SFCMP to Highlight Music for Flute and Harp

Readers may have noticed that, for the most part, the current San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) season has focused and solo and duo performances by individual members of the ensemble. Thus, the season began this past October with a focus on violinist Susan Freier and cellist Stephen Harrison, followed this month by solo bass compositions performed by Richard Worn. Next month will see the new year beginning with a program featuring Meredith Clark on harp and Tod Brody alternating between flute and alto flute entitled Fire and Water, Shadows and Dust.

This pairing plays an interesting role in the history of twentieth-century music. Between 1958 and 2002 (the year before his death) Luciano Berio composed fourteen compositions for solo instruments or voice under the collective title “Sequenza.” (sequence). The very first two of these pieces were written for flute (1958, revised in 1992) and harp (1963), respectively. Both of those works will be included in the SFCMP program, which will consist almost entirely of twentieth-century music. These will include “rapid fire,” composed by Jennifer Higdon for solo flute in 1992 and duo compositions by Salvatore Sciarrino, Toru Takemitsu, and Roberto Sierra. The solo harp compositions are more recent. The earlier of these is “Polvere et Ombra” (dust and shadow), composed by Suzanne Farrin in 2008. The other will be the world premiere performance of Marcus Norris’ “Three Lil Pretties,” winner of the SFCMP Search for Scores Commissioning Prize.

This will be the next program to be presented at The Lab. The performance will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, January 15. Doors will open early for viewing the art exhibition, beginning at 3:15 p.m. General admission will be $35 with a $15 rate for students. Tickets may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page. The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street, a short walk from the corner of Mission Street, where there is a BART station and bus lines running along both Mission and 16th Streets. Masks are required, and all attendees must be fully vaccinated to attend this event. Full vaccination is defined as completion of the two-dose regimen of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered two weeks or more in advance of the event, along with a vaccine booster.