Center for New Music: May, 2022

As of this writing, there will be slightly fewer performances in May at the Center for New Music (C4NM) than are taking place this month. However, three of the April events only showed up on the C4NM Events page about a week ago. So this site will do its best at keeping up with the news as it unfolds! That has already included announcing this Sunday’s concert in yesterday’s Bleeding Edge article. (In the interest of consistency, that announcement will be included in this article.)

For those that do not already know, C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. All tickets may be processed in advance through that aforementioned Events page. Masks are still required for all in attendance, and those in the audience are required to be fully vaccinated. Furthermore, since those pandemic conditions still prevail, the audience capacity will be reduced; so purchasing tickets early is desirable. Specifics are as follows with hyperlinks for the respective event pages, each of which has a “Buy Tickets Online” hyperlink to the appropriate Eventbrite event page:

Sunday, May 1, 7 p.m.: The month will begin with a performance by the Departure Duo, whose members are soprano Nina Guo and Edward Kass on double bass. They will present the results of their latest round of commissions. Contributing composers will be Sarah Gibson, Mikhail Johnson, Emily Koh, and Emily Praetorius.

Sunday, May 8, 4:30 p.m.: This will be the fifth installment in the Surround Sound Salon Series, the fourth having taken place this past February. This series consists of informal shows in which electronic music composers present their fixed media and/or live electronic music through the 8-channel surround system, generously provided by Meyer Sound. The composers mix their sounds from the center of the space, and members of the audience are free to choose their own listening location(s) and to move within the space to hear the music from different vantage points. The Bay Area composers contributing to this program will be Sam Genovese, Will Gluck, Kim Nucci, and Kristian Dahlbom.

[updated 5/9, 9:20 a.m.: As expected, the start time for this event has been corrected from a.m. to p.m.:

Sunday, May 15, 6:30 p.m.: (Note that the unconventional start time is the one that appears on the Web pages associated with this concert. Hopefully, we shall know whether this is an error sooner rather than later.)] Composer Sam Reider will preview the original works he has prepared for his Masters in Composition recital at San Francisco State University. Most of these will be pieces for solo piano. However, Reider is also an accordionist; and he will present a new work for accordion and string quartet, which he will perform with the members of the Del Sol Quartet, violinists Sam Weiser and Benjamin Kreith, violist Charlton Lee, and cellist Kathryn Bates.

Friday, May 20, 8 p.m.: Ensemble in Process is the duo of pianist Brian Mark and violinist Allyson Clare. They will make their Northern California debut by repeating Light of Strings, a concert they performed in New York prior to the pandemic on September 14, 2019. Three local artists will appear as guest performers: cellist James Jaffe, violist Charith Premawardhana, and harpist Jennifer Ellis. The program will include works by Ryan Brown, Meredith Monk, Anuj Bhutani, Erik Satie, Missy Mazzoli, Michael Gordon, and Ted Hearne, along with the world premiere of a live performance of Mark’s “Impenetrable.”

[updated 5/6, 7:50 a.m.: The following item has been postponed:

Saturday, May 21, 7:30 p.m.: This program will present new works for piano and live spatialized electronics composed by pianist Nick Bacchetto and Ben Sabey working with MIDI Polyphonic Expression instruments.]