Stephanie Jones to Launch SFP Guitar Series

Guitarist Stephanie Jones, who will be making her San Francisco debut at the beginning of next month (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

As was announced this past Sunday, San Francisco Performances (SFP) will launch its 2023–24 season with the first program in its Piano Series, the return of Isata Kanneh-Mason for a solo recital on October 6. The following evening will mark the beginning of the Guitar Series with another solo recital. This one will feature the San Francisco debut of Stephanie Jones; and, as is the case with all concerts in this series, it will be presented in partnership with the Dynamite Guitars series of the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts.

As was observed when the plans for the Guitar Series were announced on this site this past July, Jones, who will be visiting from Australia, commands an “impressively diverse” repertoire. The major work on her program will be an entire account of Ástor Piazzolla’s Estaciones Porteñas, known in English as The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, since the four collected compositions are associated with summer, winter, spring, and autumn. This will be the penultimate selection on her program, which, like many guitar recitals, will begin with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This will be two movements, “Gavotte en Rondeau” and “Gigue,” from BWV 1006.2, the arrangement of the BWV 1006.1 solo violin partita in E major, which may (or may not) have been written for lute solo.

The major portion of the program will be devoted to five composers, all of whom are unfamiliar to me. In the context of “current events,” the most interesting of them will be the Ukrainian Rostyslav Holubov, who composed a fantasy based on a Ukrainian folk song whose title translates into English as “Oh, in the cherry orchard.” As may have been anticipated, two of the composers are Australian, Richard Charlton and Ross Edwards, both of whom are represented by musical reflections on birds. The other two contributors to the program will be the Bavarian composer and guitarist Jakob Schmidt and Argentinian guitarist Quique Sinesi. The program will conclude with a nod to Antônio Carlos Jobim with Roland Dyens’ arrangement of “A felicidade.”

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 7. The venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. All tickets are being sold for $60, both on the main floor and in the balcony. They may be purchased through an SFP secure Web Page or by calling 415-392-2545.