SFCO: 2026–2027 MainStage Season

It has been almost exactly one year since the programs for the MainStage Concerts of the 2025–26 season of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (SFCO) were announced. Plans for the coming season showed up in my Inbox yesterday evening at 7 PM. Once again, there will be four programs; and it appears that content has already been finalized. All performances will begin at 7:30 p.m., taking place at three different venues. Tickets may be reserved through the individual Web pages for the concerts using the attached hyperlinks below. Specifics are as follows:

Friday, October 16, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Beethoven’s Eroica, A Hero’s Journey: As the title suggests, the second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 62 (third) symphony in E-flat major. Beethoven was originally inspired by Napoleon until he realized the threat of tyranny, providing a title that would reflect the composer’s own defiant and life-affirming spirit. This will be complemented at the beginning of the program with the performance of Beethoven’s Opus 62 (“Coriolan”) overture, inspired by a five-act play of the same title by Heinrich Joseph von Collin about a Roman general known for defeating the invading Volscians. The first half of the program will conclude with Grace Williams’ “Sea Sketches,” inspired by the Welsh coastline. The performance will take place in the Conservatory building at 50 Oak Street.

Wednesday, December 30, Herbst Theatre, Rising Stars: This program will see the debut of fourteen-year-old pianist Isabel Feng, who will be the soloist in a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 25, his first piano concerto, composed in the key of G minor. The “overture” for the program will be “D’un matin de printemps,” a musical portrait of a spring morning composed by Lili Boulanger. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last symphony, K. 551 (“Jupiter”) in C major. For those that do not yet know, the venue is located on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street.

Friday, February 26, Taube Atrium Theatre, Emerging Voices: The “voices” are the current members of the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows.The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to opera arias, whose selections have not yet been finalized. The program will begin with the seventh (D minor) of the thirteen string symphonies composed by Felix Mendelssohn between the ages of twelve and fourteen. This will be followed by one of the more familiar compositions by Caroline Shaw, “Entr’acte.” The venue is located in the same building as Herbst but on the top floor.

Starla Breshears, concerto soloist for the final MainStage Concert of the season (from the Web page for this performance)

Friday, May 7, Taube Atrium Theatre, Sounds of the City: The title refers to a new multi-media commissioned work by Xavier Muzik entitled “i like my coffee, black,” which was inspired by a series of recent photographs of San Francisco. (I am not sure about the significance of the comma!) This will be preceded by two excerpts from Richard Strauss’ opera Ariadne auf Naxos, the overture and the dance scene. The second half of the program will see the winner of the Irving Klein International Competition, cellist Starla Breshears, who is now the youngest member in the San Francisco Symphony. She will be the soloist in a performance of Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken VIIb/1 cello concerto (his first).

The Coltrane-Garland Connection

A two-CD “distillation” of performances by John Coltrane and Red Garland (from its Amazon.com Web page)

This morning as I was perusing my electronic mail, I found that Pandora was trying to persuade me to follow their John Coltrane Radio connection. Ironically, the link was not particularly successful, particularly since it was trying (without success) to direct me to a Sonny Rollins album! Fortunately, I already have a generous supply of Coltrane CDs, including the sixteen of them collected in the box set of Prestige recordings. The good news is that there is still an Amazon.com Web page for this collection; but the bad news is that the price is $235, accounting for sixteen CDs.

I have to confess that I have a particular fondness for those CDs that bring Coltrane together with pianist Red Garland. I suppose that is because I had an opportunity to listen to Garland leading a piano trio on one of my business trips to New York. This was relatively late in his life. At one point, he apologized for a lengthy verbal introduction, confessing that he was trying to remember what he would next be playing!

Sadly, Pandora does not seem to be have as much concern for Garland as it has for other sources. Perhaps it thinks that only names like Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, and Charlie Parker will attract attention. Nevertheless, an Amazon search for Garland yields a generous number of hits. So maybe it is just a matter of enough writers coming up with articles about Garland to give him a level of attention that parallels Coltrane!

