Choices for May 30, 2019

As of this writing (subject to updates, as always), the last Thursday of this month will be a busy one. Fortunately, for those that agonize over making hard choices, one of those events will be the opening of a festival that will continue through Saturday evening; and other will be the first of three performances of the same program, the other two also taking place on Friday and Saturday. As a result, only one of the three options is a one-time-only event. Specifics are as follows:

7:30 p.m., SFJAZZ Center: This will be the opening concert in the fifth annual “hometown” festival to be presented by the Kronos Quartet (violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Sunny Yang). The event will again be a “long weekend” running from Thursday through Saturday, with a concert every evening and special afternoon events on Saturday. This year’s Artist-in-Residence will be Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC); and, as might be expected, SFGC will be returning as guest performers. All concerts will be held in the Robert N. Miner Auditorium, and the two afternoon events will take place in the Joe Henderson Lab. There will also be the annual Family Concert, held in Miner Auditorium at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

Kronos has created a single Web page with up-to-date information summarizing both the concerts (including the Family event) and the afternoon events. Ticketing will again be handled by the SFJAZZ Center on a performance-by-performance basis. So each event will have its own hyperlink for purchasing tickets. There will be reserved seating for all three of the evening concerts with prices ranging from $20 to $65. There will be general admission for the Family Concert. “Youth” (age eighteen and under) admission will be $10; and adults will be admitted for $15. The Henderson events will be general admission at no charge. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 866-920-5299 or by visiting the Box Office on the ground floor of the SFJAZZ Center. The SFJAZZ Center is located at 201 Franklin Street, on the northwest corner of Fell Street.

Finally, Kronos has collaborated with the Exploratorium for a special event preceding the Festival Filming the World, One Song at a Time: The Films of Pete and Toshi Seeger will be held in the Kanbar Forum beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 29. The film screening will be supplemented by a discussion by Todd Harvey from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The Festival Web page has a hyperlink to further information on the Exploratorium Web site. The event will be free, but Kanbar has limited capacity. Seating will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Admission to the film will not include admission to the Museum.

8 p.m., Royce Gallery: Pamela Z has announced the latest installment in her ROOM Series. This will be a work-in-progress performance of excerpts from her current major project, which she calls “Correspondence.” Here is her own description:

“Correspondence” is an exploration of the ever-evolving modes of personal communication and how the rapid changes are impacting or coloring the ways we relate to one another. The work teases apart the history of correspondence – from handwritten letters and telegraphs to electronic messaging, tweets, and video chats. Z composed the piece by interviewing people about their histories with various modes of correspondence, and using speech fragments from those interviews to weave together the structure and to derive melodic and rhythmic material for the parts.

For the performance Z, working with electronic processing of her solo voice, will be joined by the contemporary chamber chorus Voices of Silicon Valley. The program will also include a suite of re-imagined Renaissance madrigals and excerpts from selected film scores.

The Royce Gallery offers an intimate performance space located in the North East Mission Industrial Zone (NEMIZ) at 2901 Mariposa Street on the northeast corner of Harrison Street. General admission will be $20 with a discounted price of $15 for students, seniors, and low-income patrons. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a Brown Paper Tickets event page. That page also includes a “Generous (Supporter)” option of $30, which will contribute to artist fees for the performers.

8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall: As has already been reported, this will be the first of the three performances given by conductor Juraj Valčuha on his return to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). This will be a program of extreme opposites, beginning with SFS Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik performing as soloist in Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1042 violin concerto in E major followed (after the intermission) by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 65 (eighth) symphony in C minor. Further information may be found both on this site and on the event page for this program on the SFS Web site. The other two performance of this program will also take place at 8 p.m. on Friday, May 31, and Saturday, June 1.