An Abundance of Choices for December 7

It is almost always the case that things get really busy between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. As a result, readers will not be surprised that hard choices will have to be made in selecting performances to attend during the month of December. In fact, the first really hard choices will be during the very first weekend of the month, with particular attention to Saturday, December 7. The good news is that the lion’s share of that list has been accounted for in previous articles on this site. Those events are as follows:

• Saturday, December 7, and Sunday, December 8, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.: This will be the first weekend of performances of Nutcracker by San Francisco Ballet.
• Saturday, December 7, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 8, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: These will be the four performances by Huntertones at the SFJAZZ Center.
• Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 8, 2 p.m.: These will be the last two of the four performances of Ghost Quartet, presented by New Performance Traditions.
• Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the final performance of Messiah by the San Francisco Symphony.
• Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m.: Old First Concerts will begin holiday season programming with a performance by the Young Women’s Chorus of San Francisco.
• Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m.: Voices of Music will present a program of concertos by Arcangelo Corelli, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and Antonio Vivaldi, each of which will feature a different soloist.
• Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m.: This month’s only program to be presented by DYNAMITE GUITARS will be the return solo recital by Polish virtuoso guitarist Mateusz Kowalski.

That list is almost thorough enough to account for December 7. However, over the course of this month, I have learned about two additional events, which I was encountering for the first time. Those are as follows:

Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 8, 4 p.m., Calvary Presbyterian Church: This will be the 35th year of Candlelight Christmas concerts presented by the San Francisco Bach Choir. Instrumental accompaniment will include the Velocity Handbell Quartet. There will also be a traditional-with-a-twist Boar's Head procession. Each of the above dates has its own event page, which provides the scale of prices of admission, and a hyperlink for both purchasing tickets and making donations. For those that do not yet know, the church is located in the Fillmore at 2515 Fillmore Street on the northwest corner of Jackson Street.

Pianist Nabeel Abboud Ashkar

Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m., Congregation Emanu-El: Some readers may already know that this venue has a concert series. Its next event may appeal to those seeking an alternative to performances celebrating Christmas. The full title of the program to be presented is POLYPHONY: Bridging the Divide Between Israeli Arabs and Jews Through Music. It will be a concert by Israeli Arab Nabeel Abboud Ashkar, who was inspired by the West-East Divan Orchestra founded by Daniel Barenboim. Ashkar is a pianist, and he will perform with six instrumentalists. The venue is located at Two Lake Street on the northwest corner of Arguello Boulevard, just south of the Presidio of San Francisco. All tickets may be purchased through an Eventbrite event page.

DSO: New Season, New Mahler

The “composition hut” in Carinthia where Mahler worked on his fifth symphony (photograph by OboeCrack, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

According to my records, the Live from Orchestra Hall video series presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) concluded last season with a program consisting only of Gustav Mahler’s ninth symphony, led by Music Director Jader Bignamini. Early yesterday evening, my wife and I had our first opportunity of the new season to return to Orchestra Hall through cyberspace. Once again, Mahler was the focus of the program, which was devoted almost entirely to his fifth symphony in C-sharp minor. This was the second half of the program, whose first half was a much shorter symphony, Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken I/100 in G major, often known as the “Military” symphony.

As was the case with his ninth symphony, the fifth is a product of richly diverse instrumentation. For the most part, the video work could not have provided better guidance in allowing the viewer to trace how an extended theme would peregrinate from one set of instruments to another (often with a plethora of opportunities, even if they were brief, to pay attention to individual performers). Thus, while the camera work gave a generous account of how Bignamini led his ensemble, the “heart of the matter” could be found in the diversity of instrumentation. In that respect, the attentive listener was probably better informed of the full scope of that diversity by following the video work than by enjoying a seat in Orchestra Hall.

Beyond the instrumentation, however, there is also the symmetry of structure. The symphony is in five movements grouped into three parts. The “middle part” is the third and longest movement. (Indeed, it may be one of the longest movements in the overall symphonic repertoire, even if Mahler himself composed longer ones!) The first part consists of two movements, both with funereal rhetoric, even if only the first of the movements is explicitly denoted as a funeral march. The final part begins with the shortest movements, the Adagietto, which serves as a “calm before the final storm.” That “final storm” is a rondo form, which begins playfully enough and just keeps building up in intensity. It is no wonder that listeners come away from a performance feeling as if they have just left a wild ride!

Hoboken I/100 is one of Haydn’s last and better-known symphonies. The title reflects on the second movement being structured as a parade march. Indeed, the last time I encountered this music was with the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony. On that occasion, the brass and percussion players did parade across the front of the stage. The DSO performance was more straightforward, but it was still clear that Haydn approached his “military” rhetoric with a twinkle in his eye!

Unless I am mistaken, this was not the first time I encountered a coupling of Haydn and Mozart. I find those occasions to be particularly satisfying. Both of them had a keen knowledge of the breadth of instruments at their command. For the most part, neither of them shied away from intense attention to structure on both the short and the long scale. Ironically, the Mahler biographies I have encountered have little (if anything) to say about Haydn. (His name never shows up on Mahler’s Wikipedia page.)

In any event I now find myself looking forward to which Mahler symphony Bignamini will choose for his next undertaking, and it will not surprise me if he couples it with another Haydn symphony!

Jazz Pianist George Cables at 80

Jazz pianist George Cables on the cover of his new album (from the album’s Amazon.com Web page)

Listening to I Hear Echoes, the latest album released by jazz pianist George Cables in celebration of his 80th birthday, I was reminded of having an opportunity to listen to another jazz pianist in performance, Tommy Flanagan. I had been in New York on a business trip and spent an evening that was probably near to the end of his life, listening to him lead a trio with two young colleagues, the sum of whose two ages would probably have fallen short of his own. On I Hear Echoes Cables also leads a trio with younger colleagues, whose ages are somewhat more advanced. His bassist is Essiet Essiet, who is a little over a decade younger than Cables. The “junior member” of the trio is Jerome Jennings on drums, who is in his mid-forties.

The advance material I received for this album describes Cables as “a musician who has not only shaped jazz history but continues to influence its evolution.” Listing to the eleven tracks on  I Hear Echoes, I can attest to the validity of that claim. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any booklet with notes about the eleven tracks being performed. Thus, one is left in a situation similar to that of listening to the trio performing in a club setting without the pianist taking the trouble to provide a few background remarks to his audience over the course of the evening. Indeed, aside from the tracks that I recognized (“Prelude To a Kiss” and “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To”), I had no idea how many of the selections were Cables originals, let alone why they were composed. Apparently, HighNote Records does not believe that the best listeners are informed listeners!

