Monday, June 7, 2021

Old First Concerts: Summer, 2021

Since Old First Concerts (O1C) has scheduled only one performance for the following month [updated 6/17, 1 p.m.: A second July concert has been added], it seemed reasonable to provide calendar information for July and August in a single article. As usual, if there are any changes in these plans, readers will be informed through updates to this article and notification of those updates through the Facebook shadow site. All of these performances will be live-streamed, and each event page already has a hyperlink to YouTube. However, hybrid concerts seem to have been established as the “new normal.” What this means is that seating will be limited to 100 tickets, all being sold for $25, meaning that there is no reduced rate for seniors or students. As usual, hyperlinks for program notes tend not to appear until shortly before the performances; and the best way to track any additional information and ticket availability will be through the O1C event pages. As usual, the hyperlinks to those pages are attached to the date and time of the performances as follows:

Friday, July 9, 8 p.m.: This program will celebrate the life of jazz saxophonist and composer Michael Brecker, who died from complications of leukemia on January 13, 2007. Brecker’s music will be played by the Bay Area group Charged Particles, whose members include Murray Low on keyboards, Aaron Germain on bass, and Jon Krosnick on drums. They will be joined by saxophonist Tod Dickow. Most likely, specific selections will be announced during the performance. [added 6/16, 4:15 p.m.:

Friday, July 16, 8 p.m.: Pianist Sarah Cahill will return to Old First to present the next installment in her The Future is Female project. She has accumulated a repertoire of more than sixty composition by women around the globe. This particular program will begin with a keyboard sonata that Anna Bon composed in 1757. This will be followed by selections from Au sein de la Nature (within nature), composed in 1910 by Leokadiya Kashperova (who was Igor Stravinsky's piano teacher). The most recent work on the program will be “On the Chequer’d Field Array’d,” composed in 2013 by Hannah Kendall as a musical depiction of a chess game. The other contributors to the program will be Ági Jámbor, whose 1949 sonata was dedicated to the victims of Auschwitz, Ajerbaijani composer Frangiz Ali-Zadeh, American composer and civil rights activist Zenobia Powell Perry, and Madeline Dring with selected movements from her Colour Suite.]

Sunday, August 15, 4 p.m.: Following up on her solo piano recital that marked the first O1C event of 2021, Samantha Cho will return with a new program. This time she will limit her selections to only two composers that many would view as a somewhat eccentric pairing. One of the composers is Sofia Gubaidulina, whose compositions, “Invention” and her Musical Toys suite, may carry connotations of wistful reflections on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at his most playful. Mozart, in turn, will be represented by sonatas in two of his more “playful” keys, C major (K. 545) and B-flat major (K. 570). Nevertheless, Cho’s program will begin with a darker side of Mozart, his K. 511 rondo in A minor.

Friday, August 27, 8 p.m.: Violinist Terrie Baune will be joined by pianist John Chernoff in performances of two sonatas for violin and piano from the twentieth century, neither of which receive as much attention as they deserve. The earlier of these will be the first of the numbered sonatas that Béla Bartók completed in 1921. (He also composed an earlier sonata that was not given a number.) This will be coupled with the fourth such sonata by Grażyna Bacewicz, which she completed in 1949. (Bacewicz has composed five of these sonatas to date.)

In addition, while the full details for this summer’s fifth annual San Francisco International Piano Festival have not yet been announced, O1C will be hosting two of the concerts as follows:

Sunday, August 22, 4 p.m.: Nicholas Phillips will give a solo recital entitled A Celebration of Contemporary Piano Music. He will begin with the world premiere performance of “Sonata ’21” by African American composer Quinn Mason. His program will also include the “Lullaby” composed by Iranian-born composer Sahba Aminikia. All of the other selections will be by women: Mary Kouyoumdjian, Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Tania León.

Sunday, August 29, 4 p.m.: The Festival will conclude with a program entitled Les Années Folles (the crazy years). Those years include 1918, the year of the Spanish Flu, 1919, the year that World War One ended, and the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. There will be a preference for French composers, including Camille Saint-Saëns, Maurice Ravel, Nadia Boulanger, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre. Pianists Gwendolyn Mok and Jeffrey LaDeur will be joined by two harpsichordists, Jory Vinikour and Philippe LeRoy. In addition Jesse Barret will be the oboe soloist in the performance of Saint-Saëns’ sonata for oboe and piano.

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