Ryan Truesdell’s Ambitious String Quartet Project

Ryan Truesdell uses the About Web page on his Web site to introduce himself to any curious reader. Here is the opening sentence: “A world-renowned, GRAMMY® Award-winning producer, composer, arranger, and educator, Ryan Truesdell was voted ‘Best New Artist’ in the 2012 JazzTimes Critic’s Poll and is best known for his award-winning Gil Evans Project, a large ensemble devoted to the performance and preservation of the music of the famed arranger and Miles Davis collaborator, Gil Evans.” Clearly, this is someone with rich ambitions and the power to bring them to realization.

Ryan Truesdell conducting a string quartet during a recording session for his SYNTHESIS album (photograph by Leo Mascaro, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)

The beginning of next month is currently the estimated date of availability for the results of his latest project. The full title of that project is SYNTHESIS: THE STRING QUARTET SESSIONS. Truesdell’s plan was to bring together fifteen of the current leading large-ensemble jazz composers, each with the task of composing a new work for string quartet. Thirteen of the composers were as follows (in alphabetical order): Joseph Borsellino III, John Clayton, Alan Ferber, Miho Hazama, John Hollenbeck, Christine Jensen, Asuka Kakitani, Oded Lev-Ari, Jim McNeely, Vanessa Perica, Rufus Reid, Dave Rivello, and Nathan Parker Smith. To this “pool” he added a never-before-recorded composition by Bob Brookmeyer, and contributed three of his own new works.

This amounted to a little less than three hours of music. As of this writing, the estimated ship date is August 1. The ArtistShare Web site currently has a Web page with hyperlinks for pre-ordering the full three-CD set or arranging to download the full complement of 30 tracks. That is a generous amount of content.

Sadly, the impact is not as strong as I had hoped it would be. Since almost all of the names of the contributing composers were unfamiliar to me, I had hoped that, having completed the three-hour journey, at least one of the participants would have left me thinking, “I want to heard more by this composer.” To quite the contrary, I was more concerned that so many creative minds could yield so much tedium.

I suppose that, at best, this was a project that “looked good on paper;” but the bridge from specifications to engaging performance was never satisfactorily crossed.

SFJAZZ: August, 2024

As was the case last month, activities at the Joe Henderson Lab of the SFJAZZ Center will not get under way until the middle of next month. However, since things are quieter during the summer, now is as good a time as any for making plans for the month of August. For those that do not (yet?) know, the Center is located at 201 Franklin Street, on the northwest corner of Fell Street, where the main entrance doors are located. Performance dates, times, and hyperlinks for purchasing tickets are as follows:

Thursday, August 15, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The theme for the middle of next month will be Indigenous Songbook. The series will begin with a program entitled Indigenous Jazz Funk, performed by the Delbert Anderson Quartet. Trumpeter Anderson is a member of the Navajo tribe, and he was raised in Shiprock, which is an unincorporated community on the Navajo reservation. His influences are Diné (“people” in Navajo) along with jazzmen of the past with indigenous background, such as Miles Davis (Cherokee) and Don Cherry (Choctaw). The other members of the quartet will be keyboardist Robert Muller, bassist Mike McCluhan, and drummer Khalill Brown.

Jazz vocalist Julia Keefe (from her SFJAZZ event page)

Friday, August 16, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Julia Keefe’s tribe is the Nez Perce, but she is currently actively based as a vocalist in New York, where she earned a Master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music. Her program will be based on her current activity, The Mildred Bailey Project. Bailey’s tribe was the Coeur d’Alene, but she was a devout Roman Catholic. She was a major vocalist during the Thirties, known by many as “The Queen of Swing.” No instrumentalists are cited on the Web page for this concert, but it may be that Keefe will accompany herself at the piano.

Saturday, August 17, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: This will be a Dance Floor Show, meaning general admission and standing room (or dancing) only. The performance will be by Oakland-based rapper Chhoti Maa. While she was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, her name is Hindi for “little mother.” Her repertoire is, to say the least, eclectic, including cumbia, migrant soul, neufolk, R&B, hip-hop, and oral tradition. Those wondering about whether or not to attend may wish to consult the wisdom of Alexander Pope: “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

Sunday, August 18, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: This will be a duo encounter of trumpeter (and composer) Brad Goode with his longtime collaborator Ernie Watts on tenor saxophone. As the Web page explains, they  will revisit the alchemy from their collaborative 2019 Origin Records quintet album That’s Right!  This will also mark the conclusion of the Summer Sessions series at SFJAZZ.

For those wondering what will happen next, 2024–25 Season Opening Week will begin “officially” in the Joe Henderson Lab at 7 p.m. on Thursday, September 5!

SFS: Stella Chen Debuts as Concerto Soloist

It seems as if every time I write about Stella Chen involves some new form of debut experience. Her very first professional appearance in San Francisco took place in March of 2023, a little over a week after the release of her debut album Stella x Schubert. She was accompanied at the piano by Henry Kramer in a program prepared for Chamber Music San Francisco. She returned a little over a year later to make her debut in Davies Symphony Hall, this time with pianist George Li for the final recital in the Shenson Spotlight Series.

Last night Chen returned to Davies, this time making her debut as concerto soloist with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Her selection was Samuel Barber’s only violin concerto, his Opus 14 completed in 1939. The conductor for this occasion was Earl Lee.

This was the second of the two classical concerts prepared for this season’s Summer with the Symphony  programming. Lee followed the usual overture-concerto-symphony guidelines. The Barber concerto has been absent from Davies since Gil Shaham played it with SFS in March of 2017. During the second half of the twentieth century, Barber was regarded as a composer best forgotten; but now that we have emerged from the “new for the sake of new” conceits of that past half-century, there is much for the attentive listener to appreciate in this violin concerto.

Barber was never shy in summoning up rich orchestral resources. Fortunately, between Lee’s sense of balance and Chen’s fearless command of the composer’s virtuoso passages, this was very much an engaging account of the relationship between solo and ensemble. Indeed, the number of brief passages for ensemble soloists was a generous one. The violinist is thus situated in a vast landscape of diverse sonorities. Nevertheless, in Chen’s hands, the solo voice held its own, even when surrounded by the riches of Barber’s instrumental landscapes.

Mind you, those landscapes were just as rich after the intermission, when Lee led the full ensemble in a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 36 (fourth) symphony in F minor. This is Tchaikovsky at his most dramatic without setting a narrative for a ballet or an opera. The entire symphony is structure around the opening “Fate” motif, which winds its way in and out of all the other thematic material for the four movements. The most lyrical of these was the oboe solo at the beginning of the second (Andantino in modo de canzona) movement; and Lee was one of those conductors who knew how to restrain his baton while Russ de Luna provided a ravishing account of the theme.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s autograph of the sonata movement played by Chen for her encore (public domain, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page)

On the more modest side, Chen followed her concerto debut with an encore. As is so often the case with so many violin encores, she turned to the sonatas and partitas for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach. More specifically, she “began at the beginning,” so to speak, playing the Adagio movement that begins the BWV 1001 sonata in G minor. When approached with the right dispositions, this music reveals itself more as sinuously tempting than as mere abstraction; and Chen knew just how to capture and convey those dispositions. In many ways, that music had more to say in a few minutes than Tchaikovsky could deliver over the course of an hour!

