SFJAZZ: September, 2024

SFJAZZ will begin its 2024–25 season during the first week of September. That will include performances at the Joe Henderson Lab, with further offerings taking place later in the month. 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, September 5, Friday, September 6, and Saturday, September 7, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, September 8, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: Henderson will celebrate Season Opening Week with eight performances by OKAN. This is the duo of violinist Elizabeth Rodriguez and Magdelys Savigne on percussion, both of whom will also contribute vocal work. The name of the duo is the word for heart or soul in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. OKAN goes beyond the Afro-Cuban genre to appropriate global rhythms from a wide variety of sources including jazz, folk, electronic pop, and classical forms.

September 12, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The theme for the following week will be Drums in the Lead. The first of the drummers will be Jaz Sawyer. His program will be a salute to drumming legend Roy Haynes. The performance will feature music from Haynes’ trio album We Three. However, if Sawyer is going to lead a trio, he has not yet named the musicians that will join him.

September 13, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The second featured drummer will be Anthony Fung. He is a graduate of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (which is now known as the Hancock Institute of Jazz). He will lead a quartet, two of whose members are also Monk Institute alumni, Alex Hahn on alto saxophone and bassist Luca Alemanno (the first Italian musician accepted into the Monk program). The remaining member of the quartet will be pianist Michael Ragonese. The quartet will perform music from the 2022 album FO(U)RTH.

Saturday, September 14, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday September 15, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: The final featured drummer of the week will be Mike Clark. The performances will be devoted to music from his latest Wild Hive Records album, Kosen Rufu. He will lead a quartet whose “front line” will consist of Eddie Henderson on trumpet and saxophonist Skerik. Bass will be taken by Henry “The Skipper” Franklin.

Thursday, September 19, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The theme for the third week will be Good Vibes. It will begin with a solo performance (on vibraphone) by Kyle Athayde. His influences come not only from different periods of jazz (Duke Ellington and Eric Dolphy) but also from the leading Russian composers of twentieth-century concert music, Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Friday, September 20, and Saturday, September 21, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: This will also be a solo vibraphone performance, this time by Sasha Berliner performing music from her new album, Fantome.

Sunday, September 22, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: Simon Moullier will be the one vibraphonist to lead a combo. He will be joined by South Korean drummer Jongkuk Kim and Lex Korten on piano. These are the musicians that performed with him when he made his Candid Records album Elements of Light.

Marquis Hill with his trumpet (from his SFJAZZ Web page)

Thursday, September 26, and Friday, September 27, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The theme for the final week of the month will be Soul-Jazz. Trumpeter Maquis Hill will play compositions from his new album Composers Collective. This was a band project, but any accompanying performers have not yet been named.

Saturday, September 28, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, September 29, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: This will be a duo performance by Alicia and Michael Olatuja. The latter provides bass accompaniment for the former, who is a vocalist. They will play music from their self-titles album, which is described as a “groove-heavy mix of Afro-Beat, jazz, funk, and soul.”

Christophe Rousset’s Couperin to go Digital

Harpsichordist Christophe Rousset on the cover of one of his albums (from the Amazon.com Web page for this album)

Tomorrow all of the harmonia mundi recordings of the complete keyboard works composed by François Couperin performed by harpsichordist Christophe Rousset will be released for digital download and streaming. Those that have followed this site for some time know that I have covered two complete recordings of all four of this composer’s Livres de pièces de clavecin, one by Olivier Baumont for Erato as a ten-CD box set and the other by Mark Kroll, released as single-CD installments by Centaur Records. The Rousset album also included the nine-movement “L’art de toucher le clavecin” and a single-movement “Sicilienne.”

The Rousset digital download sites for the first, second, third, and fourth of the Livres will be released through their own individual Web pages on Amazon.com, beginning at 9 p.m. tomorrow. Having indulged in the foolishness of climbing Mount Fuji twice, I have decided to focus my attention only on the other two releases in this set. The first of these is Apothéoses de Lully et de Corelli, two suites that were previously unfamiliar to me. The second accounts for the four Concerts Royaux suites with “L’art de toucher le Clavecin” added to account for an hour and twelve minutes of music.

