Thursday, February 17, 2022

SFGC to Resume Live Performances Next Month

Sarah Cahill, Bobby McFerrin, and Teresa Wong, contributors to next month’s SFGC concert (from the SFGC event page for this program)

In a little less than a month, the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) will give its first self-produced “live” performance before an audience. The title of the program will be Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs. McFerrin is currently Artist-in-Residence; and he will appear as both vocalist and conductor, sharing the latter duties with Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe. The program title reflects that the performance will begin with excerpts from Circlesongs, the album that McFerrin released in 1997.

This will be followed by two other McFerrin selections. The first of these will be “Say Ladeo,” which was included in his 1990 album VOCAbuLarieS. The final offering will be his setting of the 23rd Psalm. Both of these compositions have been arranged for two soprano and two alto vocal parts.

The program will then continue with the latest world premiere performance to be added to the SFGC repertoire. “In Stillness I Sing” was composed by Theresa Wong on an SFGC commission. The original plan was to perform the composition as a radio broadcast during the pandemic. Wong composed this in collaboration with pianist Sarah Cahill, who will be featured as soloist. The work was first performed in four installments of Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions per Minute.

The remainder of the program will present previous works written under SFGC commissions. The first of these will be Pamela Z’s “Pen Pal.” It will be followed by the concluding work on the program, Rimas tropicales, by Tania León, a set of three songs setting poetry by Carlos Pintado. Pintado immigrated to the United States from Cuba, as did León.

This program will be performed at the Bayview Opera House, which is located at 4705 Third Street and is easily accessible from the Third Street (T) trolley line. There will be only one performance, which will take place at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 13. Single tickets range in price from $15 to $40. They were scheduled to go on sale yesterday, but no hyperlink for purchases has been created as of this writing. Those wishing to buy their tickets sooner rather than later are advised to check either the SFGC event page or the City Box Office Web page for March 13, since these are likely to be the best sites where a hyperlink will subsequently appear for purchasing tickets.

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