Opera Repertoire for 2026–27 SFO Season

I see that it is almost exactly a year ago that I ran an article announcing the repertoire for the 2025–26 season of the San Francisco Opera. During the fall of the coming season, there will be four opera productions, the annual Opera in the Park event, and a concert performed by the SFO Orchestra under the baton of Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim. For that concert, Kim has prepared a program of three compositions by Richard Strauss, beginning with one of his most familiar orchestral works, his Opus 28 tone poem, “Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.” Equally familiar will be a suite of music from the opera Der Rosenkavalier, in a new arrangement for orchestra by Philippe Jordan and Tomáš Ille. Between these “bookends” soprano Adela Zaharia will be the solo vocalist in a performance of the six songs that Strauss collected for his Opus 68, sometimes known as the Brentano Lieder for the poems by Clemens Brentano. In “order of appearance,” the full-opera productions will be presented as follows:

Simon Boccanegra, Giuseppe Verdi: Once again, the season will begin with a Verdi opera conducted, as in past Verdi productions, by Kim. Katherine M. Carter will be the Revival Director for staging originally conceived by Claus Guth. As was the case last season, the title role will be sung by Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat.

Mary, Queen of Scots, Thea Musgrave: This will be a co-production with the English National Opera of a staging by Stewart Laing, who will be making his SFO debut. Conductor Clelia Cafiero will also be debuting. However, the title role will be taken by a soprano familiar to San Francisco, Heidi Stober.

Soprano Ellie Dehn in the title role of the “balloon scene” in Massenet’s opera Manon (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Manon, Jules Massenet: This will be a revival of the production shared with the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, which gave the premiere in Vilnius in September of 2015, and the Israeli Opera. Staging was conceived by Vincent Boussard, who will return as Director. Kim will conduct.

Le nozze di Figaro (the marriage of Figaro), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: This will be another revival, going back to the 2019–20 season when Michael Cavanagh staged productions of all three of the Mozart operas based on librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Shawna Lucey will direct the production, and Sebastian Weigle will make his debut as conductor. Bass-baritone Peter Kellner will make his SFO debut in the title role.

Das Rheingold, Richard Wagner: As a “preview” for the complete production of Der Ring des Nibelungen (the ring of the Nibelung), which will be given three full cycles in June of 2028, May and June will see seven performances of the first opera in the cycle; and Kim will conduct the return of the staging directed by Francesca Zambello.

Tosca, Giacomo Puccini: This is the very first opera that Kim conducted after she was appointed Music Director. Shawna Lucey will return as Director. However, for this revival, the conductor will be Clelia Cafiero. Soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen will be making her title role debut.

As is always the case, this site will do its best to provide further information as the opening dates of these productions draw nearer.

125 Years Since Duke Ellington’s Birth!

Artistic Director Charlie Young leading the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (photograph by Murphy Mochetta)

Today the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra released an album of live performances of Duke Ellington’s music, recorded between 1940 and 1968. The title of the album is, appropriately enough, Ellington Masterworks; and it is now available for CD purchase through an Amazon.com Web page. The advance material I received described the compositions being performed as “rare,” and I certainly agree! Unless I am mistaken, the only familiar track on the album was the last one: “Jack the Bear.”

In reviewing my archives, I found it interesting to be reminded that, at the beginning of this season in September, Ellington’s music was performed both at Jazz Chez Hanny and (somewhat more surprising) Davies Symphony Hall. In the latter setting, Ellington’s “Harlem” (which I described as an “extended jazz composition”) rubbed shoulders with two major works by George Gershwin, “Concerto in F” and “An American in Paris.”

The eight tracks for Ellington Masterworks were recorded on a single day, April 6, 2024, at MCG Jazz in Pittsburgh. These were all “live” (as opposed to edited) takes. The ensemble is a large one: four saxophones, five trumpets, three trombones, and the usual rhythm section of piano, bass, and drums. For what it is worth, the drummer, Ken Kimery, is also the Executive Producer; and the conductor, Charlie Young, is also the Artistic Director. Since my own interest is in piano, I was particularly drawn to the solo piano performance by Tony Nalker that began the fourth track on the album, “Madness in Great Ones.” Even though the track is one of the shortest on the albums (only four and a half minutes), this is the sort of performance that is likely to raise eyebrows among those thinking that they knew all there was to know about Ellington!

Personally, I am curious about whether the Smithsonian will come up with any further disruptions for those of us thinking that we know “all about” certain musical topics!

August will Begin with SF Bach Festival

American Bach has finalized the five programs to be performed during the San Francisco Bach Festival, which will take place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music during the first full week of August. The first four programs on August 5, 6, 7, and 8 will begin at 7:30 PM, followed by an afternoon performance on August 9 at 4 p.m. to conclude the Festival. Each program will have its own theme, captured by the event’s title; and there will be considerable diversity in the offerings. Specifics, including the title of each program, the venue, and the works to be performed, are as follows:

Wednesday, August 5, 7:30 p.m., Sol Joseph Recital Hall: Intimate Bach will present four compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach involving three different solo instruments. The program will begin with the BWV 1006 solo violin partita in E major. This will be followed by the BWV 1034 sonata for flute in E minor with continuo accompaniment. The next solo offering will be BWV 1009, the solo cello suite in C major; and the program will conclude with BWV 1017, the C minor sonata for violin and harpsichord.

Thursday, August 6, 7:30 p.m. Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall: The program will begin with a composer and violinist based here in San Francisco, Ericsson Hatfield. His selection will be Trio in A Minor, which he composed in the Italian Baroque style. There will be a second living composer on the program, Nicola Canzano, whose ninth trio sonata, in the key of C major, will be performed. Bach will be represented by the trio sonata composed to complete his BWV 1079, The Musical Offering. There will be two additional sonatas, both by contemporaries of Bach, Henry Purcell and Giuseppe Tartini.

Friday, August 7, 7:30 p.m., Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall: The title of this program will be Around the World in 80 Minutes, and each of the works will have been composed in a different country. The first composer left continental Europe to live and work in England. The program will begin with a set of variations on the English song “John, come kiss me now,” composed by Thomas Baltzar. The remainder of the program will be devoted to “usual suspects:” a concerto entitled “Polonois” by Georg Philipp Telemann, a set of “Trios pour le coucher du Roi” (loosely translated as “trios to put the king to sleep”) composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the last of the twelve concertos in Antonio Vivaldi’s Opus 1 collection, a set of variations on the “Folia” theme, and Bach’s BWV 212, best known as the Peasant Cantata, but called by Bach himself Cantate burlesque.

