Choices for February 28–March 1, 2020

February had a healthy share of days during which hard decisions would have to be made among equally tempting choices. However, those choices are going to be even more varied during the weekend that spans from the end of February into the beginning of March. Furthermore, because it includes the beginning of March, there are also monthly schedules that will kick into the process. So this will be another “fasten your seatbelts” article, likely to affect choices in both the near and the slightly distant future. Clearly the best way to begin is to jump in feet first with a couple of events that have already been given preview content:

Friday, February 28, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: As has already been announced, this will be the second of the two performances by Wendy Whelan and Maya Beiser of Lucinda Childs’ THE DAY.

Friday, February 28, 8 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: Also previously announced, Old First Concerts (O1C) will conclude its February schedule with the New Moon Duo of mezzo Melinda Becker and pianist Anne Rainwater.

Friday, February 28, 8 p.m., Noe Valley Ministry: Some readers may recall that the May entry in my Memorable Concerts of 2018 article was the final concert in the 29th season of the Volti a cappella choir. Volti is now in its 31st season and its sixteen singers are as stimulatingly adventurous as ever. The title of this program is Almost Speechless; and the selections will involve exploring the voice as an instrument, using little or no text. Two of the works given world premieres at that May concert will be given repeat performances, Playbook Choruses by Danny Clay and “Chant des Voyelles” (incantation of vowels) by the Lithuanian-born composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė. This time the world premieres will be provided by the other two pieces on the program. “Tomorrow’s Dream Not the Same” is the newest work by Volti’s resident composer Mark Winges. Tonia Ko’s newest work, “Starting Places,” uses fragments of text generated by Volti members about places they have called home.

The Noe Valley Ministry is located at 1012 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Tickets may be purchased in advance through a Brown Paper Tickets event page. General admission is $35 with a $30 rate for seniors aged 65 or older and a special $15 rate for arts employees, teachers, and students. If purchased at the door, the general admission rate is $40; and the senior rate is $35.

Friday, February 28, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The 30-voice a cappella choir of the California Bach Society will present a program of twentieth-century choral masterpieces that were sung in English cathedrals. Herbert Howells, best known for his large output of Anglican church music, will be represented by two compositions, his setting of the Requiem text and the motet “Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing.” The program will begin with Ralph Vaughan William’s G minor setting of the Mass text and will conclude with Gustav Holst’s setting of the “Nunc dimittis” (now  you dismiss) canticle.

St. Mark’s is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Ticket prices will be $30 for general admission, $25 for seniors, and $10 for students and those under the age of 30. Prices at the door will be $35 for general admission and $30 for seniors. All tickets are being sold online through a Brown Paper Tickets event page.

Saturday, February 29, 7:30 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA): The next concert by the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) will be held in partnership with the Berkeley Ballet Theater (BBT) and its Artistic Director and Choreographer Robert Dekkers. Rightfully Ours will be a full-evening program of eight new pieces of choreography created for BBT’s Studio Company set to choral works by eight living composers. These will include two world premieres commissioned by SFGC, “I Shouldn’t Be Up Here” and “Belong Not,” the second co-commissioned by the Israel Music Institute. The unifying theme of the program is the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

The BBT dancers will be joined by members of Dekkers Post:Ballet, and the instrumental accompaniment will include The Living Earth Show and the Amaranth Quartet.

This performance will take place in the YBCA Blue Shield of California Theater, which is located at 700 Howard Street on the northwest corner of Third Street. Premium Orchestra tickets are $50, those in Center Terrace and the remainder of the Orchestra are $38, and those in the Side Terrace and Boxes are $28. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page.

Saturday, February 29, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will present the third edition of the Dynamite Guitars program. The program will bring together three of the foremost guitarists in the world. Two of them, Frank Vignola and Vinnie Raniolo, have been touring together for over a decade and have developed a prodigious duo repertoire. The third, Joe Robinson, is also a singer and songwriter and is currently a major talent on the Nashville scene.

Herbst Theatre is located on the first two floors of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, convenient to public transportation on both Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. Ticket prices will be $60 for premium seating on the Orchestra level and in the front of the Dress Circle, $50 for the Boxes, the remainder of the Orchestra, and the remainder of the center Dress Circle, and $45 for the Balcony and the remainder of the Dress Circle. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page.