Some readers may recall my fondness for an advertising slogan for the Sunday edition of The New York Times: “You don’t have to read it all, but it’s good to know it’s all there!” I suppose that is pretty much the way I feel about the Couperin keyboard canon. The fact is that the selections in the Livres account for the few keyboard compositions that my aging fingers can manage these days. (I am currently in the sixth Ordre.) So I doubt that I shall ever progress beyond the selections I previously had in my library of recordings.

Nevertheless, I could still enjoy the two releases cited above. I appreciated the ways in which they established a different perspective on Couperin’s creativity. Indeed, as I continue to revisit my recordings, I may even come to grasp how Couperin chose to honor both Jean-Baptiste Lully and Arcangelo Corelli. Most important, however, is how honing “the art of listening to music” influences “the art of making music.” That process has always fascinated and influenced me, and this new perspective on Couperin’s keyboard music is likely to have an effect to how I guide my own morning practice sessions.

Plans for the SFP 2024–25 Chamber Series

Having already accounted for the 45th Season Gala of San Francisco Performances (SFP), I have now reached a point where the opening performances of the different recital series will alternate with the different categories of performances presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Thus, the second of the two SFS performances led by conductor Thomas Wilkins, discussed yesterday, will overlap with the first concert in the SFP Chamber Series. As has been the case for at least the last two seasons, each of the programs in the coming Chamber Series will feature a string quartet. However, unlike last season, none of the programs will include guest artists. All of these events will take place at 7:30 p.m. on three different days of the week.

As usual, all of the concerts will take place in Herbst Theatre. The entrance to Herbst 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. The specific dates and their related performers are as follows:

Saturday, October 26: The members of the Esmé Quartet are violinists Wonhee Bae and Yuna Ha, violist Dimitri Murrath, and cellist Ye-Eun Heo. The program will be framed by two “late” quartets from the Classical period. It will begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 575 in D major, the first in his Opus 18 collection of three quartets, often known as the “Prussian” quartets. The conclusion will be Franz Schubert’s final quartet, his D. 887 in G major. These two “bookends” will serve as “monuments” overlooking the first string quartet composed by György Ligeti.

Saturday, March 8: The Calidore Quartet consists of violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry, and cellist Estelle Choi. They have prepared a program, which will alternate Classical selections with those from the recent past. Thus, the program will begin with Ludwig van Beethoven, presenting the Opus 74 (“Harp”) quartet (the tenth), one of the major efforts from his middle period. The second half of the program, on the other hand, will begin with another encounter with late Schubert, D. 703 in C minor, known as “Quartettsatz,” since it consists of only a single movement. This brief offering will be coupled with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Opus 34, his third quartet. The pizzicato “plucking of Beethoven’s harp,” on the other hand, will be coupled with Jessie Montgomery’s “Strum.”

Friday, March 21: For those that do not already know, the Tetzlaff Quartet is a “brother/sister act.” The outer voices are taken by Christian Tetzlaff on first violin and Tanja Tetzlaff on cello. The “inner voices” will be taken by violinist Elisabeth Kufferath and violist Hanna Weinmeister. The core of the program will be the second string quartet composed by their colleague Jörg Widmann. This will be framed by more conventional music from the nineteenth century. The program will begin with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 13 quartet in A minor and conclude with Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 105 quartet in A-flat major, which was completed after his visit to America.

The members of the Isidore String Quartet (from the event page for the program they will present)

Wednesday, April 16: The Isidore String Quartet is the “youngest” ensemble in this season’s series. They are scarcely five years old, and the core of their program will be a string quartet that was only completed in 2015. The title of this quartet is “Unrequited,” and it is the third quartet composed by Billy Childs. This selection will be framed by two far more familiar Classical quartets, each with its own adventurous twists. The program will begin with Mozart’s K. 465 quartet in C major, known as the “Dissonance” quartet. The final selection will be one of Beethoven’s “late” quartets, Opus 127 in E-flat major. The members of the ensemble are violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon.