Less convincing was the “overture” for the evening. “Fate Now Conquers” was composed by Carlos Simon for the Philadelphia Orchestra, which gave the premiere performance in October of 2020. (This was during the celebration of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday.) The title, however, was taken from Homer’s Iliad. Apparently, Beethoven had entered into his journal a passage from Homer, whose first words were those that Simon selected for his title. Sadly, there was little in Simon’s meandering score to evoke either Homer or Beethoven; and the music’s greatest virtue was being limited to five minutes in duration.

Jazz Chez Hanny: August, 2024

Once again, I have an opportunity to follow up on yesterday’s announcement of this Sunday’s Jazz Chez Hanny house concert to provide advance notice for next month. There will be two events in August, both of which will follow the current ground rules: What used to be a “recommended donation” is now required admission for $25, and both cash and checks will be accepted. All of that money will go to cover expenses.

The events usually consist of two sets separated by a potluck break. As a result, all who plan to attend should bring food and/or drink to share. Seating is first come, first served; and, as a result, reservations are strongly recommended. Reservations are placed through an electronic mail address: jazz@chezhanny.com. Mail messages received after noon on the day of a performance are unlikely to be seen until after the show is over, and cancellations should be given at least 24 hours advance notice. Finally, volunteer efforts for cleaning up after the show and moving furniture to accommodate both players and listeners is always appreciated.

All performances begin at 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. The “house” for this house concert is located at 1300 Silver Avenue. This is best reached by public transportation by taking the Muni 44 bus going east from Glen Park Station. For those thinking of driving, parking tends to be available on Silver Avenue, Silliman Street, one block south of Silver, and Holyoke Street, which connects Silver and Silliman. Next month’s offerings will be as follows:

August 11: Drummer Ron Vincent was a member of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and the Re-Birth of the Cool Tentet from 1989 until Mr. Mulligan’s passing in 1996. He now has his own quartet, and they will present a tribute concert for Mulligan. The other members of his quartet will be saxophonist Rob Sudduth, Mike Olmos on trumpet, and pianist Ben Stolorow, all of whom are now based in the Bay Area.

Ian Carey and Kasey Knudsen in a performance on November 4, 2018 in the Joe Henderson Lab of the SFJAZZ Center (screen shot from the YouTube video)

August 25: Trumpeter and composer Ian Carey will lead a quintet. He will be joined by four leading jazz performers from the Bay Area. The front line will include saxophonist Kasey Knudsen, who is also a composer with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Jazz Composition from the Berklee College of Music. Carey and Knudsen will be joined by a second saxophonist, James Mahone. Adam Shulman, usually seen behind a piano keyboard, will be playing organ for this gig. Finally, the drummer will be Eric Garland, currently on the faculty at the Community Music Center.

First (and Last?) Contact with Paula Maya

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

This morning I had my first (and probably last) encounter with Paula Maya’s latest album, Rio de Janeiro. As of this writing, the album is available for MP3 download and streaming through an Amazon.com Web page; and, presumably, that Web page will be updated to account for “physical” availability, which is scheduled for August 1. Maya has been releasing recordings since 1995, which, ironically comes right after the death of Antônio Carlos Jobim in December of 1994. However, to call her a “successor” to Jobim would be a questionable stretch.

My immediate impression from “first contact” with the opening track, “Rosalie,” is that Maya’s sense of pitch is annoyingly uncertain. The good news is that she has rich and capable instrumental backup, but their efforts to steer her in the right direction are limited. On the other hand, the tunes themselves are rather routine; and, in the absence of clear and expressive pitch, there is very little delivered on each of the seven tracks to attract and sustain attentive listening.

To be fair, I do not follow Brazilian trends quite as closely as I attend to other genres; but this album definitely makes the case for me that I would prefer to celebrate the past rather that explore the present!

Dan Blake to Return to Chez Hanny

Saxophonist Dan Blake performing with Dmitry Ishenko on bass and drummer Jeff Williams (from a YouTube video of a 2019 performance for the Mount Kisco Arts Council)

A little less than a year ago, Chez Hanny hosted a jazz trio performance by Dan Blake and The Digging. The Digging was an album by Blake, which had been released in May of 2016. He led a trio whose other members were Dmitry Ishenko on bass and percussionist Eric Harland. Four wind players (Brian Landrus, Josh Sinton, Sam Sadigursky, and Mariano Gil) contributed to two of the album tracks.

When Blake visited Chez Hanny last year, his trio members had shifted to Justin Purtill on bass and drummer Jason Lewis. There will be another shift in personnel when he returns to Chez Hanny at the end of this month. Fred Randolph will be playing bass, and he will be joined by drummer Tim Bulkley. The Bandcamp Web page for the album provided useful background for the nature of the title and its impact on how the trio made its music. That background was cited last year; but, for those encountering Blake’s work for the first time, it bears repeating:

On his new recording The Digging, Blake looks at his music from a different angle, accepting the test of leading and composing for a chordless sax trio, thus stripping away harmonic layers that he has leaned on in earlier projects. The new formula allows Blake to find his voice through the freeing potential of exploring the compositions in such an open and interactive setting. The title of The Digging refers to not only to the jazz nomenclature of liking something but the actual work of searching and getting beneath the surface, in this case to create a sound that is personal and believable.

As seems to be the usual case, the performance will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 28. Admission will be $25, and both cash and checks will be accepted. All of that money will go to the musicians. There will be two sets separated by a potluck break. As a result, all who plan to attend are encouraged to bring food and/or drink to share. Seating is first come, first served; and the doors will open at 3:30 p.m. Reservations are preferred by sending electronic mail to jazz@chezhanny.com. However, if room is available, walk-ins will be accepted. Masks are optional, but attendees should be vaccinated. Vaccination will be based on the honor system. Finally, volunteer efforts for cleaning up after the show and moving furniture to accommodate both players and listeners are always appreciated.

BMOP Debuts Complete Carpenter Ballets

courtesy of AMT Public Relations

This coming Tuesday, the Boston Modern Opera Project (BMOP) will release its latest album. It consists of three compositions by John Alden Carpenter collected under the title Complete Ballets. As most readers will expect, Amazon.com has created a Web page for placing pre-orders.

As might be guessed, each of the ballets presented is a one-act affair. The “order of appearance” on the album is not chronological:

1. “Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomime,” 1921 (score revised in 1940)
2. “The Birthday of the Infanta: A Ballet Pantomime,” 1919 (score revised in 1940)
3. “Skyscrapers: A Ballet of Modern American Life,” 1926

My guess is that the album was conceived to frame the darker narrative of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale with the more upbeat selections.

Indeed, the contrast between this ballet and “Krazy Kat,” both created by Adolph Bolm, best known for his contributions to Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, is one of night and day. Sadly, I have not been able to uncover much information about the choreography for “Krazy Kat,” so I have no idea how many bricks are thrown. (I have no idea how many readers will get the reference in that last sentence!) For that matter, I have no idea how much time either Bolm or Carpenter spent reading the Krazy Kat comic strips. (The booklet provides a single frame that tells you everything you need to know about Krazy Kat.). Since I count myself a maven of that content, I have to say that Carpenter’s music does not do the protagonist justice; and I cannot imagine Bolm coming up with choreography that did much better. On the other hand, “The Birthday of the Infanta,” based on a fairy tale written by Oscar Wilde, involves more narrative than either music or choreography can handle. My guess is that Diaghilev did not allow either of these ballets to remain in repertoire very long; and I suspect that his successor, Leonide Massine, felt the same way.

“Skyscrapers” is another matter. The Dance Encyclopedia cites Carpenter as one of the choreographer (possibly providing the framework for the narrative). Most of the choreography is probably due to Robert Edmond Jones, who was assisted by Sammy Lee. It was then given new choreography by Heinrich Kröller in 1929. Personally, I have my doubts as to whether this ballet reflected “American Life” in the Roaring Twenties; and I wonder whether or not Kröller’s version is a reflection on the 1929 stock market crash.

Carpenter died in 1951 at the age of 75. I believe there was some effort to keep his music alive and kicking at the Eastman School of Music. Howard Hanson, who was Director from 1924 to 1964, certainly believed that many American composers deserved a fair shake where repertoire was concerned. Certainly, the recordings he made with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra included Carpenter selections. (His recording of “Adventures in a Perambulator” is in my collection.) Nevertheless, however sincere the intentions BMOP may have been, I fear that all three selections come across as “music of the future whose time has passed!”

Alberto Mesirca: A New OMNI On-Location Video

Guitarist Alberto Mesirca (courtesy of the Omni Foundation)

This Sunday the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will release a new video of a performance by guitarist Alberto Mesirca. The location for this new OMNI On-Location video will be Italy. More specifically, Mesirca will be performing in the Santuario della Madonna de Caravaggio, located in the town of Franzolo, which is in the province of Treviso. The program will consist of two compositions from two decidedly different centuries.

The earlier composer will be Francesco Canova Da Milano, and the music can be found in the 1565 Castelfranco Veneto Lute Manuscript. “La compagna” is one of many works collected under the title Fantasia Ness. The second offering was composed by the Serbian-born American guitarist Dušan Bogdanović. “Primo Ricercare su la Compagna” is the first of the three works in his 1998 publication Three Ricercars. It was dedicated to Mesirca.

As usual, this video will be streamed through the Omni Foundation YouTube channel. The Web page for viewing has already been created. Availability will begin at 10 a.m. this coming Sunday, July 28.

The Bleeding Edge: 7/22/2024

This will be a very quiet week in San Francisco, due, at least in some part, to the abundance of activities taking place on the other side of the Bay Bridge. There will be no previously reported events and only two new ones, the first of which is the only “usual suspect.” Furthermore, neither of these events will take place until the weekend. Specifics are as follows:

Friday, July 26, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: This week’s Other Dimensions in Sound offering, curated by reed player David Boyce, has not been announced with very much background. The performers will be the members of The Living Room, which is, presumably, the combo that has its own self-titled album available through a Bandcamp Web page. If this is off the mark, then I am the one to blame! In any event, the venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Sunday, July 28, 8 p.m., Dead End Vintage: This will be another “Mini Fest,” taking place this time after the Brutal Sound Effects Festival. There will be five sets. Commode Minstrels in Bullface will hold a DVD release party for Demonion Abyss Broadcast. Tom Djll will do a solo set with his electronic gear (as shown above). He will be followed by Connor Tomaka. The remaining sets will be taken by “Tarantula Princess vs Holographic TC Static (SAC)” and Doom Legs. The entire program is expected to conclude by 9:50 p.m. Admission will be $5. The store is located at 3370 19th Street, between Mission Street and Capp Street.

VoM Reviews Repertoire on Latest Video Stream

One advantage of the summer is that I have to deal with fewer demands for my attention on Sundays. As a result, I am more likely have time for the weekly videos presented by Voices of Music as part of their Sunday Mornings at Ten series. Today’s offering was Episode 29 in the fourth season of these releases, each of which has its own YouTube Web page, which identifies the individual videos being selected. For this particular offering, there were nine such videos collected under the title Pool Party! 

I must confess that the title left me scratching my head, but it certainly did not interfere with my impressions of both the nine individual selections of the video accounts for each of the performances. The entire program was framed by two concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Hanneke van Proosdij launched the entire event with her sopranino recorder. She was soloist in Vivaldi’s RV 443 concerto in C major. The audio was taken from a performance at the Berkeley Early Music Festival in June of 2016, but the visuals were provided by Stephen Malinowski.

Those that have followed this site for some time probably know that I have had a long-standing interest in Malinowski’s work. Sadly, I have not written about him since June of 2021, which happened to be when I completed my traversal of his animated visualizations of all of the preludes and fugues in Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. His techniques enabled even the tone-deaf listener to appreciate the technical intricacies of Bach’s polyphony. In this case they were just as effective in reflecting the ongoing give-and-take between ensemble and soloist. Mind you, I have my own ways of appreciating the virtuosities of such a give-and-take performance; but Malinowski’s approach to visualization definitely left me with a smile on my face! I only wished that more of the selections on today’s program had been given similar interpretations.

That said, I had no trouble appreciating the concluding Vivaldi offering, the RV 356 violin concerto in A minor (the sixth in the Opus 3 L’Estro Armonico collection of twelve). (The English title of that collection is best translated as “Furious Harmony!”) The soloist was Augusta McKay Lodge, and she definitely deserves credit for capturing the “furious” rhetoric without ever being overly aggressive. As always, the capture of both audio and video was supervised by David Tayler (whose performances all involved plucked string instruments); but it was interesting to see on the YouTube Web page for this particular selection that he was assisted by Lodge during the final stage of post production.

The two Vivaldi selections were complemented by two single-movement excerpts from compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. The earlier selection on the program was the final (“Badinerie”) movement from the BWV 1067 (second) orchestra suite in B minor. The solo was taken by Dan Laurin on recorder, and the video included a frolicking porpoise and three stagnant bunnies. The penultimate offering, on the other hand, was the Sinfonia that serves as overture to the BWV 156 cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe (I stand with one foot in the grave). For the most part, the video focused on the solo performance by Marc Schachman on baroque oboe.

Screen shot from the video excerpt from the performance of “Wu Song and the Tiger” with the instrumental ensemble to the right and the solo actor and dancer towards the center

The other contributing composers were Johann Pachelbel, George Frideric Handel (with the familiar Hornpipe movement from his Water Music suites), and Anthony Holborne. There was also a solo lute performance by Tayler of the Scottish tune “It is a wonder to see how the world does go.” Finally, there was a video of the tavern scene from Proosdij’s “Wu Song and the Tiger.” This was an “East meets West” semi-staged performance, which included a pipa played by guest artist Yihan Chen, as well as choreography by Carlos Fittante. I remember seeing this when it was first performed in March of last year, and I was delighted to be reminded of the experience.

Taken as a whole, this new episode emerged as a “more is better” experience, which skillfully made sure that “more” never devolved into “too much!”

SFS Opening Gala to Feature Lang Lang

SFS Opening Night pianist Lang Lang (photograph by Xin Qiu, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony)

Having accounted yesterday for the “head start” San Francisco Symphony (SFS) concert that will precede the Opening Night Gala, this site can now turn to the specifics for the Gala itself. The featured soloist will be pianist Lang Lang in a performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 22 (second) piano concerto in G minor. He will return in the second half of the program for more Saint-Saëns, this time the familiar suite entitled The Carnival of the Animals. This music was composed for a chamber ensemble performing with two pianists. In that latter capacity, the featured pianist will be joined by Gina Alice, who happens to be his wife. The program will begin with selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s music for the ballet Romeo and Juliet. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct.

As usual, because this is the Opening Night Gala, there will be additional celebratory events. At 5:30 p.m. there will be a pre-concert VIP reception in the lobby of Davies Symphony Hall with sparkling wine and light bites, after which the concert will begin at 7 p.m. Following the performance, there will be the annual Celebratory Gala Dinner in the Zellerbach Recital Hall. A single Web page has been created with full information about the options (including price levels) for attending this event.

The entire affair will take place on Wednesday, September 25. For those attending only the concert, tickets are available only in the Orchestra and Boxes ($375), Terraces ($199–$299), 1st Tier ($299), and 2nd Tier ($249). They may be purchased through the ticketing Web page for this event. Individual tickets for the Gala Dinner range between $2500 and $10,000. Tickets may also be purchased for parties of ten. All further information can be found on a single Web page, which also indicates how much of the expense is tax-deductible. (Those visiting this Web page should be advised that viewing the different options will require a generous amount of scrolling!)

A “Head Start” for the SFS 2024–25 Season

Jenny Wong conducting an SFS performance of Carmina burana in May of 2022 (photograph by Stefan Cohen, courtesy of SFS)

The 2024–25 Season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will begin earlier than usual. By this I mean the first performance will take place prior to the annual Opening Night Gala. More specifically, that event will be preceded by the first in a series of five concerts, which will feature the SFS Chorus led by Director Jenny Wong, along with an impressive lineup of vocal soloists. These will all be included in different subscriptions; and, of course, tickets will also be available for individual performances. Specifics are as follows:

Thursday, September 19, Friday, September 20, and Saturday, September 21, 7:30 p.m.: The “pre-season” concert will be devoted entirely to the setting of the Requiem Mass by Giuseppe Verdi, which will conducted by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and feature four vocal soloists: soprano Leah Hawkins, mezzo Karen Cargill, tenor Mario Chang, and bass Eric Owens.

Friday, November 15, and Saturday, November 16, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 17, 2 p.m.: The second half of this program will be devoted entirely to Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem setting. The conductor will be Kazuki Yamada, and the vocal soloists will be soprano Liv Redpath and baritone Michael Sumuel. It will be complemented, during the first half of the program, by Maurice Ravel’s G major piano concerto with soloist Hélène Grimaud. The “overture” for the program will be Dai Fujikura’s “Entwine.”

Friday, December 6, and Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the annual seasonal performance of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio Messiah. The conductor will be Stephen Stubbs. As usual, there will be four vocal soloists: soprano Amanda Forsythe, countertenor John Holiday, tenor Aaron Sheehan, and baritone Douglas Williams.

Thursday, January 16, and Saturday, January 18, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, January 19, 2 p.m.: David Robertson will conduct the performance of Carl Orff’s secular cantata Carmina burana. The vocal soloists will be soprano Susanna Phillips, tenor Arnold Livingston Geis, and baritone Will Liverman. This will serve as the second half of the program, whose first half will be devoted entirely to the world premiere of “After the Fall,” John Adams’ piano concerto composed on an SFS commission. The piano soloist will be Víkingur Ólafsson.

Thursday, June 12, Friday, June 13, and Saturday, June 14, 7:30 p.m.: As was the case this year, the season will include with a symphony by Gustav Mahler conducted by Salonen. This time it will be the second symphony, sometimes given the subtitle “Resurrection,” which refers to a poem included in the sung text. The vocal soloists will be soprano Heidi Stober and mezzo Sasha Cooke.

Each of the above dates is hyperlinked to an SFS Web page through which readers can be informed about ticket prices and availability, as well as support for online purchases. All tickets may also be purchased at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office. The entrance is on the south side of MTT Way (formerly Grove Street), located between Franklin Street and Van Ness Avenue.

SFCMP: Plans for 54th Season

This past weekend the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) and Artistic Director Eric Dudley announced the programs that will be presented during their 54th concert season. There will be four programs beginning on Sunday, November 24, and running through Saturday, May 10, of next year. Once again, there will also be three concerts of works performed by emerging composers, presented in conjunction with the ARTZenter Institute.

The season will begin with the launch of the third round of competition programs produced with ARTZenter support. As was the case last season, there will be two semi-final recitals, each presenting six newly completed works for chamber orchestra. Six of those twelve compositions (three from each of the two preceding recitals) will then be selected for the final recital, after which the recipients of the grants will be named.

All three of these performances will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building. All three performances will begin at 7:30 p.m. The two semi-final recitals will take place on Thursday, September 12 and Friday, January 17. The remaining performance will take place on Friday, June 20. There will be no charge for admission to all of these events, and seating will be open.

As in the past, one hour before each of the four concert programs, Dudley will host a How Music is Made discussion with one or more guest artists. Here is a summary of those programs with date, times, venue, and content for each:

Sunday, November 24, 4 p.m., Brava Theater: The title of the program will be composed by local composer Emma Logan on an SFCMP commission supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. The vocalist will be mezzo Kindra Scharich. The program will conclude with the West Coast premiere of “Terpsichore’s Box of Dreams,” completed by Augusta Read Thomas last year. As might be guessed, the music was inspired by the Greek Muse, who is the goddess of dancing. Each half of the program will begin with a Bay Area premiere. The opening selection will be Laura Schwendinger’s The Artist’s Muse, a suite based on seven iconic female portraits across centuries of visual art. The final selection will also turn to Greek mythology with “Moerae (The Fates),” which Mary Kouyoumdjian completed in 2010. The Brava Theater is located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street.

Saturday, February 1, 8 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM): The title of this program will be Tracing Paths. It will feature world premiere performances of two works involving oboe, cello, and percussion augmented by electronics. Both composers are students in the SFCM Technology and Applied Composition Department. There will also be the West Coast premiere of Zosha DiCastri’s “Touch/Trace,” which will feature virtuoso percussionist Steven Schick as soloist. The program will include the Bay Area premiere of a work composed in 2015 by Jonathan Bingham, currently a member of the SFCM faculty. The work was conceived as an homage to the trend of visual artists like Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It was deliberately left untitled to allow listeners to draw their own unprejudiced conclusions. Finally, tenor Michael Dailey will perform the song cycle No More, based on texts by four South African poets, who had lived through the era of apartheid. This work was completed in 1985 and was originally commissioned and premiered by SFCMP.

 

Magnus Lindberg (from the SFCMP Web page for Northern Lights)

Saturday, April 12, 7:30 p.m., Taube Atrium Theatre: Northern Lights will be a program inspired by the extreme reaches of the northern hemisphere. There will be a world premiere performance of the latest work by Mika Pelo, born in Sweden and now living in California. The program will begin with Jesper Nordin’s “Surfaces Scintillantes,” which was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble XXI and was first performed in Dijon in June of 2008. Magnus Lindberg, who is no stranger to the Bay Area, will be represented by his 2002 “Jubilees.” Finally, the late Kaija Saariaho will be remembered with a performance of her “Lichtbogen” (bows of light), which she completed in 1986 during her tenure at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris.

Saturday, May 10, 8 p.m., Brava Theater: The title of the final program is Shared Rituals. The “sharing” involves bringing together compositions by American, Latin American, and Central American composers. The most recent of these will be a “Prelude” offering  recently composed by Paul Mortilla entitled “Paradiso: Weavers of Light.” The performance will include guest artists Sun Chang on the piano and the members of the Friction Quartet. Ana Lara’s “Y los oros la Luz,” composed in 2008, will (finally) be receiving its United States premiere. There will also be two West Coast premieres” Miguel Chuaqui’s “Tiempo Norte, Tiempo Sur” and “Corpórea” by Gabriela Ortiz. The “Prelude” will be followed by the Bay Area premiere of Tania Léon’s “Indígena.”

As of this writing, information about tickets has not yet been finalized; and the Web page for making purchases advises, “Check back in September!”

Thom Blum Will Provide Music at SFMOMA

Devon Turnbull (and audience) in his HiFi Listening Room (from the SFMOMA Web page for Art of Noise)

In addition to his performances at the Prelinger Library, the next of which, as was previously announced, will be taking place this Sunday afternoon, Thom Blum will be one of the many musicians to contribute to the current Art of Noise exhibition at the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (SFMOMA). That exhibition includes a “HiFi Listening Room,” which is being curated by Devon Turnbull, who specializes in building audio systems. The Listening Room will accommodate 50 people, who will be able to enjoy the acoustic qualities of Turnbull’s custom-built speakers.

SFMOMA has created a Web page for the full schedule of events taking place in the Listening Room. Blum’s performance will take place on Friday, August 2, beginning and 10 a.m. and running through 5 p.m. The title of the program will be Acousmatic and Tape Music. The content should be broad enough to account for seven hours of content. According to Blum’s own statement, selections will range “from Bach to Cream, from Cecil Taylor to Parmegiani, from Jimi Hendrix to Ligeti, from Zappa to Stockhausen, and many others in between.” His recordings will include both vinyl and CDs.

Admission will be by admission to SFMOMA, which is located at 151 Third Street, between Mission Street and Howard Street, just opposite Yerba Buena Gardens. The price for adults is $30 with a $25 rate for seniors aged 65 or older, and young adults between the ages of nineteen and 24 will be admitted for $23. There is no charge for those younger, nor will there be a fee for those who are already members.

Sixteen Composers Reflect on Inheritance

Adam Tendler at the piano keyboard (photograph by Cameron McLeod, from the home page on Tendler’s Web site)

Last night saw the return of Adam Tendler to San Francisco to present another solo piano recital. Unless, I am mistaken, this was his first appearance since February of 2019, when he gave a solo recital for the Piano Talks series of concerts presented by the Ross McKee Foundation. This time his recital was presented by Other Minds at the Brava Theater in the Mission. The title of the program was Inheritances, which refers to the money received through the last will and testament of his father. That money was then distributed equally among sixteen composers, each of whom would create a work for Tendler to perform for the aforementioned program. The contributing composers were as follows:

1. Laurie Anderson
2. Missy Mazzoli
3. Scott Wollschleger
4. Angélica Negrón
5. John Glover
6. Mary Prescott
7. Timo Andres
8. Ted Hearne
9. inti figgis-vizueta
10. Sara Kirkland Snider
11. Christopher Cerrone
12. Marco Balter
13. Pamela Z
14. Darian Donavan Thomas
15. Nico Muhly
16. Devonté Hynes

When Tendler introduced the program last night, he said it would run around 90 minutes; but it seemed to run longer, perhaps by as much as a quarter of an hour.

Sadly, from a more subjective point of view, after about half a dozen of the selections, the program began to feel as if it would go on forever. Ironically, one of the “movements” turned out be a home movie. The “musical significance” of this selection was, at best, ambiguous; but it was still a bit of a relief from the “roll call” of the piano solo compositions. It is clear that this program was conceived and executed with the best of intentions, but we all know about the road paved with good intentions and where it leads.

I still remember the skill that Tendler brought to delivering the “talks” part of his Piano Talks recital. I suspect that, if he had trimmed down the number of composers by half and then introduced each with his own spoken reflections (rather than consigning those reflections to print in the program book), this would have been a far more engaging experience. It might even have piqued my own perceptions of those composers on his list that have never given me much (if any) satisfaction in my past listening experiences.

Omni to Live-Stream John Williams Tribute

Poster for the competition that will precede the Guitar Festival competition (courtesy of the Omni Foundation)

Next week the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will live-stream a concert that will be performed as part of the José Tomás Villa de Petrer International Guitar Festival. That concert will take place after the conclusion of a competition, which is the primary event of the Festival; and it has been planned as a tribute to guitarist John Williams. The performers will include Alvaro Toscano, Cristina Galietto, Filip Mišković, Jack Hancher, the Uppsala Guitar Quartet, and the José Tomás Efímera Guitar Orchestra. This event will be streamed through the Omni Foundation YouTube channel. Because the concert is taking place in Europe, the start time here in California will be 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 25.