Saturday, February 29, 8 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM): The Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) will present its contribution to the Violins of Hope project. Music Director Dawn Harms will conduct and will join violinists Kay Stern and Robin Mayforth in a performance of Chris Brubeck’s “Interplay,” scored for three violins. The program will begin with Ethel Smyth’s overture to her one-act comic opera “The Boatswain’s Mate.” The program will conclude with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 56 (“Scottish”) symphony in A minor.

This performance will take place in the SFCM Concert Hall. The SFCM building is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station. Tickets prices range from $35 for premium seating to $10. BARS has created a Tix Web page for online ticket purchases.

Sunday, March 1, 4 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: Right on the heels of the conclusion of its February schedule, O1C will begin March with a solo piano recital celebrating the birthday of Frédéric Chopin. The soloist will be Italian pianist Enrico Elisi. Specific details have not yet been released, but it is reasonable to assume that all the compositions will be by Chopin. The performance is being co-presented by the San Francisco Chapter of the Chopin Foundation. There will also be a reception sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and the Polish Arts and Culture Foundation.

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 the event page for this concert, general admission will be $23 with a discounted rate of $18 for seniors aged 65 or older. 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. Program details for the remainder of March have been finalized. Here are the specifics for those concerts with the necessary O1C hyperlinks for tickets:

• Sunday, March, 15, 2 p.m.: Readers probably know by now that the San Francisco Symphony programs for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven have been given “Beethoven250” as a “special category” label. In that spirit O1C has planned a series of four concerts under the header BEET250VEN. The title of the first of these concerts will be Akademie Gala. That title is taken from a benefit concert that Beethoven organized, which took place on December 22, 1808 and lasted approximately four hours. The entire program presented eight of Beethoven’s works, one of which was a spontaneously improvised fantasia. Along with the piano, the resources include a full orchestra, vocal soloists, and chorus. The program to be presented by O1C has not yet been finalized. However, it is expected to last for three hours, presenting movements from piano sonatas, arias, and short instrumental works presented by some of the Bay Area’s leading performers. Those who make it through the entire occasion will be rewarded with a Brats & Biergarten Reception. [added 3/19, 10:25 a.m.: All remaining concerts in March have been cancelled:
• Saturday, March 21, 7 p.m.: This will be another four-hour event. The Del Sol String Quartet will host the second annual Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival (PPMF). (The first took place last March.) For those unfamiliar with the terminology, the festival is dedicated to the performance of music that requires tuning systems based on integer ratios (as distinguished from the uniform intervals of equal-tempered tuning, all of which are multiples of the twelfth root of two). The program will honor the memory of Ben Johnston, who invested the better part of his career in composing music basic on integer ratios. There will be a world premiere performance of Johnston’s “Symphony in A,” played by the PPMF Festival Orchestra under the baton of John Kennedy. Del Sol will play a newly commission piece by Jung Yoon Wie, which has not yet been given a title. Other performers will be Giacomo Fiore, Stephen Kent, Marguerite Brown, and the members of the Cornelius Cardew Choir.
• Sunday, March 22, 4 p.m.: One good festival deserves another. The Junior Bach Festival is an annual event that showcases the most talented young musicians in Northern California playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. All performers are under the age of 21 and have been rigorously screened through adjudicated auditions. The final selections of both repertoire and performers have not yet been announced.
• Friday, March 27, 8 p.m.: Readers may recall this site’s report of the inaugural performance of Ninth Planet, which took place this past November. The group was the result of the merger of two established Bay Area organizations committed to the commissioning and performing of new music: Wild Rumpus and Composers, Inc. The ensemble will make its O1C debut with a performance of the West Coast premiere of “Spiral Sequences” by Jack Frerer. The remainder of the program has not yet been finalized.]

