Sunset Music and Arts: June, 2024

Next month tends to be “transitional.” On the one hand it sees the conclusion of several subscription series. However, as the month draws to a close, summer offerings, such as the Merola Opera Program, begin to get under way. This year Sunset Music and Arts will be “first out of the gate” with two distinctively diverse programs, both beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday evenings.

For those not familiar with this concert series, it takes place at the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue. General admission is $25 with a $20 rate for students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased online through Eventbrite.  Specifics are as follows, including hyperlinks for the purchase of tickets:

June 1: The month will begin with a recital by violinist Kenneth Renshaw, accompanied at the piano by Keisuke Nakagoshi. His program has not yet been finalized, but the major offering will be Edward Elgar’s Opus 82 duo sonata. This will be preceded by Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 35bis set of five “Melodies.” These were originally conceived as vocalized “songs without words” in his Opus 35. The remainder of the program remains to be announced.

Spruce Ritual musicians Nazan Aktas, Lucian Kano Balmer, Josh Mellinger, and Will Marsh (from the Sunsen Music and Arts online Calendar)

June 22: Spruce Ritual is an ensemble conceived and led by violinist Lucian Kano Balmer to explore relations between the western classical tradition and Hindustani music. The group released its first album, Spruce Ritual: The Way The Evening Speaks, in February of 2023; and, presumably, the Sunset program will include selections from this album. The other members of the ensemble are Charith Premawardhana on viola, cellist Nazan Aktas (who studied at the Ali Akbar College of Music), Will Marsh, who doubles on sitar and guitar, and tabla player Josh Mellinger.

Alchemist Jazz Quintet Coming to Mr. Tipple’s

News about jazz performances taking place at Mr. Tipple’s Jazz Club continues to be a “sometime thing.” Fortunately, I seem to be on the mailing lists of at least a few of the practicing artists here in San Francisco. So at least some of the news that the club itself overlooks still comes to my attention.

Alchemist Quintet members Greg German, Ted Burik, Michele Walther, John Kiskaddon, and Greg German (from the Mr. Tipple’s event page)

Such is the case with the Alchemist Quintet. This is a bit of a departure from the usual jazz quintet, since one of the front-line players is violinist Michele Walther. She is joined on the front line by saxophonist Doug Pet. Rhythm is provided by John Kiskaddon on piano, bassist Ted Burik, and Greg German on drums.

The quintet will perform 45-minute two sets on Wednesday, May 22nd, the first beginning at 7:30 p.m. and the second beginning an hour later at 8:30 p.m. For those that do not already know, Mr. Tipple’s is located at 39 Fell Street, on the south side of the street between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street. The Fat Cat provides dim sum food, which includes hot dumplings and Hong Kong waffles. Drinks are available from a full bar. Both food and drink may be purchased separately from the admission fee. Tickets for admission may be purchased through the above hyperlinks attached to the start times.

Evgeny Kissin’s Uneven Piano Recital at Davies

Pianist Evgeny Kissin (photograph by Pierre Anthony, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Last night pianist Evgeny Kissin returned to Davies Symphony Hall for his latest appearance in the Great Performers Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony. His last visit took place almost exactly two years ago, on May 2, 2022. As was the case on that occasion, the experience was more than a little uneven (at least to the attentive listener).

Nevertheless, Kissin definitely deserves credit for interesting planning. The program spanned almost exactly 100 years with a chronological account of music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, and Sergei Prokofiev. That chronology began with the Opus 90 sonata in E minor, completed in 1814 and the last of Beethoven’s “middle” sonatas. This was followed by two relatively brief Chopin selections composed in 1841 with consecutive opus numbers, the second of the two Opus 48 nocturnes, composed in the key of F-sharp minor, and the Opus 49 fantasy in F minor. After the intermission Kissin advanced to 1854 with the Brahms Opus 10 set of four ballades. He then concluded in the early twentieth century (1912) with Prokofiev’s Opus 14, his second piano sonata in D minor.

Kissin was at his best at the very beginning and the very end. He knew just how to honor the verbose tempo descriptions for the two Beethoven movements, and he did not let the composer’s obsession with detail impinge on his own capacity for expressiveness. At the other end, he presented the Prokofiev sonata as if he were introducing on old (if somewhat rambunctious) old friend. This came from a period when the composer was not afraid of sharp edges, many of which did not go down well with his contemporary audiences. Nevertheless, it is clear that Kissin enjoy sharing that rambunctiousness with his audience; and, for me at least, this was the most satisfying portion of the evening. Sadly, it seemed as if both Chopin and Brahms were being offered more from a sense of duty than from much interest on the part of the performer.

This year Kissin limited himself to three encores. (He took four in 2022.) He began with a Chopin mazurka, whose specifics he preferred not to announce. This was followed by the piano arrangement of the march from Prokofiev’s four-act opera, his Opus 33 The Love for Three Oranges. He then signed off with the penultimate waltz in Brahms’ Opus 39 collection of sixteen (originally for four hands on one keyboard), composed in the key of A major and probably the most familiar waltz in the set. The crowd went wild (as they say) for all of the encores but seemed to accept the quietude of resignation in the final selection. Personally, I was delighted by Kissin’s ability to distill so much expressiveness into such a brief gesture and wished there had been more of that distillation in the selections enumerated in the program book.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century Britain

Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (photograph by Monika Rittershaus, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from Wikimedia Commons)

Given that Simon Rattle was born in Liverpool, one might have expected that, even during his tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic, he would have given more attention to “England's green and pleasant land” than is evident in the anthology of his recordings with that ensemble. The only British composer to be allocated an entire CD is Benjamin Britten. Nevertheless, where my own interests are concerned, that CD is definitely a good one. It accounts for the three major song cycles with instrumental accompaniment, the Opus 18 Les Illuminations, the Opus 31 Serenade, and the Opus 60 Nocturne. All of these are sung by tenor Ian Bostridge, and only horn player Radek Baborák is given credit on the CD sleeve for his contribution to Opus 31. At least some readers probably know that I am already familiar with the recordings that Britten himself made of all three of these composition; but I could still appreciate the “contemporary take” on this music while listening to Bostridge performing with Rattle.

The only other major work to be recorded was Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite, The Planets. I tend to blow hot and cold when I encounter this music in performance, but Rattle certainly gives the overall flow of the suite a creditable account. However, the recording is given a “++” treatment, which, as far as I am concerned, lives up to the old joke about filling a well-needed gap.

The first track to follow The Planets adds the “questionable one” beyond Neptune. “Pluto, the Renewer” was composed by Colin Mathews and dedicated to the memory of Imogen Holst. This is followed by Kaija Saariaho’s “Asteroid 4179: Toutatis,” Matthias Pintscher’s “towards Osiris,” and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Ceres.” (Yes, I know that Pintscher is German; but, since he seems to be big on astronomy, I can understand why he was included on the album! Also, since I have been interested in Saariaho’s music for pretty much as long as I have been at this writing gig, I cannot complain about her presence, even if she is not British!) “Ceres” is followed by the darker “Komarov’s Fall,” composed by Brett Dean and named after Vladimir Komarov, the Soviet cosmonaut, who was the first human to die in a space flight. All but the first of these “post-Planets” compositions were commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic.

