Sunday, August 4, 2019

Old First Concerts: October, 2019

Old First Concerts (O1C) has now posted specifics for the performances it will host in October. There are only five of them; but, as always, any additions or modifications will be handled by posts to the shadow page for this site on Facebook. All O1C events take place at the Old First Presbyterian Church, located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. If purchased in advance online from an O1C event page, general admission will be $23 with a discounted rate of $18 for seniors aged 65 or older. Hyperlinks for online purchase through specific event pages will be attached to the date-and-time information given below. Tickets for full-time students showing valid identification will be $5; and children aged twelve and under will be admitted for free. There is also a discount available for those parking at the Old First Parking Garage at 1725 Sacramento Street, just up the street from the church. Here are the specifics for the month of October:

Sunday, October 13, 4 p.m.: The Ives Collective will return to O1C for another round of adventurous programming. The Artistic Co-Directors are Susan Freier (violin and viola) and Stephen Harrison (cello). They are joined by colleagues recruited for the resources required for the program being prepared. On this occasion those colleagues will be violinist Hrabba Atladottir and pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi.

The full ensemble will perform the piano quartet written by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks in 2001. The program will begin with the three string players playing an intermezzo composed by Zoltán Kodály almost a century earlier. Between these two compositions, the group will present Erich Korngold’s Opus 23 suite, composed in 1930 with the somewhat unlikely scoring for two violins, cello, and left-hand-only piano. Most likely, this was written at the request of pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I.

Friday, October 18, 8 p.m.: Pianist Neil Rutman has prepared a program with an extensive historical scope. At one extreme he will play keyboard music by Orlando Gibbons that predates the piano. At the other he will perform a prelude composed by Lou Harrison for prepared piano and Frederic Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.” The “intervening” composers will be Frédéric Chopin, Gabriel Fauré, and Maurice Ravel.

Sunday, October 20, 4 p.m.: Mezzo Naama Liany will make her West Coast debut in a recital for which her accompaniment will be provided by guitarist Robert Miller. Her repertoire is twentieth-century, presenting composers from France and the Iberian peninsula. The French composers were both members of Les Six, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc. The composers on the other side of the Pyrenees will be the Catalan Xavier Montsalvatge and Spanish composers Joaquín Rodrigo and Federico García Lorca. While García Lorca is better known as a poet and playwright, he had a great interest in traditional Spanish song, composing his own arrangements of the tunes for those songs.

Friday, October 25, 8 p.m.: Orphic Percussion is the percussion quartet of Sean Clark, Michael Downing, Stuart Langsam, and Cameron Leach. The title of their O1C debut recital will be Orphic: Unheard. The program will consist entirely of newly commissioned works. These will include world premiere performances of pieces by Shaun Tilburg, Kenneth Froelich, and Bryce Cannell. There will also be a world premiere of a work composed collectively by members of the ensemble.

Sunday, October 27, 4 p.m.: The Wooden Fish Ensemble will return to O1C with their latest program devoted to the music of Korean composer Hyo-shin Na. This concert has been prepared to celebrate her 60th birthday, and the performance will be followed by a special Birthday Reception. Na has taken imaginative approaches to writing for both Eastern and Western instruments, and Wooden Fish includes performers for both instrumental categories. The program will include four world premiere performances of works composed earlier this year.

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