The Bleeding Edge: 7/20/2026

The good news is that this will be a very busy week on the Bleeding Edge. There will be seven events, only two of which will overlap. The only bad news is that both of them will be a familiar site! Once again, the venues will be familiar to regular readers; and, as is usually the case, the options are impressively diverse. Details are as follows:

Tuesday, July 21, 7 p.m., Make-Out Room: Jazz at the Make-Out Room used to take place on Mondays. However, last month’s gig took place on a Tuesday, and this month’s offering will do the same. Once again, the program will consist of three sets. The program will open with the Ai-Ai combo led by guitarist Karl Evangelista. The second set will be performed by a trio of vocalists: Saki Minamimoto, Lorin Benedict, and David Israel Katz. The final set will see keyboardist Marc Capelle playing with William Winant on percussion. They will be joined by “guest artists” yet to be announced. For those that do not yet know, the Make-Out Room is located in the Mission at 3225 22nd Street. Doors will open at 6 p.m.

Thursday, July 23, and Sunday, July 26, 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., and Friday, July 24, and Saturday, July 25, 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Black Cat Jazz Supper Club: This week will see the return of drummer and composer Anthony Fung to the Black Cat. He will lead a quartet with alto saxophonist Alex Hahn on the front line. Rhythm will be provided by pianist Michael Ragonese and Luca Alemanno on bass. Selections will be drawn from Hahn’s latest album, Common Language, which he describes as “a bold, rhythm-driven statement of identity and sound.”

Friday, July 24, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: The next Other Dimensions in Sound offering, curated and hosted by Boohaabian reed player David Boyce, will be a trio program. He will be joined by percussionist Kevin Carnes and Kirk Peterson on bass. 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.

Kasey Knudsen with her saxophone (from the Web page for her performance this week)

Friday, July 24, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: This week Friday will require making a hard choice. Bird & Beckett will host a quartet performance led by Kasey Knudsen on saxophone. She will be joined by fellow reed player Harvey Wainapel. Rhythm will be provided by John Witala on bass and Jon Arkin on drums. There will no charge for this event. Bird & Beckett is located at 653 Chenery Street, a short walk from the Glen Park station for both Muni and BART.

Saturday, July 25, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Bird & Beckett will host a second performance at the same time on Saturday. The performance will be led by percussionist Avotcja, who will also recite poetry. “Backup” will be provided by the Modupue quartet with a front line shared by Sandi Poindexcer on violin and saxophonist Francis Wong. Rhythm will be shared by bassist Heshima Mark Williams and Baba Ken Okulolo on talking drum.

Sunday, July 26, 6 p.m., Gray Area Art and Technology: This will be a generous evening of five sets:

1. Albert.DATA
2. Entangled Others
3. Esen K. Tütüncü
4. Kyle McDonald
5. Kalie Hofstadter and Memo Akten

Sadly, as of this writing, no details have been provided for any of these performances.The program will take place in the Grand Theatre, located in the Mission at 2665 Mission Street.

Monday, July 27, 7:30 p.m, Artists Television Access: Rewards Program is an improvisational music project. The performers will be Miles Lassi, Zekarias Thompson, and Skyway Man. Visuals will be provided by Ellie Vanderlip. These will include “expanded cinema” as well as projections of both 16 mm and 32 mm slides.

Old First Concerts: September 2026

Having accounted for Old First Concerts (O1C) hosting next month’s San Francisco International Piano Festival, it is not too soon to prepare listeners for the beginning of the new season in September. This year there will be three performances, all on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. Most readers probably know by now that O1C events take place at Old First Presbyterian Church. This is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Tickets are available for purchase through the hyperlinks attached to the dates, which are also available for live stream viewing. General admission is $30. with reduced rates for seniors, students, and children age twelve and under. The season will begin with the traditional Labor Day program as follows:

September 6: Those that have followed this site for some time have probably already guessed that the season will begin with the return of jazz pianist Mike Greensill, who has made this event a Labor Day tradition. Most likely, Greensill will continue to interleave his own original compositions with a generous share of selections from the Great American Songbook. Nevertheless, the show promises to be different from previous gigs because this year Greensill will celebrate his 80th birthday!

September 13: Pianist Kevin Lee Sun will present a program entitled Look to This Day. He will present music by two living composers. The first of these, Hyo-shin Na, may be familiar to those following past events; and she will contribute two solo piano compositions. The other is Daniel De Togni, who will accompany Sun on shakuhachi for the performance of Death Poems. His Songs of Becoming cycle will receive its West Coast premiere with a performance by soprano Wallis Lucas.

