One Found Sound Launches Season Tomorrow

Members of the One Found Sound string section (courtesy of One Found Sound)

Last month this site reported that One Found Sound (OFS) would be launching its sixth season earlier than usual. For those who need reminding, “earlier” means tomorrow night! For those unfamiliar with the ensemble, OFS calls itself (on its home page) a “conductorless” collaborative chamber orchestra. Leadership is shared among the players according to the demands of the music, exactly as it is in smaller chamber music settings. Decisions about repertoire, as well as administrative matters, are decided collaboratively. Those who think this is all blue-sky idealistic should go back to the first sentence of this paragraph and bear in mind that the group has produced five seasons of highly engaging and well-executed programming.

As in the past, the season will consist of three concerts. This year the programming for those concerts has been organized around the overarching theme of storytelling; and, as a result, each of the programs is being called a “chapter.” Each chapter, in turn, has its own title; and, for the first of those chapters, that title is “Kinship.”

That title will be honored explicitly with a performance of Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres,” whose title translates as “brothers.” The overture for the program will be that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 492 opera The Marriage of Figaro, whose plot development involves the disclosure of unanticipated parental relations. The remainder of the program will be devoted to the ten relatively short pieces that Antonín Dvořák collected under the title “Legends.” These were originally written for four hands on one keyboard but were later arranged for a reduced orchestra. None of the pieces have titles that would suggest narrative content, let alone kinship; but the rhetoric that pervades the entire cycle tends to evoke a storyteller’s voice.

This concert will begin at 8 p.m. tomorrow night, Saturday, September 29. The venue will be familiar to those who have attended past OFS concerts, Heron Arts in SoMa, located at 7 Heron Street on the block between 7th Street and 8th Street, All tickets are being sold for $25. They may be purchased online through an Eventbrite event page.