December to Begin with “Alternative” Offerings

While the BayImproviser Calendar is my primary source for “bleeding edge” events, there are other opportunities to appreciate performances that do not always get the advance attention they deserve. My awareness of these events comes about through finding the right mailing lists that I choose to monitor. One of those lists is maintained by violinist Michèle Walther, who was one of the contributors to Center for New Music (C4NM) activities during the pandemic and tends to surface to participate in events that receive less attention than C4NM. I received her latest dispatch yesterday morning, and it accounts for a few potentially interesting offerings here in San Francisco during the first weekend of next month.

The first of these involves providing live music performed during screenings presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Saturday, December 3, has been named A Day of Silents. Beginning at 11 a.m., six full-length silent films will be presented, all with live music accompaniment. The Sascha Jacobsen Ensemble, in which Walther frequently performs, will provide the music for two of those films, Pour Don Carlos, which is about the civil war that took place in Spain late in the nineteenth century, and The Toll of the Sea, one of the earliest color films, which drew upon the Madama Butterfly scenario and starred Anna May Wong. The first of these offerings will be screened at 3 p.m.; and the second will be the final program, beginning at 9 p.m.

The entire Day of Silents will take place at the Castro Theatre, which is located at 429 Castro Street, a short walk south of the Muni station at the corner of Market Street. General admission for both films is $18 with a $16 rate for Festival members. Tickets may be purchased online through the above hyperlinks attached to the film titles. Details about the size of the Jacobsen Ensemble and the contributing instrumentalists is not currently available.

Violinist and composer Alisa Rose (right) with the members of the Town Quartet (clockwise from upper left): Lewis Patzner, Michèle Walther, Ilana Thomas, and Jacob Hansen-Joseph) (from the Music on the Hill event page)

[updated 11/12, 9:40 a.m.: The following evening will see the latest performance by the Town Quartet. Walther shares the first violin position with Ilana Thomas. The other members of the ensemble are violist Jacob Hansen-Joseph and cellist Lewis Patzner. They will be joined by another violinist, Alisa Rose; and the program will feature a performance of her composition entitled “Embracing Roots.” (This will also serve as the title of the entire program.) That program will also include Arcangelo Corelli’s setting of the “Folia” theme in an arrangement by Francesco Geminiani with enhancements by Patzner. There will be two selections by Astor Piazzolla, one of which involves one of his his “four seasons” movements as arranged by Leonid Desyatnikov and enhanced by Walther. The remaining work on the program will be the “Sostenuto” movement from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Opus 26, his second quartet in E-flat major.]

This recital will be presented by Music on the Hill, whose current venue is in Diamond Heights at St. Aidan’s Church at 101 Gold Mine Drive. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 4. Single tickets are being sold for $20. The simplest way to reserve tickets is by calling 415-820-1429. Further information about Music on the Hill can be provided by sending electronic mail to mathmuse2@yahoo.com.