Noël Wan with her harp (from the O1C Web page for her recital)

September 20: For “something completely different,” Noël Wan will conclude the month with a solo harp performance. She turned to the French poet Charles Baudelaire for the title of her program: Les Fleurs du mal (the flowers of evil). Her program will pair music from the late nineteenth century with contemporary compositions.

Never Enough Thelonious Monk!

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of DL Media, Inc.)

It has been a little over a year since I last invoked my favorite precept delivered by the conductor Leonard Slatkin, “You can never conduct enough Haydn or Schubert.” My own variation on that “theme” is that, where my own collection of recordings is concerned, there is no such thing as too much Thelonious Monk. As a result, I was delighted that this month began with the release of a new Monk album. The title suggests that it is the first of more to come: Monk Live in Paris, 1967, Volume One.

My only disappointment is that there are only four tracks of music amounting to a little more than half an hour. However, the album is the first “official” release from the Thelonious Monk Estate, which is curated by Monk’s granddaughter, Sierre Barbara Monk. She has contributed a paragraph to the album jacket, followed by a Q&A exchange with Monk’s son, T. S. Monk. Personally, however, I am more interested in the music, whose four tracks are “Epistrophy,” Evidence,” “Ruby My Dear,” and “We See.”

Monk, of course, is at the piano for all of those tracks. Rhythm is provided by Larry Gales with Ben Riley on drums. Tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse is the only other musician to contribute to all of the tracks. The other performers are Phil Woods on alto saxophone, another tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, Ray Copeland on trumpet, and trombonist Jimmy Cleveland.

From a personal perspective, 1967 is about half a decade before I first went to a Monk performance. If my memory is not too faded, I believe I saw him at the Village Vanguard, after which I made as many return visits as my schedule would allow. (That schedule was based on trips I would make from Cambridge, Massachusetts!) I listened to everything Monk did with silent respect and never had the nerve to try to speak to him. As far as I was concerned, listening to the music was all that mattered; and that is exactly the way in which I have now approached this first Live in Paris release.

Those familiar with the Monk repertoire will know that all of the tracks on this album are familiar. However, repetition seldom rears its head in the performance of jazz. While all four of the tunes themselves are familiar to me, there was still much for me to absorb in the diversity of solo takes across all of the tracks. I am sure that I shall be making several return visits to this new album while waiting for “Volume Two” to appear!

Not Much Bite from Slow Tiger

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

One week from today Endectomorph Music will release the self-titled debut album of the Slow Tiger quintet. The front line is shared between trumpeter Kenny Warren and Adam Schneit, who alternates between tenor saxophone and clarinet. Rhythm is provided by organist JP Schlegelmilch, Andrew Dow on electric bass, and drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell. As is often the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page to process pre-orders.

The nine tracks were recorded in a basement studio in Nyack, New York, recalling the “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show” spirit of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The advance material describes the selections as “earthy, rock-oriented melodies with more atmospheric explorations of song and sound” (whatever that means)! The good news is that all five of the performers have a solid command of their instruments. The bad news is that there is little in the content of the tracks that makes for engaging listening. Mind you, they have received a generous endorsement from clarinetist Ben Goldberg, whose work I have appreciated for many years; but this is one of those times when I shall have to agree to disagree with him. Perhaps the tiger needs significantly more determination in the steps it takes!

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.

Alister Spence’s Second Solo Recording

Alister Spence at his piano (photograph by Jordan K Munns, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

This morning saw my fourth encounter with Australian jazz pianist and composer Alister Spence. My first was in 2018: Intelsat, a duo performance with another jazz pianist, Satoko Fujii. This was followed by his four-movement suite Imagine Meeting You Here, which was performed by the Satoko Fujii Orchestras in Kobe, Nagoya, and Tokyo. In 2020 he released his solo album Whirlpool, a suite of 23 relatively short pieces.This past April saw the release of a new solo album, Always Ever, which is currently available for MP3 download through an Amazon.com Web page.

Like Whirlpool, Always Ever is an album of improvised solo performances. There are sixteen tracks, the shortest being about two and a half minutes and the longest extending to six and a half minutes. Spence is not shy when it comes to upbeat tempos and eccentric rhythms. The attentive listener is thus likely to be satisfied with the diversity of dispositions across the individual selections.

