Choices for November 2–4, 2018 (and beyond)

Next month will get off to a busy start, meaning that the first weekend will require making some hard choices. However, because it is the beginning of the month, it will mark the beginning of that month’s series of concerts at several venues, as well as a season-opening event. As a result, this column will serve as more of a compendium that usual. It is also likely entail updates, which, as usual, will be tracks of the Facebook “mirror” page for this site. Specifics are as follows:

Friday, November 2, and Saturday, November 3, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., SFJAZZ Center: Activities at the Joe Henderson Lab will begin the month with a series called Exploratory Composers. The first of those composers will be pianist Myra Melford. She will perform with her Snowy Egret quintet, whose other members are Ron Miles on cornet, Liberty Ellman on guitar, Stomu Takeishi on bass, and Tyshawn Sorey on drums. This group was formed in 2013 for a multimedia production inspired by Language of Dreams, Eduardo Galeano’s alternative history of the Americas.

As can be seen above, Snowy Egret will give four performances. Tickets for the Friday concerts will be sold for $25, and there are separate event pages for the online purchase of tickets to the 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows. Tickets for Saturday will be $30, again with separate event pages for the 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows. The SFJAZZ Center is located at 201 Franklin Street, on the northwest corner of Fell Street. Remaining Henderson Lab concerts for the month of November are as follows:

• Sunday, November 4, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: The other artist to be featured in the Exploratory Composers series will be trumpeter Ian Carey. He will present the world premiere of First in My Head (The Anxiety Suite), an extended multi-movement work that firmly secures its place along that boundary between chamber music a straight-ahead jazz. Carey developed this music around a quintet he formed with Sheldon Brown on bass clarinet, Adam Shulman on piano, Fred Randolph on bass, and Jon Arkin on drums. As the project progressed, Carey added alto saxophonist Kasey Knudsen to the group to create the Quintet + 1, which will give the premiere performance. All tickets will be $20, and separate event pages have been created for online purchase to the 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. shows.
• Wednesday, November 7, 7 p.m.: The Koret Discover Jazz educational series, led by instructor Cory Combs, will present its next class entitled The Music of Jobim. Antônio Carlos Jobim has been called the prime architect of bossa nova, but his catalog as a composer is far more diverse. This class will focus on his work in theatre and film. Example performances will be provided by guest artists Claudia Villela (vocals and percussion), Ricardo Peixoto (guitar), and Marcos Silva (piano). Admission for the general public will be $25, and tickets may be purchased online through the event page.
• Thursday, November 8, and Friday, November 9, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The next concert series will be entitled Brotherhood of the Drum. The first drummer to be featured will be Mark Guiliana, who worked with David Bowie on his final album Blackstar. He will lead a quartet whose other members are Jason Rigby and Mike Lewis, both on tenor saxophone, and Chris Morrissey on bass. All tickets will be $35, and separate event pages have been created for Thursday at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. and Friday at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
• Saturday, November 10, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 11, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: The other Brotherhood of the Drum concert will present Sammy Miller & the Congregation. Miller started forming his Congregation after completing his Master’s studies at Juilliard. The full ensemble is now a sextet that proselytizes not only the early years of jazz but also its origins through folk tunes and spirituals. Tickets for the Saturday concerts will be sold for $30, and there are separate event pages for the online purchase of tickets to the 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows. Tickets for Sunday will be $30, again with separate event pages for the 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. shows.
• Thursday, November 15, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Saxophonist Smith Dobson V will lead of a four-concert Hotplate Festival. Each event will feature a landmark recording from one of the major jazz masters of the past. Dobson will lead a band in performing material from Underground, the classic 1968 quartet session led by pianist Thelonious Monk and released by Columbia. All tickets will be $20, and separate event pages have been created for online purchase to the 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows.
• Friday, November 16, 7 p.m and 8:30 p.m.: The John Brothers Piano Company is a quartet, each of whose members play two instruments. John “Thatcher” Boomer alternates between piano and clarinet, Arlo Perlstein plays trumpet as well as piano, Jimi Marks add the piano to his drum work, and Dustin Smurthwaite alternates between bass and trombone. This emphasis on the piano reflects the album to be featured, the solo piano album that Charles Mingus recorded for Impulse! in 1963. All tickets will be $20, and separate event pages have been created for online purchase to the 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows. Note, however, that almost all tickets for both of these concerts have been sold.
• Saturday, November 17, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: This will be the annual High School All-Stars Alumni Concert, and it will feature a combo led by 2004 trumpet alumnus Will Magid. The rest of the group will consist of Maya Kronfeld on keyboards, Ranzel Merritt on saxophone, Chris Bastian on bass, Kyle Athayde alternating between trumpet and vibraphone, and John Omayga Adams on drums. The album to be featured will be Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters, released by Columbia in 1973. All tickets will be $20, and separate event pages have been created for online purchase to the 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows.
• Sunday, November 18, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: The final recording to be honored by the Hotplate Festival will be It’s Time, recorded by Jackie McLean for Blue Note in 1965. The session will be led by saxophonist Steven Lugerner, who created his group Jacknife explicitly to honor McLean’s legacy. All tickets will be $20, and separate event pages have been created for online purchase to the 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. shows.
• Friday, November 30, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The month will conclude with the latest installment in the Artists On The Rise series. The artist in question is pianist Pascal Le Boeuf, who leads a trio whose other members are Giulio Xavier Cetto on bass and Christian Euman on drums. Le Boeuf will present his latest composition Ritual Being. This is a diptych in which his trio will perform with the Friction Quartet of violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers, violist Taija Warbelow, and cellist Doug Machiz. Tickets will be $20 with a $10 rate for youth and seniors. Separate event pages have been created for online purchase to the 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. shows.