Subscriptions are now on sale for $275 for premium seating in the Orchestra, the Side Boxes, and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $235 for the center rear of the Dress Circle and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $195 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may also 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. When single tickets go on sale, they may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.

Reflections on the Death of Wolfgang Rihm

Yesterday afternoon I learned, through my New York Times feed, of the death of composer Wolfgang Rihm at the age of 72. Given that I am now in my late seventies, this was a bit of a shock; but it was just as much of a shock when I realized how long it has been since I have listened to this composer’s music. Equally disconcerting as that all of those encounters have been through recordings.

Wolfgang Rihm addressing an audience at the Kölner Philharmonie in June of 2007 (photograph by Hans Peter Schaefer, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from a Wikimedia Web page)

Indeed, Rihm’s presence on this site has been little more than incidental. However, during my tenure with Examiner.com, I wrote five articles about recordings of his music between January of 2012 and May of 2013. My “first contact” with him was a Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm (MDG) CD with the slightly deceptive title Music for Violin and Piano. The “deception” was that roughly half of the disc was the solo piano composition “Nachstudie,” played by Steffen Schleiermacher. Violinist Andreas Seidel joined Schleiermacher for the “before” and “after” selections, “Antlitz” and “Phantom und Eskapede.” My account of this album cited the influence of Morton Feldman, and it was that influence that “hooked” me into following up on subsequent releases of four further albums.

Nevertheless, after reading the Times obituary, I realized that the recordings in my collection constituted a disappointingly narrow account of Rihm’s creativity. Even more disappointing has been the paucity of opportunities (if there have been any at all) to listen to his music in performance here in San Francisco. The fact is that, over the course of his career, Rihm made a major mark on music history; and it would be more than unfortunate if that mark were confined to the boundaries of Germany. However, because I have no influence on “the powers that be,” the best I can do is encourage readers to do an Amazon search on Rihm’s name to check out what they have been missing.

SFS: Featured Visiting Conductors

The brochure that was distributed through the mail by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) a little over a week ago included the full calendar of events for the 2024–25 season. However, it also featured “highlights” to call attention to particular collections of programs. It was through those “highlights” that I compiled two of my recent articles, one featuring some (but not all) of the programs to be led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the other calling out performances featuring the SFS Chorus.

The booklet also includes a “highlight” entitled “Common Threads.” As far as I can tell, that “commonality” involves a preference for recent compositions. The other outstanding feature is that all of the programs were prepared by visiting conductors. Specifics are as follows:

October 25–26: Conductor Thomas Wilkins has prepared a program of American music from the middle of the last century. His soloist will be pianist Michelle Cann in a performance of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Wilkins will conclude the program with an orchestral suite of music from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess opera entitled “Catfish Row.” This will be complemented at the beginning of the program with a suite taken from Leonard Bernstein’s score for the musical Candide. The remaining selection will be William Grant Still’s “Wood Notes.”

April 10–12: Marin Alsop has prepared a program entitled Music of the Americas. Note the plural in the title. The composers from the United States will be Aaron Copland (“Fanfare for the Common Man”), Joan Tower (“Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman”), and Samuel Barber (his first symphony). The program will begin with “Antrópolis” by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz. Venezuelan Gabriela Montero will then be the soloist in a performance of her own first piano concerto, given the subtitle “Latin.” Both of these works will be receiving their first SFS performances.

Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero (photograph by Lukasz Rajchert, courtesy of SFS)

May 2–3: Giancarlo Guerrero, last seen on the SFS podium a little over a year ago, will return to lead a program entitled Talent & Phoenix. This is also the title of the work that Gabriel Kahane composed on an SFS commission. It will be preceded by another premiere, the first SFS performance of Kaija Saariaho’s “Asteroid 4179: Toutatis.” The “concluding symphony” for this program will be Ottorino Respighi’s “Fountains of Rome.”