Personally, I enjoyed the overdubbing of metal-on-metal percussion, which introduces the solo piano work in “Distant Cousins.” “Afternoon at Ranscom Street,” on the other hand, seems conceived to evoke the atonal abstractions encountered in improvisations by Cecil Taylor. It would be fair to say that Spence is never shy about adventurous improvisations, which is why I described the Whirlpool album as “a ‘laboratory notebook,’ in which Spence chose to document as wide a diversity of approaches to performance as his imagination would allow.” That documentation has now been continued and extended in Always Ever, which is as much a “journey of discovery” as Whirlpool was.

SFP 2026–2027 Shenson Piano Series

This coming season, the Shenson Foundation will support San Francisco Performances (SFP) through The Shenson Piano Series. This will consist of four solo piano recitals, all of which will take place in Herbst Theatre, beginning at 7:30 p.m. The entrance to Herbst is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. The specific dates and their related performers are as follows:

Thursday, November 12: The season will begin with the return of Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, who will be presenting his fourth SFP piano recital. Program details have not yet been finalized, but the program will be one of “dance-inspired works.” The contributing composers will be Bohuslav Martinů, Manuel de Falla, Karol Szymanowski, Franz Schubert, and Béla Bartók.

Pianist Elisabeth Brauss (from the SFP Web page for her solo recital)

Friday, January 22: Unless I am mistaken, German pianist Elizabeth Brauss last visited San Francisco when she accompanied Dutch violinist Noa Wildschut in the third of the four San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Spotlight recitals performed in Davies Symphony Hall. Brauss will return with a program spanning the period from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth. She will open her program with those two extremes, beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 331 sonata in A major, followed by seven of the pieces in Béla Bartók’s “14 Bagatelles.” According to the Web page for those pieces, “Bartók adopted some techniques of Debussy and Schoenberg;” and the “Bagatelles” will be followed by Claude Debussy’s “Pour le Piano.” The second half of the program will reflect on the “partnership” of Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann. Brauss will begin with the first five of the eight solo piano pieces Brahms collected in his Opus 76. They will be followed by the full performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 9 “Carnaval.”

Friday, February 26: Vikingur Ólafsson also last visited San Francisco in Davies, where he was a recitalist in the Great Performers Series. He will begin with two pieces by Philip Glass: the “Opening” movement on his Glassworks album and the fifteenth of his set of twenty études. This will be followed by three short Debussy pieces: “Ondine,” the eighth prelude in the second book, “Serenade for the Doll” from the Children’s Corner suite, and “Jardins sous la pluie” (gardens in the rain), the last of the three movements in his Estampes suite. He will devote the second half of the program to selections from two suites collected by Jean-Philippe Rameau, the third in D major followed by the second in E minor.

Friday, May 7: I know pianist Fazil Say best for his release of the six-CD set of all of the piano sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For his visit to San Francisco, he will shift his attention to Ludwig van Beethoven with performances of two of the sonatas given names: Opus 13 (“Pathétique”) and Opus 57 (“Appassionata”). He will devote the rest of his program to presenting his own compositions.

Subscriptions are now on sale for $360 for premium seating in the Orchestra, the Side Boxes, and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $315 for the remainder of the Orchestra and the Dress Circle, and $270 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. When single tickets go on sale, they may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.

New Century Chamber Orchestra: 2026/27

As was the case last year, the 2026/27 season of the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) and its Music Director and Concertmaster Daniel Hope will begin this coming November. This season there will be five concerts performed in San Francisco at three different venues. Dates, times, and location specifics are as follows:

Saturday, November 7, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Following up on their last collaboration with NCCO, the Marcus Roberts Trio will return for performances of music by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin in a performance entitled GROOVE. Roberts leads the trio on piano, joined by drummer Jason Marsalis and Rodney Jordan on bass. They will join NCCO for a suite of Ellington tunes. The program will also include a string ensemble performance of “Entr’acte,” originally composed for string quartet by Caroline Shaw. The other contributing composer will be Rhiannon Giddens with her “At the Purchaser’s Option.” For those that do not already know, Herbst is in the Civic Center on the ground floor of the Veterans Building, across the street from City Hall at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.

Saturday, December 12, 2 p.m., Taube Atrium Theatre: Violinist Benjamin Beilman will be the visiting soloist. He will perform the arrangement for violin and string orchestra of Eugène Ysaÿe’s “Rêve d’enfant” and Jean Sibelius’ Opus 117, a suite for violin and string orchestra. The program will begin with Olli Mustonen’s second nonet, which he completed in 2000. The final work on the program will be the oldest: Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4 “Verklärte Nacht,” which he originally composed as a string sextet. The venue is located on the top floor of the Veterans Building.

