Programming for Last Three SoundBox Events

Readers may recall that, at the beginning of this year, when the SFSymphony+ on-demand streaming service was launched by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), specifics for the last two SoundBox events had not yet been finalized. That information is now available, and it turns out that there are now updates for the last three of those concerts. It is now sufficiently late in the season that the $120 subscription rate is no longer advantageous, but individual SoundBox programs may still be viewed for $15 per episode. Furthermore, donors that have contributed at least $250 will be admitted without charge. All programs will be available for viewing at 10 a.m. on the date of release. The updated content for the remaining SoundBox offerings will be as follows:

July 8: This program will now be curated by SFS Collaborative Partner and flutist Claire Chase, rather than composer Nico Muhly (also an SFS Collaborative Partner). It will also feature the San Francisco Girls Chorus under Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe. The conductor will be Vimbayi Kaziboni. Chase will perform excerpts from “Pan,” a 90-minute composition by Marcos Balter scored for solo flute, live electronics, and “mass community participation.” That performance will be preceded by Kaija Saariaho’s “Terrestre” and “Sanagi” by the Peruvian composer Pauchi Sasaki.

August 12: This is the slot that had originally been planned for Chase, and it will now be curated by Muhly. As previously planned, the program will feature choreographer and dancer Emma Lanier. It will also still feature the world premiere of “Flux,” created under an SFS commission by the Czech composer Lukáš Janata. It will begin with “Inbhir” by inti figgis-vizueta. Her background is both Andean and Irish; and her influences include (as stated on her Home page) “overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools” in the District of Columbia. Muhly’s own music will be represented by the “This is the Record of John” from his Gibbons Suite and “Motion,” as well as his arrangement of Meredith Monk’s “Fat Stream.”

August 26: The final SoundBox program of the season will be curated by pianist Jeremy Denk, rather than SFS Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen as previously announced. SFS musicians will be joined by members of the SFS Chorus, directed by Ragnar Bohlin. Denk has prepared a program of prodigious diversity, extending all the way back to Orfeo’s arioso “Tu se’ morta” (have you perished), from Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, and advancing to the immediate present of Missy Mazzoli’s “The Shield of the Heart Is the Heart.”