Friday, November 2, 8 p.m., Center for New Music (C4NM): November 2 will also mark the beginning of the month at C4NM. Emma Logan will lead of the month curating OboeTronics II. The concerts will be performed by experimental oboists Glenda Bates and Brandon Labadie. They will presented works by living composers for solo oboes with laptop, as well as compositions involving soundtracks or tape. C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, about half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. General admission for this concert will be $20 with a $15 rate for C4NM members. Tickets may be purchased in advance through a Vendini event page. Remaining events for the month are as follows with hyperlinks to their respective Vendini event pages:

• Saturday, November 3, 7:30 p.m.: Dan Becker will curate a recital by two California guitarists, Giacomo Fiore from San Francisco and Elliott Miller from Los Angeles. The title of their program is TO….OBLIVION, which is also the title of a suite by Miller for electronic guitar, sound effects, and video. The piece is a musical tour of historical landmarks in the Los Angeles area. Fiore will perform compositions by Eve Beglarian, Anthony Porter, and Danny Clay. General admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.
• Sunday, November 4, 7 p.m.: The next program curated by Logan is entitled I Will Learn To. The title refers to the fact that each of the pieces performed involves a completion of the phrase “I will learn to ….” Performers will be Jordan Curcuruto (percussion), Chelsea Villanueva (clarinet), Phoebe Wu (piano), and Jocelyn Zelasko (voice). Works by Curcuruto, Griffen Candey, and Fjola Evans will be performed along with earlier compositions by Jennifer Higdon, George Crumb, and Mayke Nas. The concert will culminate with Christopher Cerrone’s “I will learn to love a person.” General admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.
• Friday, November 9, 8 p.m.: Kurt Rohde will curate a program performed by enhakē. The group is a quartet consisting of clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. Many will recognize this as the instrumentation for Olivier Messiaen’s “Quatuor pour la fin du temps” (quartet for the end of time). Appropriately enough, the title of the program will be enhakē beyond Messiaen. It will present works from the current century by Gabriela Lena Frank, David Biedenbender, Jean Ahn, and John Mackey. General admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.
• Sunday, November 11, 2 p.m.: The next installment in the HUSH Series curated by Julia Ogrydziak will be the autumn installment of a performance by The Long Tone Choir; general admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members. [event added, 10/30, 5 p.m.:
• Tuesday, November 13, 8 p.m.: The French Tana Quartet will conclude a week-long residency at CNMAT at the University of California at Berkeley with a visit to C4NM. Members are violinists Antoine Maisonhaute and Ivan Lebrun, violist Maxime Desert, and cellist Jeanne Maisonhaute. Consistent with their visit, they will conclude their program with music by a Berkeley composer, Franck Bedrossian's “Tracés d'ombres.” They will begin with the three short pieces that Igor Stravinsky composed for string quartet, believed to be his expression of his distaste for string quartet music. The program will also include Claude Debussy's only string quartet and Béla Bartók's final (sixth) quartet. General admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.]
• Wednesday, November 14, 7 p.m.: Glenda Bates will curate a two-set evening. Sontag Shogun is a collaborative trio in which pianist Ian Temple performs with two artists skilled in working with analog sound gear, Jeremy Young and Jesse Perlstein. They will share the evening with electronic works by Maggi Payne. General admission for this concert will be $12 with a $8 rate for C4NM members. [event added, 10/16, 3:05 p.m.:
• Thursday, November 15, 8 p.m.: The Latitudes series, curated by Blaine Todd, will present an album release show for the latest recording by guitarists Bill Orchutt and Zachary James, Brace Up. Orcutt plays blues on a four-string electric instrument, while James is an alumnus of Black Spirituals. Those of the present will be Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Phil Young. General admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.]
• Friday, November 16, 8 p.m.: Pianist Scott R. Looney will prepare a program of duos and trios, performing with percussionist Kjell Nordeson and Joseph Noble on saxophone and flute; general admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.
• Sunday, November 18, 8 p.m.: Disassembling The Clocks will be an evening of do-it-yourself sound sources and video experiments to create an evening of stories, inventions, and escapes. Performers will be Dennis Aman joining Martin Azevedo and his Planarian Collective. General admission for this concert will be $12 with a $8 rate for C4NM members.
• Monday, November 19, 7:30 p.m.: Pianist Clara Young will be the Founders’ Series recitalist. The title of her program will be Sound of the Past and the Present. Composers of the past will be Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Prokofiev. Those of the present will be Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and Phil Young. General admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.
• [added 10/24, 10:15 a.m.: Thursday, November 29, 8 p.m.: Disks and Groves: Exploring Rotary Instruments will be a two-set program of unconventional approaches to music-making. The first set will be taken by composer Danny Clay working with print-maker Jon Fischer. They will present live accompaniment to film screenings with the sounds provided by different ways of playing hand-printed records. They will be followed by T.D. Skatchit & Company, whose performances are organized around the invented instruments of Tom Nunn (the “T” of T.D. Skatchit), who has worked extensively with David (“D”) Michalak. The “Company” is formed from a pool of over twenty collaborators, one of whom, Aurora Josephson, will be featured at this concert. General admission for this concert will be $12 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.]
• Friday, November 30, 7 p.m.: The program will be shared by Mexico City electronic sound artists Enrique Arriaga and Concepción Huerta. Arriaga’s contribution will be “Unknown Persons.” That of Huerta will be “Territorios Personales.” General admission for this concert will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.

Saturday, November 3, 2 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall: This will be the eleventh annual celebration of the Day of the Dean (Día de los Muertos) by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). The conductor will be Jacomo Bairos, and the Mexican composer to be featured will again be Silvestre Revueltas. There will also be excerpts from two of the theatrical works for which Manuel de Falla composed the music, “El Amor Brujo” (love, the sorcerer) and “El sombrero de tres picos” (the three-cornered hat). The first of these will include dance by Casa Circulo Cultural. This year audiences should prepare for an unconventional arrangement of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach by Sam Hyken.

Davies Symphony Hall is located at 201 Van Ness Avenue and fills an entire city block. The other boundaries are Grove Street (north), Hayes Street (south), and Franklin Street (west). The main entrance (which is also the entrance to the Box Office) is on Grove Street, roughly halfway down the block. Concert ticket prices start at $25. VIP Packages begin at $250. A single event page on the SFS Web site has hyperlinks for purchasing both concert tickets and VIP Packages. VIP Packages may also be purchased by calling the Volunteer Council at 415-503-5500. Those interested only in concert tickets can visit the Box Office or call 415-864-6000.