Saturday, January 30, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: Pianist Lara Downes will join the ensemble for the world premiere of “Beauty Has No Borders,” just composed by Clarice Assad. The earliest work on the program will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 201/186a, his 29th symphony composed in the key of A major. (He was eighteen years old at the time.) The program will conclude with the strings-only music for “Apollo,” the ballet choreographed by George Balanchine in 1928 when he was only 24 years old.

Saturday, April 17, 2 p.m., Presidio Theatre: The soloist will be bandoneonist Omar Massa, performing the world premiere of his double concerto for bandoneon and violin. The entire program will present music from “south of the border.” The most familiar work is likely to be Astor Piazzolla’s suite, The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The remaining selection will be “La Calaca,” composed by Gabriela Ortiz in 2021. The venue is in the southwest corner of the Presidio at 99 Moraga Avenue.

Thomas Hampson and Daniel Hope (from the NCCO Web site for the San Francisco Rising concert)

Friday, May 14, and Saturday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, May 16, 2 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The title of this program is San Francisco Rising, and it will be jointly curated by Hope and baritone Thomas Hampson. The program has not yet been finalized, but particular attention will be given to Ernest Bloch. Bloch was Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the 1920s, after which he became Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California in Berkeley. His compositions will “rub shoulders” with traditional songs from China, Ireland, Mexico, and Africa. Sources will date back to the 1849 California Gold Rush and advance to the 1945 signing of the United Nations Charter (which took place in San Francisco … check out the painting in Herbst).

As of this writing, single tickets do not appear to be on sale. However, there is a Subscriptions Web page which allows for purchases for not only all five concerts but also four, three, and even two concerts. These will all involve 25% discounts from single-ticket purchases, which will probably become available in the coming fall.

LIEDER ALIVE!’s 2026/27 Liederabend Series

LIEDER ALIVE! now has a Web page that provides the dates for its Liederabend Series, which will run from November of 2026 through May of 2027. There will be four recitals, all taking place on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. The first of these will be the Autumn Opening Concert followed by three “Anniversary Concerts” celebrating twenty years of presenting vocalists and their respective repertoires. As in the past, all performances will take place as part of the Old First Concerts (O1C) series at Old First Presbyterian Church (1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue). All of them will be on Sunday afternoons, beginning at 4 p.m. Hyperlinks for purchasing tickets will be attached below to the specific dates. In all likelihood there will also be hyperlinks for live streams of the performances. Specific dates are as follows:

November 8: The season will begin with a performance by baritone Olivier Zerouali, accompanied at the piano by Ji Youn Lee. Both of them are San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows. Program details have not yet been finalized; but the contributing composers will be Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, and Gabriel Fauré (often known as “the usual suspects!”).

January 17: Dramatic soprano Heather Hjelle will make her LIEDER ALIVE! debut with a program devoted entirely to Richard Wagner. Her accompanist will be John Parr. She will begin with WWV 91, the five songs the Wagner collected for female voice and piano often given the title Wesendonck Lieder. This will be followed by the “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde with piano accompaniment arranged by Franz Liszt. The program will conclude with the piano transcription of the funeral march from Götterdämmerung; and, as many readers will expect, Hjelle will perform the entire concluding Immolation Scene of that opera.

February 28: Two vocalists will make return appearances: soprano Charlotte Kelso and tenor Thomas Kinch. They will perform selections from Ludwig van Beethoven, Giuseppe Verdi, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Once again, details (including accompaniment) have not yet been finalized.

Peter Grünberg accompanying soprano Esther Rayo at the piano (from their LIEDER ALIVE! Web page)

May 16: Just as familiar will be the return of soprano Esther Rayo with her accompanist Peter Grünberg. Her selections will include works by Schubert, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina, and Giacomo Puccini. Specifics will, again, be forthcoming.

Buster Williams’ 1975 Debut Album Reissued

Cover of the album being examined

This past Record Store Day, April 18, Time Traveler Recordings released three albums, along with digital copies, of three particularly adventurous jazz performers from the second half of the last century. One of them was bassist Buster Williams, whose name always seemed to come up whenever I was in conversation with San Francisco performers particularly devoted to contemporary music. Ironically, my first encounter with Williams’ music (as both composer and performer) came from one of those albums released on Record Store Day. The title of the album is Pinnacle, consisting of five tracks amounting to a little less than 45 minutes of music.

