SFP PIVOT Festival will Return in October

Readers familiar with the programs presented by the San Francisco Performances (SFP) PIVOT Festival know that this is one of the most adventurous of the SFP concert series. The last Festival had been scheduled to take place on April 16, 17, 21, and 23 of this year. When COVID-19 safety guidelines made it necessary to cancel the entire series, the SFP Front Row Web site launched an alternative streamed PIVOT series of three concerts.

Now that performances will be taking place again in the Veterans Building, SFP has decided that the next “physical” PIVOT Festival should be held sooner rather than later. All performances will be presented on consecutive days between Wednesday, October 20, and Sunday, October 24. There will be four programs, one of which will be performed on both Friday and Sunday; and the remaining three will be given only a single performance. The single performances will take place in Herbst Theatre on the ground floor of the Veterans Building. The two-performance event will be held on the top floor in the Taube Atrium Theater.

The Veterans Building is at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. The specific dates and their related performers are as follows:

Wednesday, October 20, 7:30 p.m.: Vocalist and composer Theo Bleckmann will return to PIVOT. He has prepared a full-evening performance entitled Elegy. He has planned the music to bring depth and reflection to a spirit of our age.

Thursday, October 21, 7:30 pm.: Tenor Nicholas Phan will perform with the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, whose members are violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Michael Nicolas. They will perform Nico Muhly’s “Stranger.” The rest of the program has not yet been announced.

Friday, October 22, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, October 24, 5 p.m.: Readers may recall that, at the beginning of this past January, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive presented a livestream of performances by Robert Dekkers’ Post:ballet. One of those performances was of “Surface Down,” a movement from an extended dance interpretation of the Orpheus myth entitled Lyra. PIVOT will present the performance of Lyra in its entirety. Choreography is by Vanessa Thiessen, setting music by Samuel Adams. The production also involves film by Benjamin Tarquin. The music will be performed by The Living Earth Show duo of percussionist Andy Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews.

Saturday, October 23, 7:30 p.m.: Violinist Jennifer Koh will be accompanied by Missy Mazzoli at the piano. Program specifics have not yet been announced. However, all of the selections will have been composed by Mazzoli.

Subscriptions are being sold for $240 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $200 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $160 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. (These are all locations in Herbst Theatre. There will probably be open seating in the Atrium Theatre.) Orders may be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. There is also a Web page for purchasing subscriptions online. When single tickets go on sale, the SFP Web site will be further updated.