Saturday, August 8, 7:30 p.m.: This will be another program devoted entirely to Bach, Vivaldi, and Telemann, consisting of concertos involving a diversity of instruments. The three Bach concertos will be BWV 1042 for violin in E major, BWV 1055 for harpsichord in A major, and BWV 1060R for oboe and violin in C minor. The Vivaldi violin concertos will be RV 234 in D major, “L’inquietudine,” and RV 565 in D minor, the penultimate concerto in the Opus 3 collection. The only Telemann selection will be his flute concerto in D major.

George Frideric Handel, whose music had to wait for the final program of the Festival (portrait attributed to Balthasar Denner)

Sunday, August 9, 4 p.m.: Both Telemann and Bach will return for the final program. The former will begin the program with his TWV 54 concerto in A major for four violins. The Bach selection will be the familiar BWV 1068, the third of his four orchestral suites, this one in the key of D major. The second half of the program will be devoted to George Frideric Handel’s HWV 76 cantata, given the title Ode for St. Cecilia's Day.

A First Encounter with Eduard Tubin

1958 photograph on Eduard Tubin, taken by Aarre Ekholm (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Every now and then I find myself encountering a previously-overlooked album, which interests me enough to catch up on lost time, so to speak. This was the case with The Early Years of Eduard Tubin, which was released by Orchid Classics almost exactly three month ago. Tubin was born on June 18, 1905, in Torila in Tartu County, located in the Governorate of Livonia, then part of the Russian Empire. His music education began at the Tartu Teacher’s College in 1920. He studied under the Estonian composer Heino Eller and would later be influenced by Zoltán Kodály, whom he met in 1938 during a visit to Hungary.

The album presents performances of two of Tubin’s major compositions. These are presented in chronological order, beginning with the four-movement Suite on Estonian Motifs, followed by his second symphony, given the title “Legendary.” There are also two additional tracks of solo piano preludes. Mihhail Gerts is both conductor of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and also pianist. The entire duration of the album is slightly longer than an hour.

Tubin’s approach to instrumentation definitely makes this album “worth the price of admission” (as P. T. Barnum would have put it). Awareness of his work was only recently revived with the creation of an annual Tubin Festival in 2021, held in Estonia in both Tartu and Tallinn. It will be interesting to see if Orchid Classics will continue with further releases of Tubin’s music, allowing listeners to assess his talents with more than an hour’s work of experience.

Evening of Art Song Coming to the Sunset

Yesterday this site wrote about the duo of violinist Kenneth Renshaw and pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi returning to the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 19. On their last visit to the venue, they presented a program that brought Amy Beach together with Claude Debussy and  Sergei Prokofiev, beginning with a recent (2021) composition by Emma Greenhill. I have now received word from this venue that there will be an equally promising program that will take place next month.

Pianist Paul Dab (courtesy of the San Francisco Community Music Center)

The title of the program will be Art Song: Summer Evening, which basically describes the event. The vocalist will be tenor Corey Head, accompanied at the piano by Paul Dab. Flutist Jessica Miller will also contribute to the program. Content has not yet been finalized; but the announcement made note of “favorites” by Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Claude Debussy, and Henry Purcell, as well as others. The duration is expected to be about two hours.

This recital will take place on Saturday, July 11, beginning at 7:30 p.m. General admission will be $28.52 with a $23.18 rate for students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased online through Eventbrite.

This Year’s Emerging Composer Concert

The ARTZenter poster of the latest Emerging Composer Grant winners

As was announced a week ago, the ARTZenter Institute joined forces with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP), led by Artistic Director & Conductor Eric Dudley for another concert of world premiere performances made possible by the Emerging Composer Grant Program. I can now present the order of works on the program as it was performed last night:

1. Euna Joh: A Grief Observed
2. Jackson A. Waters: my rage is quiet
3. Luca Pasquini: Memories of Storm & Light
4. Eric Estrada Valadez: Divided Realities

As in the past, the composer’s were all present, providing brief but informative introductions for each of the pieces. The size of the ensemble was generous enough to fill the stage, but there were enough imaginative approaches to instrumentation to make for an engaging evening.

Joh’s composition struck me as a study in the diverse aspects of mathematical noise. For those unfamiliar with the term, it involves a sequence of random numbers; and there is a whole sub-discipline in mathematics involving what makes a series of integers really random. Mind you, I have no idea how much mathematics influenced Joh; but “A Grief Observed” came across as an étude conceived to defy the usual predictability one associates with a musical composition. The duration was just long enough for the attentive listener to appreciate that challenge of predictability. Waters’ “my rage is quiet” was also a “noise étude.” He described his approach as “bottled tension,” and his program note suggested that this was a reflection on his own personal dispositions.

The title “Memories of Storm & Light” came across as a description of instrumentation. The “storm” emerged from a fair amount of the score being devoted to the bass drum. The “light,” presumably before the storm, began the performance with an extended violin solo. The result was an engaging study in contrasts that never came across as too academic. “Divided Realities” was also a title that spoke for itself. A wide diversity of sonorities emerged from all the different locations in the ensemble, and the superposition of those sonorities came across as an intense conflict. This performance left me leaving Herbst Theatre with a sigh of relief but also with a sense of a journey well taken.

Renshaw and Nakagoshi to Return to Sunset

Kenneth Renshaw and Keisuke Nakagoshi, who will give their next performance in a little over two weeks’ time (photograph from the recital’s event page)

Violinist Kenneth Renshaw and pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi gave their last duo recital at the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue, almost exactly two years ago. This month the concert series began this past Saturday with the duo presenting a program that brought Amy Beach together with Claude Debussy and  Sergei Prokofiev, beginning with a recent (2021) composition by Emma Greenhill. They will give a second recital at the same venue one week from Friday, June 19, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Whether or not they will play the same selections for this second round has not yet been announced. General admission will be $39.19 with a $33.85 rate for students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased online through Eventbrite.

The Voice and Musicianship of Harpo Marx

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

Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert is the “only official voice recording” of Harpo Marx. Unless I am mistaken, every Marx Brothers movie included an episode in which Harpo gave a solo harp performance; and the closest he ever came to verbal communication amounted to honking a bicycle horn. The concert recorded on this album took place six months prior to his death in 1964.

The vocal side of his performance was the narration for Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 67, “Peter and the Wolf,” given the subtitle “A Symphonic Tale for Children.” I have lost count of the number of narrators that have contributed to recordings of this composition; but I know that my own first encounter was with Basil Rathbone, who knew just the right way to endow each episode of the story with the right disposition. Nevertheless, since Harpo expressed himself only through mime and music in all of those Marx Brothers movies, this concert album is definitely “one for the books!” He also collaborated with his brother Groucho for their own unique account of the narration.