May 15–17: This season will also see the return of a conductor that last visited in April of last year. Dalia Stasevska will lead the world premiere performance of the cello concerto composed by Anna Thorvaldsdottir on an SFS commission. The cello soloist will be Johannes Moser. This will be the only work on the first half of the program. The second half will be devoted entirely to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances.”

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. There will be Open Rehearsals for two of the visiting conductors: Alsop on Thursday, April 10. and Stasevska on Thursday, May 15. These special behind-the-scenes experiences begin at 8:30 a.m. with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk at 9 a.m. The rehearsal itself begins at 10 a.m.; and, of course, the pieces rehearsed are at the conductor’s discretion. Admission will be free for those holding tickets for one of the three concert performances. For others general admission is $45 with $55 for reserved seats in the Premiere Orchestra section, as well as all Boxes and the Loge. Tickets may be purchased online through separate event pages for April and May. 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.

Omni’s New Video of Alberto Mesirca

I first became aware of guitarist Alberto Mesirca at the end of last December. As most readers might guess, this was due to a release in the OMNI on-Location video series, curated by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. The performance was a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of composer and musicologist Gian Francesco Malipiero. Mesirca played an excerpt from “Machere,” an homage composition by Angelo Gilardino; and the video was recorded in Malipiero’s home in Asolo, Italy.

Mesirca’s latest video, which was released this morning, was also recorded in Italy, this time in the Santuario della Madonna de Caravaggio, located in the town of Franzolo, which is in the province of Treviso. As was previewed this past Tuesday, the video, whose duration is about four minutes, presents two compositions from two decidedly different centuries. The first of these is a fantasia, given the title “La compagna,” composed by Francesco Canova da Milano. A catalog of Francesco’s lute music was compiled by Arthur Ness and published by the Harvard University Press in 1970. Since that time, all of those works have been identified by “Ness numbers;” and the number for this particular fantasia is 34.

 Screen shot of Alberto Mesirca playing the work composed for him by Bogdanović

The video then concludes with “Primo Ricercare su la Compagna,” composed by the Serbian-born American guitarist Dušan Bogdanović. This is clearly a reflection on the first composition that Mesirca performed. Furthermore, Bogdanović dedicated the piece to Mesirca.

Mind you, Francesco’s fantasia is highly embellished (as most compositions in that genre are); so I am not embarrassed to say that, even after a few listenings, I am still trying to tease the underlying theme out from all of the embellishments. (Such an undertaking is usually much easier when one can consult the score pages!) Thus far, all I can say is that both works share the same opening gesture (which is a single note).

Nevertheless, exploring this meeting of distant past and immediate present made for an engaging way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Esa-Pekka Salonen at SFS in the 2024–25 Season

 

Esa-Pekka Salonen (photograph by Andrew Eccles, courtesy of SFS)

Having accounted a week ago for Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in the concert preceding the Opening Night Gala, it is worth surveying other programs that he has prepared for the 2024–25 season. As usual, he will command a broad scope of repertoire. Nevertheless, there will definitely be a recognizable bias towards the twentieth century, as well as world premiere performances of new works. Here are some (but not all) of the offerings that will definitely be worth considering:

September 27–28: The first program to take place following the Gala will present the world premiere of a piano concerto by Nico Muhly, which, apparently, was inspired by traditional Baroque practices. The piano soloist for this performance will be Alexandre Tharaud. He is no stranger to those Baroque practices, having performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 set of (“Goldberg”) variations on an Aria theme for San Francisco Performances in April of 2019. Salonen seems to have decided that Muhly’s concerto should be coupled with music by Bach himself. He has selected one of Edward Elgar’s arrangements of a Bach organ composition. (Elgar was the organist of St George's Roman Catholic Church in Worcester during the middle of the nineteenth century.) The selection will be the BWV 537 fantasia and fugue in C minor. The entire program will be framed by two works by Paul Hindemith. The opening selection will be another nod to Bach, using one of the composer’s themes as a ragtime tune. (The title of the piece is simply “Ragtime.”) The program will conclude with Hindemith’s best-known symphony, “Mathis der Maler,” inspired by the paintings of Matthias Grünewald.