Williams leads a septet with a front line of trumpeter Woody Shaw and two saxophonists. The first of them, Earl Turbinton, doubles on clarinet, and the other, Sonny Fortune, also plays both flute and alto flute. Rhythm is provided by percussionist Guilherme Franco, Billy Hart on drums, and Onaje Allan Gumbs, who divides his time across acoustic and electric piano, Moog synthesizer, and an ARP String Ensemble. (I suspect I am not the only one to find Shaw the only familiar name!)

I came away from this album feeling that the overall duration was just about right for the listening experience. The diversity of instruments allows for an engaging variety of approaches to improvisation. Williams has performed with the likes of Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Miles Davis; but there is much to engage the attentive listener as he finds paths to improvisation of his own. As I write this, the album is available from Amazon.com only on vinyl; but I am hoping that it will be available to “digital listeners” in the near future.

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!

New Kenny Barron Album Over 30 Years Late

A little over two weeks ago, Elemental Music released an album of a performance at the Brycheiniog Theatre in Wales at the Brecon Jazz Festival. Pianist Kenny Barron led a trio, whose other members were Ray Drummond on bass and drummer Ben Riley. The full title of the album is So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon.

This is a generous offering: ten tracks distributed across two CDs providing one hour and 48 minutes of music. This is jazz as I like to listen to it (as, presumably, at least some readers will have guessed from encounters with previous jazz articles). Barron delivers a solid upbeat rhetoric in his keyboard work but also makes sure that both Drummond and Riley can pursue explorations of their own.

Front cover of the album being discussed

I have to wonder why it took three decades before this generous content was released. Physical packaging is a fold-out of two sleeves, providing only four surfaces for printed content. Two of them are, of course, the front (with a photograph of the three musicians) and the back, with a usefully detailed track listing. On the inside, the left-hand side provides three individual black-and-white photographs and most of the production details.

That leaves the other side for an essay by American jazz journalist Ted Panken. The advance material I received describes this as “extensive liner notes and detailed tune annotations;” but I am afraid that there is more about the background than about the music itself. Personally, I think that those familiar with twentieth-century jazz will have no trouble finding their own way through the inventive tropes of all three of the players. Those not previously acquainted with at least three of the tunes might do well to build up a bit of background before venturing into this album!

SFP 2026–2027 Art of Song

This coming season the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Art of Song series will present only three recitals, one less than the four presented this past season. However, the second of the three will be a debut performance by a vocalist that has already won two Grammy Awards. The other two are likely to be familiar to those that follow vocal performances. As many (most) readers will expect, 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:

Tenor Nicholas Phan (photograph by Club Soda Productions courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Thursday, October 22: Tenor Nicholas Phan was the selected artist for the SFP 45th Season Gala in 2024. This year he will lead off the series with a program entitled Fellow Citizens. His intention is to reflect on two enduring narratives in American history: one that asserts America is for Americans, and another that celebrates the country as a “Nation of Immigrants.” In the last century, Irving Berlin was about as American as a composer could get; and in Phan’s program he will rub shoulders with Franz Schubert to reflect on European influences. The program will also include a new work by Shawn Okpebholo. He will be accompanied at the piano by Myra Huang.

Friday, December 11: This will be the SFP debut for soprano Angel Blue. The program has not yet been finalized; but it will include the art song repertoire, American spirituals, and “favorites” from the Great American Song Book. Her accompanist will be pianist Bryan Wagorn, who is also Assistant Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera.

Saturday, April 3: Bass-baritone Dashon Burton will perform with accompaniment by the Calder Quartet. This ensemble last performed for SFP in March of 2024; and the members are still violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Tereza Stanislav, violist Jonathan Moerschel, and cellist Eric Byers. The program will include one of the best-known vocal compositions for string quartet accompaniment, Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach.” There will also be the West Coast premiere of a quintet composed by Christopher Cerrone. Other composers to be represented on the program will include Thomas Adès, John Tavener, Jessie Montgomery, Caroline Shaw, and Thomas Oboe Lee.

Subscriptions are now on sale for $220 for premium seating in the Orchestra, the Side Boxes, and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $190 for the center rear of the Dress Circle and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $160 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. When single tickets go on sale, they may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.