The program began with a performance of the “Toy Symphony,” which was originally attributed to Joseph Haydn but, according to more recent musicological research, was probably composed by Haydn’s younger brother, Michael. This was followed by a few popular and traditional songs (concluding with Stephen Foster), after which Harpo added one of his own compositions, “Guardian Angels.” Taken as a whole, the album is an engaging one, providing a welcome opportunity to appreciate Harpo’s musicianship.

I get the impression these days that the Marx Brothers are not as appreciated as they were during the second half of the last century. Personally, for the better part of my life, I could not get enough of them! Since I did not even know about Harpo’s Riverside concert when it took place, I have enjoyed making up for lost time in listening to this new album.

The Bleeding Edge: 6/8/2026

This is one of those weeks when the number of new events is only one more than that of events previously announced. Where Audium is concerned, there will be two more BIOMETRICKS performances on Friday, June 12, and Saturday, June 13. In addition, there will be the next concert of world premiere performances made possible by the Emerging Composer Grant Program presented by the ARTZenter Institute taking place tomorrow (June 9). Finally, this week will see the first two concerts of the month taking place at the Center for New Music, the Kra Pao recital on Friday and the monthly pancake event at noon on Saturday. Specifics for the remaining events are as follows:

Monday, June 8, 8 p.m., Dead End Vintage: This was announced in last week’s Bleeding Edge, which just shows that the end of one week is the beginning of the next. To save readers trouble with hyperlinks, the text will be repeated as follows: “Once again, vintage clothing will provide a setting for free improvisation. This time there will be an abundance of seven sets, and at least some of the performers are likely to be familiar to readers. They will be as follows: Ava Koohbor, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, Danishta Rivero, Jordan Blankenship, K Francis Messer, Kaitlin McSweeney, and Domi Nigro. Each will present a unique take on improvisational noise. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m., and admission will be $10. Nevertheless, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.”

Thursday, June 11, 7 p.m., Mr. Tipple’s Jazz Club: This will be a special performance by ensembles from the Jazzschool Advance High School Workshop. The first set will be a quintet of five student musicians. The front line will be shared by Victor Taraboukhine on tenor saxophone and pianist Max Roston-Saul. Rhythm will be provided by Levi Friedman on bass and drummer Benjamin Gleason. The second set will be a quartet of three students led by their instructor Peter Horvath on piano. Student Carl Schultz will lead on tenor saxophone, with rhythm bringing together Essiet Okon Essiet on bass and drummer Jason Lewis.

Thursday, June 11, 8 p.m., Peacock Lounge: Unfortunately, the students will not be able to make it to the Peacock Lounge for this four-set performance. Bob Ostertag will perform a solo set of sound captured by handmade and “virtual” synthesizers, samplers, and “a multivalent mind.” The second set is likely to emerge as a collision of choices of resources selected by Jacob Felix Heule and Antimatter, respectively. Philip Perkins, who previously performed with The Residents, will give a solo set. Finally, Anti-Ear is the brainchild of polymath Tyler Harwood.

Friday, June 12, 7:30 p.m., Gray Area Art And Technology: Paradessence is a full-length performance to be presented by Visible Cloaks; and, as might be guessed, not very much content about what to expect is visible!

Saturday, June 13, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: The four members of the Rova Saxophone Quartet will give their first concert in nearly two years. They will present two sets of new and recent works. Presumably, the membership will still be Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Steve Adams, and Bruce Ackley.

Will Bernard with his guitar (on the home page of his Web site)

Sunday, June 14, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: This will be a “double header” at Bird & Beckett. The second program will devoted entirely to a trio led by saxophonist Beth Custer. She will be joined by two guitarists: Will Bernard and Ken Emerson.

“Elektra” Returns to San Francisco Opera

Yesterday afternoon saw the first of six performances of Richard Strauss’ one-act opera “Elektra” to the San Francisco Opera in the War Memorial Opera House. The running time was only one and two-thirds hours, but the resources are abundant. The orchestra consisted of 95 musicians including two timpanists (one doubling on percussion), three additional percussionists, and four Wagner tubas. There is an offstage chorus of 45 vocalists, and sixteen characters on the stage.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal prepared the libretto, using the Sophocles “Electra” play as his source. Sophocles may have drawn upon the earlier “Electra” play by Euripides, which, in turn, mined sources from the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. There are sixteen vocalists in Hofmannsthal’s cast, but the title role dominates all others from beginning to end. Even as the curtain first rises, there are five maidservants talking about Elektra.

The narrative itself is one of vengeance. Prior to the beginning of the story, King Agamemnon was assassinated by his wife Klytemnestra. Elektra is their daughter, and she joins forces with her brother Orest to murder their mother for the crime she has committed. As already stated, all of this fits into a single uninterrupted act with a large diversity of instrumental sonorities to keep things moving. The good news is that the vocalists on stage could hold their own against conductor Eun Sun Kim’s intense management of the orchestra. Given Strauss’ reputation for “pulling out the stops,” Kim’s technique would have made the composer (or his spirit) proud.

Elektra (Elena Pankratova) dwarfed by the excessive stage design by Boris Kudlička

The production by Keith Warner, revived for this performance by Anja Kühnhold, was another matter. Rather than trying to establish an Ancient Greek setting, he situated the performance in a museum with Ancient Greek artifacts on display. Personally, I felt that the staging would have benefited from a bit more focus. Too many things were happening (either through projections or “in the flesh”) to keep the viewer attentive to Sophocles’ narrative. It is one thing when Strauss’ music and Hofmannsthal’s libretto navigate us through Elektra’s thoughts and deeds and quite another when the navigation has to contend with superfluity.

In performances in 1991 and 1997, this opera was directed by Andrei Serban. This was a director who was often criticized for “going over the top;” but, every now and then, he knew just how to hit the nail on the head. Watching that production kept me on the edge of my seat. Yesterday, I felt that I was just clocking off the episodes from Sophocles’ play.

Peter Whelan to Begin Tenure with PBO in July

Peter Whelan will curate his first season as Music Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO) in a little over a month’s time. San Francisco will see a series of six concerts beginning next month and continuing through April of next year.  As in the past, in addition to full-season subscriptions, there will be Choose-Your-Own subscriptions for five, four, or three concerts. Also as in the past, all San Francisco performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Subscriptions are now on sale, and a Web page has been created, which provides separate hyperlinks for the available options. The San Francisco dates are as follows:

Thursday, July 23, Handel’s Tolomeo: The season will begin with a semi-staged production of George Frideric Handel’s opera seria, Tolomeo, re d'Egitto (Ptolemy, King of Egypt), HWV 25. The advance material I received describes the production as  a “historically informed performance with theatrical elements to heighten the drama.” Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen will perform the title role. Other vocalists will be countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim, sopranos Lauren Snouffer and Nicole Heaston, and bass-baritone Dashon Burton.