October 18–20: Salonen will present the first SFS performances of his cello concerto with Principal Cello Rainer Eudeikis as the soloist. (The concerto was originally composed for Yo-Yo Ma.) The concerto will be framed by music from the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Reversing the usual sequence, the program will begin with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 68 (sixth) symphony in F major, best known as the “Pastoral” symphony. The concluding selection (which will not really be an overture) will be Claude Debussy’s La mer (the sea), which he described as “three symphonic sketches.”

February 13–16: This will be the next visit to SFS by pianist Yuja Wang. Salonen has prepared a program of three compositions for piano and orchestra by Igor Stravinsky. Each of these will be followed by one of the movements from Claude Debussy’s Images pour orchestre. The extent to which Debussy’s music may have influenced Stravinsky will be left as an exercise for the listener!

May 23–25: Salonen will return with more Stravinsky, this time a much earlier composition. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to the score for the one-act ballet “The Firebird.” Composed for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company, this was Stravinsky’s first work to receive significant attention. This will be the “symphony” portion of the program. The “overture” will be the first SFS performances of Magnus Lindberg’s “Chorale;” and the concerto will be Alban Berg’s violin concerto with Isabelle Faust as soloist.

June 6–8: According to my records, Salonen has not conducted the music of Jean Sibelius with SFS since February of 2023, when the symphony selection was Opus 82, the fifth in E-flat major. Nearing the conclusion of his tenure, Salonen will perform Sibelius’ final (seventh) symphony. The composer was so focused on this undertaking that it took him a decade to complete this single-movement work. It will be coupled with the world premiere of a work by Gabriella Smith, composed presumably in less time. The entire program will be framed by the two best-known tone poems by Richard Strauss, beginning with “Don Juan” and concluding with “Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.”

June 12–14: Most readers probably know that this past season was concluded with Salonen conducting a performance of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony. Next June he will conclude the season with the second symphony. Like the third, this symphony will include performance by the SFS Chorus, prepared by Director Jenny Wong. This time, however, there will be two vocal soloists, 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. In addition, the final program of the season will have an Open Rehearsal on Thursday, June 12. This special behind-the-scenes experience begins at 8:30 a.m. with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk at 9 a.m. The rehearsal itself begins at 10 a.m.; and, of course, the pieces rehearsed are at the conductor’s discretion. Admission will be free for those holding tickets for one of the three concert performances. For others general admission is $45 with $55 for reserved seats in the Premiere Orchestra section, as well as all Boxes and the Loge. Tickets may be purchased online through a separate event page. 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.

ABS Brings Vivaldi to Summer Festival

Engraved portrait of Antonio Vivaldi by François Morellon la Cave (public domain, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page)

Last night in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church the American Bach Festival (ABS) presented the first of the two performances in its annual Summer Festival. The title of the program was Viva Vivaldi; and, for the most part, it reproduced a performance of the four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi known collectively as The Four Seasons, which had been performed about a year ago in the Green Room in the War Memorial Veterans Building. Each concerto featured a solo performance by a different ABS violinist as follows:

1. Spring: Tomà Iliev
2. Summer: Tatiana Chulochnikova
3. Autumn: Jacob Ashworth
4. Winter: YuEun Kim

The intermission took place between “Summer” and “Autumn.” The first half of the program began with the RV 549 concerto for four violins in D major, the first concerto in the Opus 3 (L’estro armonico) collection. The violinists were then given a bit of a rest after the intermission with the selection preceding the “Autumn” concerto. The first of these featured cellist. Gretchen Claassen playing Vivaldi’s RV 43 sonata in A minor. This was followed by a trio sonata for two violas (Ramón Negrón-Pérez and Yvonne Smith) and basso continuo (Steven Lehning) transcribed from the eleventh sonata in the Opus 1 collection.

