SFCMP Updates Plans for 50th Season in 2021

At the end of this past September, this site ran an article summarizing the plans for the 50th season of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP). The season began with performances that were streamed on October 16 and November 6. However, while live-streaming was planned for the 2021 concerts, arrangements were also being made for “physical” admission where it seemed feasible and appropriate. As of this week, however, SFCMP has decided that all remaining concerts will be recorded in advance for streamed delivery.

All of the offerings will be ticketed. Acknowledgement of the ticket will include information for connecting to the streamed content. Streaming will be available on the date and time for each event as specified below, and content will be accessible for one month. The date and time in the summary below are hyperlinked to the Web page from which tickets may be purchased. The revised schedule of offerings is as follows:

1. Saturday, March 6, 8 p.m.: The in the LABORATORY series will present a program entitled Overtones and Undercurrents. The program will feature world premiere performances of two works created by students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under the Technology & Applied Composition Program. The first selection will be Garrett Lucero’s “Onward,” scored for guitar and electronics, with the guitar played by David Tanenbaum. This will be followed by DeVanté Winn’s “Yesterday Night,” scored for oboe and electronics. The oboist will be Kyle Bruckmann. The program will conclude with Ash Fure’s “Shiver Lung 2,” scored for percussion and electronics. Like the original “Shiver Lung” included on her debut album Something to Hunt, “Shiver Lung 2”  is based on the physical nature of listening, not only to the percussion played by William Winant but also to the use of subwoofer cones as pulse generators.
2. Saturday, April 10, 8 p.m.: The first program in a two-part series entitled PostScript to the Future will be an at the CROSSROADS offering. It will feature the world premiere performance of the winning composition in the annual SF Search for Scores competition managed by SFCMP. The winning composer is Josiah Tayaq Catalan. The title has not yet been finalized, but it will be performed by pianist Allegra Chapman. The program will also present Olly Wilson’s “Echoes,” scored for clarinet and electronics. The clarinetist will be Jeff Anderle.
3. Sunday, May 23, 3 p.m.: This year’s in the COMMUNITY event is entitled Sound Encounters. It will feature performances of pieces by three of the Bay Area’s leading sound artists from the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at the University of California at Berkeley: Jon Kulpa, Maija Hynninen, and Jon Yu. Kulpa’s “QuFoam” will involve real-time synthesis performed by the composer. Hynninen’s contribution is a radiophonic work involving multi-channel audio entitled “it is always today.” Finally, Yu’s “15 eyes” is scored for percussion and will be played by Winant. In addition, Winant will begin the program with a performance of “Koan: Having Never Written a Note for Percussion” by James Tenney.
4. Friday, June 18, 8 p.m.: 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. Shaw has not yet announced the title; but the piece is scored for clarinet, piano viola, cello, and voice. Z will also perform her own “Breathing” movement from her 2013 Carbon Song Cycle. The program will also include John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony,” Andrew Norman’s “Sabina,” and Amadeus Regucera’s “Inexpressible, v.2.”
5. Saturday, June 26, 8 p.m.: SFCMP will celebrate its 50th anniversary with an intimate concert highlighting the solo and chamber music artistry of players from SFCMP’s roster of virtuosi, sharing works by celebrated living composers that are among their personal favorite “party pieces” and, in some cases, were written specifically for them. Anderle will begin the program with a bass clarinet performance of David Lang’s “Press Release.” He will be followed by Tanenbaum playing “Soliloquy” by Aaron Jay Kernis. Bruckmann will then play Liza Lim’s oboe solo, “Gyfu;” and the final solo offering will be “Joe Jack Binglebandit,” performed by trombonist Brendan Lai-Tong. The final selection will be Guillaume Connesson’s duo “Disco Toccata,” played by Anderle on clarinet and Hannah Addario-Berry on cello.
6. Saturday, July 10, 8 p.m.: The season will conclude by returning to the at the CROSSROADS series with the second PostScript to the Future program. This will feature a memorial for Wilson composed by Tyshawn Sorey and co-commissioned by the Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain. Sorey’s “For Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. (In Memoriam)” will be followed by a performance of Wilson’s “A City Called Heaven.” The program will begin with Tomeka Reid’s string quartet entitled “Prospective Dwellers.”