Friday, November 13, Handel’s The Power of Music: The five-concert subscription series will begin with the United States premiere of the 1772 Dublin version of the HWV 75 ode, Alexander’s Feast; vocal soloists will be soprano Sherezade Panthaki, mezzo Rachael Wilson, and tenor James Way with Valérie Sainte-Agathe leading the Philharmonia Chorale.

Friday, December 4, Baroque Brilliance: The program will begin with more Handel, this time limited to a single aria, “Let the Bright Seraphim” from the HWV 57 three-act oratorio Samson performed by soprano Kathryn Mueller. The second half of the program will present two members of the Bach family. It will conclude with the BWV 51 cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. This will be preceded by a concerto composed by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, his Wq. 172 concerto for cello in A major. This, in turn, will be preceded by the last of the three orchestral suites composed by Georg Philipp Telemann, the TWV 55:G10 Burlesque de Quixotte. In the first half of the program, Mueller will also sing the West Coast premiere of “O virgo, cui salute debet orbis,” composed by Marianna Martines, whose keyboard music was recently recorded by Signum Classics on an album release this past April.

Friday, February 5, Vivaldi and the Oud: I suspect that it is very unlikely that Vivaldi knew anything about the oud. However, Philharmonic Baroque Composer-in-Residence Tarik O’Regan has composed a concerto for it with accompaniment by strings and percussion (perhaps with a nod to Béla Bartók). This new work will be both preceded and followed by works by Antonio Vivaldi. The program will begin with the overture to RV 725, the three-act dramma per musica entitled L'Olimpiade. The second half of the program will survey selected movements from L'estro armonico, Vivaldi’s Opus 3 collection of twelve concertos for string instruments.

Friday, March 5, Baroque on Stage: The first half of this program will survey a selection of works composed for staged performances by Henry Purcell and Jean-Philippe Rameau. It will conclude with a set of variations on the “Folia” theme, composed by Francesco Geminiani in an arrangement by Michi Wiancko. There will also be a concerto in E minor by Antonio Vivaldi, which will apparently be a “synthesis” of RV 273 and RV 278. The second half of the program will begin with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Wq. 182:5, a symphony in B minor.

William Blake’s The Ancient of Days, a depiction of the angel Urizen planning the Creation

Friday, April 9, The Creation: Having began the season with an opera, PBO will conclude with an oratorio. This will be The Creation, the Hoboken XXI:2 oratorio by Joseph Haydn. The vocal soloists will be soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Enrico Lagasca. Valérie Sainte-Agathe will again lead the Philharmonia Chorale.

DSO: Wagner with Tchaikovsky and Strauss

The text for yesterday evening’s latest YouTube livestream of the performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) began as follows: “Stories of tragic love unfold through the expressive power of the orchestra.” Each half of the program began with music by Richard Wagner: the Prelude and Liebestod episodes (the latter performed without vocalist) from Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde and the “Siegfried Idyll” tone poem, which serves as a supplement to the operatic tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen  (the ring of the Nibelung). The first half of the program concluded with another tone poem, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini;” and the program concluded with an instrumental suite of excerpts from Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier. Music Director Jader Bignamini led the ensemble.

What struck me most positively was the conductor’s measure-by-measure sensitivity to Wagner’s dynamics. Those familiar with the composer know how his sensitivity to dynamics underscores the narrative subtleties that provide the backbone of the music. Those dynamics are better appreciated when the narrative is performed in its entirety, but there are always subtleties underlying many (if not most) of Wagner’s excerpts. One could appreciate those subtleties in watching Bignamini at work, even when the music has been deprived of its overall narrative context.

The music of the other two composers on the program was anything but subtle. The narrative behind Tchaikovsky’s tone poem was inspired by one of the “Inferno” episodes in the first of the three parts of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. I must confess that the account of forbidden love borders on soap opera, and Tchaikovsky’s music just adds more soap to the narrative. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the composer’s approaches to instrumentation, particularly when he deploys a trio of three separate flute parts, given a thoroughly engaging account by last night’s Detroit musicians:

Three members of the DSO flute section playing Tchaikovsky (screen shot from last night’s YouTube livestream)

Where Rosenkavalier is concerned, I much confess that I prefer the full-length opera to the excerpts. The “magic” resides in the relationship between the music and the overall narrative. When selections are performed, they tend to be most meaningful only to those that know the whole story. The most significant case in point concerns the most familiar instrumental waltz, which is actually providing background for a scheming scoundrel! Fortunately, I could engage my own memories of the opera as context for Bignamini’s performance and could fully appreciate the excerpts he performed!

Carmen Lite?

Next month the Merola Opera Program will present two performances of La Tragédie de Carmen. When I announced this event on this site at the end of last month, I described it as “a starker adaptation” of Georges Bizet’s four-act opera Carmen. It was created by stage director Peter Brook in 1983, who collaborated with Jean-Claude Carrière in writing the script. Music was composed by Marius Constant. As in Bizet’s version, the text will be in French; and English supertitles will be provided.

Ariana Maubach, who will be singing the title role in La Tragédie de Carmen (from the Web page for the Merola 2026 emerging artists)

The objective was to distill the “source text” by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy into a 90-minute performance (without intermissions). There are no choruses, and instrumentation was scaled down to a chamber orchestra. The cast is significantly reduced, limited to the major characters in the plot. Vocal ranges are, for the most part (but not entirely), based on Bizet’s original score. The Merola performers will be mezzo Ariana Maubach in the title role, tenor Charles Styles as the hapless Don José, soprano Anna Thompson as the even more hapless Micaëla, baritone Raúl Morales Velazco as the flamboyant toreador Escamillo, tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson as Lieutenant of Dragoons Zuniga, and tenor Logan Wager as Lilas Pastia. Carriére’s script also endowed Carmen with a husband, Garcia, who will be sung by bass John Mburu. Staging will be directed by Mo Zhou, and Stephanie Rhode Russell will conduct.

This production will be given two performances: at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 9, and at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 11. Tickets will be sold for $75 with a $25 rate for those aged 25 and younger. Tickets can be purchased online with separate Web pages of Thursday and Saturday. They may also be purchased by calling the San Francisco Opera Box Office at 415-864-3330. The venue will be the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at 50 Oak Street.

Chan Gets Down to Business with SFS Concert

Now that conductor Elim Chan has been officially welcomed in City Hall at the end of last month, she has now gotten down to business with her first performance conducting the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) after she was officially named new Music Director of the ensemble. Some readers may recall that I was kind enough to describe her last performance on the SFS podium as a disappointment, but there was nothing disappointing about her return to the podium last night! Her selections spanned a little over half a century, and all three of them fired on all cylinders.

