio with violinist Isabelle Faust and pianist Alexander Melnikov. For his return, he will be accompanied at the piano by Alexandre Tharaud. The program will focus on selected movements from longer compositions, including Franz Schubert’s D. 821 sonata for pianoforte and arpeggione, Benjamin Britten’s Opus 65 duo sonata in C major, and Claude Debussy’s D minor sonata. Queyras will also give a solo performance of the “Prélude” to a suite in D minor from the second book in the Pièces de viole collection by Marin Marais. The program will begin with Francis Poulenc’s Suite Française, followed immediately by Alban Berg’s Opus 5 collection of four pieces for clarinet and piano. The program will conclude with two “consecutive” compositions by Gabriel Fauré, his Opus 78 “Sicilienne” followed by the Opus 77 “Papillon” duo. These will then lead to three of the Hungarian Dance compositions by Johannes Brahms, the first in G minor, the seventh in A major, and the fifth in G minor.

Tuesday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.: Pianist Juho Pohjonen will accompany cellist Jonathan Swensen; the program has not been finalized beyond identifying composers Frédéric Chopin, Francis Poulenc, Arvo Pärt, Witold Lutosławski, more Fauré, and probably others.

Thursday, April 22, 7:30 p.m: The soloist will be Tessa Lark, performing a program entitled Stradgrass–Works for Solo Violin. The title refers to bring bluegrass together with the more “classical” repertoire. She will conclude the program with the bluegrass tune “Sally Goodin’,” which will be preceded by John Corigliano’s “STOMP.” The program will begin with a pairing of Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach. The former composed a set of twelve fantasias for solo violin, and Lark will play the fifth of them: TWV 40:105. The Bach selection will be the BWV 1002 partita in B minor, which is much more familiar. This will be followed by the fifth of the seven solo sonatas in Eugéne Ysaÿe’s Opus 27. The remaining work on the program will be Nathan Milstein’s “Paganiniana.”

Twentieth-Century Cello Sonatas from Paris

Basile Ausländer and Jansen Ryser on the cover of their debut album

This coming Friday will see the release of a somewhat delayed debut album of two laureates of the Crescendo Young Swiss Artists. The performers are cellist Basile Ausländer and Jansen Ryser at the piano keyboard. Their “program” presents three sonatas for cellos and piano by composers that were trained in Paris during the first half of the last century. The first of these is Romanian George Enescu. The other two were French, both members of “Les Six,” Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc.

There is often a tendency for every new century to regard its predecessor as a distant past. Nevertheless, all three of these composers seem to have dodged that dismissal to at least a moderate extent. Closest to home, so to speak, is Enescu, whose string octet in C major was performed by musicians of the San Francisco Symphony, whose Chamber Music recital took place this past February 1. Similarly, violinist Agustin Hadelich made his debut with San Francisco Performances (SFP) as a soloist in the Shenson Great Artists & Ensemble Series this past March with a program that included Poulenc’s only sonata for violin and piano. Finally, Honegger’s 1920 sonatina (which he dedicated to Darius Milhaud) was performed at Mills College in October of 2020.

I must confess that I have had a soft spot for Les Six for some time. On the other hand, Enescu was given utterly terrible treatment by my high school music teacher (who clearly knew little more than what had appeared in the textbook he used). As a result, it took me quite some time to get to know not only that composer’s spirit but also the Romanian context in which that spirit had been cultivated. Nevertheless, in the “immediate present,” I found the performances by Ausländer and Ryser to be as refreshing as they were to the many “marks on paper” that they confronted.

Those (like myself) that feel that the last century still deserves some respect are likely to find the “program” that these performers prepared an engaging encounter.

SFP Plans for 2026–2027 Season

Last year plans for the San Francisco Performances (SFP) 2025–2026 season were announced at the beginning of April. The timing was the same for the coming 47th season, but things have been busier than usual on the “Bleeding Edge.” Nevertheless, as in the past, this site will, prior to the beginning of the season, give a series-by-series account of the programs that have been planned.

This year’s Gala will be on October 2 and will be held in conjunction with the first Great Artists & Ensembles recital of the season, which will be performed by violinist Geneva Lewis, accompanied at the piano by Joshua Mhoon. The season will again conclude at the beginning of May with a recital by pianist Fazil Say, who will juxtapose his own compositions with two of Ludwig van Beethoven’s best-known piano sonatas, Opus 13 (“Pathétique”) and Opus 57 (“Appassionata”).

