Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, featured on the cover of the new SFP Season Brochure
Yesterday morning President Melanie Smith announced the 2019–2020 season of San Francisco Performances (SFP). Those who saw the article on this site about a year ago and still know how to do the math should immediately recognize that this will be a landmark occasion, since it will be the organization’s 40th anniversary season. A new Web page has been created that summarizes the concert calendar for the new season. This is simply an easily readable chronological listing that does not include any hyperlinks to specifics. However, on the SFP home page there are hyperlinks to two PDF files, one for the new Season Brochure and the other for a printable order form.
The brochure provides both the specifics and the summary of how the concerts have been organized into Series Themes. Subscriptions to individual Series will go on sale on Wednesday, April 24. Single tickets will be available on Monday, August 19.
As in the past, this site will discuss the specifics of each of the series closer to the date of that series’ first concert. However, at the present time it is worth calling out the return of a favorite series that had to be suspended during the current season. Also, because of the significance of the occasion, there will be more to anniversary celebrations than there were last season.
The returning series, of course, will be the Salon Series. This was suspended during the 39th season due to a scheduled renovation of the Hotel Rex. Unfortunately, the resulting renovation no longer provided space for Salon events. Fortunately, a venue has been found for the next season; and, while it may not have the early twentieth-century ambience found at the Hotel Rex, it promises to provide the intimate relationship between audience and performers that made the Rex venue such a special place. The new venue will be the Education Studio that is part of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, which is located on the fourth floor of the Veterans Building at the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street (basically three flights above the entrance to Herbst Theatre). As in the past, performances will take place on Wednesday evenings beginning at 6:30 p.m.; and the Series will resume on January 15.
As usual, there will be the usual Season Gala & Concert, which will be held early in the new season on Tuesday, October 29. The 40th Anniversary recitalist will be pianist Richard Goode, who is preparing a program of music by Claude Debussy and Frédéric Chopin, which will begin at 7 p.m. The recital will be preceded at 6 p.m. by a cocktail reception and followed by dinner in the Green Room (on the second floor of the Veterans Building) beginning at 8 p.m. As always, proceeds will benefit the SFP education programs; and, when single tickets go on sale, concert-only tickets will be available for $85, $65, and $45.
Anniversary festivities will then continue on Sunday, April 26, with an all-day extravaganza with two programs. The first will be a Family Day marathon that will run from noon to 5 p.m. Over the course of those five hours there will be 40 free and low-cost concerts held at several different venues throughout the Veterans Building. All children under the age of eighteen will be admitted for free; and all-day passes for adults will be sold for $25.
Then at 7 p.m. Herbst Theatre will provide the venue for the 40th Anniversary Concert featuring pianist Marc-André Hamelin, the Alexander String Quartet (ASQ), tenor Nicholas Phan, and composer Gabriel Kahane. Hamelin will give the world premiere performance of a new quintet that he will perform with ASQ. Phan will then perform a new song cycle by Kahane, who will accompany him at the piano. All tickets for this concert will be sold for $40.
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