Center for New Music: October 2016

Tomorrow sees the beginning of a new month; and, as was reported at the beginning of this week, a full concert schedule at the Center for New Music (C4NM) will begin with a program of electroacoustic music for flute presented by Jessie Nucho. One major change is that, while in the past, tickets for most concerts were available only at the door, advance purchase through an online Web page will be available for all of the coming concerts. For those who need reminding, C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. Here is a basic summary of concerts that will be taking place during the remainder of the month:

Friday, October 7, 7:30 p.m.: Anne Sajdera and Davide Verotta will present an evening of original music composed by both of them. Their respective styles encompass jazz, classical foundations, and modern techniques. There will also be one composition written by neither of them a concertino for two pianos by Dmitri Shostakovich. General admission will be $20 with a $12 rate for C4NM members, and tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Saturday, October 8, 7:30 p.m.: Jazz wind player Peter Kuhn will celebrate the release on NoBusiness Records of the latest work by his trio. Rhythm is provided by Nathan Hubbard on drums and Kyle Motl on bass. The trio will also be joined by trumpeter Eddie Gale, who has collaborated with Kuhn frequently in the past, for collective composition of the highest order. General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members, and tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Sunday, October 9, 3 p.m.: This concert will mark the kick-off (hey, it’s Sunday afternoon) of a monthly Sunday afternoon series entitled Quiet Time. Danny Clay will curate the launch of the series with a performance of John Cage’s Empty Words. This piece was the result of Cage composing lectures based on chance techniques that would reassemble text sources at verbal, syllabic, and phonemic levels. Empty Words is in four sections, and Clay has organized a performance in which all four will be read simultaneously. Luciano Chessa, Ben Zucker, and Pamela Z will join Clay as readers. The performance is expected to last two and one-half hours. General admission will be $10 with an $8 rate for C4NM members, and tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Friday and Saturday, October 14 and 15, 8 p.m.: Kyle Bruckmann will curate this month’s sfSoundSalonSeries event, which will be a “festlet” of two concerts entitled Jingle Five-O. The festive occasion will be the 50th birthday of sfSoundGroup saxophonist, conductor, and founding member John Ingle. For the first concert Ingle will improvise with the Volcano Radar duo of Elbiio Barilari and Julia A. Miller. In the second concert Ingle will lead an ensemble of friends, some from sfSoundGroup, in a structured improvisation entitled “Babylon Lottery,” based on “The Library of Babel,” a story by Jorge Luis Borges. General admission for each concert will be $15, and the $10 rate will apply to C4NM members, students, and the underemployed. Separate event pages have been created for the online purchase of tickets to the Friday and Saturday concerts.

Sunday, October 16, 7 p.m.: This program will present new works for instruments, voices, and dancer, by both Anne Hege and Julie Herndon. Hege’s major work will be her setting of Bertolt Brecht’s “For Those Who Come After.” She will also perform some of her works for an analog live looping circuit of her own design. Herndon’s composition, which uses both graphic and traditional notation, is entitled “There’s no place like home.” It is an improvisatory piece in which she will be joined by Josh Marshall on saxophones and Erika Oba on flute. The dancer for these performances will be MaryStarr Hope. General admission will be $12 with a $10 rate for C4NM members, and tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Thursday, October 20, 6:30 p.m.: This will be the first concert in this season’s Soundings concert series prepared by the Del Sol Quartet. This concert series explores different approaches to the combination of the performance of music with the display of visual art. The music for this concert will be Lembit Beecher’s quartet entitled “These Memories May Be True;” and he will provide his own animated drawings to supplement the music. General admission will be $20 with a $15 rate for C4NM members, and tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Saturday, October 22, 7:30 p.m.: This will be a somewhat unconventional double bill. It will begin with a screening of the silent film Häxan, a documentary by Benjamin Christensen that includes dramatized sequences about practices of witchcraft. The film will be accompanied by live electronic music scored by Chris Sneeringer. He will then be followed by Alma Sangre, a three-piece ensemble whose repertoire covers a wide variety of forms of traditional Spanish and Mexican music. General admission will be $10 with a $5 rate for C4NM members. Tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Sunday, October 23, 4 p.m.: The Bay Area Chapter of the American Harp Society (BACAHS) will present a jazz trio led by harpist Sarah Voynow. (Bass and drum players have not yet been announced.) She will play arrangements of music by the great jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, as well as pieces by Freddie Hubbard, Billy Cobham, Cole Porter, and Bruce Springsteen. General admission will be $18. The $15 rate will apply to both C4NM members and BACAHS members. Students will be admitted for $5, and $30 will pay for both a ticket and BACAHS membership. Tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Tuesday, October 25, 8 p.m.: The next concert in the permutations series will present Ensemble dal Niente’s harpist Ben Melsky and flutist Emma Hospelhorn. The program is entitled New Paradigms, and it will feature two world premieres and three classics of the contemporary flute and harp repertoire. General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members. Tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Thursday, October 27, 8 p.m.: This will be a two-set evening featuring piano, viola, and electronics. The first set will bring together pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri performing selections from the ECM recording Transylvanian Concert. They will also premiere pieces for a follow-up album. The second set will be a performance of Space Ghost Études, music scored for two pianos, two electronics tables, two sets of objects and toys, and two very, very odd musicians, Joe Lasqo and Derek Gedalecia (performing as Headboggle). General admission will be $20 with a $15 rate for C4NM members. Tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Friday, October 28, 8 p.m.: Meerenai Shim will curate a visit by the flute (Tessa Brinckman) and percussion (Terry Longshore) duo Caballito Negro. They have prepared a program entitled Resist, which will utilize six flutes, spoken word, film, images, and more percussion than can be imagined. Brinckman will be assisted by the Left Edge Percussion ensemble. General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members. Tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Saturday, October 29, 8 p.m.: Mark Alburger’s Opus Project will celebrate Halloween with a concert of compositions all given opus number 46. The pieces will be played in chronological order, and the complete list may be found on the C4NM event page for this concert. General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members, seniors, and students. Tickets may be purchased online in advance.

Sunday, October 30, 8 p.m.: Halloween weekend will continue with an evening of three eerie sets. Susan Rawcliffe will perform on a variety of different indigenous flutes and ocarinas. This will be followed by “Pahoehoe,” a ballet for butoh dancers with music composed by David Samas for his invented instrument collective Pet the Tiger. Finally, the 1910 Edison Studios silent film Frankensein will be given live improvised accompaniment by Jaroba (saxophone and invented instruments), Kevin Corcoran (found objects and extended percussion techniques), Jorge Bachmann (modular synthesizer), and Samas, this time with invented vocal techniques, General admission will be $10 with an $8 rate for members. Tickets may be purchased online in advance.