Many readers probably know that I have reported on performances in St. Mark’s for quite some time. Ensembles of all sizes have benefited from its affordances. They include a generous amount of space for a reasonably large audience. Nevertheless, there was an intimacy in last night’s performances which tended to get “lost in space.” To some extent, Ashworth and Kim seemed to maintain a stronger sense of contact with the listeners than Iliev and Chulochnikova did; but that could just as easily been an element of activity, rather than musicianship! (Ashworth was particularly engaging in his capacity for “playing with” the music, rather than just performing it, while Kim was jaw-droppingly fearless in taking on the extremely vigorous passages.)

Mind you, more audience means more tickets; and more tickets means more revenue. That is clearly a major factor where an organization like ABS is concerned. I just wish there were some way in which they could bring this music to smaller venues whose scale matched the intimacy of the music being played.

Plans for the 2024 Merola Grand Finale

The specific selections to be performed at the annual Merola Grand Finales have not yet been totally finalized. However, the Merola Opera Program has now released the list of operas that will provide excerpts for the program. That list includes the following:

• Gioachino Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia and L'italiana in Algeri
• Gaetano Donizetti: Don Pasquale and Lucia di Lammermoor
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Così fan tutte (K. 588)
• Vincenzo Bellini: Norma and I puritani
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio
• Pietro Mascagni: L'amico Fritz
• Richard Strauss: “Das Rosenband” (from the Opus 36 set of four songs) and Die ägyptische Helena
• Johann Strauss: Die Fledermaus
• Jules Massenet: Werther
• Charles Gounod: Roméo et Juliette
• Terence Blanchard: Fire Shut Up in My Bones
• Jake Heggie: Dead Man Walking
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Iolanta
• Young-Sup Choi: “Longing for Mountain Keum-kang”
• Emmerich Kálmán: Die Csárdásfürstin
• Noël Coward: “I’ll See You Again” from his operetta Bitter Sweet

All of this season’s Merolini will participate. In alphabetical order they are:

• Lucy Joy Altus, New York, New York (Mezzo-Soprano)
• Moriah Berry, Atlanta, Georgia (Soprano)
• Nathan Bryon, Geurie, Australia (Tenor)
• Michael John Butler, Bowie, Maryland (Tenor)
• Hannah Cho, Seoul, South Korea (Soprano)
• Sujin Choi, Seoul, South Korea (Pianist/Coach)
• Alexa Frankian, Oakville, Ontario, Canada (Soprano)
• Julian Garvue, Seattle, Washington (Pianist/Coach)
• Simona Genga, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Mezzo-Soprano)
• Viviana Aurelia Goodwin, Tulsa, Oklahoma (Soprano)
• Lydia Grindatto, Tijeras, New Mexico (Soprano)
• Giorgi Guliashvili, Rustavi, Georgia (Tenor)
• Elizabeth “Hanje” Hanje, Vestavia Hills, Alabama (Soprano)
• Mary Hoskins, Saratoga Springs, New York (Soprano)
• Sihao Hu, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China (Baritone)
• Hyemin Jeong, Seoul, South Korea (Pianist/Coach)
• Donghoon Kang, Seoul, South Korea (Bass-Baritone)
• Yedam Kim, Paris, France (Pianist/Coach)
• Ji Youn Lee, Seoul, South Korea (Pianist/Coach)
• Lindsay Martin, San Diego, California (Mezzo-Soprano)
• Tessa McQueen, Loveland, Colorado (Soprano)
• Kara Morgan, Andover, Minnesota (Mezzo-Soprano)
• Angelo Silva, Houston, Texas (Tenor)
• Benjamin R. Sokol, Westbury, New York (Bass-Baritone)
• Hyungjin Son, Seoul, South Korea (Baritone)
• Samuel White, Columbia, South Carolina (Tenor)
• Justice Yates, Leesburg, Florida (Bass-Baritone)
• Olivier Zerouali, Middletown, Delaware (Baritone)