Old First Concerts: December, 2024

This year Old First Concerts will present only four programs at Old First Presbyterian Church. All four of them will be “seasonal;” and, as might be expected, they will all be vocal! All of the events will remain “hybrid,” allowing both live streaming and seating in the Old First Presbyterian Church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue. However, there will be more variation in ticket prices than usual. Those interested in attending should consult the event pages (which include hyperlinks for streaming) for specific price information. Hyperlinks to those event pages (which include hyperlinks for streaming) will be attached to the date and time of the performances as follows:

Saturday, December 7, 7:30 p.m.: The Young Women’s Chorus of San Francisco is an annual visitor at this time of year, presenting its annual Carols by Candlelight program. They will sing Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols with harp accompaniment by Molly Langer, and the performance will be led by Dr. Matthew Otto. There will be other selections for chorus and harp, which will include traditional carols.

Friday, December 13, 8 p.m.: The next regular visitor for the season will be Golden Bough. The performers are Margie Butler, Paul Espinoza, and Kathy Sierra. In addition to providing vocals, they are all instrumentalists backing themselves on an array of rare and more common acoustic instruments including: Celtic harp, penny-whistle, violin, octave-mandolin, mandolin, accordion, guitar, harmonica, recorder and bodhrán. Like their previous performances, their program will specialize in Celtic songs of winter; but they also offer their unique take on better known Christmas carols.

The members of the Ragazzi Boys Chorus (from the Old First Concerts event page)

Sunday, December 15, 4 p.m.: The Ragazzi Boys Chorus will return, led by Artistic and Executive Director Kent Jue. They will present the oldest composed work in the series, the Cantate Domino by Heinrich Schütz. For the most part, however, the program will draw upon familiar seasonal offerings.

Sunday, December 22, 4 p.m.: Kitka will present its traditions Wintersongs program under the co-direction of Shira Cion, Janet Kutulas, and Juliana Graffagna. The vocalists are Stacy Barnett, Kristine Barrett, Charlotte Finegold, Erin Lashnits Herman, Maclovia Quintana, Katya Schoenberg, and Talia Young-Skeen. This year’s program will pay particular attention to music from the Republic of Georgia. However, there will also be offerings of Balkan, Baltic, Mediterranean and Slavic sources.

SFJAZZ: December, 2024

The better part of this month will be devoted to Holidays at SFJAZZ performances. Fortunately, these will include options at the Joe Henderson Lab; and it will probably be the case that not all (if any) of those options will venture into “seasonal repertoire!” For those that do not (yet?) know, the SFJAZZ 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:

Saturday, December 7, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 8, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: Huntertones is a group with a repertoire that blends jazz, funk, rock, and soul. Leadership seems to be shared among saxophonist Dan White, trumpeter Jon Lampley, and trombonist Chris Ott. If we are to believe the photograph on the Web page, the entire ensemble is a sextet; but further details about personnel have not yet been released.

Guitarist and vocalist George Cole (from the SFJAZZ event page for his performances this month)

Friday, December 20, and Saturday, December 21, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 22, 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.: Guitarist and vocalist George Cole will give his own account of tracks from Nat King Cole’s 1960 album The Magic of Christmas. He will lead a trio whose other instruments are piano and bass. However, the performers of those instruments have not yet been named.

Marshall Allen Celebrates Sun Ra

This seems to be a good year for reviving my interest in Sun Ra. At the beginning of this past May, I wrote about the release of Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago, which accounted for performances in both February of 1976 and November of 1977. Listening to that album reminded me of when my wife and I were living in Los Angeles and went to at least one of Ra’s performances with his Arkestra.

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

Ra died on May 30, 1993. After that, Marshall Allen took over leading the band, which kept Ra’s name in the title as the Sun Ra Arkestra. This past May 25 marked Allen’s 100th birthday. For that occasion IN+OUT Records invited the 24 musicians in this band to make a recording in its studio. The result was released today under the title Lights On A Satellite, and it is now available through an Amazon.com Web page.

I have to confess that there were a few episodes during my listening experience that shifted my attention in a somewhat unorthodox direction. This was particularly the case with the ensemble’s take on David Rose’s “Holiday for Strings.” This was the theme song for The Red Skelton Show, which was always introduced by a chorus singing “David Rose and his ORRRRchestra” (which was about as inspiring as fingernails on a blackboard)! Spike Jones also had his way with the tune, having it sung by a clucking chicken. Allen introduces the tune on Lights On A Satellite with a bit of his own tongue in cheek; and, while his rhetoric verges on the raucous, he never descends into the absurdities of the last century! (Mind you, the gong at the end of “Friendly Galaxy” also brings Jones to mind!)

Nationalism: Here and in the Middle East

Some “unkempt thoughts” departing from music:

It was in high school that I first encountered the concept of “nationalism.” My American History teacher distilled it to a single sentence: “My country, right or wrong; but always my country.” I used to think back on those days during the Watergate hearings, wondering if my teacher’s commitment to nationalism was as strong as it was a few decades earlier.

I was reminded about that myopic commitment this morning when I encountered the following headline on a BBC Web page: “Biden says ICC war crimes arrest warrant 'outrageous’.” Apparently, our President’s “right or wrong” commitment to Israel is as strong his commitment to his own country. As the BBC article observes, that commitment isolates our country not only from the International Criminal Court (ICC) but also from a fair number of European countries.

My first job after leaving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with my doctoral degree took me to the Technion in Haifa, whose “secondary” name was “Israel Institute of Technology.” From an academic point of view, it was a smooth move; and I had no trouble preparing material for the classes I taught. (My knowledge of Hebrew never came up to snuff, but none of my students minded my lecturing in English while my teaching assistants provided hand-outs in Hebrew!) Nevertheless, my encounters with both Israelis and ex-pats, not only in Haifa but also in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, were, to put it politely, “mixed.”

The fact is that, even before borders were finalized, Israel would do what Israel wanted to do. Mind you, this a time when (too) many Americans stereotyped Arabs as terrorists, even if they could not support their bias with evidence. Since my own efforts to promote a more balanced view tended to provoke most of the Israelis I worked with and knew socially, I kept my ideas to myself for the two years of my tenure with Technion.

My second job was at the University of Pennsylvania, and it was only then that I bought my first television and started to watch the news, rather than just reading the papers. During the last few decades of the last century, Benjamin Netanyahu was already ingratiating himself with the broadcast media in the United States. Whenever a conflict was being reported from the Middle East, he always seemed to be there to offer his perspective. The American newscasters never seemed to mind whether or not that perspective was consistent with that of Israel itself.

As a result, I am now not surprised that, when I hear Netanyahu, I have no trouble wondering if he is speaking for himself or for his country. Unfortunately, it seems that our President is not given to such wondering. It’s bad enough when an allegiance to nationalism blinds us to hard truths about our own country. However, when it also blinds us to hard truths presented by the ICC, I have to worry about whether we shall ever be capable of a broader perspective that will afford a less pleasant point of view.

Labadie Returns to SFS with More Mozart

Conductor Bernard Labadie (photograph by Winnie Au, courtesy of SFS)

The last time Bernard Labadie visited the podium of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), he divided his program between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the first half and Joseph Haydn in the second. Yesterday afternoon he returned to Davies Symphony Hall, this time with a program devoted entirely to Mozart. The soloist was soprano Lucy Crowe, who sang an aria from the K. 344 opera Zaide along with two concert arias, both of which were being performed by SFS for the first time, one on either side of the intermission. In addition, she introduced the Zaide offering with the K. 577 rondo “Al desi, di chi t’adora.” The two arias that flanked the intermission were “Schon lacht der holde Frühling” (K. 580) and K. 490, “Non temer, amato bene,” with a recitative introduction, “Venga la morte.”

With the exception of the Zaide aria, these offerings provided a thoroughly engaging journey of discovering how Mozart could approach vocal music without the context of an opera narrative. Crowe found just the right way to convey expressiveness that was not conceived to enhance a larger-scale narrative. Indeed, K. 490 was scored as a duet for soprano and violin (performed by Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik). Sadly, over the course of this one occasion when the two of them were performing “together as equals,” they did not always succeed in balancing their respective parts.

The instrumental offerings provided a variation on the usual overture-concerto-symphony plan. Since the vocal offerings served as the “concerto” the musical selection between the overture and the symphony was the K. 477 “Masonic Funeral Music.” This latter was characterized by a rich selection of winds. Mozart made some changes in overall instrumentation to find just the right tone of darkness. He eventually settled on three basset horns and a contrabassoon, whose collective sonorities could not have been more engaging.

The overture for the program was the one Mozart composed for his final opera, the K. 621 La clemenza di Tito. As a result, everything but the concluding symphony made for a throughly engaging journey through seldom performed Mozart works. Familiarity came at the end with the K. 543 symphony in E-flat major, the first of the “big three” symphonies that conclude the catalog of Mozart’s contribution to this genre. As a clarinet player in the past, I appreciated the attention that Mozart gave to that instrument, particularly in the Trio for the third movement; and I relished every phrase of Carey Bell’s interpretation of that music!

Not Much Fun from Ginetta and her Vendetta

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

This morning I had my first encounter with Ginetta M., described in June 29, 2015 by Jazz Times as a “triple threat female power-house.” The three “tines” of that threat are singing, composing, and leading a band called Ginetta’s Vendetta in which she plays pocket trumpet. The latest release by that ensemble is the album Fun Size, which, according to its Amazon.com Web page, was first available for MP3 download this past June and (according to another source) is due for “physical” release this coming Sunday. (Presumably, this is when the option will be added to the Web page.)

Having listened to this album several times, I have to confess that I found nothing particularly “threatening.” More often than not, her sense of pitch tends to be a “sometime things,” whether it involves her vocals or her trumpet work. Her band is a quintet with Danny Walsh on the front line playing both tenor and soprano saxophones. Rhythm is provided by Jon Davis on piano, drummer Marcello Pellitteri, and Belden Bullock on bass. Personally, when Davis is given enough space to improvise, I found a fair amount of satisfaction in listening; but everything else about this album left me cold.

SFS: Concert Music for the Holiday Spirit

Next month is when the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) goes “all in” for the “holiday spirit.” While there are any number of holidays being celebrated by different faiths and communities during the month of December, the prevailing theme in Davies Symphony Hall tends towards Christmas, beginning with the decor in the lobby! While there are any number “popular” offerings that will be taking place in Davies Symphony Hall between December 2 and December 21, there are two concert offerings that make an annual appearance.

The first of these is the annual SFS performance of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio, better known by its title, Messiah. As usual, Jenny Wong will lead the SFS Chorus; but all the vocal soloists will be making Orchestra Series Debut performances. They will be Amanda Forsythe (soprano), John Holiday (countertenor), Aaron Sheehan (tenor), and Douglas Williams (baritone). The conductor will be Stephen Stubbs, who will also be making his debut.

Messiah will be given two performances, both beginning at 7:30 p.m., on Friday, December 6, and Saturday, December 7. Ticket prices range from $30 to $199. The hyperlinks attached to the above dates may be used for online purchase. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-864-6000 or by visiting the Box Office in Davies Symphony Hall, whose entrance is on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday.

Wattis Foundation Music Director Radu Paponiu (from the event page for next month’s SFS Youth Orchestra performance)

The other major concert offering for the season will be the annual performance by the SFS Youth Orchestra of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” This will be an “ecumenical” program, which will include the traditional Hanukkah song “Mis Zeh Hidik” (behold the lights) in an arrangement by Jeff Tyzik; and the program will conclude with a “sing-along” of traditional Christmas carols. There will also be selections from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, which will be framed by two secular offerings, the seventh piece in Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 72 Slavonic Dances collection, and Johann Strauss II’s Opus 324, the polka given the title “Unter Donner und Blitz” (thunder and lightning). The conductor will be Wattis Foundation Music Director Radu Paponiu.

For this program, which will be given only one performance at 2 p.m. on Sunday, December 15, ticket prices will range from $15 to $199; and a Web page is again available for online purchase.

Alberto Mesirca Plays with Domenico Scarlatti

I sometimes think that the history of music evolves not through those that simply play music but with those most adventurous individuals that seek out opportunities to play with the music of others. Composer Kevin Swierkosz-Lenart provides a good example of such an endeavor, and his effort can now be appreciated through the latest Omni on-Location video, which was released on YouTube this morning at 10 a.m. This is a solo performance by guitarist Alberto Mesirca, which was captured on video at the Villa Comello in the town of Rossano Veneto, which is in the province of Vicenza, Veneto, Italy. (One can find a map on the Rossano Veneto Wikipedia page.)

Guitarist Alberto Mesirca playing Kevin Swierkosz-Lenart’s “Scarlattiana” at the Villa Comello in today’s latest video release from the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts

The title of Swierkosz-Lenart’s composition is “Scarlattiana.” As might be expected, his music plays with a composition by Domenico Scarlatti, his single-movement K. 380 sonata for solo keyboard. This tends to be one of the most familiar of the many (over 500) sonatas that Scarlatti composed. I suspect that many in my generation “discovered” it when Ingmar Bergman appropriated it as music for his film The Devil’s Eye (one of his few films that is a comedy).

