Choices for November 8, 2018 (and beyond)

Having now enumerated choices for several weekends, next month will provide the first instance of a weekday for which hard choices will have to be made. All of the options will overlap, either entirely or in part. They will all deserve consideration. As noted above, the date in question is Thursday, November 8. Specifics are as follows:

7:30 p.m., secret location: The members of One Found Sound will present another one-night-only program of chamber music. The title for the evening will be Stories from the Chamber (Concert) of Secrets. Specific selections and performers have not yet been announced. The venue will be a secret art gallery near the intersection of 16th Street and Mission Street (making it accessible to public transportation). All tickets will be $25, and they may be purchased through an Eventbrite event page. Once the purchase has been concluded, ticket holders will receive electronic mail giving the location of the concert.

7:30 p.m., Red Poppy Art House: The first offering at the Poppy next month will be a trio called Florist. The group calls itself a “soft-synthesizer folk band” and a “friendship project.” Emily Sprague is the vocalist, accompanied by Jonnie Baker on guitar. Rick Spataro handles the synthesizer work.

The Red Poppy is located in the Mission at 2698 Folsom Street on the southwest corner of 23rd Street. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20. Tickets will be available in advance online through and Eventbrite event page. Given the demand for these concerts, it is often the case that only a limited number of tickets will be available at the door. The Poppy is a small space. Even those who have purchased their tickets in advance should probably make it a point to be there when the doors open one half-hour before the performance is scheduled to begin.

This will also be a good time to account for the other concerts scheduled for this month. Hyperlinks to the respective Eventbrite event pages will be attached to the date and time where appropriate. Here is the current state of the rest of the November calendar:

• [added 10/18, 11 a.m.: Thursday, November 1, 7:30 p.m.: The Daniel Fabricant Trio will join forces with StringQuake for an evening of melodic French jazz, improvisations, and unusual rhythms. Fabricant leads his trio from his bass and Aaron Kierbel is his drummer. The pianist for this evening has not yet been announced. StringQuake is the trio of harpist Amelia Romano, cellist Misha Khalikulov, and percussionist Josh Mellinger. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20.
• Friday, November 2, 7:30 p.m.: The Yoga Society of San Francisco will present an evening shared by Mark Deutsch and Cornelius Boots. Boots will open with a shakuhachi solo set. Deutsch will play an instrument of his own invention, the bazantar, a 39-string upright bass. He will perform The Picasso Tunings, an epic cycle of compositions for this instrument. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20.]
• [added 10/19, 10:45 a.m.: Sunday, November 4, 8 p.m.: Bassist Seth Ford-Young will lead a quartet whose other members will be violinist Evan Price, accordionist Rob Reich, and guitarist Jason Vanderford. As can be seen from the instrumentation, the style amounts to a chamber music approach to the legacy of Django Reinhardt. The group will perform selections from their new release Tme Memory Beauty Hope, as well as the first album, entitled simply Seth Ford-Young. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20.]
  
• Friday, November 9, 7:30 p.m.: Mean to Me is a quintet whose repertoire is inspired by classic jazz from the Twenties through the Forties. However, their interpretations frequently reflect influences by Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ahmad Jamal, and an eclectic variety of purveyors of soul and Latin jazz. Judy Butterfield is the group’s vocalist. Instrumentalists are Ben Slater on saxophone and piano, Dave Shaff on trumpet and washboard, and Cairo McCochran on drums. The bass player for this gig has not yet been announced. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20.
• Saturday, November 10, 7:30 p.m.: Invisible Bird is the trio of trumpeter Shane Endsley, guitarist Dave Devine, and percussionist Scott Amendola, all three of whom supplement their instrumental work with diverse electronic gear. As might be expected, there is considerably diverse eclecticism in their styles. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20.
• Thursday, November 15, 7:30 p.m.: Morley’s vocal work weaves the threads of jazz, soul, and folk traditions. She accompanies herself on guitar. Any musicians joining her have not yet been announced. The program will feature music from her sixth studio album, Thousand Miles. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20.
• Friday, November 16, 7:30 p.m.: Flutist Rebecca Kleinmann will return to the Poppy to celebrate her birthday. She will perform with a trio of visitors from Goiania, Brazil: Everton Luiz on winds, Julio Lemos on guitar, and Diego Amaral on percussion. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $20 and $25.
• Sunday, November 25, 2 p.m.: This will be the next installment of the free Monthly Community Rumba, with music provided by Rumberos de Radio Habana. While this is a free event, donations are warmly accepted. All donated money goes to the performing musicians, and a recommended amount is between $5 and $10.
• Sunday, November 25, 7 p.m. and 8:45 p.m.: Duo Moldova will present a program of Romanian Lautari music. This style encompasses soul-wrenching ballads, high-energy wedding dances, and village-style tunes. The members of the duo are accordionist Sergei Popa and violinist Valy Lautar. Their set will be preceded by the members of the Mahala project, violinists Annie Cilley and Matt Stein, Andrew Cohen on accordion, Balder ten Bate on cimbalom, and Travis Hendrix on bass. As can be seen above, the entire program will be given two shows. Admission for both will be on a sliding scale between $20 and $25. Note also that there is a single Eventbrite event page for advance purchase.
• [added 10/19, 10:50 a.m.: Wednesday, November 28, 7:30 p.m.: Saxophonist Anton Schwartz will give a duo performance with pianist John Nelson. They will play standards and original compositions. Admission will be on a sliding scale between $15 and $20.]
• [added 10/20. 2:35 p.m.: Thursday, November 29, 7 p.m.: Decoda is a chamber music ensemble based in New York. It is the only group to have been named an Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall. It's visit to the Poppy is co-presented with Noe Valley Chamber Music’s SNAPSHOTS series. The program will offer music by Sergei Prokofiev, Franz Schubert, and Evan Primo. The performers will be Premo on bass along with Owen Dalby (violin), Meena Bhasin (viola), James Austin Smith (oboe), Alicia Lee (clarinet). Soprano Mary Bonhag will make a special guest appearance. All tickets will be sold for $25.
• Friday, November 30, 8 p.m.: Gamelan Sekar Jaya will present a program of music and dance range that takes in both the traditional Balinese repertoire and recent cutting-edge compositions. The musicians play on several different sets of Balinese instruments, consisting of various combinations of bronze-keyed metallophones, bamboo marimbas, gongs, drums, and flutes. Tickets will be $30 if purchased at the door. However, the price for online purchase will be $25.]
  