[added 10/28, 9:10 a.m.:

Saturday, November 3, 6 p.m., Fort Mason: The Fort Mason campus of the San Francisco Art Institute will host CODAME ART+TECH in a four-hour event that will include projection, installation, and performance art. Entitled Intersections, the evening will showcase work that defies boundaries: Where art meets technology, experiment and play collide, and new media wander curiously in the footsteps of old. While there is not a strict schedule for performances, one of the musical offerings will feature the trio of Bill Hsu (video and electronics), Matt Ingalls (clarinets), and John Shiurba (guitar). Hsu uses his electronic gear to create images spontaneously in real-time, meaning that he will be “jamming” alongside the sponteous improvisations by Ingalls and Shiurba. Admission for all will be $20. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an interface to Eventbrite on the Web page for this event.]

Saturday, November 3, 7:30 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM): The New Century Chamber Orchestra will begin its 2018–2019 season with British violinist Anthony Marwood leading as Guest Concertmaster. The featured soloist will be accordionist James Crabb in a performance of Sally Beamish’s “Seavaigers,” scored for violin, accordion, and strings. Marwood will also perform as soloist in “Distant Light,” the concerto for violin and string orchestra by Pēteris Vasks. The program will conclude with Antonín Dvořák's Opus 22 serenade in E major for strings.

SFCM is located at 50 Oak Street. This is about halfway between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. It is also a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. Prices for single tickets are $29, $49, and $61. Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page.

In addition, because this is the first concert of the season, subscriptions are available for either the full season or three of the four programs. City Box Office has created entry pages for both four-concert and three-concert series. The remaining dates and venues in San Francisco are as follows:

• February 9, Taube Atrium Theater: Music Director Daniel Hope will make his first appearance as Concertmaster. The program will be almost entirely British, including arrangements by Benjamin Britten. The evening will conclude with Max Richter’s “recomposition” of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons violin concertos.
• March 23, Herbst Theatre: Forbidden Music will be a program that emphasizes works by composers that ran afoul of heavy-handed authorities. They will include Hans Krasa, Erwin Schulhoff, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Hope and pianist Vanessa Perez will be the soloists in Schulhoff’s double concerto. The program will also include two of Felix Mendelssohn’s early symphonies composed for string ensemble.
• May 11, SFCM: The season will conclude with a program entitled American Masters, featuring music by Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, and George Gershwin. The ensemble will be joined by the Marcus Roberts Trio for arrangements of Gershwin songs by Paul Bateman.

Finally, as in the past, there will be an Open Rehearsal for each program. Each of these will be held on the Wednesday preceding the concert, beginning at 10 a.m. The venue will be Trinity+St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, located at 1620 Gough Street on the northeast corner of Bush Street. All tickets for Open Rehearsals are sold for $15.

Saturday, November 3, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Jazz bassist Lisa Mezzacappa has now completed the four Work-in-Progress Salons for her Cosmicomics project. The title comes from a collection of short stories by Italo Calvino. Mezzacappa selected a subset of those stories, inventing a musical interpretation for each of them. The results were given their first performances at the Salons, played by the Lisa Mezzacappa Six, whose other five members are Aaron Bennet (tenor saxophone), John Finkbeiner (guitar), Mark Clifford (vibraphone), Tim Perkis (electronics), and Jordan Glenn (drums). To conclude Mezzacappa’s residency, Bird & Beckett will host a complete performance of all of Mezzacappa’s musical interpretations of Calvino.

Bird & Beckett is located at 653 Chenery Street, a short walk from the Glen Park station for both Muni and BART. All tickets will be $20, and space will be extremely limited. Reservations may be arranged through electronic mail.

