Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Ébène Quartet to Balance Classical and Jazz

The members of the Ébène Quartet (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Next month will begin with the return of the Ébène Quartet, whose current members are violinists Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadure, violist Marie Chilemme, and cellist Raphaël Merlin, to Herbst Theatre. As has previously been observed, this ensemble has performed in two different Series offered by San Francisco Performances (SFP), the Shenson Chamber Series and the Jazz Series. This season there is no Jazz Series, so the concert will be the fourth of the Shenson Chamber Series concerts.

Nevertheless, the second half of the program will be devoted entirely to arrangements of jazz standards; and, consistent with most jazz gigs, the selections will be announced from the stage. The first half of the program, on the other hand, will couple two radically different offerings widely separated by time. Like the Pavel Haas Quartet this past weekend, Ébène will begin with a quartet by Joseph Haydn. However, while Pavel Haas performed one of the Opus 76 quartets, Ébène will feature the much earlier Opus 20 collection with a performance of the Hoboken III/34 quartet in D major. This will then be followed by Leoš Janáček’s first quartet, based on Leo Tolstoy novella The Kreutzer Sonata.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5.  It will take place in Herbst Theatre, which is located on the first two floors of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, convenient to public transportation on both Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. Ticket prices will be $70 for premium seating on the Orchestra level and in the front of the Dress Circle, $55 for the Boxes, the remainder of the Orchestra, and the remainder of the center Dress Circle, and $45 for the Balcony and the remainder of the Dress Circle. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an SFP event page. Conditions according to the Health and Safety Factsheet, which was updated on February 15, still prevail.

No comments: