Catalyst Finalizes Programs for PIVOT Series

Catalyst Quartet members Abi Fayette, Paul Laraia, Karla Donehew Perez, and Karlos Rodriguez (courtesy of SFP)

Readers may recall that San Francisco Performances announced this past summer that the Catalyst Quartet would curate the 2023 PIVOT Festival. The Festival, which was created eight years ago with adventurous audiences in mind, will serve as a platform for the Uncovered series, which was launched with Catalyst serving as curator. The ensemble, whose members are violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette, violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez, will perform with a visiting guest artist during the first two Festival concerts, while the final concert will be devoted entirely to the quartet. Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott will join the group for its first program, and cellist Marcy Rosen with be featured during the second.

Pianist and radio host Sarah Cahill will introduce the composers to the audience with a Prelude lecture that will begin an hour before the program. She will then moderate a question and answer session following the conclusion of each program. The other figure to be involved in all three of the programs will be the composer, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He composed three collections of six string quartets. Those in the second set, given the title “Au gout du jour” (in contemporary taste), will be performed over the course of the Festival, the first two quartets opening the first concert, the third opening the second, and the remaining three opening the third.

The performances will all begin at 7:30 p.m. on three successive evenings: Tuesday, February 21, Wednesday, February 22, and Thursday, February 23. As already mentioned, Cahill’s Preludes will begin at 6:30 p.m. on each of those evenings. The works that will follow the Saint-Georges quartets will be as follows:

February 21: McDermott will joint Catalyst to perform Amy Beach’s Opus 67 piano quintet in F-sharp minor. She will also contribute to the piano trio in E minor by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The remaining works on the program will be Miguel Bernal-Jimenez’ “Cuarteto Virreinal” and Rebecca Clarke’s “Dumka.”

February 22:  Rosen will join Catalyst to perform Ethel Smyth’s Opus 1 quintet. The quartet will play Teresa Carreño’s quartet in B minor. The remaining work on the program will be a single-movement string trio by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

February 23: The remaining works on the program will be quartets by Germaine Tailleferre, Antônio Carlos Gomes, and Fanny Mendelssohn.

As usual the venue will be Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. Subscriptions are now on sale for $180 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $150 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $120 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Single tickets are also now on sale. The ticket prices are $65, $55, and $45. All single tickets may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.