Plans for SFCMP’s 50th (2020–21) Season

Group portrait of the SFCMP performers (courtesy of SFCMP)

I seem to have fallen a bit behind the curve when it comes to the plans for the 50th season of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP); but that is more that a bit understandable in a context of uncertainty when it comes to the openings of venues that will once again allow performances to take place in the presence of an audience. For those that missed it, the first concert of the new season was announced on this site only through the September 14 Bleeding Edge column. It involved the latest installment in the ONLINE Series of How Music is Made programs that was launched after shelter-in-place was imposed, an online premiere of pianist Myra Melford’s “Homogeneous Infiltration.”

As of this writing, there will be two more SFCMP concerts before the end of the calendar year. Both of them will be live-streamed through YouTube, and there will be no charge for admission. Each has its own Web page with a hyperlink to SFCMP’s YouTube channel. Presumably, once the date of the performance is closer, there will also be a hyperlink to the YouTube Web page for the live-stream. The events themselves, along with hyperlinks to their respective event pages, are as follows:

1. Friday, October 16, 7 p.m.: How Music is Made will present a performance of Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerilla” performed by pianists Kate Campbell and Allegra Chapman, who will also host the program along with SFCMP Artistic Director Eric Dudley.
2. Friday, November 6, 7 p.m.: How Music is Made will present Ted Hearne’s “The Cage Variations.” Hearne will join the SFCMP players as a guest performer. Dudley will again host, this time joined by violinist Hrabba Atladottir.

2021 concerts will also be live-streamed. However, tickets for admission will be charged for almost all of them; and plans are currently in place to arrange for “physical” admission to most of them. It goes without saying that all plans are subject to change. Where charges for tickets are involved, ticket-holders will be notified ten weeks before the event, should it be cancelled or postponed. All tickets will be refundable. Program specifics are as follows:

1. Saturday, March 6, 8 p.m.: The in the LABORATORY series will present a program entitled Overtones and Undercurrents. The music to be performed will be composed by musicians interested in breaking apart and recombining the elements of amplified music, with particular interest in the electronic side of the rock genre. The program will feature Fred Frith’s “Stick Figures,” scored for six electronic guitars played by two musicians, one a guitarist and the other a percussionist. Frith will join Dudley for the pre-concert How Music is Made discussion at 7 p.m. The program will also feature world premiere performances of two works created under the Technology & Applied Composition Program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. There will also be West Coast premiere performances of Mary Kouyoumdjian’s “The Vanishing Dark” and Donnacha Dennehy’s “Canons and Overtones.” The program will begin with Frank Zappa’s “Times Beach II;” and it will also include Ashley Fure’s “Shiver Lung 2,” scored for percussion and electronics. This concert will only be live-streamed.
2. Saturday, April 10, 8 p.m.: The first program for which a “physical” audience has been planned will take place in the Mission at the ODC B.Way Theater, which is located at 3153 17th Street. PostScript to the Future will be an at the CROSSROADS offering. The program will feature the West Coast premiere of a new work by Tyshawn Sorey jointly commissioned by SFCMP and the Ensemble Intercontemporain based in Paris. Sorey will be present for the occasion and will join Dudley for the pre-concert How Music is Made discussion at 7 p.m. There will also be a world premiere performance of the winning composition in the annual SF Search for Scores competition managed by SFCMP. The program will also present two compositions by Olly Wilson and “Prospective Dwellers,” a recent string quartet composed by jazz cellist Tomeka Reid.
3. Friday, June 18, 8 p.m.: The final program of the season has been planned for performance at the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera on the fourth floor of the Veteran’s Building in the Civic Center. The on STAGE series will present a program entitled Voices in Reverberation. As might be guessed, the emphasis will be on vocal music and will include the world premiere of a new composition that Caroline Shaw composed for performance by Pamela Z. Z will also perform her own “Breathing” movement from her 2013 Carbon Song Cycle. Both she and Shaw will join Dudley for the pre-concert How Music is Made discussion at 7 p.m. The program will also include John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony,” Andrew Norman’s “Sabina,” and Amadeus Regucera’s “Inexpressible, v.2.”