Old First Concerts: January, 2024

As of this writing, Old First Concerts has prepared only two programs for the month of January. Both of them will be on Sunday afternoons but at different times.  These offerings will continue to be “hybrid,” allowing both live streaming and seating in the Old First Church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. All tickets will still be sold for $25 (no reduced rate for seniors or students). Hyperlinks to the event pages (which include hyperlinks for streaming) will be attached to the date and time of the performances as follows:

Sunday, January 7, 2 p.m.: The 2024 season will begin with a solo piano recital by Sarah Cahill. The program does not have a title; but, if it did, it would be something like “Something Old, Something (relatively) Recent!” The first three selections will all date from the first quarter of the twentieth century. The composers will be Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (his Opus 66 Forest Scenes), Amy Beach (the first of her Opus 92 “Hermit Thrush” compositions), and Ruth Crawford Seeger (four of the nine preludes she composed between 1924 and 1928). The more recent selections will be two works by Ann Southam (the opening selection in her Rivers Series and “Commotion Creek”), along with compositions by Terry Riley (“The Walrus in Memoriam”) and Evan Ziporyn (“You Are Getting Sleepy”). Ziporyn is expected to attend this recital.

Sunday, January 28, 4 p.m.: This will be the first visit by the Ives Collective since this past September. They are a quartet whose members are Kay Stern (violin), Susan Freier (violin and viola), Stephen Harrison (cello), and Elizabeth Schumann (piano). The program will begin and end with compositions by Mélanie Bonis, who just missed studying at the Paris Conservatoire under Gabriel Fauré. The opening selection will be the piano trio that she entitled “Matin et Soir” (morning and evening); and the program will conclude with her Opus 69, her first piano quartet composed in the key of B-flat major. Between these “bookends” Stern, Freier, and Harrison will play the string trio that Ethel Smyth composed in 1887.