The new season will also mark the beginning of a new series with the first performance in the Beethoven Anniversary Series. Over the course of two seasons, the Esmé Quartet, the SFP Artists-in-Residence, will perform all of the string quartets composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. The first half of the survey will consist of three performance, all at 7:30 p.m., on March 26, April 23, and May 6 of next year. Dimitri Murrath has replaced violist Jiwon Kim. The other three members are still the same: Wonhee Bae (first violin), Yuna Ha (second violin), and Yeeun Heo (cello). The PIVOT Festival will again return at the end of January with performances on January 27, 28 and 29. As usual, the other series will be familiar to SFP audiences:

• Great Artists & Ensembles
• Chamber
• Art of Song
• Guitar
• The Shenson Piano Series

The members of the Paul Taylor Dance Company (from the SFP event page)

Finally, following the conclusion of the season, SFP will join forces with the Presidio Theatre to present four performances by the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The program will include Taylors “Junction,” “3 Epitaphs,” and “Esplanade,” as well as “Tensile Involvement,” created by Alwin Nikolais. Further information about the program, including other works, will be announced in the fall. There will be three performances at 7:30 p.m. on May 20, 21, and 22, as well as a Saturday Family Matinee performance at 2 p.m. on May 22. All ticketing will be handled by the Presidio Theatre. All of the other SFP performances will take place in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.

Noe Music 2026–2027

About a month ago, Noe Music announced the ten programs that will be performed in the Mainstage series. As is usually the case, these will all take place on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. There will also be a special preview event for Reverberations. Composer-performers Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan will collaborate with the chamber collective Decoda for a work-in-progress preview performance of this composition, which will be given its world premiere in Carnegie Hall next season. This preview will take place at the Hosfelt Gallery, rather than the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 260 Utah Street, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 10. All other performances will take place at the Noe Valley Ministry at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Summaries of the programs to be performed are as follows:

September 20: The Sekhri Piano Series will begin with the recital debut of local Gilmore Young Artist Janice Carissa. The major work she has prepared will be Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 84 (eighth) piano sonata in B-flat major. The program will begin with works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Philip Glass, and Frederick Rzewski.

October 4: Djékady is the duo of cellist Mike Block and Balla Kouyaté, who plays the Malian balafon, both veterans of the Silkroad Ensemble.

November 1: Co-Artistic Director Owen Dalby will present a world-class string quartet.

November 29: The second Sekhri pianist will be Jeremy Denk. He will conclude his program with the last two piano sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven: Opus 110 in A-flat major and Opus 111 in C minor. He will also play a recently rediscovered composition by Hélène de Montgeroult. along with études by Unsuk Chin and yet-to-be-announced music by Bach.

January 10: The Westerlies, a quartet of two trumpets and two trombones, will be joined by South African vocalist Vuyo Sotashe.

February 7: The piano trio Trio Gaia will make its San Francisco debut. They have prepared a program entitled Between Worlds, “asking what we carry when we leave home.” Details have not yet been finalized; but composers will include Antonín Dvořák and Igor Stravinsky.

February 28: Violinist Dalby will perform all three of the violin sonatas by Johannes Brahms, accompanied at the piano by Stephen Prutsman.

March 21: Karen Ouzounian and Lembit Beecher will perform Mayrig, a 60-minute performance for cello, electronics, piano, and voice.

Portrait photograph of Eric Satie by Henri Manuel (from Wikmedia Commons, public domain) 

May 2: The season will conclude with a the final Sekhri Piano Series recital. Steven Osborne has prepared a program entitled Reflections. The program will conclude with Beethoven’s Opus 120, “33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli.” The first half of the program will bring together selections by Robert Schumann, Erik Satie, and Maurice Ravel.

Left Coast Chamber Plans for 2026/27 Season

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) released the first round of information about its 34th season a few days ago. Four programs have been planned, all of which will take place at the usual venue of the Noe Valley Ministry. The Ministry is located in Noe Valley (of course) at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street. Program specifics are as follows:

Saturday, September 19, 7:30 p.m.: The title of this program will be Impossible Inventions, which will also be the title of the second work on the program. This was the winner of the 2025 Composition Contest, composed by Paul Novak. It will be preceded by Thea Musgrave’s “In the Still of the Night.” The second half of the program will be devoted to a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 12, his first string quartet, composed in the key of E-flat major. Other world premiere performances by emerging composers participating in the Pathways Program will be announced at  later date.

Saturday, November 21, 7:30 p.m.: Left Coast clarinetist Jerome Simas will be featured in the second half of the program with a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 581 clarinet quintet in A major. Simas will also perform in the first half of the program in a new work by his fellow clarinetist, Jonathan Russell. The program will begin with Thea Musgrave’s “Narcissus.”

