San Francisco Performances’ Plans for the 2017 Spring Salons at the Hotel Rex

As was announced on this site this past October, this season San Francisco Performances (SFP) organized its annual series of one-hour recitals on Wednesday evenings at the Hotel Rex into two separate segments. The 2016 Fall Salons series concluded last month with pianist Sarah Cahill’s Chaconnes, Revisited recital. Plans are now in place for the 2017 Spring Salons series, which will get under way next month. There will be only three concerts in this series, rather than the four in the fall series. Specifics are as follows:

February 22: The series will begin with a recital by the Thalea String Quartet. Consisting of violinists Christopher Whitley and Kumiko Sakamoto, violist Luis Bellorin, and cellist Bridget Pasker, this is the latest chamber ensemble coming out of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), where all four members are currently students. In addition SFCM selected them to be that institution’s first quartet-in-residence; and, at the beginning of next month, they were selected by the Kronos String Quartet to perform a program of works commissioned under Kronos’ Fifty for the Future project. The program they have prepared for their Salon will couple music from the late twentieth century, Joan Tower’s 1994 “Night Fields,” with Felix Mendelssohn’s last string quartet, his Opus 80 in F minor, composed after the death of his sister Fanny.

March 22: Tenor Nicholas Phan is a frequent visitor to the Bay Area, and his performances are consistently imaginative and welcome. On February 26 he will make his debut at London’s Wigmore Hall, presenting a program entitled Gods & Monsters, a “themed recital” that will survey songs by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Hugo Wolf. These songs have been recorded on Phan’s latest album, also entitled Gods & Monsters, which was released this past Friday. His Salon program will consist of selections from this album, and his accompanist will be pianist Robert Mollicone.

May 10: The final Salon will present jazz pianist, composer, and Guggenheim Fellow Edward Simon. Simon is currently based in the Bay Area as a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. His influences include pop, folk, Brazilian jazz, and classical, all of which he can harvest for his own innovative improvisations.

Each concert takes place from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The Hotel Rex is located at 562 Sutter Street, between Powell Street and Mason Street. Tickets are $25 for each of the concerts; and a subscription for all three concerts will be $60. A City Box Office event page has been created for subscriptions. Single tickets are also being sold by City Box Office, and the hyperlinks on the above dates lead to the event pages from which those tickets may be purchased. Any additional information may be obtained by calling San Francisco Performances at 415-392-2545.