Sunday, March 3, 2019

Further Information about Bard Music West Plans

Readers may recall that this month’s schedule at the Center for New Music (C4NM) includes the first program in a series of concerts organized by Bard Music West. Since further details have arisen since that concert was first announced, this seems like a good time to take stock of activities of both short-term and long-range plans. Let’s begin with the new concert series.

Composers Danny Clay and Gabriella Smith (courtesy of Bard Music West)

The title of this series is Bard Music West Plays. This has been conceived to explore the music and inspirations of emerging composers through concerts around the Bay Area. The title of the first program in this series is Games and Revolutions; and it will be performed at four different venues around the Bay Area, the first of which will be C4NM. The program will feature two of those emerging composers, both with Bay Area ties, Danny Clay and Gabriella Smith.

As was already reported, the Clay compositions will be “Toy Piano Music” and “Playbook,” performed by Allegra Chapman on toy piano and piano, respectively. For “Toy Piano Music” Chapman will play with a string quartet whose members are violinists Zenas Hsu and Mélanie Clapiès, violist Jessica Chang, and cellist Laura Gaynon. The Smith compositions will be her string quartet entitled “Carrot Revolution” and “Anthozoa,” scored for violin, cello, piano, and percussion. The percussionist will be Mika Nakamura.

Clay and Smith also suggested pieces that could be coupled with their own compositions. Thus, there will be two other toy piano compositions, “Carousel” by Phyllis Chen, scored for toy piano and music box, and “Mirabella,” a tarantella by Stephen Montague. Smith, on the other hand, has chosen to pair her string quartet with Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken III/36, the last of the six “Sun” quartets published as his Opus 20. This is one of the three Opus 20 quartets to conclude with a fugue, and the fugue for Hoboken III/36 has three subjects.

The C4NM performance of this program will take place on Thursday, March 28, at 8 p.m. 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 $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and a $5 charge for students. Tickets may be purchased in advance through a Vendini event page. The program will run approximately 70 minutes and will be performed without an intermission.

Further Bard Music West Plays concerts have not yet been scheduled. However, plans for the third Bard Music West festival have been announced. Those familiar with this event know that each festival provides a “context-dependent” approach to single composer, presenting not only that composer’s music but also pieces that reflect both influences and legacy. The first two festivals focused on György Ligeti and Henry Cowell, respectively. The third festival has been scheduled for October 18 and 19 of this year, and the title will be The World of Grażyna Bacewicz. Once again the venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, located in Noe Valley at 1021 Sanchez Street at the corner of 23rd Street.

Bacewicz’ Wikipedia page describes her as “the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.” Bacewicz was born on February 5, 1909 and died on January 17, 1969, meaning that this year marks the 50th anniversary of her death and the 110th anniversary of her birth. Program details have not yet been finalized; but, where influences are concerned, Bacewicz’ teachers included Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Nadia Boulanger. In Poland her most notable predecessors were Andrzej Panufnik and Witold Lutosławski. An event page has been created for the festival on the Bard Music West Web site, and this is where specifics will be announced once they have been determined.

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