The “bookends” for the program could not have been more contrasting. Chan began with the Prelude for Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. This was, as is so often the case, coupled with an instrumental account of the opera’s final music, the “Liebestod.” The second half of the program, on the other hand, was devoted entirely to Claude Debussy’s three-movement tone poem “La Mer,” which has endured as many slings and arrows from the critics as Wagner did! The “concerto” of the program was a vocal selection sung by mezzo Sasha Cooke, a cycle setting six poems by Théophile Gautier given the title Le Nuits d’été (the nights of summer), composed by Hector Berlioz. As an encore, she sang “Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen” (I live my life in growing orbits), the second of the six songs that Michael Tilson Thomas collected for his cycle Meditations on Rilke. (Thomas’ recording of the complete cycle was released by SFS Media in July of 2020.)

Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” on the cover of the 1905 first edition of the score of “La Mer”

Much as I have consistently enjoyed Cooke’s performances, the high point of the evening was the chemistry Chan had established with the orchestra over the course of the entire evening. There is a plethora of instrumental details in “La Mer,” and Chan managed to provide a clear account of all of them. Debussy may not have captured the fractal details that one finds in the woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai entitled “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” For that matter, Pierre Lalo, critic for Le Temps, wrote “I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea.” Far be it from me to criticize the late Lalo for having tin ears; but, as far as I am concerned, he missed the point. Indeed, there are surges of sonorities in the final movement that might almost make you want to duck from an oncoming wave!

Chan’s approach to Wagner was as engaging has her reading of Debussy. While movement is the underlying force of “La Mer,” the music for Tristan was all about intense reflection. Over the course of the opera, the overall “path” is one of descent; so the performance of the music’s “bookends” comes across as a bit of a shortcut. Nevertheless, each of the two movements has its own approach to unfolding thematic material, over the course of which the listener establishes a “background” for the narrative of the opera. Chan’s account seemed to have that unfolding in mind, and the full resources of the SFS ensemble came across in following her lead with all the necessary precision.

All of these factors made last night a high point in the current SFS season.

New Performance Traditions in SF: June, 2026

Joel Davel and Paul Dresher in performance (from the Givebutter Web page for making donations)

Once again, I have not had an opportunity to write about New Performance Traditions (NPT) since I announced the two performances that were presented in May of last year. Readers probably know by now that this is because I only write about events taking place within the San Francisco city limits. The good news is that the next visit to the city will take place in a little less than two weeks’ time.

This will be a fundraising event to support the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency (DEAR). Every year the money raised goes to supporting six artists with studio space, profession production resources, mentorship, and a stipend of $1500 to support the production of a new work. The event will take place here in San Francisco at the Hosfelt Gallery, located at 260 Utah Street. It will begin at 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 18. Admission will begin with a suggested donation of $35 in the hope that there will be higher levels of contribution. Donations can also be given online through a Givebutter Web page created by NPT.

As many will expect, there will also be a performance. The Dresher Davel Invented Instrument Duo brings Joel Davel together with Paul Dresher, both of whom usually work with a diversity of invented instruments. Instruments such as the Quadrachord and the Hurdy Grande make for visual experiences as engaging as the sonorities one encounters during performance. This should provide a more than sufficient reason for supporting DEAR for the coming season!

Tomas Janzon Releases Diary-Inspired Album

Sketch of Tomas Janzon on the cover of his latest album

According to my archives, I have not written about Swedish guitarist Tomas Janzon since I wrote about the release of his Nomadic album at the end of 2022. His latest album, Jazz Diary, was released this past April; but I only learned about it at the beginning of this month. The title refers to his habit of writing down musical ideas as soon as they come to mind. According to the advance material I received, these events tend to take place between three and four in the morning!

The result is an engaging collection of eleven tracks of trio performances with Nedra Wheeler on bass. Tony Austin provides drums for the first six tracks, and Chuck McPherson accounts for the remaining four. Janzon is consistently generous in sharing solo work with his rhythm performers, allowing each track to take a tune and explore it through a diversity of improvisations. It would be fair to say that no one of those tracks stands out above the others; but, having listened to the entire album several times, I have come to relish the journey taken through each track.

The background of my student days cultivated my interest in the interplay between signal and noise. It would be fair to say that, even in those early-morning hours, Janzon documented a solid command of signal! This allows the attentive listener to relish in both his capacity for thematic invention and his explorations in improvisation. This is an album that easily stands up to multiple-listening experiences disclosing new discoveries.

Center for New Music: June, 2026

Once again, this will be a busy month at the Center for New Music (as it was last month). Yesterday’s Bleeding Edge article accounted for the first event of the month, the celebration of Pauline Oliveros’ birthday with a performance on Saturday, June 6 at 7 p.m. by the Cornelius Cardew Choir. Those that read the piece already know that the venue is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. As was the case last month, all of the other dates below will be hyperlinked to an event page through which tickets may be purchased as follows:

Friday, June 12, 8 p.m.: Kra Pao is a unique combination of Japanese and European instruments augmented by the unique sounds of a Buchla modular synthesizer. That instrument is played by Philip Gelb, who leads the ensemble and doubles on shakuhachi. The other performers are Thomas Dimuzio (also on Buchla), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe and cor anglais … more frequently called “English horn” on this side of the pond), Fred Lonberg Holm (cello), and Kanoko Nishi (koto). General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and students.

The latest bizarre poster design for pancakes at the Center for New Music (from the Web page for the event)

Saturday, June 13, noon: This will be the monthly G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S performance. As is usually the case, there will be five sets with at least some of the titles guaranteed to raise eyebrows:

1. EKG (Karel Šůcha and Kyle Bruckmann)
2. Thom Blum
3. Eric Glick Rieman
4. CUT
5. Aaron Oppenheim

Also as is usually the case, general admission will be $10 with a $6 rate for C4NM members and students.

Thursday, June 25, 7:30 p.m.: Unless I am mistaken, the last time I wrote about trans, gender non-binary, gender fluid, and gender queer musicians at C4NM was in August of 2019, when the Center launched the Compton’s Cafeteria Series with a program entitled Trans Audibility. On that occasion Amanda Chaudhary performed a set of live electronic improvisations. This time she will be one of the New Queer Sound performers of three solo sets, the other two being Bob Ostertag and Bill Hsu. General admission will again be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and students.

Friday, June 27, 8 p.m.: Kevin Gan Yuen will open with his solo project “EERIÆRMOR,” which explores psychoacoustic impressions through immersive soundscapes built from granular synthesis, guitar, and field recordings. This will be coupled with electronic acoustic music performed by Iranian sound artist Kamran Shafii. The evening will conclude with a performance by Kole Galbraith, who will be visiting from Seattle. His work focuses on sound, audio-visual, and found-object installations. General admission will again be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members and students.