That leaves only one remaining track, Thomas Adès’ “Tevot,” which is about twenty minutes in duration. Early in his tenure with the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas seemed to show an interest in Adès’ music. His performances never really persuaded me to share that interest, nor did the television broadcast of The Exterminating Angel from the Metropolitan Opera. So it did not surprise me that “Tevot” left me (in the immortal words of Dorothy Fields for Jerome Kern’s “A Fine Romance” song) “as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes!”

Change of Conductor This Week at SFS

Conductor Gemma New (photograph by Ray Cox, courtesy of SFS)

Yesterday morning the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) announced that conductor Marta Gardolińska, scheduled to make her debut, regretfully had to withdraw due to a family illness. She will be replaced by Gemma New, who will be making her debut in the Orchestral Series but had previously conducted two programs during the 2019 summer season at the Frost Amphitheater on the Stanford University campus. The program will remain the same, and cellist Pablo Ferrández will still be the soloist in Edward Elgar’s Opus 85 cello concerto in E minor. The program will begin with Grażyna Bacewicz’ “Overture;” and the second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 56 symphony in A minor, his third, known by many as the “Scottish.”

This program will be given only two performances in Davies Symphony Hall on Friday, May 10, at 7:30 pm., and on Sunday, May 12, at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at prices from $25 to $150. They may be purchased online through hyperlinks on the event page for this concert. They are also being sold at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office. The entrance (for both the Box Office and the concert hall) is on the south side of MTT Way (formerly Grove Street), located between Franklin Street and Van Ness Avenue.

Meg Okura and KevinHays: Debut Duo Album

Meg Okura and Kevin Hays (photograph by Tracy Yang, courtesy of AMT Public Relations)

This Friday will see the release of Lingering, a debut album for the duo of violinist Meg Okura and pianist Kevin Hays. As is often the case, Bandcamp has already created the Web page for this album and is accepting pre-orders. That Web page is particularly informative, since it includes an extended essay by jazz historian Scott Yanow.

Okura was classically trained at the Juilliard School; but, after she acquired all the appropriate degrees, she shifted her attention to jazz. Her “education in the field” then emerged through performances with musicians such as Lee Konitz, Michael Brecker, and Tom Harrell. Hays’ experiences, on the other hand, have included performing for the likes of Sonny Rollins, Joshua Redman, and Chris Potter.

One would have thought that the meeting of Okura and Hays would have sent sparks flying at first sight. However, after listening to this album several times, I have encountered nary a fizzle. Mind you, Okura’s technique is impressive; and there is no arguing over the acuity of her sense of pitch. Indeed, both performers have a solid command of their respective instruments.

What is lacking, though, is inventiveness. Where there is no end of opportunities for sharp edges, one encounters little more than bland familiar tropes. This is just not the sort of music, composed or improvised, that gets the juices flowing.

The Bleeding Edge: 5/6/2024

This month will begin with a moderately well-balanced offering of new announcements and previously reported events. The latter category involves two venues:

1. The Lab will present adventurous two-set programs on both Thursday and Friday evenings.
2. The Center for New Music has also planned two programs, but both of them will take place on Saturday at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., respectively.

Where the remaining events are concerned, there will be two familiar venues. Specifics are as follows:

Friday, May 10, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: This week’s installment of Other Dimensions in Sound, curated by reed player David Boyce, will feature two sets, each involving a different combo. The first of these will be the Evidence Trio, whose members are Kersti Abrams, playing alto saxophone, flute, and mbira, Andrew Joron on theremin, and bassist Michael Wilcox. This will be followed by the Diaspora Focii Collective, which is led by guitarist Mika Pontecorvo, who also works with electronics. The group also includes Abrams, playing her same variety of instruments. The other members of the group are Jaroba on bass clarinet and tenor saxophone, bassist Elijah Pontecorvo, and Mike Villarreal on drums.

Friday, May 10, and Saturday, May 11, 8 p.m., Audium: The Depths is a new multichannel sound composition and installation by Dave Shaff. He describes the sonorities as follows: “[L]iquid drips & drops land on sluggish synth drones. Horns improvise saturated melodies while flying above you. Wind whips at your front and back. A contrabass tickles your feet.”

Audium is located at 1616 Bush Street. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. City Box Office has created a Web page for purchasing tickets. General admission (including the option for wheelchair accessibility) will be $30 with a $20 rate for students. A limited number of pay-what-you-can tickets will also be available.

Sunday, May 12, 5 p.m., Glen Park Station Bar: The venue will host a live album release show. The album, released by Edgetone Records, is the second in a series called FutureJazz. This one documents a live performance at the Cadillac Hotel, which took place last year. The musicians on this album, E. Doctor Smith and Peter McKibben, will be on hand to perform tracks from the album. The bar is located at 2816 Diamond Street. There will be no charge for admission, but the bartenders tend to assume that anyone entering will be a customer!

LIEDER ALIVE!: Mezzo, Cello, Piano

LIEDER ALIVE! performers Kindra Scharich, Jeffrey LaDeur, and Jennifer Culp (from the LIEDER ALIVE! Web page for the 2023/24 season)

Early yesterday evening, LIEDER ALIVE! concluded its twelfth annual Liederabend season. The vocalist was mezzo Kindra Scharich, accompanied at the piano by Jeffrey LaDeur. However, for the most part, the program consisted of trio performances with the addition of cellist Jennifer Culp (who also gave two duo performances with LaDeur).

The first half of the program was framed by Franz Schubert (the D. 943 “Auf dem Strom”) and Johannes Brahms (the second of the two Opus 91 songs, “Geistliches Wiegenlied”). (The titles translate as “on the river” and “sacred cradle-song,” respectively.) Robert Schumann was represented by a cello-piano duo, the second of his Opus 94 pieces, entitled simply “Romanze.” These three leading figures were joined by Alexander Borodin’s three songs for piano, voice, and cello, which he composed in 1854.

The second half of the program took in a much wider extent. The earliest selections were by Hector Berlioz (“La Captive”) and César Franck (“Le Sylphe”). The most recent work on the program was “Dream with me,” one of the songs that Leonard Bernstein composed for the Peter Pan musical. Between these “bookends” were selections by Amy Beach (“Chanson d’amour”) and Edwin Greene (“Sing me to sleep”). The cello-piano duo for this half of the program was the third movement (Andante) from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 19 cello sonata.

The entire offering proceeded at a fair clip, providing just enough time for the attentive listener to appreciate each selection and then compare it with what would follow. All three of the performers accounted for their parts with engaging clarity, and Scharich always captured just the right dispositions to frame the texts she was singing. I have been listening to Culp’s performances pretty much for as long as I have been doing my writing, and I have never been dissatisfied!

Taken as a whole, the program put the cap on an engaging season, leaving attentive listeners to look forward to the next season, which will establish a new “home” in the Old First Concerts series.