Swierkosz-Lenart, however, seems to be more interested in virtuosity than in sly humor. Scarlatti’s music is deconstructed; and the fragments are then woven into a “thicker fabric,” which demands focus on rising to the challenge of each finger-busting elaboration on the underlying theme. Mind you, anyone familiar with the Scarlatti sonata will have no trouble following it, but the fun comes in following all of Swierkosz-Lenart’s digressions!

As one can see above, the Villa Comello is a seriously austere venue. I was therefore struck by some of the “off beat” camera angles (such at the one captured above). I took these be a playful point of view that offsets the austerity of the physical setting, thus reinforcing the prankish approach that Bergman took, when he appropriated Scarlatti’s music for his film. One might even say that the media crew was playing with the visual impressions in the same way that composer Swierkosz-Lenart was playing with Scarlatti.

SFB: Plans for 2024–2025 Season

As usual, the new season of San Francisco Ballet (SFB) will begin next month with a little over three week’s worth of performances of Helgi Tomasson’s choreography for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet score. This will be followed by the 92nd Season Opening Night Gala on January 22. After that, SFB will settle into its annual season of six programs, three of which will be full-length performances of a single ballet.

This year will mark the twentieth anniversary of Tomasson’s staging of this seasonal tradition. The production will be given 37 performances. As usual, the cast will be augmented by the usual 110 SFB School children, performing as bugs, soldiers, mice, and partygoers. Similarly, the setting will remain San Francisco in 1915 during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The scenery has been designed by Michael Yeargan, Martin Pakledinaz conceived the rich diversity of costumes, and lighting was designed by James F. Ingalls. The full list of performance dates and times is as follows:

• Friday, December 6, 7 p.m.
• Saturday, December 7, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Sunday, December 8, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Tuesday, December 10, 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.
• Wednesday, December 11, 6 p.m.
• Thursday, December 12, 6 p.m.
• Friday, December 13, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Saturday, December 14, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Sunday, December 15, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Tuesday, December 17, 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.
• Wednesday, December 18, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Friday, December 20, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Saturday, December 21, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Sunday, December 22, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Monday, December 23, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Tuesday, December 24, 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
• Thursday, December 26, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Friday, December 27, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Saturday, December 28, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• Sunday, December 29, 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.

All performances will take place in the War Memorial Opera House, which is on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street (across Grove from Davies Symphony Hall). A single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for all of the above dates and times. There is also a single Web page that provides casting information (which is subject to change) for the leading roles, again for all of the above dates and times. Tickets may also be purchased at the Box Office in the outer lobby of the Opera House or by calling 415-865-2000. The Box Office is open for ticket sales Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

SFB Artistic Director Tamara Rojo (from her Instagram Web page)

Dates for the season performances next year have been set as follows:

• January 24–February 1: Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon is a three-act ballet based on the novel Manon Lescaut by Antoine François Prévost.
• February 13–19: Cool Britannia will survey recent works by British choreographers: Christopher Wheeldon (“Within the Golden Hour”), Wayne McGregor (“Chroma”), and Akram Khan (“Dust”).
• March 1–8: Marius Petipa conceived Raymonda as a three-act ballet named after a young noble lady. The narrative concerns the men that vie for her hand in marriage. However, Artistic Director Tamara Rojo has reworked the plot to model the title character on Florence Nightingale and the role she played during the Crimean War.
• March 20–26: SFB will revive the performance of Frankenstein, a full-evening ballet based on the novel by Mary Shelley and choreographed by Liam Scarlett.
• April 5–19: This program will be a tribute to Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen, performing four of his works: “Solo,” “5 Tango’s,” “Grosse Fuge,” and “Variations for Two Couples.”
• April 8–18: Frederick Ashton’s “Marguerite and Armand,” originally created for Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, will return to the SFB repertoire; it will be coupled with a revival of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Broken Wings.”
• April 26–May 4: This will be a second round of performances of Frankenstein.

Tickets may be purchased through the above hyperlinks. Box Office hours are the same as for the Nutcracker performances.

SFP: Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Recital Debut

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

My “first contact” with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo could not have been more memorable. It dates back to the fall of 2014, when he sang the role of Armindo in the San Francisco Opera production of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 27 opera Partenope. The staging was by Christopher Alden, who was not afraid to inject slapstick comedy into the veins of baroque opera. Costanzo stole the show when Alden decided that Armindo would sing a full-length aria while depicting a drunk trying to contend with getting up a staircase.

As a recitalist, Costanzo was not quite as raucous, but there were no shortage of high spirits. He was accompanied at the piano by Bryan Wagorn, who may have been a bit too heavy-handed for the opening Handel selections. These were arias from Amadigi di Gaula (HWV 11) and Arminio (HWV 36), both of which displayed an abundance of coloratura embellishments. They were a good way to seize audience attention; but the virtues of the evening had more to do with the breadth of expressiveness, rather than mere showboating.

Mind you, it was not particularly easy to keep up with the full extent of that breadth. Ultimately, I was drawn to the unexpected. This was particularly the case when Costanzo chose to conclude the first half of his program with four songs by Franz Liszt. These may have fallen short of the peak of the art song repertoire, but it was still interesting to encounter Liszt occupied with something other than excessive keyboard embellishments!

More interesting were the three selections of songs by Philip Glass. Readers may recall my writing about the Great Performances at the Met telecast of Akhnaten, whose title role was sung by Costanzo. While I was not particularly impressed with that experience, I have to confess that Costanzo’s account of those individual songs was far more engaging. He knew exactly how to wind his voice around Glass’ repetitive structures, while Glass knew how to capture just the right amount of expressiveness in just the right amount of time. On the other hand, when the program closed out with two familiar songs by George Gershwin, neither of the accounts left much of a memorable impression.

However, if the conclusion was not at its strongest, Costanzo bounced back with a delightful encore. He sang the roles of both Almaviva and Susanna in the duet “Crudel! perchè finora” at the beginning of the third act of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 492 opera The Marriage of Figaro. This is a mini-drama of conflicting schemes. Costanzo knew just how to honor the narrative while having a bit of fun with it at the same time.

The Bleeding Edge: 11/19/2024

Readers may have noticed that this week’s Bleeding Edge was pushed back by a day. This is because it was “beaten to the punch” yesterday by the announcement of Ghost Quartet, which will not be performed until the beginning of next month. However, this morning things are “back on track,” even if the “track” is a relatively quiet one. Two of this week’s events have already been announced:

1. The two-set evening at The Lab, which will take place tomorrow (November 20)
2. The next performance by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, which will take place this coming Sunday

These will be balanced by two new events, both of which are “usual suspects,” as follows:

Tuesday (today), November 19, Make-Out Room, 7 p.m.: As was the case last month, this month’s installment of Jazz at the Make-Out Room will consist of two sets, each roughly an hour in duration. The first set will be taken by Ghost Dub. This is usually a quartet; but, on this occasion, it will be limited to the trio, led by Ghost in the House founder David Michalak, who, as usual, will be playing steel guitar and the skatch instruments invented by the late Tom Nunn. He will be joined by Bruce Ackley, playing both clarinet and soprano saxophone, and trumpeter Darren Johnston, who will also provide vocals. They will be followed by the trio of saxophonist Philip Greenlief, Evelyn Davis on keyboard, and drummer Jordan Glenn. 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.