Shenson Spotlight Disappoints Again

Violinist Njioma Grevious (photograph by Jiyang Chen, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Apparently, Nathan Amaral’s violin recital this past April was the only satisfying performance in the Shenson Spotlight Series this season, presented by the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall. Readers may recall that the significant adjective that I applied to the January and February performances was “dim.” Most of last night’s violin recital by Njioma Grevious settled back into that same spirit, but at least there was one moment when things picked up a bit. This was “Levee Dance,” the second in a set of short character pieces collected by Clarence Cameron White for his Opus 27. It would not surprise me to learn that she came to know this music through the recording Jascha Heifetz made for RCA Victor, since that is the only source I know for the composition!

The program was structured around three “classical pillars.” It began with the Grave movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1003 sonata for unaccompanied violin in A minor and concluded with Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 94a violin sonata in D major, originally composed for flute. The “middle pillar” was Johannes Brahms, with the Scherzo movement he contributed to the “F-A-E Sonata.” Sadly, none of these made a lasting impression, as was the case with the most recent work on the program, “Within the drifting contours of the land…,” composed by Electra Perivolaris explicitly for Grevious.

Ultimately, the only really satisfying offering came in the middle of the program. This was the “Theme and Variations” that Olivier Messiaen composed in 1932. He wrote this for the violinist Claire Delbos around the time that he married her! Grevious knew exactly how the deliver the theme in such a way that an attentive listener could appreciate its transformation into the following five variations. That attentiveness surfaced only one more time, which was in the Scherzo movement of the Prokofiev sonata.

Grevious’ accompanist at the piano was Andrew Goodridge, making his first appearance in Davies Symphony Hall. He is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. If he enjoyed his trip to San Francisco, it might be nice to see more of him in more conducive circumstances.

Catching Up on “Slipped” CDs

Apparently, I let the recent Deutsche Grammophon album of the complete symphonies by Bohuslav Martinů “slip through the cracks” (so to speak). Fortunately, today is a relatively quiet day, allowing me all the time I need to make up for my negligence! Martinů composed six symphonies, and they all fit on three CDs. The compositions do not have opus numbers. Instead, they have catalog numbers with the prefix “H,” whose initial refers to the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich. Closer to home, so to speak, two conductors of the Boston Symphony Orchestra promoted these symphonies in the programs they prepared. Those conductors were Serge Koussevitzky and Charles Munch.

Jakub Hrůša on the cover of his album of Martinů’s symphonies (from the Amazon.com Web page for this album)

Thus, it may be the case that this is the first time that the Czech composer Martinů is being represented under the baton of a Czech conductor on a recording. Jakub Hrůša was born in Brno and studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Nevertheless, the orchestra he is conducting on this album is the Bamberg Symphony in Germany. Furthermore, that ensemble has impressive history, summarized in a paragraph from its Wikipedia page:

The Bamberg Symphony was founded in 1946 by musicians who as a result of the Beneš decrees had been driven out of Bohemia, Moravia, the Czech Sudetenland as well as from German cities and had ended up in Bamberg. The "core" of the orchestra comprised former members of the German Philharmonic Orchestra Prague. The first concert of the orchestra was performed on March 20, 1946, in Bamberg. In July 1946, the orchestra was renamed the „Bamberg Symphony“ (German: Bamberger Symphoniker).

In other words, the ensemble was one of the first cultural institutions to emerge from World War II. One of the objectives of the Allies in that War was the liberation of Czechoslovakia from occupation by Adolf Hitler. Fortunately, Martinů had left his native land in 1923 and never looked back. In both the Twenties and the Thirties, he was exposed to a wide diversity of genres and explored all of them with enthusiasm. He was  just as fortunate to leave Europe in 1941, where all six of his symphonies were performed by (in the words of his Wikipedia page) “all the major US orchestras.”

1946 was also the year of my birth. However, I did not become aware of Martinů until I was in my twenties. That meant that my undergraduate years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took place a little over a year after Munch handed the baton for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) over to Erich Leinsdorf. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that I was able to see Munch at least once in a guest appearance on the BSO podium.

To be fair, none of that background had much influence on my knowledge of Martinů’s music. His name was familiar, but he was seldom encountered not only in the concert hall but also on the radio. (By way of “confession,” I do not think I ever played any of his music when I was working at the MIT campus radio station!) As a result, my “serious listening” of Martinů’s symphonies was deferred until this month, when I listened to Hrůša’s album to acclimate my listening capacity to the composer’s rhetorical twists and turns.

Given the length of this article, I would say that my experiences could not have been more positive. Ironically, when I first started listening to that album, I was also drawn to the other “complete” recording I have of Jiří Bělohlávek conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. I have to confess that it has been a long time since I last listened to that album. This is probably just as well, since I was able to take Hrůša’s interpretations strictly on their own terms.

By all rights, this should be a wake-up call to pay more attention to Martinů. The fact is that those six symphonies amount to the tip of an iceberg. Here is a more complete summary from his Wikipedia page:

Martinů was a prolific composer who wrote almost 400 pieces. Many of his works are regularly performed or recorded, among them his oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh (1955, Epos o Gilgamešovi), his six symphonies, concertos (these number almost thirty – four violin concertos, eight compositions for solo piano, four cello concertos, one of each for harpsichord, viola, and oboe, five double concertos, two triple concertos, and two concertos for four solo instruments and orchestra), an anti-war opera Comedy on the Bridge (Veselohra na mostě), chamber music (including eight string quartets, three piano quintets, a piano quartet), a flute sonata, a clarinet sonatina and many others.

The good news is that the chamber music recital by members of the San Francisco Symphony included the nonet he composed in 1959, but that performance took place over a year ago at the end of April, 2025!

Next ARTZenter Emerging Composer Concert

Composer Euna Joh (from her home page)

Once again, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP), led by Artistic Director & Conductor Eric Dudley, will present a concert of world premiere performances made possible by the Emerging Composer Grant Program presented by the ARTZenter Institute. As in the past, the program will present recent works each by a different composer. Also once again, there will four works on the program with composers and titles as follows:

1. Eric Estrada Valadez: Divided Realities
2. Euna Joh: A Grief Observed
3. Luca Pasquini: Memories of Storm & Light
4. Jackson A. Waters: my rage is quiet

At the previous performance (which was this past January), there was a brief intermission between the second and third selections.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m., on Tuesday, June 9. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building. located on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. The performance will be presented free of admission, and no reservations will be required.

