Saturday, January 13, 2018

Center for New Music: February, 2018

[added 2/1, 12:15 p.m.: Note that the title of this article has been changed to reflect that only one item has been added thus far to fill out the remainder of the month of February.]

As was the case with the Red Poppy Art House, the Calendar listings for the month of February at the Center for New Music (C4NM) have not yet extended beyond the middle of next month. Nevertheless, this is also a case for which making save-the-date plans is likely to be in order. C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. All of the events listed below will have the same $15 price for general admission; but there will be some variation regarding the discounted rate of $10, which will always apply to C4NM members. All tickets may be purchased in advance through a Vendini event page. Hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages will be attached to each of the dates in the following summary:

Friday, February 2, 7:30 p.m.: The month will begin with Heating Up, a preview concert for the annual Hot Air Music Festival, which will be taking place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) throughout the day of Sunday, February 25. The festival, which is now in its ninth year, is produced each year by a “core committee” of SFCM students. It is a new music marathon that focuses on world premieres, collaborations by young composers and performers, and music written in the past 50 years. This preview will feature performances by Nicholas Denton-Protsack and the Siroko Duo. The duo, which consists of flutists Victoria Hauk and Jessie Nucho, performed at C4NM this past October in a partnership with the Guerrilla Composers Guild, which was founded by C4NM students.

Wednesday, February 7, 8 p.m.: This will be a performance by the animals & giraffes duo, whose members are Phillip Greenlief on reeds and vocalist Claudia La Rocco, who provides the texts. The duo describes itself as “an interdisciplinary container for improvisation on and off the page;” and it is the current C4NM ensemble-in-residence. This program’s interdisciplinary efforts will be expanded to include dancer James Kidd and multi-instrumentalist Tara Jane Oneil. The performance will be the first time that all four of these performers have gathered together for an improvisation session. The discounted rate will also be available for students and the underemployed.

Thursday, February 8, 7:30 p.m.: Adam Marks will curate a visit from New York by the Nouveau Classical Project (NCP). This is an all-women contemporary classical music ensemble that collaborates with visual artists and fashion designers. They will present a program entitled Currents, which will consist entirely of works commissioned by NCP. The ensemble will consist of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and electronics. The contributing composers will be Olga Bell, Gabrielle Herbst, and Isaac Schankler.

Saturday, February 10, 8 p.m.: Dan Becker will curate a program entitled SOUTH. This will be a visit from Los Angeles by two composers, each of whom will showcase a piece that explores the space between mythology and history in the southern states of our country, extending from east to west. Alexander Elliott Miller will present TO…OBLIVION, a suite for electric guitar, sound effects, and video, each movement of which has been inspired by a historic site in Los Angeles. Ian Dicke’s contribution will be Cowboy Rounds, a song cycle for piano/vocalist and live electronic processing. Each of the seven songs is a remix of one of the songs collected as part of the field work conducted across the southern states in 1939 by ethnographers John and Ruby Lomax.

[added 1/31, 1:20 p.m.:

Sunday, February 11, 7:30 p.m.: Swiss composer Marcel Zaes will present of full-evening program entitled Pulsations [Bitumen]. He creates abstract pulsations and minimalist soundscapes by working with pure sine waves and mathematical grids. Pulsations [Bitumen] involves bringing virtuoso viola work into this context. The violas will be performed by Ashley Frith and Zsolt Sörés.]

Friday, February 16, 7:45 p.m.: Border Crossings will be an evening of new music that explores the borders between genres. The project was developed and realized by composers Peter Colclasure and Cellista (who, as her name suggests, is also a cellist). They will be joined by the rapper DEM ONE and the members of the Juxtapositions Chamber Ensemble.

Saturday, February 17, 8 p.m.: Emma Logan will curate a visit by the Hubbard Quartet, which will be making its first concert tour of the West Coast. All the members are women: Jamie Roberts on oboe, Klaudia Szlachta on violin, Laura Manko Sahin on viola, and Hyun Min Lee on cello. They came together during the summer of 2015, when they were all teaching at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. They named the quartet after the street where they were living together that summer in Lennox, Massachusetts. They now live in cities across the United States (including San Francisco) but still come together to perform. Their program will consist entirely works by female composers. It will include West Coast premiere performances of “Luz de Agosto” by Devree Lewis and an oboe quartet by Marilyn Zupnik. They will also perform Julie Barwick’s “Shroud” and a capriccio by Vivian Fine. The discounted rate will also be available for students and seniors.

[added 2/1, 12:15 p.m.:

Sunday, February 18, 7:30 p.m.: This will be a Founders' series concert featuring two visiting pairs of accomplished experimental performers. Christine Tavolacci on bass flute and Scott Worthington on bass will conclude the program with a performance of “muto infinitas,” a new hour-long work composed by Catherine Lamb. They will be preceded by the Red Desert duo of clarinetist Katie Porter and percussionist Devin Maxwell. Their featured offering will be Maxwell's “Cloudseeding 4” for solo bass clarinet and electronics. In addition Maxwell will perform percussion compositions by Pauline Oliveros ("All Fours”) and Alvin Lucier (“Music for Snare Drum, Pure Wave Oscillator, and One or More Reflective Surfaces”).]

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