“Wayfarers” in the banner for the Web page for the January concert

Monday, January 18, 4 p.m.: The first half of the program will be devoted to a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (songs of a wayfarer), a cycle of four songs with Mahler’s own texts. The second half of the program will present six new works, each by a different composer, collected under the title What is Home? The entire collection was co-commissioned by Collage New Music, Eighth Blackbird, LCCE, and the Korean Cultural Society of Boston.

Sunday, May 23, 4 p.m.: The title of the final program will be Ephemera: Rebecca Clarke and Friends. Clarke will be represented on the program by her piano trio. This will be preceded by “The Egrets have Landed,” composed by her “friend,” Thea Musgrave. The composers in the second half will both be “male friends,” Patrick Castillo (“Ephemera”) and Jeffrey Mumford (“Undiluted Days”).

As of this writing, tickets may only be purchased through a full subscription. The price is $155, but students will receive a $50 rate. That said, no more than twenty subscriptions may be purchased. A Web page has been created for online purchases.

Evening of Art Song Coming to the Sunset

Yesterday this site wrote about the duo of violinist Kenneth Renshaw and pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi returning to the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 19. On their last visit to the venue, they presented a program that brought Amy Beach together with Claude Debussy and  Sergei Prokofiev, beginning with a recent (2021) composition by Emma Greenhill. I have now received word from this venue that there will be an equally promising program that will take place next month.

Pianist Paul Dab (courtesy of the San Francisco Community Music Center)

The title of the program will be Art Song: Summer Evening, which basically describes the event. The vocalist will be tenor Corey Head, accompanied at the piano by Paul Dab. Flutist Jessica Miller will also contribute to the program. Content has not yet been finalized; but the announcement made note of “favorites” by Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Claude Debussy, and Henry Purcell, as well as others. The duration is expected to be about two hours.

This recital will take place on Saturday, July 11, beginning at 7:30 p.m. General admission will be $28.52 with a $23.18 rate for students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased online through Eventbrite.

Renshaw and Nakagoshi to Return to Sunset

Kenneth Renshaw and Keisuke Nakagoshi, who will give their next performance in a little over two weeks’ time (photograph from the recital’s event page)

Violinist Kenneth Renshaw and pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi gave their last duo recital at the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue, almost exactly two years ago. This month the concert series began this past Saturday with the duo presenting a program that brought Amy Beach together with Claude Debussy and  Sergei Prokofiev, beginning with a recent (2021) composition by Emma Greenhill. They will give a second recital at the same venue one week from Friday, June 19, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Whether or not they will play the same selections for this second round has not yet been announced. General admission will be $39.19 with a $33.85 rate for students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased online through Eventbrite.

New Performance Traditions in SF: June, 2026

Joel Davel and Paul Dresher in performance (from the Givebutter Web page for making donations)

Once again, I have not had an opportunity to write about New Performance Traditions (NPT) since I announced the two performances that were presented in May of last year. Readers probably know by now that this is because I only write about events taking place within the San Francisco city limits. The good news is that the next visit to the city will take place in a little less than two weeks’ time.

This will be a fundraising event to support the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency (DEAR). Every year the money raised goes to supporting six artists with studio space, profession production resources, mentorship, and a stipend of $1500 to support the production of a new work. The event will take place here in San Francisco at the Hosfelt Gallery, located at 260 Utah Street. It will begin at 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 18. Admission will begin with a suggested donation of $35 in the hope that there will be higher levels of contribution. Donations can also be given online through a Givebutter Web page created by NPT.

As many will expect, there will also be a performance. The Dresher Davel Invented Instrument Duo brings Joel Davel together with Paul Dresher, both of whom usually work with a diversity of invented instruments. Instruments such as the Quadrachord and the Hurdy Grande make for visual experiences as engaging as the sonorities one encounters during performance. This should provide a more than sufficient reason for supporting DEAR for the coming season!

Center for New Music: June, 2026

Once again, this will be a busy month at the Center for New Music (as it was last month). Yesterday’s Bleeding Edge article accounted for the first event of the month, the celebration of Pauline Oliveros’ birthday with a performance on Saturday, June 6 at 7 p.m. by the Cornelius Cardew Choir. Those that read the piece already know that the venue is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. As was the case last month, all of the other dates below will be hyperlinked to an event page through which tickets may be purchased as follows:

Friday, June 12, 8 p.m.: Kra Pao is a unique combination of Japanese and European instruments augmented by the unique sounds of a Buchla modular synthesizer. That instrument is played by Philip Gelb, who leads the ensemble and doubles on shakuhachi. The other performers are Thomas Dimuzio (also on Buchla), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe and cor anglais … more frequently called “English horn” on this side of the pond), Fred Lonberg Holm (cello), and Kanoko Nishi (koto). General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and students.