Amadeus Mozart Performed on Three Guitars

Some readers may recall that near the end of last month the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released an Omni on-Location video of guitarist Giulia Ballaré playing her own transcription of “In a Landscape,” one of the early solo piano compositions by John Cage. This morning saw the premiere of the latest video to be released. The music could not be more distant (in both space and time) from Cage. Instead, the composer is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and the music is a transcription for three guitars of the overture to his K. 492 opera, The Marriage of Figaro.

I have to confess that I first encountered this opera at an early age (which was a time when the only operas that interested my parents were by Mozart). So it may well be that this was the first opera overture I ever heard. It was a good start with the string section hustling and bustling to prepare the opera-goer for all the twists and turns in the libretto’s narrative.

Zuzanna Bonarska, Wiktoria Bloch, and Wojciech Niemotko playing Niemotko’s transcription of the Overture for Mozart’s K. 492 opera

That said, I was more than a little impressed that all of that hustling and bustling could be distilled down into three guitars. Those familiar with the overture will probably appreciate the agility of the three guitarists (Zuzanna Bonarska, Wiktoria Bloch, and Wojciech Niemotko, who prepared the transcription). Mind you, in most productions of Mozart’s opera Susanna accompanies Cherubino on guitar when he sings “Voi che sapete che cosa è amor;” but this trio is only interested in Mozart’s music, rather than the narrative of his opera! My guess is that opera lovers will be impressed with how this guitar trio works its way into the setting for K. 492.

The Bleeding Edge: 6/2/2026

This week will not be quite as busy as last week. Nevertheless, there will be a lot of options, beginning tomorrow and extending all the way into Monday of next week. The one event that has already been reported is the two-set program at The Lab, which will begin at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 6. Specifics for the remaining events are as follows:

Wednesday, June 3, 8 p.m., Bric a Brac: The next performance at this venue will take place tomorrow, exactly one month after the last event. This time there will be only three sets but with little background material. One set will be the trio of Aine Nakamura, Kevin Corcoran, and Jacob Felix Heule. Another will be a duo performance by Isabel Waldner and Casey Adams. No further information has been provided about the music, as is the case with the remaining set, identified only as “Corsick/Pontiac.” The venue is located at 175 Leland Avenue.

Thursday, June 4, Friday, June 5, and Saturday, June 6, 7:30 p.m., Audium: Barbara Nerness will perform BIOMETRICKS, conceived to showcase breath, heartbeats, stomach gurgles, and the resonances within our heads. Sounds collected using a stethoscope microphone will be given a live performance, mixed with layers of recordings of guitar, voice, and drum beats recorded by Jack Perry. The mix will also include field recordings of San Francisco. The venue will be at 1616 Bush Street, and ticket information will be found at the above hyperlinks.

Friday, June 5, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Mr. Tipple’s Jazz Club: Violinist Jenny Scheinman will bring her quintet to this venue. According to DownBeat she is “the #2 Jazz Violinist in the world.” Rhythm will be provided by Carmen Staaf on piano, guitarist Matt Wrobel, Matt Munz on bass, and drummer Scott Amendola. For those that do not yet know, the venue is in the Civic Center at 39 Fell Street.

Friday, June 5, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: PC ​​Muñoz will give a performance of Little Ransoms, his first spoken word album in 21 years. Readings from the text will alternate with music performed by Red Fast Triple Luck, the quartet of David Boyce, PC Muñoz, Francis Wong, and Chris Trinidad. 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.

Saturday, June 6, 7 p.m., Center for New Music (C4NM): Composer Pauline Oliveros died in 2016, but C4NM will celebrate her 94th birthday. The Cornelius Cardew Choir will mark the occasion through a selection of her text scores and listening practices. Oliveros was the founder of the Deep Listening practice, and the performance by the Choir will explore how contemporary technologies such as large language models might become part of a Deep Listening experience. For those that do not yet know, the venue is at 55 Taylor Street; and admission will be on a pay-what-you-can basis.

Danishta Rivero (photograph by Chuck Johnson)

Monday, June 8, 8 p.m., Dead End Vintage: Once again, vintage clothing will provide a setting for free improvisation. This time there will be an abundance of seven sets, and at least some of the performers are likely to be familiar to readers. They will be as follows: Ava Koohbor, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, Danishta Rivero, Jordan Blankenship, K Francis Messer, Kaitlin McSweeney, and Domi Nigro. Each will present a unique take on improvisational noise. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m., and admission will be $10. Nevertheless, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Yo-Yo Ma’s One-Night-Only Visit to Davies

Yo-Yo Ma with his cello (from the event page for last night’s performance)

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in March of 1970 and has been making return visits to Davies Symphony Hall since then. In addition to performing in a symphonic setting, he has also given chamber music recitals in in Davies, the most recent of which was in April of 2024, when he was accompanied at the piano by Kathryn Stott. Last night he returned to Davies for a one-night-only performance with SFS under the baton of James Gaffigan.

The concerto selection was Edward Elgar’s Opus 85, his only cello concerto, composed in the key of E minor. Ma announced from the stage that the performance would be in memory of Michael Tilson Thomas. Indeed, Ma’s relationship with SFS has been an adventurous one. Nevertheless, what struck me the most about last night’s performance was his “first among equals” relationship with the SFS ensemble. Concertos are often treated as “ego trips;” but it was clear from the opening measures that being in a group mattered as much to the soloist as it did to the SFS players. From my vantage point, the result felt like the continuation of a decades-long partnership that has sustained as a friendship.

Perhaps because he did not want to “upstage” the ensemble, Ma concluded the evening with only one encore. This was Pablo Casals’ arrangement for solo cello of the Catalan Christmas song “El cant dels ocells” (the song of the birds). On the “other side” of the program, Gaffigan began by leading SFS in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s final (“Jupiter”) symphony, K. 551 in C major. He was patient with the applause after each movement by an audience not familiar with concert etiquette. Interruptions aside, his account of the symphony could not have been better managed, leading up to the “all together now” plethora of themes and sonorities that populate the last of the four movements.

Last night’s evening may have been shorter than usual, but it could not have been sweeter!

Peter Horvath to Lead Trio at Chez Hanny

Pianist Peter Horvath on the cover of his new album, Absolute Reality

About a year ago, pianist Peter Horvath performed with the Scott Barnhill Quartet at Chez Hanny. This month he will return, leading his own trio. Rhythm will be provided by Dan Feiszli on bass and drummer Jason Lewis.

Regular readers probably “know the usual drill.” For those encountering Chez Hanny house concerts for the first time, the events begin at 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. This one will take place on June 14. Admission will be $25, payable by check, cash, or a Zelle transfer to jazz@chezhanny.com. The “house” is located at 1300 Silver Avenue. This is best reached by public transportation by taking the Muni 44 bus going east from Glen Park Station. For those thinking of driving, parking tends to be available on Silver Avenue, Silliman Street, one block south of Silver, and Holyoke Street, which connects Silver and Silliman.