Olivier Latry Returns to Davies Ruffatti Organ

Conductor Stéphane Denève (courtesy of SFS)

The Ruffatti organ in Davies Symphony Hall is having a workout this week with the return to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) of organist Olivier Latry performing under the baton of Stéphane Denève, who made his SFS debut in 2009. The first half of the program concluded with Francis Poulenc’s organ concerto, whose full title is “Concerto pour orgue, cordes et timbales” (concerto for organ, timpani and strings), structured as a single movement with six changes in tempo. The second half was devoted entirely to Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 78 (third) symphony in C minor, known as the “Organ Symphony” for the addition of a pipe organ during the latter portions of both movements. The “overture” for the program was “Flammenschrift” (fire-letter), composed by Guillaume Connesson and performed by SFS for the first time. At the beginning of the performance, Denève announced that the program would be dedicated to the memory of Michael Tilson Thomas.

The program was at its strongest in the second half. The symphony has a four-movement structure, but there is only a pause between the end of the Poco adagio movement and the Allegro moderato. Furthermore, the organ first appears toward the end of the Poco adagio, meaning that it figures as a “conclusion” for both of the halves. That said, the organ dominates over that conclusion, particularly towards then end, when it takes the “pedal point” motif literally! In his opening remarks, Denève made it a point to observe that the symphony had the same key structure as Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 67 (fifth) symphony in C minor. As far as I am concerned, however, any connection to Beethoven would have been incidental, if not accidental!

Nevertheless, the performance was a solid one, reminding me that occasional visits to Opus 78 tend to leave me in an upbeat mood. Sadly, this was not the case for the Poulenc concerto. Latry seemed to have difficulty finding the right way to balance his instrument against the ensemble. As a result, the clarity of the instrument was significantly more muddled than it would be during the performance of the Saint-Saëns symphony. This was a personal disappointment, since I have enjoyed Poulenc’s concerto ever since I first encountered it in my student days.

Ironically, Beethoven’s presence was much more evident at the beginning of the program. Unfortunately, Connesson never quite knew what to do with that presence. Once “Flammenschrift” established the “fatal fifth” gesture, the composer did little more than work it to death. Granted, the performance took only ten minutes; but that was five minutes too long (at least)!

Buchbinder Celebrates Birthday with Schubert

The first day of this coming December will mark the 80th birthday of pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. I must confess that I have probably not given this pianist due attention. It has been almost two years since I Iast wrote about one of his Deutsche Grammophon albums. That was when the Song Transcriptions CD was released, on which he performed solo piano transcriptions of 28 songs by Johannes Brahms.

Cover of the album being discussed

Tomorrow will see the release of his latest album. The title is Schubert Treasures, consisting of 160 tracks of Schubert’s compositions of a diversity of different styles of dances (with a distinctive preference for waltzes). If the number of tracks seems daunting, readers should be informed that a significant majority of these tracks are less than one minute in duration!

Clearly, this album was not conceived for the purpose of listening to all of those tracks from beginning to end in a single sitting. Indeed, even the D. 145 set of 38 waltzes was probably not intended for sitting still for the entire collection. Fortunately, in our “digital age,” it is easy to visit these tracks, sampling different collections at different times. Schubert was certainly prodigious in composing all of this dance music, but the listener should be free to explore his own strategies for getting to know this music. I have been doing this over the last month, and I have to say that encountering any of the collections leaves me in a good mood!

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.

Stratigou’s 4th Album of Farrenc’s Piano Works

This week began with word from the Naxos of America PR Team of the latest installment in recordings of the complete piano works of nineteenth-century composer Louise Farrenc performed by Maria Stratigou. This is about a year and a half since the release of the third album, and the new release is the second with the Theme and Variations subtitle. About half of the album is devoted to variations on music from operas by Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti.

Once again I feel a need to invoke that “this is the sort of thing that people who like that sort of thing are bound to like.” However, when I cited it this past March, the “sort of thing” involved four nineteenth-century composers: Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, and Johannes Brahms. It goes without saying that none of them are associated with opera! However, if the sources for the variations on this new release are unfamiliar, Stratigou’s performances are as engaging as ever. As a result, my interest in learning more about Farrenc’s repertoire is as strong as ever.

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

A “head count” of her Web page reveals 36 pieces for solo piano. The first four albums released to date account for 25 of those works. Presumably, the “complete works” collection will conclude with the next album!