The latest bizarre poster design for pancakes at the Center for New Music (from the Web page for the event)

Saturday, June 13, noon: This will be the monthly G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S performance. As is usually the case, there will be five sets with at least some of the titles guaranteed to raise eyebrows:

1. EKG (Karel Šůcha and Kyle Bruckmann)
2. Thom Blum
3. Eric Glick Rieman
4. CUT
5. Aaron Oppenheim

Also as is usually the case, general admission will be $10 with a $6 rate for C4NM members and students.

Thursday, June 25, 7:30 p.m.: Unless I am mistaken, the last time I wrote about trans, gender non-binary, gender fluid, and gender queer musicians at C4NM was in August of 2019, when the Center launched the Compton’s Cafeteria Series with a program entitled Trans Audibility. On that occasion Amanda Chaudhary performed a set of live electronic improvisations. This time she will be one of the New Queer Sound performers of three solo sets, the other two being Bob Ostertag and Bill Hsu. General admission will again be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and students.

Saturday, June 27, 8 p.m.: Kevin Gan Yuen will open with his solo project “EERIÆRMOR,” which explores psychoacoustic impressions through immersive soundscapes built from granular synthesis, guitar, and field recordings. This will be coupled with electronic acoustic music performed by Iranian sound artist Kamran Shafii. The evening will conclude with a performance by Kole Galbraith, who will be visiting from Seattle. His work focuses on sound, audio-visual, and found-object installations. General admission will again be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and students.

Shenson Spotlight Disappoints Again

Violinist Njioma Grevious (photograph by Jiyang Chen, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Apparently, Nathan Amaral’s violin recital this past April was the only satisfying performance in the Shenson Spotlight Series this season, presented by the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall. Readers may recall that the significant adjective that I applied to the January and February performances was “dim.” Most of last night’s violin recital by Njioma Grevious settled back into that same spirit, but at least there was one moment when things picked up a bit. This was “Levee Dance,” the second in a set of short character pieces collected by Clarence Cameron White for his Opus 27. It would not surprise me to learn that she came to know this music through the recording Jascha Heifetz made for RCA Victor, since that is the only source I know for the composition!

The program was structured around three “classical pillars.” It began with the Grave movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1003 sonata for unaccompanied violin in A minor and concluded with Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 94a violin sonata in D major, originally composed for flute. The “middle pillar” was Johannes Brahms, with the Scherzo movement he contributed to the “F-A-E Sonata.” Sadly, none of these made a lasting impression, as was the case with the most recent work on the program, “Within the drifting contours of the land…,” composed by Electra Perivolaris explicitly for Grevious.

Ultimately, the only really satisfying offering came in the middle of the program. This was the “Theme and Variations” that Olivier Messiaen composed in 1932. He wrote this for the violinist Claire Delbos around the time that he married her! Grevious knew exactly how the deliver the theme in such a way that an attentive listener could appreciate its transformation into the following five variations. That attentiveness surfaced only one more time, which was in the Scherzo movement of the Prokofiev sonata.

Grevious’ accompanist at the piano was Andrew Goodridge, making his first appearance in Davies Symphony Hall. He is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. If he enjoyed his trip to San Francisco, it might be nice to see more of him in more conducive circumstances.

Duo Gazzana’s Eastern European Album

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

The latest ECM New Series album of performances by Duo Gazzana will be released this coming Friday. Most of the music consists of two multi-movement compositions by Sergei Prokofiev: his first sonata for violin and piano (Opus 80 in F minor) and the Opus 35a collection, Five Melodies. Each of these is followed by a more recent work. Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel” provides the “punctuation mark” for the sonata, and the album concludes with Alfred Schnittke’s “Gratulationsrondo.” Unless I am mistaken, my last encounter with the former took place almost exactly two years ago, at the beginning of April of 2024, when Yo-Yo Ma included “Spiegel im Spiegel” in his recital in Davies Symphony Hall. The Schnittke selection, on the other hand, was probably a “first contact” experience.