SFCA: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Late yesterday afternoon, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church saw the last of the three concerts of the season to be presented by San Francisco Choral Artists (SFCA), led by Artistic Director Magen Solomon. The title of the program was Love, Lost and Found, and it featured three new works. Two of them were by “usual suspects,” Composer-in-Residence Max Marcus and Composer-Not-in-Residence Perter Hilliard. The third composer was Yuri Lee, winner of the New Voices Project competition.

This, however, was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Contributing composers from the current and last centuries were be Roger Nixon, Kirke Mechem, Daniel Afonso, Russell Burnham, and Allen Shearer. Those from past centuries were Orlando di Lasso, Carlo Gesualdo, Claudio Monteverdi, Fanny Hensel, and Clara Schumann.

In the midst of this plethora of music history, past and present, Solomon delivered commentary on the offerings. Given the size of the program, this amounted to too much of a good thing. Thus, while Solomon could maintain a solid command of balance and phrasing in her ensemble, the event turned out to be more than most attentive listeners could handle. One might say that breadth of scope can be a good thing; but, when it is examined with a magnifying glass, it can easily become tedious.

Of course, this may be little more than a bias in my own approach to listening. Over the years I have cultivated the skilled patience to negotiate the extended durations of symphonies by Gustav Mahler and operas by Richard Wagner. Nevertheless, I came away yesterday with the feeling that I had sustained one you-know-what thing after another; and I am afraid that the overall experience was not particularly satisfying!

Duo Gazzana’s Eastern European Album

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

The latest ECM New Series album of performances by Duo Gazzana will be released this coming Friday. Most of the music consists of two multi-movement compositions by Sergei Prokofiev: his first sonata for violin and piano (Opus 80 in F minor) and the Opus 35a collection, Five Melodies. Each of these is followed by a more recent work. Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel” provides the “punctuation mark” for the sonata, and the album concludes with Alfred Schnittke’s “Gratulationsrondo.” Unless I am mistaken, my last encounter with the former took place almost exactly two years ago, at the beginning of April of 2024, when Yo-Yo Ma included “Spiegel im Spiegel” in his recital in Davies Symphony Hall. The Schnittke selection, on the other hand, was probably a “first contact” experience.

Having now had enough opportunities to listen to Duo Gazzana ECM albums, I always tend to be interested in what they will do next. While my enthusiasm Prokofiev is usually muted, I tend to look forward to opportunities to listen to previously unknown music. In this case I was particularly drawn to the rhetorical diversity across the four movements of the Opus 80 sonata. I am hoping that I shall have an opportunity to listen to this music in recital in the not-too-distant future.

Where Schnittke is concerned, I am always looking forward to his tongue-in-cheek rhetoric. The title of his selection suggests music that was composed for the interest of teachers more than students! He wrote this piece in the year after he had composed the tongue-in-cheek Suite in the Old Style. That rhetoric can also be found in “Gratulationsrondo;” but the edges are not quite as sharp! It is a bit long to make for an engaging encore selection, but it definitely has the makings of a definitive punctuation mark.

SFCM to Host Workshop of New Opera

Portrait of Lavinia Williams, the title character of Madame Theremin

One week from this coming Thursday, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will host the first complete workshop performance of a new opera. The opera is Madame Theremin, composed by Kennedy Verrett setting a libretto by George M. Kopp. The title refers to Lavinia Williams, who was the wife of Leon Theremin, the inventor of the electronic instrument that bears his name.

Williams was a Principal Dancer with the American Negro Ballet Company, which was based in New York in the Thirties. The libretto is a tale of the Harlem Renaissance, involving music, dance, technology, politics, and Haitian Vodou. For this workshop the title role will be sung by soprano Ariel Emma, and tenor Eric Levintow will portray Theremin. Other vocalists for the workshop will be mezzo Melissa Bonettio Luna (a Vodou priestess), bass-baritone Patrick Blackwell as Noble Washington (based loosely on Paul Robeson), and Sara Couden as a Soviet official. A variety of other roles will be taken by tenor Joe Meyers and baritone Daniel Cilli. Mary Chun will conduct, and accompaniment will be by pianist Kymry Esainko.

The performance will take place in the SFCM Ann Getty Center, which is in the building at 50 Oak Street. It will begin at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, and last for about 90 minutes. The event will be followed by an audience feedback session and an informal reception. There will be no charge for admission, but a suggested donation of $20 will be appreciated. Tickets will be available by sending electronic mail to cblalock@gmail.com.

SFS: A Promising Program that Did Not Deliver

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya (from the Web page for this week’s SFS concert)

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya made his San Francisco Symphony (SFS) debut in November of 2023 when he led the annual Día de los Muertos concert. Last night he returned to Davies Symphony Hall to give his first Orchestra Series performance. The program had a Hispanic theme with composers born on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Three of the four selections were composed in the last century, but the other enjoyed a United States premiere performance.

The composer of that new work was Jimmy López, born in Lima (Peru) in 1978 and currently composer-in-residence for both the San Diego Symphony and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. His contribution to the program was “Shift,” a four-movement concerto for trombone and orchestra with Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins as soloist. The titles of the four movements suggest that the composer may have had an interest in synesthesia:

1. Sound
2. Water
3. Light
4. Sonoluminescence

Each of these movements had its own approach to sonorities. The first required a plethora of double-tonguing episodes. The second exploited the instrument’s most powerful capability: glissando passages! The “Light” movement was performed with mute, leading into a richly extended cadenza to introduce the final movement. Higgins brought a confident command to each of these movement, making it a pity that he is on leave this season.

The program began with the most recent of the twentieth-century selections. Alberto Ginastera composed music for his Opus 8 ballet “Estancia” and then extracted four of the movements for the Opus 8a suite. The suite has little relation to the narrative for the ballet. Nevertheless, the movements were engaging; and the third of them, “Los peones de hacienda” (the cattlemen) seem to offer more than a few nods to Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score, “Le sacre du printemps” (the rite of spring)!

The second half of the program was rooted in the early decades of the century. The better-known selection was the final one, Maurice Ravel’s four-movement “Rapsodie espagnole.” I am familiar enough with this music that I know the subtlety it demands, but Harth-Bedoya never seemed to invoke that spirit.

He seemed more “at home” with the preceding composition, Joaquín Turina’s three-movement “Danzas Fantásticas.” My encounters with this composer have been almost entirely through the guitar recitals I have attended and covered, so I was looking forward to listening to his command of the orchestral repertoire. Once again, however, it felt as if Harth-Bedoya was undermining the spirit that Turina had injected into his dances.

Fortunately, the impact of López’ capacity for invention made the evening worthwhile!