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!”
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