Guitarist Zachary James Watkins (from the Bay Area Improviser Web page for his performance on Friday)

Friday, November 22, Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery, 7 p.m.: As usual, reed player David Boyce will host the weekly Other Dimensions in Sound series. This week he will perform with Zachary James Watkins (guitars), singer-songwriter Robert Diaz, and Evelyn Davis (keyboards and vocals). 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.

Volti Begins 46th Season with Digital Electronics

Last night at the Noe Valley Ministry, Volti launched its 46th season with a program entitled Electronic & New Music. Composer-in-Residence Mark Winges presided over electronic gear most (all?) of which was digital. The program began with the world premiere performance of “Becoming Within” by Anne Hege. The Volti vocalists also manipulated a Rope Instrument designed by Hege, which seemed involve laptop technology and apparently some level of supervision from Winges’ facilities. The result was an integration of vocalization and choreography for which viewing was as important as listening.

A more analog approach to electronics figured in Angélica Negrón’s FONO, a four-movement suite with each movement having a lexeme for a title. In many ways this struck me as “middle ground” between more traditional vocalization and sonorities based on those lexemes identified by the movement titles. Somewhat in the spirit of serial music, it also struck me that permutation contributed to Negrón’s approach to composition. While all of this may sound abstract, there was no shortage of expressiveness in Volti’s performance.

“Becoming Within” was commissioned by Volti, but the program featured two other world premieres. The second half began with Victoria Fraser’s “Lux Aeterna.” This struck me as a reflection on the relationship between light and time, particularly since the vocalists performed against a ticking media track. The overall structure involved a bit of playing around with mathematics, but I found the overall flow of the sonorities to rise above any structural details.

Set design by Josef Hoffman showing Yggdrasil in the first act of Die Walküre (photograph by Viktor Angerer, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The other introductory offering was actually a “world premiere preview.” Winges is currently working on s multi-movement composition inspired by Norse mythology entitled Guardians of Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil is a sacred tree in Norse mythology. It is the one that holds the sword that Siegmund appropriates at the end of the first act of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre. That may establish the context for the title of the first movement, “Yggdrasil, Held,” which has no verbal text for the choral performance. There was also a preview performance of Winges’ third movement, “Wanting More” (which may describe the rest of us waiting for him to complete his composition).

In the context of the entire evening, I was struck by the fact that the earliest work on the program was composed in 2001. This was Kaija Saariaho’s “four seasons” cycle, entitled Tag des Jahrs. These were settings of late poems by Friedrich Hölderlin, which he published under the pen name Scardanelli. The chorus performed with electronic accompaniment, including taped recordings of the human voice and natural surroundings.

From a personal point of view, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the prodigious diversity of approaches to choral performance in this program; but I was definitely impressed that there was never a dull moment.

A “Ghost Story Musical” from NPT

This past February, this site wrote about The Rebirth of Apsara, a three-act reflection on the Khmer Rouge Genocide presented jointly by New Performance Traditions (NPT) and the Paul Dresher Ensemble (which created NPT). The beginning of next month will see the next NPT offering in San Francisco. Ghost Quartet is a full-evening musical theatre composition for which Dave Malloy provided music, lyrics, and text, which he describes as “a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey.” More specifically, the libretto accounts for a setting in which “a camera breaks and four friends drink in four interwoven narratives spanning seven centuries.”

Veronica Renner and Monica Rose Slater performing on their respective instruments while singing (photograph provided by David Malloy)

The performance will actually involve five vocalists, all of whom will also be responsible for instrumental performances. Only baritone Michael Perez will restrict his instrumental work to percussion. Each of the other four will command a diversity of instruments as follows:

• Tenor Rinde Eckert: piano, organ, slide guitar, percussion
• Soprano Monica Rose Slater: glockenspiel, accordion, harp, percussion
• Soprano Ami Nashimoto: cello, ukulele, erhu, percussion
• Alto Veronica Renner: accordion, autoharp, percussion

This production will be given four performances at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 5, Friday, December 6, and Saturday, December 7, with a 2 p.m. matinee performance on Sunday, December 8. The ODC Theater is located in the Mission at 3153 17th Street on the southwest corner of Shotwell Street. General admission will be $39 with priority seating for $64 and “Pay What You Can” options for $14 and $24. Tickets may be purchased through the four hyperlinks on the ODC Web page for this event.

SFP: McGill to Perform with Pacifica Quartet

Pacifica Quartet musicians Simin Ganatra, Mark Holloway, Austin Hartman, and Brandon Vamos (photograph by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco, courtesy of SFP)

San Francisco Performances (SFP) will be presenting only one concert next month, but it definitely promises to be a good one, particularly for those with enthusiasm for chamber music. Clarinetist Anthony McGill will return to San Francisco and will again be joined by a string quartet. The last time he had such an encounter here, it was with the Catalyst Quartet; but this time he will be performing with the Pacifica Quartet, which will also be making a return visit. In the latter case, however, there has been a change of personnel. Simin Ganatra still leads as first violin, and the cellist is still Brandon Vamos. However, the “inner voices” are new ones: Austin Hartman as second violin and Mark Holloway on viola.

As might be expected, the full ensemble will perform Johannes Brahms’ Opus 115 clarinet quintet in B minor, which will account for the second half of the program. However, they will also play “High Sierra Sonata” by Ben Shirley, an alumnus of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. This will be preceded by Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 96, best known as the “American” quartet.

The performance will take place very early in the coming month. As usual, it will begin at 7:30 p.m. on the first Tuesday, December 3. Also as usual, the venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street and directly across Van Ness from City Hall. SFP has created its own Web page for online ticket purchases. Tickets for the Boxes and Orchestra ranged between $65 and $75. The remaining tickets are in the Dress Circle and the Balcony, with prices between $55 and $75.

Omni Foundation Hosts Debut of Artyom Dervoed

Last night St. Mark’s Lutheran Church hosted the second guitar recital of the month presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts in its DYNAMITE GUITARS series. Artyom Dervoed was the first Russian to win two of the most prestigious guitar contests, the Michele Pittaluga Guitar competition in Italy and the Her Royal Highness Princess Cristina Competition in Spain. In the United States his touring plans have taken him to Carnegie Hall in New York and Jordan Hall in Boston.

