Old First Concerts: June, 2024

This month’s events in the Old First Concerts (O1C) series were reported in conjunction with the first “busy weekend” of the month. As of this writing, three performances have been scheduled for next month. All of them will be “hybrid,” allowing both live streaming and seating in Old First Presbyterian Church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Ticket prices are now adjusted according to seating areas. Hyperlinks to the event pages continue to be attached to the date and time of the performances, as above. Specifics are as follows:

Sunday, June 2, 4 p.m.: The piano music of Mark Winges, who is based here in San Francisco, will be performed by Blaise Bryski, who lives on the East Coast. Bryski will give a complete account of Winges’ Nocturnes collection, composed between 2001 and 2022. He will begin the program with “Red Sky Opening,” which was completed in 2009. The final selection will be the 2023 “More Hand Jive.”

Friday, June 14, 8 p.m.: Sitar player Arjun K. Verman, who, according to my records, last visited Old First on August 5, 2022, will return. This time he will be accompanied by tabla player Emam Hashimi. Once again, the repertoire will be influenced by the ancient and modern aspects of Indian classical music in the style of the legendary Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

Pianist Lee Alan Nolan (from his O1C event page)

Sunday, June 30, 4 p.m.: Another returning artist will be pianist Lee Alan Nolan. Readers may recall that I described his last visit on July 22, 2022 as “Scriabin Rubs Shoulders with Joplin.” His own title of the program was From Rags to Mystics, and the title of this month’s program will be From Rags to Mystics 2. The ragtime composers will be Scott Joplin, May Aufderheide, and Irene Giblin. The “primary mystic” will be Olivier Messiaen with a performance of the three compositions in the first book of his Catalogues d’oiseaux. (The composer collected seven of these books, but five of them have only a single composition!) The program will also include another composition by Bruce Christian Bennett, “Small Art.”