[added 10/16, 10:50 a.m.:

Saturday, November 3, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: San Francisco Performances will present its second Guitar Series recital. This will be another duo recital, but this one will couple guitarist Paul Galbraith with cellist Antônio Meneses. The featured work will be Franz Schubert's D. 821 (“Arpeggione”) sonata in A minor, with Meneses taking the solo line and Galbraith providing the accompaniment (presumably following the Göran Sölischer arrangement for violin with guitar accompaniment). There will also be a San Francisco premiere of Andre Mehmari’s second Brazilian Suite, as well as a sonata explicitly composed for cello and guitar by Radamés Gnatalli.

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. Ticket prices will be $60, $50, and $40. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page.]

Saturday, November 3, 8 p.m., SFCM: The Elevate ensemble will present the first concert of its 2018–2019 season. The title of the program will be Iconoclasts & Freethinkers. Chad Goodman will conduct, and the program will feature the world premiere of Julie Herndon’s “Visible.” The other iconoclastic composers on the program will be Jordan Kuspa, Leoš Janáček, and Paul Hindemith. Admission will be $30 with a $20 rate for students and artists. Tickets may be purchased in advance through an Eventbrite event page.

Sunday, November 4, 4 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: The month of November begins for the Old First Concerts series (O1C) with a performance by the Persephone Ensemble. This consists of mezzo Kindra Scharich and the piano quartet of violinist Ilana Blumberg-Thomas, violist Wendy Clymer, cellist Amy Brodo, and pianist Lois Brandwynne. The group will give the premiere performance of a set of vocal nocturnes performed by the entire ensemble. Scharich will also sing the two Opus 91 “alto” songs by Johannes Brahms; and the instrumentalists will perform his Opus 60 (third) piano quartet in C minor.

The Old First Presbyterian Church is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. If purchased in advance online from an O1C event page, general admission will be $23 with a discounted rate of $18 for seniors aged 65 or older. Tickets for full-time students showing valid identification will be $5; and children aged twelve and under will be admitted for free. There is also a discount available for those parking at the Old First Parking Garage at 1725 Sacramento Street, just up the street from the church. The remaining concerts for November, with hyperlinks to their respective event pages for ticket purchases, are as follows:

• Friday, November 9, 8 p.m.: Strobe brings oboist Laura Griffiths together with the string trio of Stephanie Bibbo on violin, Caroline Lee on viola, and Krisanthy Desby on cello. They will perform the world premiere of “Lyra and Aulos” by Alexis Alrich and the San Francisco premiere of “Visions and Visitations” by Vincent Russo. The program will conclude with a divertimento by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
• Sunday, November 11, 4 p.m.: After having presented a series of solo qanun recitals to O1C audiences, Ali Paris will return with his instrument as part of a quartet. The other members will be Gabriel Navia on guitar, Briana DiMara on violin, and Josh Mellinger on percussion. The title of the program will be A Music Journey from Egypt to Spain.
• Sunday, November 18, 4 p.m.: Pianist José López will commemorate the 190th anniversary of the death of Franz Schubert with performances of his D. 915 Allegretto movement and his D. 958 sonata, both in the key of C minor. The program will also feature transcriptions of the operatic works of Giuseppe Verdi, Gaetano Donizetti, and Charles Gounod, all by Cuban-born composer Nicolás Ruíz Espadero. His original contribution to the program will be his Opus 11 “Souvenir d’autrefois.” López will also play “Vallée d’Obermann” from the first “year” of Franz Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage.
• Friday, November 30, 8 p.m.: The chamber quintet of Rodney Sauer (piano), Britt Swenson (violin), David Short (cello), Brian Collins (clarinet), and Dawn Kramer (trumpet) calls itself the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. They have been compiling scores for silent films since 1994. To date, they have created over 140 such scores. Based in Louisville, Colorado, they will use their visit to O1C to showcase their work.

Sunday, November 4, 7:30 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall: Violinist Hilary Hahn will give a recital as part of the SFS Great Performers Series. Her program has not yet been announced, but her performances tend to be in high demand. Ticketing is being handled by Davies as usual, and ticket prices range from $45 to $135. Tickets may be acquired through an event page on the SFS Web site. Flash is required for computer-assisted seat selection.