Louis Hayes’ Reflection on the Bebop Era

Louis Hayes on the cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

Artform Revisited is a new album from Savant Records of a combo led by drummer Louis Hayes. His rhythm section consists of pianist David Hazeltine and Dezron Douglas on bass. The front line players are Abraham Burton on tenor saxophone and vibraphonist Steve Nelson, each of whom is absent on one of the album’s ten tracks.

The “artform” of the title is bebop. Hayes began his career as a member of the Horace Silver Quintet. Over the course of his career, he would go on to play and record with Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Cedar Walton, Sonny Rollins, and Woody Shaw (to name more than a few). For the most part, the album reflects on different approaches to bebop as the genre evolved.

While the title clearly denotes an examination of the past, I fear that, in the arrangements on this album, those reflections are not as sharp as the originals. The performances are dutiful enough, and there are any number of imaginative improvisations. However, there is still a sense that the edgy drive from the last century has not sustained into the current one. I fear that, at best, this album sent me back to revisit the original sources for many of its tracks.

The Bleeding Edge: 7/16/2024

This will be another “balanced” week. This time there will be three previously reported events complemented by three new ones. On the other hand, the previously reported events involve only two venues as follows:

• The Brava Theater will host Inheritances, a solo piano recital by Adam Tendler.
• There will be two programs presented by the Center for New Music: the Ambient Musics and Analogue Synthesis presentation by Complacency on Wednesday evening and this month’s installment of G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S beginning at noon on Saturday.

The three new events are as follows:

Tuesday, July 16 (today!), Make-Out Room, 7 p.m.: This will be the usual monthly Make-Out Room concert. The opening set will be a duo performance by drummer Tim Bulkley and pianist Dahveed Behroozi. The second set will begin at 7:45 p.m. with another duo performance, this time by pianist Kanoko Nishi-Smith and cellist Ben Davis. The final set, beginning at 8:30 p.m., with be taken by the Tri-Cornered Tent Show. As usual, the Make-Out Room is located in the Mission at 3225 22nd Street. Doors will open at 6 p.m. There is no cover charge, so donations will be accepted and appreciated.

Friday, July 19, Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 8:30 p.m.: This will celebrate the recording of John Coltrane’s Ascension, one of the major events in jazz history, if not in the overall history of music. Tenor saxophonist John Coltrane led his “classic” quartet, whose other members were pianist McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and drummer Elvin Jones. However, this was a large-ensemble piece, which involved seven additional players: tenor saxophonists Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, John Tchicai and Marion Brown on alto saxophone, trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Dewey Johnson, and Art Davis on bass. The result was a little less than 40 minutes of free jazz at its wildest, with everyone getting a take for a highly personalized solo. This “revival” performance, however, will revert back to a quartet led by saxophonist Jon Raskin. He will be joined by Scott Foster on guitar, bassist Matt Montgomery, and Bulkley (again) on drums.

As regular readers probably know by now, Bird & Beckett is located at 653 Chenery Street, a short walk from the Glen Park station that serves both BART and Muni. Admission will be the usual $20 cover charge, payable by Venmo or in cash. Given that only a limited number of people will be admitted, reservations are necessary and can be made by calling 415-586-3733. The phone will be answered during regular store hours, which are between noon and 6 p.m. on Tuesday through Sunday. Because this is a weekend performance, it will probably be live-streamed for viewing on either the shop’s Facebook page or its YouTube channel.

Sunday, July 21, Prelinger Library, 1:30 p.m.: Tom Blum has been giving occasional performances at this venue, and I am glad that I am finally receiving advance notice! He will be joined by Kattt Sammon Atchley, who will be playing hand and kettle gongs, as well as singing. She will be joined by greensatan (the performing name of Kenneth Atchley), who will be in charge of computer-driven electronics. Blum will contribute by improvising on the “instrullation” that he has embedded in the library stacks. Playing will continue through 4 p.m. The library is located on the second floor of 301 8th Street, and admission is by getting attention through a callbox with a “Library” button available.

Cheryl E. Leonard: Two Earlier Recordings

I have now had the opportunity to follow up on the work of composer Cheryl E. Leonard by listening to two of her earlier albums. Like Antarctica: Music from the Ice, Chattermarks is a collection of fifteen field recordings made in January of 2009 during a visit to Palmer Station in Antarctica. Six of the tracks involve animal sounds of Adélie penguins and elephant seals, respectively. The others involve different aspects of relations between ice and water. As was the case with the Antarctica album, there is more diversity across these tracks than one might expect. Sadly, Chattermarks does not include quite as informative a booklet. However, it is a jacket that unfolds to provide capsule accounts of each of the tracks, a series of color photographs, and background material about Palmer Station itself.

Cover design for Littoral (from the Recordings Web page on Cheryl E. Leonard’s Web site)

A more recent release, Littoral, came out in December of 2023 and was probably recorded earlier in the year. It consists of a single track with a duration of slightly more than half an hour. No text is included with the album. However, Leonard provided the following description for its Web site:

A sonic love letter to the Northern California Coast, this long-form composition journeys landwards: from the open Pacific, through surf breaking on rocky and sandy shores, then onto/inside beaches, tidepools, wetlands, and lagoons. Along the way, coastal ecosystems and soundscapes are examined and re-imagined. Littoral is anchored in field recordings from Point Reyes National Seashore, Marin Headlands, and MacKerricher State Park. Voices from driftwood, stones, shells, and kelp are carefully combined with these recordings into a piece that transports listeners to — and into — Northern California seashores.

One may not be able to sort out the different sources, but one can still enjoy the journey as Leonard described it.

Pianist Charlotte Hu to Make PENTATONE Debut

Charlotte Hu on the cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Jensen Artists)

This Friday will see the release of Liszt: Metamorphosis, pianist Charlotte Hu’s debut album on PENTATONE. That title is a personal one, since the birth name of the Taiwanese-American pianist was Ching-Yun Hu. Thus, to some extent, the “metamorphosis” of her name may have led her to reflect on the progressive changes in Franz Liszt’s approaches to making music over the course of his career. As of this writing, Amazon.com has created a Web page for pre-ordering a digital download of the album’s ten tracks.

Ironically, Hu seems to have undermined her title by beginning with the latest of the selections from the Liszt catalog. This is “Les jeux d’eau á la Villa d’Este,” which is in the “Troisième année” volume in the Années de pèlerinage collection. This was composed in 1877 when Liszt was going into his late sixties. (He died in 1886.) The chronology then drops back to 1837 with four transcriptions of songs composed by Franz Schubert over a period of two years. These are followed by the transcription of Robert Schumann’s “Widmung” from 1848. The chronology then backs up again to account for the three concert études composed between 1845 and 1849, and the album concludes with the 1858 “Rhapsodie espagnole.”