8 p.m., ODC Theater: The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO) will present the first of the two PBO SESSIONS events taking place in San Francisco this season. The title of the offering will be The H.I.P. Revolution, the abbreviation referring to Historically-Informed Performance. Music Director Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Chorale Director Bruce Lamott will discuss the growing popularity of this approach to performance with Ben Sosland, Director of the Historical Performance program at the Juilliard School. Music will be provided by three PBO musicians, each coupled with a recent Juilliard graduate. These will be violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock and Alana Youssefian, cellists Phoebe Carrai and Keiran Campbell, and oboists Gonzalo X. Ruiz and David Dickey. Musical selections will be by Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, and Francesco Geminiani.

The ODC Theatre is located in the Mission at 3153 17th Street on the northwest corner of Shotwell Street. Seating will be general admission, and all tickets will be $25. Complementary wine will be served and the end of the evening. This season PBO is handling its own ticketing, and an event page has been created for online purchase. Those who wish further information may call 415-392-4400.

This event will serve as a preview for the performance of the next PBO program in San Francisco. The title of this concert will be Vivaldi the Teacher: When Reigning and Rising Stars Align. The program will consist primarily of six Vivaldi concertos, each for a different combination of instruments. The program will begin with the seventh, in D major, of the twelve Opus 6 concerti grossi by Arcangelo Corelli. The final selection will be a Corelli transcription, Geminiani’s concerto grosso arrangement of the last of the twelve violin sonatas in Corelli’s Opus 5, a set of variations on the “Folia” theme. The three Juilliard graduates visiting the PBO SESSIONS event will be featured as soloists.

The San Francisco performance of this concert will take place on Friday, November 9, beginning at 8 p.m. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices will range from $32 to $120 for premium seating. Tickets are currently available for advance purchase through a City Box Office event page, which displays a color-coded seating plan that shows which areas correspond to which price levels.

8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall: Finally, November 8 will be the first night of the week’s subscription concert by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). The title of the program will be Banned and Boycotted: Music of Bartók and Shostakovich. Jakub Hrůša will conduct, and violinist Karen Gomyo will make her SFS debut performing Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 77 (first) violin concerto in A minor. Béla Bartók will be represented by the suite he extracted from his Opus 19 pantomime, “The Miraculous Mandarin.” The one “uncontroversial” work on the program will be Alexander Borodin’s second symphony in B minor.

This concert will be given two additional performances, also at 8 p.m. on Friday, November 9, and Saturday, November 10. The Inside Music talk will be given by Elizabeth Seitz one hour prior to each concert. Ticket prices range from $20 to $75, and an event page has been created for online purchase. KDFC’s Rik Malone has prepared podcasts about both the Bartók and Shostakovich selections. These are not, as of this writing, on the event page, but they should appear on the Program Notes Podcasts Web page prior to the first performance of this program. The event page does gave sound clips of previous SFS performances of the Bartók selection.

In addition, these performances will be preceded by the next Katherine Hanrahan Open Rehearsal of the season. This special behind-the-scenes experience begins at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, November 8, with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk by Seitz at 9 a.m. The rehearsal itself begins at 10 a.m.; and, of course, the pieces rehearsed are at the conductor’s discretion. General admission is $30 with $40 for reserved seats in the Premiere Orchestra section and Rear Boxes and $45 for seating in the Side Boxes and the Loge. Tickets may be purchased online through a separate event page.