Alexander String Quartet members violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist David Samuel, and cellist Sandy Wilson in performance (courtesy of the Morrison Chamber Music Center)
This morning the Morrison Chamber Music Center of the College of Liberal & Creative Arts at San Francisco State University announced a limited and virtual return to the Morrison Artists Series, now known as the Jane H. Galante Concert Series. There will be four performances, the first two of which will be presented by the Alexander String Quartet (ASQ), consisting of violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist David Samuel, and cellist Sandy Wilson. The remaining two will be the rescheduling of a concert originally planned for this past March 15 and a performance by the early music ensemble Les Délices. All four events will be video recordings that will be uploaded for viewing on an “opening night,” date, probably at 7 p.m. The specific dates and presentations are as follows:
December 1: The first program will be devoted entirely to Johannes Brahms. It will begin with the Opus 67 (third) string quartet in B-flat major. The group will then be joined by its previous violist, Paul Yarbrough. The quintet will play a transcription of the second (in the key of A major) of Brahms’ Opus 118 collection of six short pieces for solo piano. The transcription for quintet has been prepared by Grafilo.
[updated 1/26, 3:50 p.m.: This concert has been postponed due to COVID considerations. It has been tentatively rescheduled for April 11. However, that date has not yet been finalized. Further information will be provided when it is available.
February 1: The major work on the second ASQ program will be Maurice Ravel’s 1903 quartet in F major. It will be preceded by George Walker’s first string quartet, a single-movement work composed in 1947. The Walker performance is being programmed as ASQ’s acknowledgement of the Black Lives Matter movement.]
February 28: The rescheduled event will be the full-evening musical theater work Ain’t I a Woman, created for actress and a chamber music trio of cello, piano, and percussion. The actress will be Shinnerrie Jackson, and the instrumentalists have not yet been named. The text was created by Kim Hines to examine the life and times of four powerful African-American women: novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, ex-slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, folk artist Clementine Hunter, and civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer. The musical score is drawn from the heartfelt spirituals and blues of the Deep South, the urban vitality of the Jazz Age, and contemporary concert music by African-American composers such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach and Diane Monroe.
April 25: Les Délices was founded by baroque oboist Debra Nagy in 2009. In 2018 they presented the March concert in the series organized by the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS). On that occasion Nagy was joined by violinists Julie Andrijeski and Adriane Post, Emily Walhout on gamba, and Mark Edwards on harpsichord. The repertoire was drawn from the musical culture of Paris during the middle of the eighteenth century. Performers for next year’s concert have not yet been announced, but the program most likely will cover the same period that constituted the SFEMS program.
Most likely the hyperlinks to the respective video streams will be installed on the event pages for each of the concerts, which may be accessed through the hyperlinks on the above dates.
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