The conductor will be Steven White, and 2024 Merola Stage Director Anna Theodosakis will account for the staging of the entire production. The performance will begin at 7:30 pm. on Saturday evening, August 17. Ticket prices will be $65, $50, $40, and $25. Those aged 25 and under or attending their first Merola performance will be admitted for $10. The venue will be the War Memorial Opera House, which is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue on the northwest corner of Grove Street. Further information will be available by calling the Box Office at 415-864-3330.

Paul Hindemith: “Complete” Works for Flute

The current decade seems to be emerging as one of a revived interest in the composer Paul Hindemith. The composer died in 1963, which is the year in which I entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a freshman. (I had also applied to Yale University, primarily because I knew that Hindemith was on the faculty of the Music Department.) When I launched a Music of the Twentieth Century program on the MIT campus radio station (whose call-letters at the time were WTBS), I was not shy in presenting Hindemith’s compositions. Nevertheless, as Pierre Boulez began to ascend into the position of “global authority,” Hindemith’s star quickly faded; and his “Germanic playfulness” succumbed to the rigid discipline of “French intellect.” (Historians of World War II will probably appreciate the irony of that transition.)

So it was that Hindemith did not surface on this site until September of 2007, when I wrote about Charlie Parker’s interest in the composer. (Mind you, by that time I would guess that there were many readers asking themselves, “Who is Charlie Parker?”) However, by March of 2020, I found myself writing about Ondine launching a project to record Hindemith’s chamber music. This would be a major undertaking, because Hindemith was so involved in writing works for just about every instrument or combination of instruments that his chamber repertoire was sure to be prolific. As a result, I was glad to see that Ondine is still at it, having recently released an album with the title Complete Works for Flute.

Now, to be fair, where Hindemith is concerned, “complete” is a dangerous adjective. I would say that his List of compositions Web page on Wikipedia amounts to an honest effort but not necessarily a thorough one. The three works listed under “Flute” in the “Solo (and chamber music sonatas with piano)” category can all be found on this new recording. In chronological order (as opposed to track order) these are the 1923 “Canonic sonatina for two Flutes,” the 1927 set of eight pieces for solo flute, and the 1936 flute and piano sonata. On the concertante site, there is the 1949 concerto for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, harp and orchestra. Ironically, what is missing is one of Hindemith’s best-known compositions, his 1922 “Kleine Kammermusik” for wind quintet.

On the other hand, the album has three selections that cannot be found on the Wikipedia list. The earliest of these is the second “Abendkonzert,” composed in 1932 and scored for solo flute and strings. (The “Abendkonzert” for three recorders is the only item in that category on the Wikipedia list.) “Enthusiasm” is a duo composed for flute and viola in 1942, and it is given its world premiere on the Ondine album. The third selection is “Echo,” composed for flute and piano in 1944.

Flutist Stathis Karapanos on the cover of his Ondine album (courtesy of Crossover Media)

The flutist on all the tracks of this Complete Works album is Stathis Karapanos. He clearly has a solid command of his instrument and can definitely be credited for “playing well with others.” Taken as a whole, the album is consistently engaging; so I see no need to pick nits with him over “missing content!” Instead, I am glad to see that a revived interest in Hindemith’s music is still rolling along over the course of this decade.

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. [updated 8/29, 4 p.m.: Owens has regretfully withdrawn for personal reasons; he will be replaced by bass Peixin Chin. It has also been announced that the program will begin with three short works by Gordon Getty. The first of these will be the concert premiere of the Intermezzo from his 2021 opera based on James Hilton’s novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The San Francisco Symphony Chorus for the world premiere of “St. Christopher.” The final selection will be the first SFS performance of Getty’s setting of his own poem, “The Old Man in the Snow.”]

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!”