PBO to Open 2019/20 Season with World Premiere

Poster image of Caroline Shaw on the banner for the first concert of the new PBO season (from the Web page for this concert)

As was announced this past summer, the 39th season of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO) & Chorale will get under way in San Francisco next month. The entire season will reflect on the legacy of Nicholas McGegan and his 35 years of service as Waverley Fund Music Director with the appropriate overall title Reflections. The title of the first program of the season will be A Cosmic Notion, and it will reflect upon a sustained relationship that McGegan has established with a contemporary composer.

The composer is Caroline Shaw, and the relationship began with premiere performances taking place between 2016 and 2019 to present three songs composed by Shaw and sung by mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter performing with PBO. The title of next month’s program refers to a much larger Shaw project, which resulted in a composition entitled “The Listeners.” The title refers to the Voyager Golden Records, two phonograph records (hyperlink to Wikipedia for those unfamiliar with such objects) created in 1977, each attached to a Voyager spacecraft. The contents of these records were selected for NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. Sagan called this effort “the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’” in the hope that other civilizations in interstellar space would learn something about our own existence. The entire contents was extensive; and the musical selections included a wide variety of folk sources from different cultures, as well as composed works that ran the gamut from Johann Sebastian Bach to Chuck Berry.

“The Listeners” was inspired by the content of these records; but Shaw also used the composition to reflect on the nature of listening itself. To that end she drew upon texts by Walt Whitman, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Tracy K. Smith. In addition, she explored the nature of listening by exploiting the otherworldly qualities of low-register solo voices. For this purpose she enlisted the assistance of contralto Avery Amereau and bass-baritone Dashon Burton, the latter being one of her Roomful of Teeth colleagues. The Philharmonia Chorale, directed by Bruce Lamott, will also contribute to the performance, along with audio feeds from curated recorded selections. In addition, Lamott will lead the pre-concert talk, allowing Shaw to share her thoughts about this new composition. The other participant in this conversation will be Timothy Ferris, who produced the Golden Record.

“The Listeners” will be preceded by two compositions by George Frideric Handel. The first of these will be the HWV 74 “Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne” with a libretto by Ambrose Philips. This ode is often known by the first line of the text, “Eternal source of light divine.” Burton will be one of the three soloists, the other two being soprano Arwen Myers and countertenor Reginald Mobley. This will be followed by a suite of instrumental music from “Terpsichore,” which Handel composed as a prologue for his HWV 8 opera Il pastor fido (the faithful shepherd).

The San Francisco performance of this concert will take place on Thursday, October 17, beginning at 8 p.m. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices will range from $32 to $120 for premium seating. Tickets are currently available for advance purchase through a City Box Office event page, which displays a color-coded seating plan that shows which areas correspond to which price levels.

Since this if the first concert of the season, all subscription options are still on sale. These include full subscriptions for all six of the season concerts and a variety of alternatives for those wishing to attend fewer performances. Across all of those alternatives, the full range of prices runs from $90 to $660. A Web page has been created for purchasing all subscription alternatives. Further information may be obtained by calling Patron Services at 415-295-1900, which is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.