Choices for June 15–16, 2019

Accounting for the second weekend in June will be a bit tricky. Two different groups will be presenting performances on both Saturday and Sunday. However, one will perform the same program twice, while the other will offer two different programs. As a result, the approach I shall take will be to organize options according to program content, rather than the performing organization. Hopefully, this will facilitate making decisions, including taking an additional entry on Sunday into account. Specifics are as follows:

[updated 5/30, 9:10 a.m.:

Saturday, June 15, 7:30 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The International Orange Chorale of San Francisco (IOCSF), the only ensemble to have named itself after the color of the Golden Gate Bridge, will present the San Francisco performance of its annual June program. The title of this year’s program will be Re-Set. It will be devoted to modern setting of texts from a wide variety of sources, some within the last decades and others dating back several centuries. The featured work will be the premiere of “Te Puse Collares,” a dramatic reconception of a poem by Federico García Lorca created by 2019 Composer-in-Residence Robin Estrada. As usual, IOCSF will be conducted by Artistic Director Zane Fiala. St. Mark’s is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Admission is free, but donations are always welcome.]

Saturday, June 15, 8 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA): Other Minds (OM) will conclude its Festival 24 with two different performances. The first of these will be “The Pressure (A graphic musical tale of horror),” structured in fifteen scenes and performed with one intermission. Oakland-based composer Brian Baumbusch created this staged work on an OM commission with funding provided by the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation. The roles will be shared by four vocalists, who will also serve as narrators. These will be soprano Shauna Fallihee, alto Melinda Becker, tenor Ryan Matos, and bass Sidney Chen. Instrumentalists will include the members of the Friction Quartet (violinists Kevin Rogers and Otis Harriel, violist Taija Warbelow, and cellist Doug Machiz), The Lightbulb Ensemble playing percussion instruments from different cultures, and two organists, Margaret Halbig and Brett Carson, the latter doubling on toy piano. Baumbusch himself will serve as primary narrator, and Nathaniel Berman will conduct.

The performance will take place in the YBCA Theater, which is located on the northwest corner of Third Street and Howard Street. Ticket prices range between $59.50 and $32.50. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an event page on the YBCA Web site.

Saturday, June 15, 8 p.m., and Sunday, June 16, 3 p.m., ODC Theater: Paul Dresher and Joel Davel have been performing as the Dresher | Davel Invented Instrument Duo since 2001. Both of them have been playing instruments such as Don Buchla’s Marimba Lumina, the ten-foot Hurdy Grande, and the fifteen-foot Quadrachord, the latter two invented and built by Dresher and Daniel Schmidt. Performing on these instruments involves an imaginative invocation of signals that may be interpreted for sound creation and/or control.

Their latest program, entitled Unseen | Unheard will feature the world premiere of Dresher’s latest composition, “Three for Two.” It will be performed in conjunction with the real-time display of a video created specifically for this concert by Naomie Kremer. The program will also present two additional Dresher works, “Glimpsed From Afar” and “Moving Parts, “ as well as Davel’s “Out of Thin Air.”

The ODC Theater is located in the Mission at 3153 17th Street on the southwest corner of Shotwell Street. General admission will be $25 with a $12 rate for students and children. Tickets may be purchased through separate event pages for the Saturday and Sunday performances on the ODC Web site.

Sunday, June 16, 2 p.m., War Memorial Opera House: As has already been announced on this site, San Francisco Opera will present the first performance of the last of the final three operas in the 2018–19 season, Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka. The War Memorial Opera House is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue, on the northwest corner of Grove Street. Ticket prices range from $37 to $398. Remaining performances will all be at 7:30 p.m. on June 19, 22, 25, and 28. There is a single Web page for online purchase of tickets for all five of these dates.

Sunday, June 16, 7 p.m., YBCA: The final OM Festival 24 concert will be devoted to quarter-tone compositions by Ivan Wyschnegradsky performed on pianos specially tuned for the occasion. The performers will include the members of the HOCKET duo, Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff, Martine Joste, Director of the Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky, based in France, Vicki Ray, and Steve Vanhauwaert. Joste will give two solo performances, both of which will be United States premieres: the Opus 38 set of three pieces and the Opus 40. “Étude sur le carré magique sonore” (étude on the sonorous magic square). Donald Crockett will conduct three compositions for four pianos, including the United States premiere of “Cosmos.”

The performance will again take place in the YBCA Theater. Ticket prices are the same ranging between $59.50 and $32.50. They may be purchased in advance online through a separate event page on the YBCA Web site.