Old First Concerts: August 2020

According to the latest announcement from Old First Concerts (O1C) earlier this week, the organization is planning to continue live-streaming its programs through YouTube. August has shaped up to be a busy month, so this may prove to be an ambitious undertaking. As of this writing, there are plans to offer five concerts as follows:

Friday, August 7, 8 p.m.: The Bow & Mallet Quintet seems to have been named after the partnership of Jennifer Kloetzel (former cellist of the Cypress String Quartet) and Jack van Geem (former Principal Percussionist of the San Francisco Symphony). They provide the “front line” for a jazz combo, whose rhythm section consists of Brian Cooke on piano, Rob Wright on bass, and Brian Simpson on drums. The repertoire has been built around jazz tunes and instrumental approaches to ballads from the American Songbook.

Sunday, August 16, 4 p.m.: Mallets will also be in play (so to speak), this time in the hands of Sebastian Alexander Johnson. He will give a duo performance with pianist Henry Plotnick. Both of them are students at the School of Jazz, the second conservatory of The New School in New York. They are both composers, so the program will combine their originals with the standard jazz repertoire as a context for rich improvisation.

Friday, August 21, 8 p.m.: XBOOM calls itself a “creative music project that brings in electronic artistry to traditional jazz improvisation.” The group is a trio led by drummer Charles Xavier, who also oversees synthesizer technology. Clifford Brown III is the trumpeter, and the trio is completed with Matt Montgomery, who alternates between electric guitar and violin. However, all sound sources are subjected to electronic processing, building up what the group calls “layers of sonic exploration.”

Sunday, August 23, 4 p.m.: The Jupiter Chamber Ensemble will host the Eighth California Andriasov Festival. This is the string quartet led by Victor Romasevich with Michael Jones on second violin, Stephen Levintow on viola, and Paul Rhodes on cello. For as long as I have been listening to Romasevich in recital and chamber music settings, he has been championing the music of Iosif Andriasov and his son Arshak Andriasov. He has prepared a program with an extensive survey of the music of both of these composers. The quartet musicians will be joined by clarinetist Lawrence London, trumpeter Scott Macomber, trombonist Gabral Cruz, and pianists Marilyn Thompson and Lena Lubotsky. In addition to the extensive Andriasov repertoire, Macomber will play Arthur Honneger’s “Intrada” for trumpet and piano.

Friday, August 28, 8 p.m.: As of this writing, it appears the the New Piano Collective will go ahead with this year’s iteration of the San Francisco International Piano Festival, scheduled to take place between August 20 and August 30. As in the past O1C will host one of the programs, which, in honor of all the celebrations of the composer’s 250th birthday, will consist entirely of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. The participating pianists will be Gwendolyn Mok, Allegra Chapman, and Sarah Yuan. Mok will accompany cellist Stephen Harrison in a performance of the second, in the key of G minor, of Beethoven’s Opus 5 pair of cello sonatas. Chapman will accompany violinists Eunseo Oh in the third (in G major) of the three Opus 30 violin sonatas. The program will conclude with the Opus 16 quintet in E-flat major for piano (Sarah Yuan) and winds. The wind players will be four of the members of the Nomad Session wind octet: Jesse Barrett (oboe), Jonathan Szin (clarinet), Kristopher King (bassoon), and, Stephanie Stroud (horn).

Each of the above hyperlinks points to the O1C event page for that respective concert. Each event page will provide the necessary link to the YouTube site through which the concert will be streamed. As of this writing, those pages are still set up with hyperlinks for purchasing tickets. In the event that ticketed audience admission will be allowed for any of these events, the Old First Presbyterian Church is 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. 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.