An Injustice to the Great Female Jazz Vocalists

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

At the beginning of this month, Jazz at the Ballroom released a new album entitled Flying High: Big Band Canaries Who Soared. The “canaries” were the leading female jazz vocalists of the last century, such as Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Rosemarie Clooney, and Ella Fitzgerald. This project was the brainchild of pianist and vocalist Champian Fulton, who recruited five other vocalists (Gretje Angel, Carmen Bradford, Olivia Chindamo, Jan Monheit, and Vanessa Perea) to revive the spirit of those “good old days.” Instrumental accompaniment was provided by a trio led by Fulton at the piano. On four of the tracks she was joined by drummer Charles Ruggiero and Mike Gurrola on bass. On the remaining eleven tracks, the drummer is Fukushi Tainaka with Neal Miner on bass. The first track is instrumental, and the remaining fourteen are divided among the six vocalists.

Writing as an “old-timer” familiar with all of the twentieth-century stars cited above, I feel justified in asserting that none of the interpretations on this album come anywhere near the polished stylizations encountered on the recordings made by those stars. Note my choice of adjective. There is something coarse in the delivery on each of the new album’s tracks that grates on the ear with the same impact encountered by fingernails scratching on a blackboard (if that metaphor still carries any weight). The very idea of a disciplined approach to pitch and rhythm, which can then be taken as a “spinal cord” for stylization, eludes all six of the vocalists.

The message to all these vocalists comes from the song that Lee sang in Stage Door Canteen: “Why Don’t You Do Right?”

SFO: The Second Spring Opera

The second of the three programs to be presented by San Francisco Opera (SFO) during its spring season will be the United States premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s sixth and final opera, Innocence. SFO co-commissioned this work in conjunction with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, where it received its world premiere on July 3, 2021, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, and the Dutch National Opera. The opera is structured in five acts with no intermissions, and the overall duration is about 105 minutes.

A set design by Chloe Lamford, which accommodates the unfolding of multiple narratives in Innocence (photograph by Jean-Louis Fernandez, courtesy of SFO)

The original libretto was written in Finnish by Sofi Oksanen. However, when dramaturg Aleksi Barrière began in 2013 to develop the production of the world premiere, he developed a polylingual libretto, which included texts in English, Czech, Romanian, French, Swedish, German, Spanish, and Greek, as well as Finnish. The narrative is one of multiple stories, beginning with a wedding taking place at the beginning of this century, which is then intertwined with an account of a school shooting, which took place ten years earlier. What emerges is an exploration of questions of innocence (hence the title of the opera) and guilt in a context of painful truths.

Staging was directed by Simon Stone, whose work will be presented by SFO for the first time. The production here will be directed by Louise Bakker, who will also be making her SFO debut. Conductor Clément Mao-Takacs will also be making his SFO debut. The bride (Stela) and bridegroom (Tuomas) at the wedding will be sung by soprano Lilian Farahani (another SFO debut) and tenor Miles Mykkanen, making his role debut as well as his SFO debut. The character that links present and past at the wedding is the waitress Tereza, whole role will be sung by mezzo Ruxandra Donose, also making her role debut.

As has already been observed, this production will be given five performances at 7:30 p.m. on June 1, 7, 12, 18, and 21, and 2 p.m. on June 16. The performances will take place in the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street (across MTT Way from Davies Symphony Hall). Ticket prices range from $26 to $426, and a single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets 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. The Web page also includes a hyperlink to an Opera Previews Web site and a second Web page with information about pre-performance talks.

DSO’s Final Live-Stream of the Season

Last night saw the final live-stream of the season in the Live from Orchestra Hall series presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO). Music Director Jader Bignamini led the ensemble in a program entitled Mozart & the Seasons. This was an overture-concerto-symphony program in which the concluding symphony was by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 551 (his 41st symphony) in C major. It carries the nickname “Jupiter Symphony” is attributed to the impresario Johann Peter Salomon (probably best known for his arranging Joseph Haydn’s visit to England).

The first half of the program presented two “responses” to the “call” of the four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi collected under the title The Four Seasons. The title of the “overture” was “More Seasons,” composed by Michael Abels. This amounted to a spritely reflection on Vivaldi’s themes, which the advance work for this concert described as “Vivaldi in a Mixmaster.”

This was followed by Estaciones Porteñas, which is better known for its free translation into English as The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. This began as a collection of four tangos, which Ástor Piazzolla composed for his quintet consisting of violin (alternating with viola), piano, electric guitar, bass, and bandoneon. The first was composed in 1965, originally as incidental music for a play; and the other three were first performed in 1969.

DSO Concertmaster Robyn Bollinger (from her DSO Web page)

Between 1996 and 1998 the Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov arranged these pieces for solo violin and string orchestra, and that is the version that Bignamini conducted. The soloist was DSO Concertmaster Robyn Bollinger. Over the course of the four movements, there were also extended solos for the first-desk cello. Desyatnikov provided a generous number of hoops through which the violinist was required to leap, and Bollinger brought an energetic grace to each of them. Most importantly, however, both she and Bignamini clearly appreciated the generous supply of wit brought to this music, a supply that probably could be divided equally between Piazzolla and Desyatnikov!

Those high spirits then spilled over to the second half of the program. Bignamini’s account of Mozart’s score honored all of the repeats, but there was never any sense that the experience was going on for too long. He knew how to give each thematic gesture the necessary attention, while managing the overall architecture of both the individual movements and the journey they established. My guess is that this music was familiar to just about everyone listening, whether in the concert hall or in front of a television screen. Nevertheless, there was a freshness to the rhetoric that probably kept much of the audience on the edge of their respective seats.

Those of us sitting at our televisions are probably now wondering what Live from Orchestra Hall will have to offer next season!

Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy in Antwerp

Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy, Reggie Workman, and Andrew Cyrille performing in Antwerp (from the booklet accompanying the album being discussed)

My final examination of a new album released in celebration of Record Store Day is The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp. This is another quartet album led jointly by pianist Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone. Rhythm is provided by Reggie Workman on bass and drummer Andrew Cyrille. The album accounts for the entire performance, which took place at De Singel Arts Center in Antwerp (Belgium) on September 30, 1995. Like Atlantis Lullaby, which was discussed yesterday, the album consists of two CDs. The overall duration is 100 minutes (again including time set aside for applause).

Also like Atlantis Lullaby, the tracks tend to be generous in duration. Indeed, the shortest track is “Epistrophy,” which Thelonious Monk composed with Kenny Clarke in 1941. (I always get a bit of a chill when I am listening to adventurous jazz that is older than I am!) I suspect that this was deployed as a “punctuation mark” for the longer opening selection, which was Waldron’s “What It Is.” Waldron’s more extended contribution is a medley lasting a little less than 25 minutes, which couples his “Snake Out” with his “Variations on a Theme by Cecil Taylor.” I found it somewhat interesting that, over the course of the thirteen pages of text provided by the highly informative booklet, no one identified Taylor’s theme; but, to be fair, it is usually not an easy matter to extract the theme from one of the tracks on a Taylor album!

Lacy contributed only one of his own originals to this set, “Longing,” which is one of the moderately shorter offerings. The more impressive undertaking is Workman’s “Variation of III,” which is almost half an hour in duration. Once again, the booklet provides no clues about what that title is meant to convey. To be fair, however, I do not think that much is to be gained from trying to overthink the listening experience. Ever since The Wire, many of us have had a tendency to fall back on the assertion that “It is what it is;” but, where adventurously inventive jazz is concerned, I can think of no better advice for how to approach performances and improvisations.

Sahba Aminikia to Present New Work at 836M

A page from The Concourse of the Birds, painted by Habiballah of Sava (from the Web page for the event being discussed, provided by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York)

Readers may recall that, this past March, the 836M Gallery hosted a celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which included a performance at the piano by the gallery’s composer-in-residence Sahba Aminikia. At the conclusion of this month, the gallery will host a performance of his latest project, The Language of the Birds. This will be based on the poem by the twelfth-century mystic Attar of Nishapur, which had previously been staged by Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière under the title La Conférence des oiseaux (the conference of the birds). (The script was published in 1979.)

In preparing this performance, Aminikia collaborated with the Living Earth Show duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson, both of whom had been “fellow students” during his studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The resulting score will also be performed by the ensembles of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and singer Marjan Vahdat, who had performed with Aminikia in the concert he had prepared for the Persian New Year this past March. Other contributors to the current project are media artist John Sanborn and multidisciplinary artist, musician, composer, director, and educator David Coulter. Translator Zara Houshmand contributed to preparing the text.

The Language of the Birds will mark the conclusion of Aminikia’s residency. It will be given two performances at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 31, and Saturday, June 1. The 836M Gallery is located in North Beach at 836 Montgomery Street, between Jackson Street and Pacific Avenue. The event is free, but an RSVP is necessary. That may be arranged through a hyperlink on the 836M Web site; but, as of this writing, that hyperlink has not yet been created. As a result, readers will have to make their reservations close to the end of the month, presumably through the Coming Performances Web page.

SFP: A Disappointing Close to the Season

Pekka Kuusisto and Gabriel Kahane (from the SFP event page for last night’s performance)

Last night San Francisco Performances (SFP) wrapped up its 2023–24 season with a disappointing conclusion. The final offering was taken by Council, the duo of Pekka Kuusisto and Gabriel Kahane, both of whom are vocalists and multi-instrumentalists. Their page in the program book cited: “The program will be announced from the stage.” There was a fair amount of babble, but much of it came across as if they were more interested in talking to each other than addressing the audience.

The twentieth century was a rich period when it came to musicians making fun of what they did in front of an audience. My favorite was the duo of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. Darlene could not hit a note on pitch if her life depended on it. (Some readers may recall that I cited her to express my disappointment with a vocal album released by Radha Thomas.) Jonathan was best represented by an album jacket showing three hands at a keyboard, suggesting that none of them could find the right notes. These were, of course, “stage names” for two major contributors to the pop scene, pianist and arrange Paul Weston and vocalist Jo Stafford. (Stafford also took on “Temptation,” singing “Tim-Tayshun” under the name Cinderella G. Stump with Red Ingle and his Hillbilly Band. Every vowel that she delivered had spine-cringing impact.)

The thing about those days was that those of us that knew about music knew how to laugh with Stafford and Weston. Last night it was hard to decided whether or not to laugh at Kuusisto and Kahane or simply to endure the experience in polite silence. My upbringing taught me that the latter was a preferred option, and I confined any groaning to the deeper recesses of my imagination. Nevertheless, I still have to wonder how it came to be that two individuals, who seemed to have little to offer other than self-indulgence, have achieved representation by serious promotional organizations.

As Kurt Vonnegut liked to say, “So it goes!”

SFCMP to Conclude Season with Vocal Offerings

Soprano Winnie Nieh (courtesy of SFCMP)

At the end of this month, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) will conclude its 2023–24 season with another program featuring vocal works, given the title RE:voicing 2: Worlds Apart. The instrumentalists will be joined by the Volti chamber choir, led by its founder Robert Geary, along with two vocal soloists, soprano Winnie Nieh and baritone Daniel Cilli. The featured work on the program will fill the second half of the evening, the cantata Worlds Apart, composed by Richard Festinger.

This piece was commissioned from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University in 2018. The plan was for the work to be given its first performance by Cantata Singers and Ensemble, based in Boston. The new work would provide the same instrumental accompaniment that Johann Sebastian Bach required for his BWV 78 cantata, Jesu, der du meine Seele. However, while BWV 78 required four vocal soloists (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), the new work would require (as can be seen above) only a soprano and a baritone. The text for the cantata drew upon an eclectic collection of sources from Bertolt Brecht, Stephen Crane, and Wendell Berry. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the originally scheduled world premiere had to be cancelled, meaning that this month’s concert will mark the composition’s first performance.

In the first half of the program, Volti will perform “De Profundis” (out of the depths), a setting of Psalm 130 by the rising young Bay Area composer Jens Ibsen. There will also be a performance of “Effortlessly, Love Flows,” one of the movements from Aaron Jay Kernis’ Ecstatic Meditations. The text is taken from the writings of the medieval mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg.

The first half will then conclude with the only instrumental work on the program. “Asko Concerto” was one of the last pieces to be composed by Elliott Carter. It was written on a commission for the Asko Ensemble, which is based in Amsterdam. Carter wrote the score for sixteen players, drawing upon the concept of a Baroque concerto grosso. The work is in six sections, which involve different combinations of instruments.

This program will take place on Thursday, May 30, beginning at 7:30 p.m. The venue will be the Brava Theater, which is located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street. As usual, the program will be preceded at 6:30 p.m. by a How Music is Made discussion with Artistic Director Eric Dudley in conversation with Festinger. General admission will be $35 with a $40 VIP rate, and $15 for students. Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page.

Yusef Lateef’s Quartet in Avignon

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

Following up on my examination of Sun Ra at the beginning of this month, my examination of new albums released in celebration of Record Store Day has led to Atlantis Lullaby: The Concert in Avignon. The concert took place on July 19, 1972 in the Cloître des Célestins and was presented by a quartet led by wind player Yusef Lateef. He was joined by pianist Kenny Barron, Bob Cunningham on bass, and drummer Albert Heath, one of three jazz brothers known to his friends as “Tootie.” The album consists of two CDs and accounts for about 90 minutes of music (give or take the time set aside for applause).

For the most part the tracks are of extended duration. The only brief one is “Lowland Lullaby,” in which Heath shifts over to Indian flute to play a duet with Cunningham. Most of the tracks are by Barron, including what was probably 25 minutes of free improvisation given the title “The Untitled!” On the briefer and more lyrical site, Barron plays a duet with Lateef for his composition “A Flower.” All the other tracks involve the entire quartet, providing each of the players opportunities for extended solo takes. That includes the “straight ahead” track for “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” which is one of the more generous platforms for Lateef’s own solo work.