Having now had enough opportunities to listen to Duo Gazzana ECM albums, I always tend to be interested in what they will do next. While my enthusiasm Prokofiev is usually muted, I tend to look forward to opportunities to listen to previously unknown music. In this case I was particularly drawn to the rhetorical diversity across the four movements of the Opus 80 sonata. I am hoping that I shall have an opportunity to listen to this music in recital in the not-too-distant future.

Where Schnittke is concerned, I am always looking forward to his tongue-in-cheek rhetoric. The title of his selection suggests music that was composed for the interest of teachers more than students! He wrote this piece in the year after he had composed the tongue-in-cheek Suite in the Old Style. That rhetoric can also be found in “Gratulationsrondo;” but the edges are not quite as sharp! It is a bit long to make for an engaging encore selection, but it definitely has the makings of a definitive punctuation mark.

Catalyst to Conclude “Uncovered” Series

courtesy of Primo Artists

This Friday will see the release of the final volume in the UNCOVERED series of albums on the Azica Records label. All of the performances on these albums are by the Catalyst Quartet, whose members are violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette, violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez. This series was conceived to bring more attention to historically important Black composers; and it will conclude with an album devoted entirely to the eighteenth-century French violinist, conductor and composer, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Joseph Bologne.

This will be the first-ever commercial recording of all of the eighteen string quartets that Bologne composed. As was the case for most of the quartets composed by Joseph Haydn, these were organized into three sets of six quartets. These were published as Opus 1, Opus 14, and a set given the title Six Concertante Quartets. The advance material from Primo Artists describes them as “representative of early Parisian renditions of the 18th-century string quartet style most associated with Haydn.” It may be worth noting that Joseph Haydn composed his six “Paris” symphonies, written on a commission by the Count D'Ogny, Grandmaster of the Masonic Loge Olympique; but they were composed about six years after Saint-Georges’ earliest quartets.

While this is an engaging account of a significant Black composer, it is probably worth noting that the Chevalier is not a stranger to many San Francisco music lovers. A little over a year ago, violinist Randall Goosby performed the last in a set of Saint-Georges’ three violin sonatas for his debut recital with San Francisco Performances. The “uncovering” of the Chevalier is likely to be a discovery for many collectors of recorded music; but, here in San Francisco, many of us have enjoyed the luxury of listening to that music in performance!

A New Release from William Susman

Composer William Susman (courtesy of Crossover Media)

It has been a while since I have encountered a new album of compositions by William Susman: almost five and a half years to be specific. Over that time I wrote about three of his previous albums on Belarca Records, as well as Nicolas Horvath’s recording of Quiet Rhythms, Book I. The title of his latest Belarca release is Scattered Threads, which accounts for six works composed between 1974 and 2013 scored for violin and piano.

The title of one of the selections is “Seven Scenes for Four Violins,” which was composed in 2011. The violinist is Dylan Hamme, accounting for all four instruments through overdubbing. The other five tracks are duo performances, with Susman accompanying Hamme at the keyboard on the final track. The pianist for the remaining four tracks is Nicole Brancato.

“Quiet” continues to be the operative adjective in Susman’s compositions. When I wrote about the release of his album A Quiet Madness in January of 2021, I cited the advance material I had received, which described him as “working in a post-modern, post-minimalist language.” These days reflections on that language run the gamut all the way from aggravating to sincerely nostalgic. I have done my best to keep my own impressions midway between those two extremes.

Nevertheless, in the context of technology now at our disposal, I suspect that many listeners are likely to appreciate Susman’s work by listening to individual tracks, each with its own merits, rather than an entire album.

Pamela Z to Return to Roar Shack Next Month

Pamela Z preparing for her next encounter with TLES (from the Eventbrite Web page for their performance)

Many (most?) readers probably know by now that the Roar Shack, which is located in SoMa, is the “home base” for The Living Earth Show (TLES), the duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and drummer Andy Meyerson. Last year the venue’s inaugural season concluded with a concert in which the duo performed with Qube Chix, the trio of Pamela Z, Julie Queen, and Leigh Evans. One month from today, Z will return to the Roar Shack, this time for a trio bringing her together with the TLES duo. According to the Eventbrite Web page for this show, the performance will explore “song, improvisation, chamber composition, and experimental performance as they build a SF-centric artistic vocabulary and practice.”

This program has been made possible by 836M, recently discussed on this site for the inauguration of its Young Artists Program. However, the performance itself will take place at the Roar Schack, which is located at 34 Seventh Street. The entry is through a secret side door on Odd Fellows Way, which is called Stevenson Street on the other side of Seventh. The “price of admission” is established by TLES through a hyperlink on the Eventbrite Web page for the event. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. one month from today on Friday, June 19.