Old First Concerts: April, 2021

As of this writing, Old First Concerts (O1C) has scheduled two performances for next month. Given that April is less than a week away, I would say it is likely that this will be the full complement. The current plan is that both concerts will be live-streamed through YouTube, but at present a YouTube hyperlink has only been provided for the first concert. Presumably, program notes will be available for both concerts; but these also seem to be forthcoming. The best way to keep track of additional information will be through the O1C event pages. Hyperlinks to those pages will be attached to the date and time of performances as follows:

Sunday, April 11, 2 p.m.: The Del Sol String Quartet, whose members are violinists Sam Weiser and Benjamin Kreith, who alternate in playing first violin, violist Charlton Lee, and cellist Kathryn Bates, had been scheduled to present the Second Annual Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival on March 21, 2020. It took over a year of waiting, but the Festival will be held next month. The title was chosen to provide a platform to highlight the work of experimental innovators and traditional masters of integer-ratio harmonies.

Because the performance will consist of streamed video, the Festival will take advantage of a unique opportunity to invite performers whose work involves large instruments that cannot easily be moved for live performance. This will include specially tuned pianos for the performance of music by deVon R. Gray and Michael Harrison, as well as Ellen Fullman playing her Long String Instrument. Beyond European traditions there will be performances by Stephen Kent on didjeridu, Dariush Saghafi on santur, and Hong Wang on erhu. Vocalist Daisy Press will perform music by Hildegard of Bingen, and guitarist Giacomo Fiore will play a selection by Catherine Lamb.

Of particular interest Del Sol itself will play Set for Billie Holiday. This will be a suite of songs that Holiday recorded arranged by Ben Johnston. I am not sure that Holiday herself was particularly “Pythagorean.” Nevertheless, acute attention to many of her recordings will reveal that, if she did not have a piano to set a standard, she had a keen ability to stretch or squeeze her intervals to enhance the rhetorical significance of the phrases she was singing. (Whether or not she did this consistently is probably open to debate, as is the question of whether her recordings are representative of her style of delivery.)

Saturday, April 17, 8 p.m.: Quinteto Latino is the woodwind quintet directed by hornist Armando Castellano. The other four wind players are Diane Grubbe (flute), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Leslie Tagorda (clarinet), and Shawn Jones (bassoon). They were one of the groups that opened SF Music Day 2019 in the Veterans Building. Their repertoire draws upon Latin American music from both traditional folk sources and new works by living composers. Specific program information has not yet been announced.