In my younger years I had the advantage of a piano teacher with a sincere commitment to take Liszt’s piano music seriously. Through her I came to appreciate this difference between a performance that had something to say and mere showboating. As a result, I accumulated a relatively generous number of recordings of performances of that music, most of which offered valuable experiences that I would often revisit.

Whether or not this new recording will join the ranks of my collection remains to be seen. From a technical point of view, Hu definitely has the chops to take on the many challenges that arise in Liszt scores. However, I have not yet decided how she stands up in relation to the Liszt pianists I have encountered with satisfaction over the past few decades. (These being personal preferences, I am not going to run off any names!) Nevertheless, if plans arise to bring her to San Francisco, I definitely would like to know about them!

Sunset Music and Arts: August, 2024

Polish pianist Tomasz Kamieniak (from the Sunset Music and Arts event page for this recital)

As is the case this month, the month of August will also see only one recital presented by Sunset Music and Arts. This month’s solo violin recital will be complemented next month by a solo piano recital. The recitalist will be Polish pianist Tomasz Kamieniak.

He has prepared a program of eight selections, each by a different composer. Since he, himself, is also a composer, he has given himself one of the slots with a performances of “Potsdamer Platz. Hommage à Marlene Dietrich,” the second piece in his Opus 67 collection Drei Berliner Klavierwerken.

The only composer to appear twice on the program will be Charles-Valentin Alkan. Kamieniak will play “Aime-Moi” (love me), the first piece in the Opus 15 collection Morceaux dans le Genre pathétique. Alkan’s other “appearance” will be as the arranger of the Allegro con brio movement from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 37 (third) piano concerto in C minor, for which Alkan also provided the cadenza. The other “arranger” on the program will be Franz Liszt, who arranged six of the songs collected in Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 74. These are generally published with German titles. Kamieniak will play three of them as follows:

• Frühling (spring)
• Das Ringlein (the ring)
• Bacchanal (merrymaking)

Other composers known for their virtuosity will include Louis Moreau Gottschalk (his Opus 31 “Souvenir de Porto Rico”), Sigismond Thalberg (the Opus 46 “Grand Caprice sur des motifs de l’Opéra la Sonnambula”), and “An American Idyl,” from Leopold Godowsky’s Triakontameron, subtitled “30 Moods and Scenes in Triple Measure.” The twentieth century will be represented by Walter Niemann with one of the movements from his Opus 119 Jura-Sommer: Kleine Impressionen.

This performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 9. For those not familiar with this concert series, it takes place at the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue. Admission will be free with a suggested donation of $20 per person.

Neave Trio Releases its Second Album of the Year

Cover of the new album being discussed (courtesy of Jensen Artists)

Readers may recall that the Neave Trio released its A Room of Her Own album this past February. Since that time, violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura have clearly kept themselves productively busy, because this Friday will see the release of their second album of the year. The title of this new album is Rooted; and, as many probably expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders. Once again, the album has a theme, this time examining the personal lives and cultural roots (hence the title) of four distinctively different composers, all with foundations in the late nineteenth century. In “order of appearance,” those composers and their associated works are as follows:

1. Bedřich Smetana: the Opus 15 piano trio, composed in 1855 and revised in 1857
2. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: the first five selections in the 1905 Opus 59 collection, Twenty-Four Negro Melodies
3. Josef Suk: the Opus 2 “Petit Trio,” composed in 1889 with a final revision in 1891
4. Frank Martin: the three-movement “Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises,” composed in 1925

The selections on this album are as diverse as the nationalities of the composers. As usual, none of the composers are unfamiliar to me. Nevertheless, as was the case with A Room of Her Own, I can say with some confidence that I never encountered any of them on a daily basis. Indeed, with the exception of their Musical Remembrances album, it would be fair to say that Neave Trio has cultivated a reputation for seeking out rarely-performed works and giving them “a place in the spotlight.” (Sarah Cahill had a similar mission with her Future is Female recordings, but Neave has less of a “gender bias!”)

During my student days, one of my favorite essays was “With Edgar Varèse in the Gobi Desert” by Henry Miller. (This is one of the chapters in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.) Here is my favorite paragraph:

No one asks you to throw Mozart out the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Laotse and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.

None of the four composers on this album can be classified as “the coming ones.” Nevertheless, they remind us that there is still music from the nineteenth century that continues to scratch on the window-panes! Neave’s approach to repertoire reveals a generously imaginative approach to bringing awareness to that scratching.

Plans for Lamplighters 2024/2025 Season

Much to my chagrin, I discovered this morning that I have not written a season preview article for the Lamplighters Music Theatre for over half a decade. This may have been due to the fact that their seasons usually begin in August, making for a somewhat unconventional season cycle. As usual, there will be four events in San Francisco, one for the annual Gala and the other three for full-length fully-staged productions. This coming season (the 72nd) each of those productions will take place in a different San Francisco venue. Specifics are as follows:

Poster design for The Pirates of Penzance (from the Lamplighters home page)

The season will begin with one of the most popular collaborations of composer Arthur Sullivan and librettist W. S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance. What many readers may not know is that this comic opera was given its premiere performance in New York City on December 31, 1879. The venue was the Fifth Avenue Theatre, which was located on Broadway but not in what is now the Times Square district. Rather, it was at the corner of West 28th Street, and it was demolished in 1939. Pirates did not debut in London until the following year on April 3, 1880. The Lamplighters production will be directed by Michael Mohammed, and the conductor will be Resident Music Director Brett Strader.

This production will be given two matinee performances at 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 17, and Sunday, August 18. The venue will be the Blue Shield of California Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which is located at 700 Howard Street on the northwest corner of Third Street. Premium Orchestra tickets are $88, those in Center Terrace and the remainder of the Orchestra are $78, and those in the Side Terrace and Boxes are $73. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through City Box Office event pages. Each performance has a separate Web page, which may be reached through the hyperlinks attached to the above dates. As of this writing, there appears to be no information about subscription rates.

The second event of the season will be the Champagne Gala. This will be the 60th gala celebration, and it will serve as a tribute to former Lamplighters Music Director Baker Peeples. It will begin at 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 27, taking place in the Taube Atrium Theater, which is on the top floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance portion of the occasion will, once again, feature trademark parodies based on the original lyrics that Gilbert wrote for Sullivan. There will also be both a silent auction and a more vociferous one for the annual Fund-A-Need campaign. City Box Office has created a single Web page with a Performance Only option and one for the entire event.

The third offering will be a musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s play Candida. The title character is the wife of a popular and upright Anglican minister, who must contend with a young poet trying to woo Candida away from him. Austin Pendleton provided the book for the staged version, entitled A Minister’s Wife; and Jan Levy Tranen wrote the lyrics for composer Joshua Schmidt. This production will be given three performances in the Taube Atrium Theatre. There will be two matinee performances at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 15, and Sunday, February 16, along with an evening performance at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 15. General admission will be $76 with a $71 rate for seniors (age 62 or older), and $31 for children aged eighteen or younger and students aged 25 and under.