Manzanares el Real, one of the castles “portrayed” in Moreno Torroba’s Castillos de España (photograph by Ramón Durán, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

The major work that Dervoed presented last night was one of the most ambitious collections for guitar composed in the twentieth century. Castillos de España (castles of Spain) amounts of a catalog of relatively brief musical reflections on fourteen different venues, each a castle that had once dominated a particular region of the Iberian peninsula. The music was composed by Federico Moreno Torroba and published in two volumes in 1970 and 1978 respectively. The first volume accounts for eight of the pieces (and I know this because Andrés Segovia made his recording of them in December of 1969), leaving the remaining six for the second volume.

I must confess that ignorance of the “subject matter” probably impeded the extent of my listening capacity. Dervoed presented his own ordering of the individual movements, but each was a self-contained miniature. The venue that particularly seized my attention was “Redaba,” whose musical realization was engagingly cryptic. This occurred around the middle of Dervoed’s ordering, perhaps to serve as a prod to the listener’s attention!

There was a similar prod in the opening selection that preceded Castillos. This was the “Elogio de la Danza” composed by Leo Brouwer. This may have been one of his more prankish undertakings, since the respective rhetorics of elegy and dance seemed to be at cross-purposes! It certainly served to seize listener attention, presumably to prepare for the more extensive journey that was to follow. Another “prod” began the second half of the program, when Dervoed decided to play the two solo guitar preludes by Heitor Villa-Lobos in reverse numerical order! (Villa-Lobos was no slouch in composing for guitar, and that included preludes. This is one of those cases where a catalog number would have been helpful.)

If Moreno Torroba’s suite was not ambitious enough, the major undertaking in the second half of the program was a transcription of the third (and final) movement of Niccolò Paganini’s Opus 7, his second violin concerto in B minor. That movement is best known by its nickname, “La Campanella.” (Fun fact: Paganini’s instrumentation for this concerto included a serpent!) Dervoed delivered a thoroughly engaging account of this chestnut with the sort of panache that would probably have brought a smile to the composer’s face. He then concluded the program with a piece given the subtitle “Omaggio a Paganini,” the “Capriccio Diabolico” by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Dervoed introduced it as “a great piece to play in church,” and the audience definitely appreciated his sense of humor.

Indeed, they received him well at the conclusion of the program. As might be expected, he returned for an encore. Unfortunately, he did not introduce either the composer or the title. Nevertheless, his audience was still enthusiastic.

Bonus Music in the Mishkan Concert Tomorrow

Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (from its Google Maps Web page)

This is a last-minute announcement, but I only learned that Music in the Mishkan will be presenting a “bonus” concert tomorrow. This will benefit the venue, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, with a pay-what-you-want fundraiser for the synagogue. Violinist Randall Weiss, who runs the series, will be joined by pianist Marilyn Thompson. In the spirit of the venue, so to speak, the program will include Paul Ben-Haim’s “Sfardic Lullaby” and “The Wild Shepard” by Yariv Esrachi. Weiss will give a performance of the Sarabande movement from one of the solo violin partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach. The program will be framed by sonatas for violin and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven (Opus 96 in G major) and Johannes Brahms (Opus 108 in D minor).

A Web page has been created for accepting donations. There will not be tickets, as such; but there will be list of donor names at the door. In addition, once the donation has been confirmed, electronic mail will be sent with information about viewing the performance through Zoom. The concert will begin at Sha’ar Zahav at 4 p.m. tomorrow, November 17. The synagogue is located in the Mission at 290 Dolores Street on the northwest corner of 16th Street.

Thoroughly Engaging Fauré from SFS Chorus

The organ by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll at La Madeleine, which would have been used when Fauré’s Opus 48 was first performed (photographer identified as “Mbzt,” from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license)

Unless I am mistaken, last night was the first opportunity this season to listen to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Chorus, prepared by Director Jenny Wong, perform in Davies Symphony Hall. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 48 setting of the Requiem Mass text. This is an almost entirely choral performance with only one solo opportunity for soprano (Liv Redpath) and a few more for bass-baritone (Michael Sumuel). The conductor was Kazuki Yamada, making his SFS debut.

Fauré’s setting is not a complete one. Most evident is the absence of the Dies irae sequence. This is consistent with the observation on this composition’s Wikipedia page: “Its focus is on eternal rest and consolation.” The Dies irae text offers neither of those! Nevertheless, the work was first performed for a funeral Mass that took place in the Parisian church La Madeleine in 1888. The music has an almost understated quality, which seems to suggest that Fauré did not wish to intrude on the liturgical setting.

In last night’s more secular conditions, however, one could appreciate Fauré’s efforts strictly for their musical virtues. Most of the score involves what amounts to a discreet understatement of the text’s reflections on death. While I have not examined the score in detail, I suspect that the dynamics that rise above mezzo-piano are few and far between. In addition, many of the instrumental passages involve a transparency that contrasts with the homophonic settings for the full chorus. While I have several recordings of this music, last night may well have been my first encounter with it in performance; and, as the work advanced from one movement to the next, I found myself more and more wrapped up in the many meticulous details in the score.

The concerto portion of the program was also French. Ravel’s G major piano concerto was composed not too long after the Fauré selection. The soloist was Hélène Grimaud, who is no stranger to that repertoire. However, even if she knows that concerto like the back of her hand, she brought an engaging freshness to last night’s performance. Ravel, of course, paid as much attention to instrumentation as he did to the solo work; and his concerto has one of the most abundant panoplies of sonorities that can be found in the piano concerto repertoire. Ravel clearly prioritized the interplay of soloist and ensemble, and Yamada could not have done a better job in bringing that interplay to audience attention.

For the “overture” of the program, Yamada chose to give the United States premiere of a recent (2021) composition by Japanese composer Dai Fujikura entitled “Entwine.” The music itself certainly lived up to its name. One could easily appreciate how the thematic material wound its way through different instrumental lines. This was very much a study in the diversity of sonorities, which managed to establish and sustain its attention for its limited (eight minutes) duration.

One the whole, Yamada prepared much to sustain attention for his debut, leaving me hoping that he will pay SFS another visit in the not-too-distant future.