Lateef enjoyed a relatively generous amount of attention during my time at the campus radio station for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, after I left with my doctoral degree, I found that there were few opportunities for me to encounter his work. That situation only changed a few months ago, when I wrote about his Eastern Sounds album at the end of this past February. As a result, I appreciated that Record Store Day provided me with another opportunity, which turned out to be a “full concert” document. Whether one has a taste for extended improvisation or the quiet brevity of “Lowland Lullaby,” this is a collection of tracks for which attentive listening will be richly rewarded.

Jonathan Biss Concludes Schubert Series

Pianist Jonathan Biss (photograph by Benjamin Ealovega, courtesy of SFP)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, pianist Jonathan Biss concluded his three-part series of recitals for San Francisco Performances (SFP) entitled Echoes of Schubert. The series was structured around the last three piano sonatas to be composed by Franz Schubert: D. 958 in C minor, D. 959 in A major, and D. 960 in B-flat major, none of which were published during the composer’s lifetime. Indeed, they remained out of sight for about a decade, after which A. Diabelli & Co. published all three of them in a single volume in 1838, given the title Franz Schubert’s Allerletzte Composition. Drei grosse Sonaten, which was dedicated to Robert Schumann.

Since the sonatas were performed in order of catalog number, the series concluded last night with D. 960. In many ways this is the most massive undertaking of the three. Furthermore, since the catalog of Otto Erich Deutsch is chronological, only five entries remain in the principal portion of the document. (The last is the final song, “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.”) Biss took all of the notated repeats, allowing the sonata to unfold into the full extent of its “heavenly length” (Schumann’s epithet). His command of both tempo and phrasing escorted the attentive listener through an extended journey well worth taking.

Having struggled with this sonata during my younger days, I have cultivated a genuine love for this music both for its inventive technical qualities and for the profundity of its expressiveness. (I happened to be working on this undertaking during a trip to Seattle for my first encounter with Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle in its entirety. I managed to find a piano near my hotel, and I pursued a path through the entire sonata every morning!) As a result, I try not to miss an opportunity to listen to this music in recital.

As might be expected, I have also accumulated a fair number of recordings. On that score, however, I have to say that I have cultivated an appreciation for the “historically-informed” performances that have been recorded. The fact is that, to put it bluntly, Schubert poured a lot of notes into D. 960. As they accumulate into larger masses, they tend to obscure each other when they are played on a contemporary keyboard (such as the Steinway Model D that San Francisco Performances offers to its recitalists). On the other hand, because the dynamics are not as overpowering, a performance on an instrument from the early nineteenth century is more conducive to accounting for every note that Schubert penned. For those of us that are sticklers for detail, that amounts to a significant asset.

However, if last night’s instrument did not allow Biss to do justice to every minute detail, he could still deliver a compelling account of the sonata in its entirety. Indeed, as the sonata unfolded, I found myself scribbling a note in my program book suggesting that Schubert might have had a “four seasons” plan in mind. There is something “autumnal” in the almost wistful rhetoric of the opening movement, which is then followed by the “winter chill” of the Andante sostenuto. The Scherzo, of course, is spring, while the concluding Allegro ma non troppo blazes in the heat of summer!

The program began with the third of the four impromptus collected in D. 935. Composed in the key of B-flat major, this is a sunny set of variations on a theme that Schubert had previously explored in earlier guises. Biss brought a light touch to his interpretation, which provided just the right “warm-up” for the more imposing sonata that would follow.

Prior to that sonata, however, he gave the second (ever) performance of Tyshawn Sorey’s “For Anthony Braxton,” which had been commissioned by SFP. Biss introduced this piece by discussing the interplay of composed and improvised music that one could find in Braxton’s compositions (many of which were given enigmatic icons as titles). He described the genre as “trans-idiomatic,” which is about as good an account as any!

He also observed that the music was not necessarily “directed.” I can definitely affirm that proposition. At my first classes in composition, the teacher liked to caution against the problem of “noodling.” Unfortunately, Sorey had a tendency to “noodle.” As a result, while he laid out a landscape of interesting territory at the beginning of his composition, it was not long before the journey through that landscape devolved into “more of the same.” Needless to say, it did not take long for D. 960 to blow away the cobwebs of that prior listening experience!

SFO: The First Spring Opera

One of the projected images for the new production of The Magic Flute (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

As was promised this past Tuesday, this site will attempt to provide “informative introductions” to each of the three operas to be presented by San Francisco Opera (SFO) between May 30 and June 23. The first of these will be a new production (at least for SFO) of a long-time favorite, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 620, The Magic Flute. The staging was conceived by Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky, and it was originally presented by the Komische Opera Berlin. Here in the United States, SFO is sharing the production with the Los Angeles Opera and the Minnesota Opera.

The producers were inspired by silent film, the Berlin cabaret of the 1920, and early Hollywood animation; and the latter will be included through the animation efforts of Paul Barritt. The stage design and costumes were created by Esther Bialas. SFO Music Director Eun Sun Kim will conduct, and she will participate is a post-performance talk following the matinee on Sunday, June 2.

Many readers probably know that the “hero” of this opera is the prince Tamino, whose role will be sung by tenor Amitai Pati, an Adler alumnus and Merola fellow. Those (if any) familiar with narratology know that the hero always has a sidekick. In this narrative he is Papageno, who (again following tradition) is a bit of a rascal and catches birds for the Queen of the Night. Those roles will be sung respectively by bass-baritone Lauri Vasar and coloratura soprano Anna Simińska. Pamina, the “heroine” sought by Tamino will be sung by soprano Christina Gansch. She is the daughter of the Queen of the Night; but Sarastro (bass Kwangchul Youn), who values wisdom above all else, sees the impetuous passions of the Queen as a bad influence. He has thus taken Pamina under his own aegis, charging his servant Monostatos (tenor Zhengyi Bai) to oversee her care. (This turns out to be mistaken judgment!) Taken as a whole, the narrative presents a diversity of characters with a diversity of motives.

As has already been observed, this production will be given nine performances at 7:30 p.m. on May 30 and June 4, 8, 14, 20, 22, and 26, and 2 p.m. on June 2 and 30. The performances will take place in the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street (across MTT Way from Davies Symphony Hall). Ticket prices range from $26 to $426, and a single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets 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. The Web page also includes a hyperlink to an Opera Previews Web site and a second Web page with information about pre-performance talks.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century Russians

As was the case with the French composers, three Russian composers are taken into account in the anthology of recordings made by Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic. In chronological order of birth, those composers are Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. However, among the three of them, there are only six compositions; and Shostakovich is “leader of the pack” with three of them. Rachmaninoff has a single CD all to himself with two works, and Prokofiev is represented only by his first violin concerto (on an album that gives “top billing” to violinist Sarah Chang)!

The Saint Petersburg Conservatory, probably as it appeared when Shostakovich was a student (photograph by Karl Bulla, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

The Shostakovich selections are particularly interesting, since they serve as “snapshots” of different periods in his career. Indeed, his first symphony (Opus 10 in F minor), was completed in 1925 when he was nineteen years old. He had composed it as his graduation piece at the Petrograd Conservatory (which is now the Saint Petersburg Conservatory). At the other end of his career, his fourteenth (next to last) symphony (Opus 135 in G minor) was first performed in September of 1969, having been completed in the spring of that year. Between these “bookends,” the Opus 77 (first) violin concerto in A minor was completed in 1948; but, due to the composer’s denunciation by the Zhdanov Doctrine, the premiere performance did not take place until October 29, 1955, by which time Shostakovich and David Oistrakh had worked on several revisions.