The final production will be the first two-act operetta created by Gilbert and Sullivan. The Sorcerer will be given a staging that advances the time from the Victorian era of its creators to 1920, which was a time in which fascination with the occult was particularly popular. As might be guessed, the plot revolves around a love potion; and Lamplighters has a tendency to interject references to other musical themes associated with that plot. (Lovers of German opera should be on the alert!) This production will be given three performances at the Presidio Theatre Performing Arts Center. Opening night will be on Friday, May 16, at 7:30 p.m. This will be followed by the usual two matinee performances at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 17, and Sunday, May 18.

Cheryl E. Leonard’s “Music from the Ice”

Yesterday afternoon the Golden Gate Valley Branch of the San Francisco Public Library hosted a presentation by composer Cheryl E. Leonard. The title on the announcement was Polar Resoundings. However, she also introduced the program as Antarctica: Music from the Ice. The former, however, was more accurate, since it involved the two polar extremes, which served as both inspiration and resources for Leonard’s compositions.

A female polar bear with her cub in Svalbard on drift ice in the Hinlopen strait (photograph by AWeith, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, from a Wikimedia Web page)

Antarctica: Music from the Ice is also the title of Leonard’s recent Other Minds album. The first three of the pieces she performed were taken from that album: “Fluxes,” “Point Eight Ice,” and Ablation Zone.” All of these involved field recordings as source material; and Leonard supplemented those recordings with performances involving objects taken from the field, primarily bones. For the remaining two selections, she shifted to the northern extreme with “Thresholds” and “Kelpnet.” Her sources were taken from Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago, which is situated far north of the northern Norwegian coast and to the east of Greenland.

This was one of those programs when there was never a dull moment. The diversity of sonorities that Leonard evoked was far beyond any expectations, and her delivery of the background information was consistently engaging and informative. Listening to the album this morning, I was reminded of just how rich the subtle details were in yesterday’s performance. What I missed, however, was Ooma Stern’s video content that she had projected yesterday, which consistently set just the right context for appreciating the listening matter.

Ultimately, Leonard’s “subject matter” is best served by the coupling of audio and video media that she presented yesterday; and, perhaps at some time in the near future, she will have an opportunity to create a video recording as informative as her event yesterday.

SFCS to Bring Mendelssohn Oratorio to Davies

“Banner” for the concert being discussed (from its City Box Office Web page)

In a little less than a month’s time, the San Francisco Choral Society (SFCS) will continue its 35th anniversary celebrations with its annual Summer Festival Chorus performance in Davies Symphony Hall. This year’s program will be devoted to a single composition, Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 70 Elijah oratorio, the best known of his three works in that genre. The performance will involve a debut collaboration with the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and instrumental accompaniment will be provided by the California Chamber Symphony. The vocal soloists will be soprano Michelle Rice, mezzo Courtney Miller (making her SFCS debut), tenor Brian Thorsett, and bass Eugene Brancoveanu. Artistic Director Robert Geary will conduct.

There will be only one performance, which will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 10, in Davies Symphony Hall, on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street. Tickets prices are $50, $66, and $81; and they may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page. As usual, that Web page includes a “map” showing which tickets are available in which sections. Tickets are available for seniors and students at a 10% discount.

The Joy of Anachronism from New Orleans

When the New Orleans Klezmer All Stars performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival at the beginning of this past May, it was not only the anachronism of Eastern Europe Yiddishkeit from the nineteenth century but also the “geographical displacement” of that anachronism into New Orleans. Nevertheless, that occasion marked the first studio album by that combo in nearly a decade. Given what is currently happening in Sinai, one might think that the release of that album, Tipish, was ill-timed; but, as a lapsed-Jew atheist, I prefer to think of its as a necessary reminder that the “Jewish state” of Israel is not always a reflection of a more global view of Jewish culture.

The fact is that, as the above album cover shows, the most important virtue of Yiddishkeit is that it is not to be taken seriously. Some of the track titles are just as convincing as that image. They include “King Fela’s Chicken Soup,” “The Detox Hora,” and “Lomir Zikh Get’n Tanz” (which is Yiddish for “The Let’s Get a Divorce Dance”).

The music itself, however, has definitely been given extensive reflection by its composer, Jonathan Freilich, who is the group’s guitarist. He is joined in the rhythm section by Joe Cabral on bass, drummer Doug Garrison, and Glenn Harman on accordion. The front line, in turn, boasts three saxophonists, Ben Ellman, Aurora Nealand, and Dan Oestreicher, joined by freilach-inspired clarinetist Nick Ellman. Hartman and Freilich share leadership.

It is now over half a century since Esquire published an anthology of its articles entitled Smiling Through the Apocalypse. Tipish serves up the sort of music that will encourage us to keep smiling, even when conditions are most apocalyptic. Think about listening to it before the Republican National Convention gets under way!

Scott Amendola and Will Blades at Keys Bistro

This morning I realized that, up until last night, I had not had an opportunity to listen to the drum work of Scott Amendola since the pandemic. Back in those days, he was one of many to take advantage of live streaming from Bird & Beckett Books and Records, performing in a trio gig with saxophonist Phillip Greenlief and visiting bassist Adriana Camacho. Since then, I have accounted for Amendola performances in Bleeding Edge columns, none of which I was able to attend. Last night, however, my wife and I experienced a generous share of his inventive capacities at Keys Jazz Bistro.

Will Blades and Scott Amendola on the cover of their Greatest Hits album (from their Store Web page)

For the better part of the set, he was joined by Will Blades, sitting behind a diversity of instruments. This included a Hammond organ, which was supplemented, for the most part, by a Hohner keyboard. More often than not, Blades seemed to provide a continuo of sorts for the seemingly endless flow of polyrhythms emerging from Amdenola’s drum kit. They referred to their duo work as a “friendly battle.” Indeed, they were so wrapped up in that friendship that there seemed to be little time to announce titles for any of their selections. Nevertheless, they were not shy it letting the audience know that CDs were available; and, in that spirit, it seems appropriate to let readers know that there is also a Web page for purchasing these recordings!

Things toned down more than a bit when they were then joined on the stage by Otis Macdonald with his bass guitar. All of his contributions involved vocal work. If Amendola and Blades are currently on the forefront of new approaches to drums and keyboards, Macdonald’s contributions were decidedly retrospective. His heart was clearly back in the days of Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder, but his reflection on that period never rose above the level of lame. Indeed, it was hard for me to ignore that old joke: “If you remember the Sixties, you probably weren’t there!”

More important is that Amendola and Blades are still going strong, and I hope that I shall not have to wait too long for my next encounter.