American Bach: Christmas Holiday Concerts

Jeffrey Thomas leading a performance in Grace Cathedral (from the American Bach Holiday Concerts Web page)

As was announced a little over a month ago, American Bach will present two holiday concerts for the Christmas season. Jeffrey Thomas will lead the American Bach [instrumental] Soloists & Choir. They will be joined by four vocal soloists: soprano Mary Wilson, countertenor Eric Jurenas, tenor Jon Lee Keenan, and baritone Jesse Blumberg. Both concerts will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Grace Cathedral, which is located at the top of Nob Hill at 1100 California Street. The specific dates and selections are as follows:

Thursday, December 12: This program will be divided between Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. It will begin with the first of the six parts of Bach’s BWV 248 Christmas Oratorio, which describes the Birth of Jesus. This will be followed by a Gloria in excelsis Deo setting. Bach wrote many of these, but the BWV 191 cantata seems to have been composed explicitly for Christmas. This will be followed by Part I of Handel’s HWV 56 Messiah oratorio, which is usually known as the “Christmas portion” and is just as usually concluded with the “Hallelujah” chorus at the end of Part II.

Friday, December 13: This will be the one performance of HWV 56 in its entirety.

As of this writing, tickets are readily available for Thursday; but almost all of the seating for Friday has already been sold. The above hyperlinks can be followed to lead to the Tix Web pages for the respective events. Each page has a diagram showing where seats are available.

The Not-So-Dynamic Duo of Shaw and Kahane

Caroline Shaw and Gabriel Kahane (from the San Francisco Performances event page for last night’s program)

Last night Caroline Shaw and Gabriel Kahane returned to Herbst Theatre to launch the Art of Song Series presented by San Francisco Performances. Both of them are vocalists, contributing both music and lyrics to the songs they presented. They are also both instrumentalists with Shaw playing viola and Kahane at a piano keyboard. In addition, each performer has a desk on the stage with objects on them that could serve for percussion.

The major work on the program was a joint composition effort entitled “Hexagons,” inspired by “The Library of Babel,” one of the stories that Jorge Luis Borges collected in his 1941 publication, El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan (the garden of forking paths). This was preceded by five individual songs, two by Shaw embedded among three by Kahane; and the last three of those songs were solo performances, the first by Shaw and the others by Kahane. Both performers were more than a little casual when it came to identifying the song titles; but, when Shaw delivered her solo, I jotted “deconstructed Tallis” in my program book!

Indeed, if I were to try to coin a category for the approach that both Shaw and Kahane take to performance (solo and duo), it would probably be “playful deconstruction.” However, the problem with this approach is that the performers seem to be the only ones having fun. They may relish each other’s insights and laugh at each other’s jokes, but none of that spirit ever spilled off the stage to engage the audience. As a result, the evening had far less to do with the mind-bending fictions of Borges and more to do with the Monty Python’s Complete Waste of Time computer game!

Noe Music to Present Live Music for Silent Film

Telegraph Quartet members Eric Chin, Jeremiah Shaw, Pei-Ling Lin, and Joseph Maile (photograph by Lisa Marie Mazzucco, courtesy of Jensen Artists)

Many readers probably know by now that pianist Stephen Prutsman has taken a great interest in composing musical accompaniment for the classic silent films of Buster Keaton. These have been performed by Prutsman and the members of the Telegraph Quartet, violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw for over a year by now. The first two of these endeavors were performed during the San Francisco International Piano Festival for the screening of College last year and that of Sherlock Jr. at the penultimate program of this year’s Festival.

At the beginning of next month, Prutsman will take his latest effort to the Noe Valley Ministry for its West Coast premiere. Noe Music will present the Telegraph Quartet performing for the screening of Keaton’s The General, which was made in 1926. The narrative was based on The Great Locomotive Chase, a memoir by William Pittenger about the hijacking of a Confederate train by Union soldiers during the Civil War. 30 years later it was “modernized” by Lawrence Edward Watkin and Walt Disney for the movie The Great Locomotive Chase. Those familiar with Keaton’s work will probably guess (correctly) that the Disney version was a far more serious undertaking!

Unlike the usual Noe Music programs, this event will begin an hour later than usual, at 5 p.m. on Sunday, December 1. It is expected to last about 90 minutes. As most readers probably know by now, the Noe Valley Ministry is located in Noe Valley at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street. General admission will be $45 with a special $60 rate for reserved seating in the first few rows. Students will be admitted for $15. A Web page has been created for ordering tickets online.

Zambello’s Account of Bizet’s Gypsy Returns

Last night the War Memorial Opera House saw the first of eight performances by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) of Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Francesca Zambello returned to the San Francisco Opera to revive her staging, which received its first performances in 2019. Mezzo Eve-Maud Hubeaux made her United States debut singing the title role. The role of Don José, the victim of Carmen’s charms, saw the return of tenor Jonathan Tetelman, who had made his SFO debut in the fall of 2022 as Alfredo Germont in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. José’s “rival” for Carmen’s attention, the matador Escamillo, was sung by bass-baritone Christian Van Horn.

Eve-Maud Hubeaux’ portrayal of Carmen (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

This opera receives so much attention by just about every opera company that even the most seasoned opera-goer can be forgiven for taking a here-we-go-again approach to a performance. In that respect, Zambello deserves credit not only for the overall flow of imaginative staging but also for developing the leading characters as more than cardboard stereotypes without letting them over-emote the roles. As a result, mezzo Eve-Maud Hubeaux brought a commanding presence to her interpretation of the title role. Her character clearly knew how to exercise her seductive appeal, but the overall course of character development made it clear that her only asset was her ultimate undoing. Where José was concerned, Tetelman was never afraid to highlight the weaknesses in his character, making the efforts of Micaëla (soprano Louise Adler, making her American debut) all the more poignant.

On the surface, this narrative reveals itself as an almost panoramic view of affairs of the heart, both cultivated and frustrated. However, from the very beginning, Bizet’s music casts the dark shadow of fate over that panorama. In many respects, what makes Zambello’s staging interesting is her ability to capture the impact of that shadow on all of the principal characters in the opera. However, familiar the narrative may be, this was a production that encouraged one to follow all its twists and turns while, at every stage, relishing how the music (instrumental as well as vocal) leads the way along the path. Carmen may be one of the best examples of how music can elevate a narrative above the “ground level” of plot.

Primavera to Bring Holiday Sprit to the Cadillac

This year the Holiday Spirit will get under way at the Cadillac Hotel at the end of next week. However, an even more celebratory occasion is that this month will mark the anniversary of that meticulously restored 1884 Model D Steinway concert grand in the lobby, whose original soundboard is still intact. In fact, the Steinway Factory has a certificate that the piano was first put on sale in November of 1884. Mind you, the piano has been in that lobby only since 2007; but one can still celebrate the “vintage” of its origin!