As a result, to some extent, these selections can be approached as “snapshots” from an autobiography. Opus 10 practically overflows with ambitious confidence; and it is clear that the composer had no idea how many “hammer blows” (with a nod to the biography of Gustav Mahler) he would have to endure. Nevertheless, Opus 135 bears witness to the composer’s strength in endurance; but this is far from your usual symphony. It was scored for soprano (Karita Mattila), bass (Thomas Quasthoff), and a small string orchestra with percussion. Technically speaking, the music would be better classified as a cantata, since each of its eleven movements is a setting of a poem, all translated into Russian from texts by Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Nevertheless, the composer always has the last word on how each of his compositions is named! This departure from convention can also found in the composer’s decision to provide descriptive titles to his concerto movements (rather than tempo markings): Nocturne, Scherzo, Passacaglia, Burlesque. Taken as a whole, these three “snapshots” provide an informative perspective on the composer’s career.

The Rachmaninoff CD has a similar biographical perspective. It begins with “The Bells” (Opus 35), which is usually described as a “choral symphony.” When that description was applied to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 125 in D minor, the “choral” portion was limited to the final movement. In “The Bells” all four of the movements are “choral,” with solo vocal parts in three of those movements. The first movement features a tenor (Dmytro Popov), the second a soprano (Ľuba Orgonášová), and the last a bass (Mikhail Petrenko). While the title was taken from the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, the text is a Russian adaptation by Konstantin Balmont; and any suggestion of Poe’s rhythms is purely coincidental! In my distant past I seem to recall a recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra that tried to accommodate Poe’s original words, and the impact of that experience led to my avoiding that music for quite some time!

Opus 35 is coupled with Opus 45, given the title Symphonic Dances. It is the only work composed in its entirely in the United States, completed in October of 1940. Rachmaninoff corresponded with Michel Fokine about creating choreography, but Fokine died in August of 1942. Several choreographers have tried to set this music. I seem to recall having seen a performance of the Bat-Dor Dance Company that left me cold. Nevertheless, I have been listening to this music since my high school days, and it still gets the juices flowing!

The Prokofiev concerto (Opus 19 in D major) gets far less attention than Opus 63 in G minor. (Prokofiev composed only those two.) It receives relatively little attention. Unless I am mistaken, my only previous encounter came from the Violin Masterclass anthology of recordings made by David Oistrakh. My guess is that Rattle chose to add this to his repertoire because it had been so neglected; but I fear that, where “public opinion” is concerned, there is more than a little reasoning behind that neglect!

San Francisco Philharmonic Coming to Herbst

Poster for the concert being discussed (from its Facebook Events Web page)

According to my records, the last time I tried to announce a performance by the San Francisco Philharmonic, led by is Founder and Music Director Jessica Bejarano, was in March of 2020; and, thanks to COVID, that concert never took place. Since that time, I have experienced radio silence from the group, which was only broken at the end of last month. The orchestra now announces its concerts through Groupmuse, which I am now set up to track by virtue of my need to follow other performers.

Yesterday afternoon, Groupmuse put up a Web page announcing that, towards the end of this month, the San Francisco Philharmonic will be performing in Herbst Theatre. The major work on the program will be Felix Mendelssohn’s third symphony, known to many (including those familiar with the ballets of George Balanchine) as the “Scottish.” The program will, with one addition, follow the usual overture-concerto-symphony format. The overture will be the one for the five-act opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, composed by Mikhail Glinka. The “concerto” will be the single movement “Romance” in the key of F minor, the orchestrated version of music originally composed for violin and piano by Antonín Dvořák. (The violin soloist has not yet been announced.) The program will include the “Phaéton” tone poem by Camille Saint-Saëns.

Tickets for this performance are on sale for $17, and they may be purchased through the Groupmuse Web page for this event. “Supermusers” will be able to purchase tickets for $12. The performance will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 25. Ticket sales through Groupmuse will close at noon on Friday, May 24. Seating will be general admission (first come first served). Tickets may be collected at the Box Office in the lobby.

Sun Ra: Chicago Sets from 1976 and 1977

Sun Ra on the cover of the album being discussed

In reviewing my archives, I discovered that, on several occasions, I would conjecture the influence of Sun Ra on a particular jazz artist that was the subject of my article. Sadly, it seems that I have not yet written anything about Ra himself. Fortunately, he was one of the artists to benefit from the plethora of new albums released in celebration of Record Store Day last month. The full title of the album that can introduce listeners to Ra’s unique approach to performance is Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago. The Amazon.com Web page in that preceding hyperlink provides options for both MP3 and a two-CD set.

All of the selections on the second CD were recorded on February 21, 1976. This includes the longest of the tracks, “The Shadow World,” clocking in short of eighteen minutes in duration. The tracks on the first CD were recorded at two different performances on November 4 and 10, 1977. The ensemble for all of these performances was a large one, and all of the reed players alternate among different instruments. That includes oboist James Jackson, whose other instrument is the Ancient Ihnfinity Drum. The brass section is limited to three trumpeters (Ahmed Abdullah, Emmett McDonald, and Vincent Chancey), joined by Richard Williams on French horn. There are also three vocalists: June Tyson, Cheryl Banks-Smith, and Wisteria (Judith Holton).

I had the good fortune to see Ra at least once in performance during the time when my wife and I were living in Los Angeles. It was clear that the visual experience was as important as the musical one, particularly to the extent that performances took place in a broader context of ritual. Nevertheless, the music was still jazz, even if the improvisations were wilder than anything one might encounter from any other ensemble.

Now, of course, those improvisations can be experienced only through recordings. Nevertheless, there are some advantages to that limitation, particularly for those listening with gear that includes access to time codes. It would not be out of the question to “parse” any given track for the sake of homing focus in on an extended solo or trying to tease out just how many instruments are doing how many different things during an ensemble episode. (Also, it may take several listenings to figure out some of the words being sung!)

I realize that some of these observations may be contrary to Ra’s own inclinations. Extended improvisations tend to develop around relatively simple building blocks, suggesting that the attentive listener should simply take things as they come to pass. While I had no trouble grooving on such spontaneity when in the presence of Ra and his ensemble, at the present “historical distance,” I am more inclined to take “deeper dives,” not necessarily for the entire album but at least for specific episodes that I feel deserve more attention.

Nevertheless, those without background experiences may have some trouble deciding whether this is noise masquerading as music or music masquerading as noise. My guess is that, if anyone would have put that choice to Ra himself, his answer would have been “Both and neither!” I suppose the appropriate metaphor is that Ra rolls the dice, and it is up to the listener to play it as it lays.

