Flower Piano 2022 Schedule Announced

A typical Flower Piano performance (from the Flower Piano Web site)

Sunset Piano and the San Francisco Botanical Garden (SFBG) have announced the schedule for this year’s annual Flower Piano event. There will be a special one-hour Opening Event, which will take place in the Great Meadow on Wednesday, September 14, beginning at 5 p.m. After that all remaining events will take place between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. beginning on Friday, September 16, and concluding on Tuesday, September 20.

Once again, a dozen grand pianos will be installed on the 55 acres that SFBG occupies in Golden Gate Park. That means that there will be times when twelve different performances will be taking place simultaneously; and, yes, the Garden is large enough that sounds from the different venues rarely interfere with each other! Furthermore, when those pianos are not committed for scheduled performances, they are available for anyone interested in playing them. As in the past, a Web page has been created with the full schedule of events; and anyone interested in one of those events needs only to show up at the right place at the right time. (Yes, SFBC will provide maps showing the twelve different performance venues.)

While that Web page does not provide a thorough account of the music that will be performed, I wanted to call out one specific event involving a concert discussed yesterday. Readers may recall that pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers will perform in the first Faculty Artist Series recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), presenting music for both four hands on one keyboard and two pianos. Furthermore, they will be joined by two other pianists, Allegra Chapman and Monica Chew, to perform music for four pianists at two pianos. [added 8/28, 8:45 a.m.: The only selection from the SFCM recital that will not be performed at Flower Piano will be Elenor Alberga’s “3-Day Mix,” scored for four hands on one keyboard.] That program will be revisited at 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 17. That afternoon there will be two pianos in the Celebration Garden, and they will be put to work by different pairings of pianists between noon and 4 p.m.

Cahill [added 8/28, 8:40 a.m.: and Myers] will also participate in the Opening Event. They will be two of twelve pianists to perform Benjamin Gribble’s “Fall and Fly,” which the composer scored for a twelve-piano choir. The ensemble will be conducted by Stanford Symphony Director Paul Phillips. This will be the only performance in the entire program that will require tickets. All tickets are being sold for $35, and a secure Web page has been created for online purchase.