Dave Casini playing his vibraphone at the Cadillac Hotel during a performance on August 19, 2022, joined by Al Standford (congas), John Watson (piano) and Paul Smith (bass) (from the YouTube video of the entire concert)

This occasion will be marked by the return of the Primavera Latin Jazz Band, which made its last appearance a little over a year ago in September of 2023. Once again the group will be led from that Patricia Walkup Memorial Piano in the lobby by Lena Johnson. Dave Casini will “respond” to the “call” of her chromatic keyboard work with his vibraphone performance. Rhythm will again be provided by Paul Smith on bass and Jeff McNish on guitar. Bob Blankenship will also return, performing on both congas and his drum kit.

As usual, this show will begin at 1 p.m. on Friday, November 22. The Cadillac Hotel is located at 380 Eddy Street, on the northeast corner of Leavenworth Street. All Concerts at the Cadillac events are presented without charge. The purpose of the series is to provide high-quality music to the residents of the hotel and the Tenderloin District; but all are invited to visit the venue that calls itself “The House of Welcome Since 1907.”

Trifonov Shifts Attention from Europe to Americas

Pianist Daniil Trifonov has been a regular visitor to San Francisco, both as concerto soloist and recitalist, over the course of several years. This coming February, he will return to Davies Symphony Hall as soloist in a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 18 (second) piano concerto in G minor with the San Francisco Symphony. In addition, this site has tried to keep up with his Deutsche Grammophon recordings, the most recent of which was Bach: The Art of Life, a “family portrait” that juxtaposed works by Johann Sebastian Bach with selections by four of his sons.

Daniil Trifonov on the cover of his latest album (courtesy of Crossover Media)

Trifonov’s latest album takes him across the Atlantic Ocean, so to speak. It is the first of two releases both under the title My American Story. The subtitle for that first release is North, and it offers an impressively diverse account of music composed in the United States. Taken as a whole, it amounts to an engaging account of how music was being made during the twentieth century.

The breadth of that diversity can be oriented around the two concerto selections on the album, each reflecting a different perspective across the two centuries. The first of these is George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” (originally given the title “New York Concerto”). Following the success of “Rhapsody in Blue,” the conductor Walter Damrosch commissioned Gershwin to compose a full-scale piano concerto for his New York Symphony Orchestra. “Rhapsody in Blue” has been composed for solo piano and jazz band, but it was subsequently prepared for orchestral performance by Ferde Grofé. The concerto, on the other hand, is entirely a product of Gershwin’s own efforts.

A little less than a century later, Mason Bates composed his first piano concerto. It was written for Trifonov and given its first performance in January of 2022. It was co-commissioned by Trifonov and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom he played the work’s debut. The recording of that concerto on North was made with that same ensemble led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has been the ensemble’s music director since 2012.

I feel as if I have been following Bates’ work for almost as long as I have been writing on this site. Unless I am mistaken, that dates back to the spring of 2009, when Michael Tilson Thomas conducted Bates’ “The B-Sides” with the San Francisco Symphony. It took me a while to get used to him (which may be the same for any thoughts he may have had when reading what I wrote about him); but I came away from listening to his concerto with the sense that he had approached it with more security than Gershwin had brought to his “parallel” effort. Indeed, I can confess that my very first impression of Bates leaned towards “enfant terrible;” but the firm and secure hand he brought to composing for both piano and ensemble is a far cry from either of those words!

All the other selections on this first My American Story album are solo performances. I must confess that I was particularly taken with the tracks that involved arrangements of popular tunes by leading pianists from each half of the twentieth century. The earlier of these was one of the most influential musicians (who happened to play piano) of his time, Art Tatum. The second could be said the same for his time, the pianist being Bill Evans. In listening to these tracks, one can easily detect Trifonov’s appreciation of both of those jazz masters. That appreciation also extends to the final track on the album, which is “4’33”,” John Cage’s “silent” composition. On the other hand his approach to the more “serious” composers, such as Aaron Copland, John Adams, and John Corigliano, struck me as more dutiful than engaging; but that is probably just because I am not shy in voicing personal opinions!

SFCMP to Begin Season with Myths and Muses

Mezzo Kindra Schirach, guest artist for this month’s SFCMP concert (from the Web page for the event)

Readers may recall that the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) and Artistic Director Eric Dudley announced the programs that will be presented during their 54th concert season this past July. That season will begin on the last Sunday of this month, November 24. The title of the program will be Myths & Muses, and the guest artist will be mezzo Kindra Schirach.

The world premiere selection will be “Mother Eve,” composed by Emma Logan on an SFCMP commission supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. There will be one West Coast premiere, “Terpsichore’s Box of Dreams,” completed by Augusta Read Thomas last year. The remaining works on the program will be Bay Area premiers: “Moerae (The Fates),” composed by Mary Kouyoumdjian in 2010 and Laura Schwendinger’s “The Artist’s Muse,“ completed in 2017.

This performance will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, November 24 at the Brava Theater, which is located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street.

The Bleeding Edge: 11/11/2024

All previously reported events for this week will be taking place at The Lab on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; specifics for the remaining events, which will take place on those same days of the week, are as follows:

Thursday, November 14, Gray Area Art and Technology, 7 p.m.: The program will be an evening of experimental electronic music produced by Lusine, Arms and Sleepers, and Yppah. For those that have not previously visited the venue, it is located at 2665 Mission Street, between 22nd Street and 23rd Street. Gray Area has created a Web page for advance ticket purchases for $29.68. Admission at the door will be $35.18.

Thursday, November 14, Peacock Lounge, 8 p.m.: This will be the usual three-hour show consisting of four sets. The opening (or possibly closing) set will be taken by James Goode, who makes his music through tape manipulation and electronics. Each of the remaining three sets is associated with one of the usual cryptic names: lucie R., Newcomer Can’t Swim, and Rot Diet.

The Peacock Lounge is located in the Lower Haight at 552 Haight Street. Doors will open at 7:45 p.m. to enable the first set to begin at 8 p.m. sharp. Admission will be between $5 and $15, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Friday, November 15, Medicine for Nightmares, 7 p.m.: Mystery School is the duo of saxophonists Phillip Greenlief and David Boyce, the latter being the host of the weekly Other Dimensions in Sound series on Friday evenings. As always, the venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. There is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Poster design of Joyce Todd McBride (left) with her Dream Kitchen colleagues (from the BayImproviser Web page for this performance)

Saturday, November 16, Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 8:30 p.m.: Dream Kitchen is a local jazz ensemble led by pianist and composer Joyce Todd McBride. This will be a quartet performance, whose other members will be saxophonist Jeff Kaszubinski, Todd Larson on bass, and drummer Jeff Pera. 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 the limited space of the venue, 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. This performance will also be live-streamed through a hyperlink on the Bird & Beckett Web page while the show is in progress.