Daniel Hope’s Violin Recital for CMSF

Last night in Herbst Theatre, violinist Daniel Hope gave his San Francisco recital debut in a performance presented by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). He was accompanied at the piano by Simon Crawford-Phillips. The program spanned music from the nineteenth to the current century, including the United States premiere of Jake Heggie’s Fantasy Suite 1803, completed in 2022. There was also a last-minute augmentation, which did not appear on the program sheet.

The high point of the evening came in the second half, which was devoted entirely to César Franck’s A major violin sonata. I first became acquainted with this music in the late Seventies during my time in Santa Barbara. I had a neighbor on the faculty of the Music Departments at the University of California, and she was preparing this sonata for a recital. Since I was a frequent visitor to her unit, I heard a wide diversity of excerpts from the sonata each time I came to her door; so I was well prepared for my first encounter with the sonata in its entirety. It remains one of my favorites, and the expressiveness that both Hope and Crawford-Phillips brought to their interpretation triggered many fond memories.

The same could be said of the encore selection, Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” (love’s sorrow), the second of the two pieces collected under the title Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen (old Viennese melodies). This is music I have known from childhood, probably because it was often injected into soundtracks for silent cartoons! Hope’s delivery captured the nostalgia of the music without letting the rhetoric get too syrupy.

The first half of the program did not leave as strong an impression. The opening selection was George Enescu’s “Impromptu Concertante.” Enescu was a major figure in the twentieth century, not only as a composer but also as a violinist, a conductor, and a teacher. “Impromptu Concertante” was one of his earliest works, composed in 1903 but not published until 1958. In retrospect I would call it one of those pieces by an up-and-coming-talent throwing everything but the kitchen sink into his efforts. Hope had a solid command of the technical demands, but the overall rhetorical framework left much to be desired.

This was followed by Maurice Ravel’s first violin sonata, composed in the key of A minor and not published until after his death. This was a relatively short single-movement composition, and one can appreciate why Ravel never published it. Hope chose to segue it into Suite populaire espagnole, six of the seven Spanish folksongs (Siete canciones populares españolas) composed by Manuel de Falla, who made the arrangement with Paul Kochanski. I never fail to enjoy these pieces, regardless of setting; but I did not think that Hope quite caught the spirit of the music.

The first half of the program concluded with the Heggie suite, and the composer was on hand to introduce the audience to its four movements. Considering its relatively brevity, this music was, as they say, “all over the map,” which may have been foreboded by an opening movement entitled “Constellations.” The following movements capture the aggressive nature of Ludwig van Beethoven, the rise and fall of his relationship with George Bridgetower (for whom the “Kreutzer” sonata was written), and Heggie’s own opera Dead Man Walking. (I am surprised that the kitchen sink did not show up in the midst of all that diversity!)

Fortunately, the second half of the program compensated for any shortcomings encountered during the first.

SFO: The Spring Operas of the 101st Season

This month will conclude with the remaining three operas scheduled for the 101st season of the San Francisco Opera. As in the past, this site will provide previews for each of these operas in individual articles. However, this article will provide the “nuts and bolts” summary accounting for composers, opera titles, and date-and-time summaries of the performances as follows:

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Magic Flute: 7:30 p.m. on May 30 and June 4, 8, 14, 20, 22, and 26, and 2 p.m. on June 2 and 30
2. Kaija Saariaho, Innocence: 7:30 p.m. on June 1, 7, 12, 18, and 21, and 2 p.m. on June 16
3. George Frideric Handel, Partenope: 7:30 p.m. on June 15, 19, 25, and 28, and 2 p.m. on June 23

Information about plot and casting will follow soon on an article-by-article basis.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century France

The account by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic of twentieth-century music by French composers is decidedly shorter than the collections for Gustav Mahler and the “Schoenberg-Stravinsky axis.” There are, of course, the “usual expected suspects,” Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, each represented by the entirety of a single CD. Only one other CD remains, which consists of a single composition by Olivier Messiaen.

The Debussy CD begins with two of his own “usual suspects.” The first of these is the “Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune” with the flute solo taken by Emmanuel Pahud; and it is followed by his La mer (the sea), which the composer described as “three symphonic sketches.” The remainder of the CD is devoted to orchestral versions of piano music. The first of these is the score for the ballet “La boîte à joujoux” (the toy-box), whose piano score was orchestrated by André Caplet. The remaining three tracks presented three of the piano preludes in orchestrations by Colin Matthews. I must confess that I was particularly drawn to “La boîte à joujoux,” simply because I was so unfamiliar with it; and it did not take long for listening to emerge as a what-have-I-been-missing event.

Marie-Therese Gauley in her costume for the title role of “L'enfant et les sortilèges” (photograph by Henri Manuel, public domain in France, from Wikimedia Commons)

The Ravel disc begins with the complete performance of the one-act opera “L'enfant et les sortilèges” (the child and the spells), setting a libretto written by Colette. The whole affair is shamelessly silly, which is probably why I find it irresistible! Since this was a studio recording, multiple roles were taken by all but one of the vocalists. As readers might guess, that “one” was mezzo Magdalena Kožená (Lady Rattle), singing the title role! I have had many encounters with this music; and it always leaves me with a smile (along with a few belly-laughs as the plot unfolds). Rattle’s account definitely allowed the music to stand up on its own without staging. It was then followed by the orchestral version of the Ma mère l'Oye suite, which had originated as a piano duet performed by six-year-old Mimi Godebski and her seven-year-old brother Jean. Having performed that four-hand version with one of my neighbors, I am a sucker for any opportunity to revisit the music!

The Messiaen selection is one of his massive undertakings inspired by the New Testament. The Wikipedia page for “Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà…” translated the title as “lightning over the beyond.” However an entire paragraph is devoted to explaining both the denotations and connotations of the title. This is one of those compositions inspired by the New Testament Book of Revelation, which may well be the deepest dive into imaginary rhetoric to be found in any sacred writings.

I must confess that, when I listen to Messiaen, I rarely commit myself to teasing out all of those denotations and connotations in either the music or the text that inspired that music. I am content to “go along for the ride,” and I am seldom disappointed. Rattle’s recording (which was also included in the Warner Messiaen anthology) was a teasing reminder that I should take that ride more often.

The Bleeding Edge: 4/29/2024

This will be a busy week. However, much of it has been included in the “busy weekend” article for May 3–5, including the addition of one more event at the very end of that weekend. In addition, there have already been articles that account the entire new month for both Outsound Presents and the Center for New Music. As a result, this is the first time that all of the events to be considered this week have been accounted for by hyperlinks! 

A Pair of (Sort of) Singing Trumpeters

This month saw the celebration of Record Store Day on April 20. As most readers might guess, I spent the evening at a recital, rather than with my album collection. Nevertheless, a generous number of “historically significant” jazz albums were reissued for the occasion. Now that they have made it to the head of my queue, I feel it appropriate to deal with them on a one-by-one basis.

Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon on the cover of the album being discussed

I shall begin with the Jazz Detective album entitled In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album. The source of that album was a collection of studio performances recorded in 1972, which was shared by two West Coast trumpet icons, Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon. Both of them also provided vocals, and I suppose the polite way of putting it is that each one had his own unique approach to vocalizing. For the record, as they say, I have had enough exposure to get used to Baker’s voice; but I am not as sympathetic to Sheldon’s efforts!

