Left Coast Plans for 2022–2023 Season

The members of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (photograph by Bonnie Rae Mills)

Subscriptions are now on sale for the five concerts in the 30th season of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE). However, that almost-monthly series, being called “Season 30,” will be preceded by “something completely different.” Not only will the venue be different, the Miner Auditorium of the SFJAZZ Center, but also the program will be structured around a guest storyteller with music interleaving within the narration of the tales. For the subscription series itself, venues have not yet been finalized for all of the performance. However, the full LCCE agenda in San Francisco will take place on the following dates and times with venue information as available:

Saturday, September 10, 11 a.m., SFJAZZ Center: In a program entitled Fairytale Pieces, storyteller Susan Strauss will narrate a series of tales including classics such as “Birds of Fortune” and “Coyote Goes to the Sky.” Her narration will be punctuated by three LCCE musicians, percussionist Loren Mach, joined by Leighton Fong on cello and Stacey Pelinka on flute. This will be a one-hour program that features live performance and a Q&A session, as well as the interplay of storytelling and music.

Monday, September 19, 7:30 p.m.: The title of the first subscription concert is Up Next! It will present three works written by young composers. The program will begin with the world premiere of “Canon Cadenza Cadence Cluster,” composed by Sky Macklay, which was made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This will be followed by the winner of the 2020 LCCE Composition Contest, Sarah Westwood, who submitted “Things You Don’t Yet Know You Feel.” The program will then conclude with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 18 (first) string quintet in A major. Since Mendelssohn was seventeen years old when this music was composed, he, too, can be classified as a “young composer!”

Monday, October 24, 7:30 p.m.: The title of the second subscription concert will be Sounds Divine. Specific compositions have not yet been named, but the program will be a generous survey of sacred music. Contributing composers will be T. J. Anderson, Jonathan Harvey, Errollyn Wallen, Arvo Pärt, and Olivier Messiaen.

Monday, January 30, 7:30 p.m.: The title of the third subscription program will be Wild Music. It will include a performance of the music that Igor Stravinsky composed for the ballet “The Rite of Spring” but in the arrangement for four hands on one keyboard. There will also be a solo piano performance of the ten compositions collected in the first book of Leoš Janáček’s cycle On an Overgrown Path. The program will conclude with a new work by a composer yet to be announced.

Saturday, April 29, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, June 21, 4 p.m., Bayview Opera House: This is the one subscription offering for which the venue has been announced. The program will consist of world premieres of two chamber operas. Anthony R. Green serves as his own librettist in his composition of “Tenderhooks,” which is basically a reflection on modern dating. His perspective is a personal one of a Black, gay cis-male. The second opera is a twenty-minute partnership of Kurt Rohde with the poet Donna Masini entitled “4:30 Movie.” These are settings of Masini’s poems scored by soprano, percussion, video mirror, and electronics. Masini’s poems reflect on the death of her sister from cancer, while Rohde’s score resonates with his own current treatment for cancer.

Monday, June 5, 7:30 p.m.: The season will conclude with a program entitled Starry Night. As might be guessed, the program will include Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4 string sextet entitled “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night). In addition, flutist Stacey Pelinka will be soloist in “Night of South Winds,” a new flute concerto by Josiah Catalan. Finally, there will be two different takes on urban evenings in Madrid composed by Luigi Boccherini and Roberto Sierra.

Tickets for the SFJAZZ Center performance will be handled by SFJAZZ. A Web page has been created for online purchases. This is part of the Family Matinees series, and prices will be $5, $10, and $23. A single Web page has been created for all purchases of Season 30 tickets. These include both subscriptions and tickets to individual concerts.