Old First Concerts Announces Plan for June

This past Thursday Old First Concerts (O1C) reached out to those on its electronic mailing list about its plans for the summer. The two operative paragraphs are as follows:

Given the way things are currently trending, it is hard to imagine that we will be able to host concerts again before the end of the summer.  However, just in case the situation improves before then, we have updated our website with three Friday night solo concerts in June and a full slate of concerts in July.

Any ticket purchased on our site is fully guaranteed: if your concert is postponed or cancelled, you can use the ticket for another concert, request a refund, or let us know that we can consider it as a donation.

In addition O1C has announced the sale of Golden Tickets. These are explained as follows:

Buy a ticket good at any show at Old First Concerts – valid until June 1, 2021. Golden Ticket holders receive the latest concert updates via e-mail and can reserve their seat for any concert before general ticket sales begin. Some specially priced concerts may require additional payment.

Golden Ticket prices are $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors aged 65 and older, and $5 for full-time students with identification. O1C has created a Web page specifically for the purchase of Golden Tickets.

The solo concerts scheduled for June will be presented by three performers likely to be familiar to those that attend O1C recitals regularly. 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 June programs, all of which will take place on Fridays at 8 p.m.:

June 5: Pianist Sarah Cahill will present the program she had originally intended to play this coming May 15. It will be the latest “progress report” on her The Future is Female project. By the time this project is completed, Cahill is expected to have collected 60 compositions by women around the globe. There will be three selections that pre-date the project itself. The earliest of these will be a scherzo by Grażyna Bacewicz. A partita by Germaine Tailleferre, the one female member of Les Six in Paris, was composed in 1957. From the following decade Cahill will play “Troubled Water,” composed by Margaret Bonds in 1967. The program will also include the third in a series of prelude-étude couplings composed by Gabriela Ortiz in 2011, “Yeah Yeah Yeah” by Lois V Vierk, Sofia Gubaidulina’s chaconne, and “Tango Si?” by Betsy Jolas.

June 12: Ali Paris will return with his qanun to present a program entitled Love Letters from the Middle East. Like Cahill he had been scheduled to perform this month on May 29. Paris has been making annual visits to O1C for several years. Unless I am mistaken, this will be his first appeared as a soloist; and he will complement his instrumental fusion of Middle Eastern and Western musical styles with his own singing.

June 19 [updated 6/19, 5:25 a.m.: This recital has been rescheduled for Sunday, June 21, at 4 p.m. with a YouTube video link]: The final recitalist of the month will be cellist Natalie Raney. I believe that all of her previous O1C performances have involved chamber ensembles, making this her O1C debut as a soloist. Somewhat ironically, the last time I reported about her was when she joined the New Moon Duo of mezzo Melinda Becker and pianist Anne Rainwater at O1C at the end of February, not long before the metaphorical curtain descended. Even more ironically, I ran into her in the audience for the March 7 performance of Danny Clay’s one-hour chamber opera “Echoes” presented by The Living Earth Show. This took place right the heels of the cancellation of all public performances, events, and gatherings at the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center. As might be expected, Raney’s solo debut will include one of the solo cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 1007 in G major. She will also play one of the major contemporary works for solo cello, Kaija Saariahjo’s “Sept Papillons” (seven butterflies). The remaining work on the program will be Dorothy Chang’s “Bloom,” an evocation of the spirit of springtime.

[updated 5/14, 12:45 p.m.: As of this writing, not only are the above concerts still “on the books” but also another concert for next month has been scheduled:

June 26: Cornelius Boots will present a solo performance. Once a clarinetist, he is now a master of shakuhachi, and Japanese vertical flute of Zen Buddhism made from the root-end of a stalk of bamboo. Boots also plays the bass version of this instrument, known as the taimu shakuhachi. However, he does not limit himself to Japanese music for these instruments. He also explores more contemporary styles, one of which he calls “Bamboo Gospel.”]