The album has ten tracks; and rhythm is provided by the quartet of pianist David Frishberg, Joe Mondragon on bass, drummer Nick Ceroli, and Jack Marshall on guitar. For the most part, the vocals prevail over the instrumental work; but, as many readers know by now, I am always a sucker for following the bass line, even when the bass player does not venture into any extended improvisations. I was also drawn to Frishberg’s work, both in the background and on the occasions in which he took the foreground. Unless I am mistaken, this was my first contact with Sheldon; and, while I appreciated some of his stylistic turns, it is unlikely that I shall be actively pursuing any of his other recordings.

Baker’s history, on the other hand, was a variable one (to be polite about it). In reviewing my archives, I discovered that my collection includes two of his Pacific Jazz releases, the quartet album with Russ Freeman, recorded in Los Angeles in 1953, followed by Picture of Heath, six tracks recorded at a single session on October 31, 1956, also in Los Angeles. There are then two additions to my collection from recordings made in Europe, Early Chet, a “lost tapes” anthology of sessions in Germany between 1955 and 1959, and Blue Room, compiled from a series of sessions at the Vara Studio in Holland in 1979.

I must confess to one bit of frustration. While I had no trouble distinguishing the vocalizations of the two leaders, I was never quite sure who was taking which of the trumpet solos! It would not surprise me if those details were never documented (or if any documentation made at the time was subsequently lost). As a result, while the tracks on this album are, for the most part, engaging, I am more likely to return to the other Baker albums in my collection, if only for my personal obsession with specifics!

Pocket Opera’s Staging of Janáček’s Vixen

The monument for Sharp Ears erected in Janáček’s home town of Hukvaldy (photograph by Kazuo Ikeda, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from Wikimedia Commons)

Yesterday afternoon at the Legion of Honor, Pocket Opera presented the San Francisco performance of the latest installment in its 2024 season, Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. This opera, which explores the parallels between human nature and forest animals, requires a substantial cast, led by the title character (given the name “Sharp Ears”), sung by soprano Amy Foote. The cast also included two dancers, Bela Watson and Stephen Fambro, both with dual roles. The production was directed by Nicolas A. Garcia.

Those familiar with the venue know that its performance area is limited; and, in the absence of an orchestra pit, the musicians are required to perform in a narrow space behind the “action” on the stage. This layout could not accommodate the full extent of Janáček’s instrumentation techniques. Fortunately, Jonathan Lyness created an orchestration of the full score requiring only thirteen instrumentalists (four of whom played multiple instruments); and the Mid-Wales Opera was kind enough to share that score with Pocket Opera.

While the full cast accounts for a rich diversity of both animal and human personalities, the entire narrative revolves around Sharp Ears. As a child she is captured by the Forester (baritone Spencer Dodd); but it does not take long for him and his wife (mezzo Mary Rauh) to realize that she cannot be domesticated. By the time the vixen has matured at the beginning of the second act, she has her first encounter with the fox Goldstripe (mezzo Hope Nelson); and it is not long until the stage begins to fill up with five fox cubs. By the end of the opera, both the vixen and the Forester’s wife have died. However, the Forester encounters a frog, which turns out to be the grandson of a frog that appeared at the beginning of the opera, affirming that life goes on in cycles.

This makes for a rather elaborate plot line. However, Janáček’s score keeps the action moving, so to speak. The libretto, which was also by Janáček, was sung in a clearly-delivered English translation by Pocket Opera founder Donald Pippin. It was thus easy to negotiate the characters of the large cast and the rich extent of the action. My own quibble would be that an opera with such a rich abundance of imaginative content deserved a setting more conducive for the orchestra, the performers on stage, and (to at least some extent) the audience. Given the many challenges of financing, this is an ensemble that deserves deeper pockets!

Clerestory to Explore Schumann(s) and Brahms

Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, and Clara Schumann (courtesy of Clerestory)

Tickets are now available for the second concert to be presented in the current Clerestory season. (It has been a bit of a wait, since the first concert was performed this past November!) The full title of the program will be Notes and Letters: Music of Brahms and the Schumanns. Note the plural at the end of the title. The program will present choral music by not only Johannes Brahms but also both Robert and Clara Schumann. Specific selections have not yet been announced, but the program has been conceived to express this three-way relationship in terms of themes of longing, love, loss, and redemption. While Clerestory usually performs a cappella, for this program pianist Kymry Esainko will provide accompaniment for some of the selections.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place next month on Sunday, May 26, beginning at 7 p.m. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Tickets may be purchased through an Eventbrite Web page with prices of $35 for general admission, $25 for seniors, and $5 for students.

The Latest Discovery of Art Tatum Recordings

Cover of the album being discussed

Some readers may have observed that, every now and then when writing about pianists, I find of a way of injecting the name of Art Tatum into the context. To call him a jazz pianist of prodigious inventiveness would be selling him short. Indeed, since he was a contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff, I like to fantasize over what might have happened had the two of them been in the same place at the same time. (To the best of my knowledge, this never happened; but I can still wonder whether each listened to recordings of the other!)

As a result, even though I have both of the “Complete” box sets released by Pablo (one for solos and one for combos), I never miss an opportunity to add recordings of Tatum performances to my collection. So when I learned that Resonance Records was releasing a three-CD collection of live performances from the Blue Note jazz club in Chicago, recorded between August 16 and 28 in 1953, I was as happy as a pig in you-know-what. The title of the collection is Jewels in the Treasure Box, and it could not be more accurate.

With the exception of a few solo tracks, all of the performances are of a trio that Tatum led. He was joined by guitarist Everett Barksdale and Slam Stewart on piano. Every now and then, each of them gets an opportunity for a solo take or two; but, for the most part it’s Tatum’s show. My guess is that almost all of the tunes are familiar and have been previously recorded, but Tatum’s inventiveness knows no bounds. It seems as if, every time he returns to a tune, he has another way of approaching it.

It is also worth noting that those approaches often involved a radical shift in connotation. One of Tatum’s favorite sources from the classical repertoire was Jules Massenet’s “Élégie” (which the composer himself repurposed several times). As the title suggested, the composer conceived this as a musical evocation of melancholia. The score page I found through IMSLP gives the tempo as “Triste et très lent.” In this Chicago collection, Tatum’s performance is anything but “triste,” since he performs it at an eye-popping breakneck pace!

Since these are club performances, there is no shortage of “background noise.” Nevertheless, the recording technology consistently keeps the music in the foreground. When any imposition from the background finds its way onto the recording, it is inevitably a sign of appreciation from the audience that is bound to concur with anyone listening to that particular track. It is also worth noting that the album includes a fifteen-page booklet, which includes a diverse collection of retrospective reflections by other musicians with first-hand experiences of Tatum’s talents, such as Ahmad Jamal and Sonny Rollins. I also rather liked Rollins’ reflection that, when Earl (“Fatha”) HInes was at one of Tatum’s performances, he said, “God is in the house!”

Enjoy the journey!