Sunday, March 1, 4 p.m., Noe Valley Ministry: Noe Valley Chamber Music (NVCM) will present the San Francisco debut of the Aizuri Quartet, whose members are violinists Miho Saegusa and Emma Frucht, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Karen Ouzounian. They have prepared a program entitled Songs of Echoes of Home, which explores music that embodies a sense of homeland and national identity. The first half of the program will begin with a selection of the arrangements for string quartet that Antonín Dvořák composed based on his Cypresses cycle of love songs. This will be followed by a selection of folk songs arranged by Komitas. The second half will begin with “At the Purchaser’s Option,” composed by Rhiannon Giddens after reading a nineteenth-century advertisement for the sale of a 22-year-old female slave. This will be followed by Jean Sibelius’ only major work for string quartet, his Opus 56 “Voces intimae” (intimate voices). The program will conclude with Lembit Beecher’s “These Memories May Be True,” inspired by the experiences of the composer’s Estonian grandmother. NVCM has created a Web page for the online purchase of tickets at $40 for general admission, $35 for seniors, and $10 for students.

Sunday, March 1, 4 p.m., Congregation Sha’ar Zahav: Music in the Mishkan will present a program of chamber music by Czech composers. Two of those composers, both of whom were actively involved in cultural life in Theresienstadt concentration camp, Gideon Klein and Hans Krása. Readers probably know by now that both of those composers will be represented at the Violins of Hope chamber music recital, which will be given by members of the San Francisco Symphony on this coming Sunday, February 23. The program will begin with Klein’s string trio, followed by two Krása selections, also composed for string trio, “Tanec” and a coupling of Passacaglia and Fugue movements, both composed shortly before his death in Auschwitz on October 17, 1944. The program will also include the 1939 duo for violin and viola by Hungarian composer László Weiner, who also was a victim of the Holocaust. The final work on the program predates not only World War II but also World War I. Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi’s Opus 10 serenade for string trio in C major was composed in 1902.

Congregation Sha’ar Zahav,  is located at 290 Dolores Street at the northwest corner of 16th Street. Tickets for the general public are $25, but members of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav will be admitted for $20. Tickets may be purchased in advance with a credit card by calling Congregation Sha’ar Zahav at 415-861-6932. They may also be acquired online through a Web page. This Web page also allows for additional donations to Sha'ar Zahav. A wine and cheese reception will follow each performance.

Sunday, March 1, 4:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: The which way west? concert series will present Matt Renzi’s Arm-Sized Legging project. This is a survey of Renzi’s original compositions, which explores textures and colors, as well as various instrumental sonorities. Those sonorities are provided by Renzi alternating among saxophones, clarinet, and English horn, joined by Jessica Ivry on cello, John Witala on bass, and Tim Bulkley on drums. Many of the parts are notated, but the performance allows opportunities for improvisation. There will no charge for this event. Bird & Beckett is located at 653 Chenery Street, a short walk from the Glen Park station for both Muni and BART.

Sunday, March 1, 7 p.m., Red Poppy Art House: Sunday will also mark the beginning of the March concerts presented at the Poppy. The month will begin with the return of vocalist Halie Loren, following a run of February jazz festivals in the Pacific Northwest. Instrumental backup will be provided by Rob Kohler on bass and Lee Kohler on piano and backup vocals.

The Red Poppy is located in the Mission at 2698 Folsom Street on the southwest corner of 23rd Street. Ticket prices at the door will be $30 for general admission and $25 for students and seniors with valid identification. Tickets may be purchased in advance through an Eventbrite event page.

Given the demand for these concerts, it is likely that only a limited number of tickets will be available at the door. The Poppy is a small space, so even those who have purchased their tickets in advance should probably make it a point to be there when the doors open one half-hour before the performance is scheduled to begin. This is also a good time to review the remaining Poppy events scheduled for February. If any events are subsequently added, notification will be provided through my “shadow” Facebook site. Here are the specifics for the events that have been posted thus far with Eventbrite hyperlinks attached to the date-and-time information:

• Friday, March 6, 7:30 p.m.: This will be a program of low wind sonorities led by Paul Austerlitz on bass clarinet. He will be joined on the front line by John Calloway on both bass and alto flutes and Hafez Modirzadeh on tenor saxophone. Rhythm will be provided by Keshav Batish on drums, Alex Farrell on bass, and Simon Lace on guitar. This will be a global jazz program that combines the influences of Yusef Lateef with traditional music from Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Iran. Ticket prices at the door will be $30 for general admission and $25 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Saturday, March 7, 7:30 p.m.: Bringing it Back to the Roots is a program conceived by vocalist and guitarist Lior Ben-Hur, whose background consists of Israeli, Greek, and Iraqi influences. He leads a band called Sol Tevél, whose members include vocalists Jenevieve Francisco and Rebecca Nobel with rhythm provided by Yoel Bibas on drums, Brett Cavanaugh on percussion, and Luis Mayorga on bass. Ben-Hur’s work with this group is grounded in his interest in reggae music. Ticket prices at the door will be $25 for general admission and $20 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Thursday, March 12, 7:30 p.m.: Moldovan accordion virtuoso Sergiu Popa will present a musical journey from Eastern Europe and the Balkans through the Middle East. Any information about accompanists has not yet been released. Ticket prices at the door will be $30 for general admission and $25 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Friday, March 13, 7:30 p.m.: Led by Larry Gordon, Northern Harmony is the highest level performing group under the umbrella of the Vermont-based world music organization Village Harmony. The other vocalists are Avery Martin, Howe Pearson, Stuart Wheeler, Hannah Levy, Sora Harris-Vincent, Sarina Partridge, Linnea Sablosky, and Maisie Dolan. The repertoire includes South African songs and dances, traditional music from Corsica, Georgia, and the Balkans, American shape-note singing, and Renaissance compositions. Ticket prices at the door will be $25 for general admission and $20 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Saturday, March 14, 7:30 p.m.: Huarango is a new musical project born in the city of Oakland, California, based in Afro-Peruvian musical roots and the cultural heritage of its people. The group in led by Peruvian Pierr Padilla. The leading instrumentalists violinist Kyla Danysh. Rhythm is provided by Javier Trujillo on guitar, Alex Farrell on bass guitar, and Pedro Rosales on percussion instruments that include cajón, cajita and quijada de burro (donkey’s jawbone). Ticket prices at the door will be $25 for general admission and $20 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Thursday, March 19, 7:30 p.m.: The Levoná Ensemble last visited the Poppy this past June. Their repertoire combines flamenco guitar, ethnic percussion, klezmer clarinet, and folk songs from the Middle East. The group is a quintet consisting of Faisal Zedan (percussion and vocals), Asaf Ophir (woodwinds and vocals), David McLean (flamenco guitar), Josh Mellinger (percussion), and Travis Hendrix (bass). Admission will be on a sliding scale between $20 and $25.
• Friday, March 20, 7:30 p.m.: Guitarists Javi Jiménez and Ross Howe will join forces to celebrate the music of Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli and the Hot Club of Paris. They will be joined by Eric Rodgers on violin and Sascha Jacobsen on bass. Ticket prices at the door will be $25 for general admission and $20 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Saturday, March 21, 7:30 p.m.: Pedro Pastrana and Miguelito Martinez, both of whom play multiple instruments, will present what they call a “musical dialogue between Puerto Rico and Mexico.” Additional performers may be named at a later date. Ticket prices at the door will be $25 for general admission and $20 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Sunday, March 22, 2 p.m.: This will be the next installment of the free Monthly Community Rumba, with music provided by Rumberos de Radio Habana. While this is a free event, donations are warmly accepted. All donated money goes to the performing musicians, and a recommended amount is between $5 and $10.
• Friday, March 27, 7:30 p.m.: Low reeds player Steven Lugerner will lead his SLUGish Ensemble in music from the group’s debut album An Eight Out of Nine, along with new selections from a release expected later this year. The other performers are Steve Blum on the Prophet-5 analog synthesizer (which dates back to the early eighties), Keith Ganz on guitar, Javier Santiago on piano, Giulio Xavier Cetto on bass, and Michael Mitchell on drums. Ticket prices at the door will be $25 for general admission and $20 for students and seniors with valid identification.
• Saturday, March 28, 7:30 p.m.: The final concert of the month (at least at the time of this writing) will present Jessica Fichot, a chanteuse that specializes in Shanghai jazz as well as French chanson. She is usually accompanied by accordion, toy piano, and a fiery band; but, as of this writing, the names of any other performers have not yet been announced.