Monday, December 9, 2019

SFP to Launch Two Overlapping Series in 2020

Next month San Francisco Performances (SFP) will launch the last two concert series of its 2019–2020 season. The two series, Hear Now and Then and PIVOT, will both consist of four programs; and the first three of those programs will be shared by both series. Both of these are forward-looking series that depart from the usual boundaries and explore new approaches to making music. The primary difference is that PIVOT is a weekend festival, while the last of the four Hear Now and Then concerts will not take place until April. Each of the events will begin at 7:30 p.m., except for the final PIVOT concert on Sunday, January 26, which will begin at 5 p.m. The specific dates and their related performers are as follows:

Thursday, January 23: The combined series will begin with a duo recital by violinist Stefan Jackiw accompanied by harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. Each half of the program will pair a member of the Bach family with a twentieth-century composer that wrote music for harpsichord. The Bach selections will be Johann Sebastian’s BWV 1014 duo sonata in B minor and son Carl Philipp Emanuel’s Wq 76 duo sonata, also in the key of B minor. The sonata by “Bach the father” will be coupled with a duo sonata by Viktor Kalabis, who was married to the Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková. “Bach the son” will be coupled with a sonatina for violin and harpsichord composed by Walter Piston.

Friday, January 24: Limitless will be a trio program that will bring two SFP favorites, violinists Jennifer Koh and pianist Vijay Iyer, together which percussionist Tyshawn Sorey, who will be making his SFP debut. Koh and Iyer will play the latter’s four-movement composition “The Diamond,” which is based on “The Diamond Sutra,” written during the early years of Buddhism and included on Koh’s recent Limitless album. Koh will begin the program with another “Bach the father” performance, the BWV 1002 solo violin partita in B minor. Andrew Norman will be featured with two movements from his The Companion Guide to Rome suite, “Cecilia” and “Sabina.” These were composed for string trio, and presumably they will be rearranged for the performers at this recital. Another selection from the Limitless album will be Sorey’s “In Memoriam Muhal Richard Abrams,” honoring the memory of one of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago. Finally, the program will include improvisations by both Iyer and Sorey.

Saturday, January 25: German vocalist Theo Bleckmann will present an evening of Berlin cabaret songs entitled Love and War, Peace and Exile. He will be accompanied at the piano by Dan Tepfer; and they will be joined by the members of the adventurous Telegraph Quartet, violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. The selections will be drawn from works composed throughout the twentieth century.

Sunday, January 26: The PIVOT series will conclude, as it began, with a duo recital. This time the violinist will be Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and she will be performing will cellist Jay Campbell. The distant past will be represented on the program through compositions by Orlando Gibbons, Guillaume de Machaut, and polyphonic selections from the eleventh century Winchester Troper. There will be duo sonatas by two composers from the early twentieth century, Maurice Ravel and Zoltán Kodály. The program will also present more recent compositions by Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, and Jörg Widmann. This concert is also part of the Great Artists and Ensembles Series.

Wednesday, April 29: The Hear Now and Then series will conclude with a recital by tenor Mark Padmore. The program will consist entirely of music from the Baroque period. Accompaniment will bring together some of the leading performers of early music, including local cellist Tanya Tomkins.

All programs will take place in Herbst Theatre, which occupies the first two floors of the Veterans Building, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Subscriptions are available for the four Hear Now and Then concerts for $220, $180, and $160. The PIVOT subscriptions are slightly higher: $230, $185, and $160. This is because single tickets for the January 26 concert will be sold for $70, $55, and $45, while the prices for the tickets for all the other concerts will be $60, $50, and $45. The above hyperlinks lead to the event pages for each of the concerts, from which both subscriptions and single tickets may be ordered. All tickets can also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545 for individual tickets or 415-677-0325 for subscriptions.

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