LIEDER ALIVE!’s 2026/27 Liederabend Series

LIEDER ALIVE! now has a Web page that provides the dates for its Liederabend Series, which will run from November of 2026 through May of 2027. There will be four recitals, all taking place on Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m. The first of these will be the Autumn Opening Concert followed by three “Anniversary Concerts” celebrating twenty years of presenting vocalists and their respective repertoires. As in the past, all performances will take place as part of the Old First Concerts (O1C) series at Old First Presbyterian Church (1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue). All of them will be on Sunday afternoons, beginning at 4 p.m. Hyperlinks for purchasing tickets will be attached below to the specific dates. In all likelihood there will also be hyperlinks for live streams of the performances. Specific dates are as follows:

November 8: The season will begin with a performance by baritone Olivier Zerouali, accompanied at the piano by Ji Youn Lee. Both of them are San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows. Program details have not yet been finalized; but the contributing composers will be Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, and Gabriel Fauré (often known as “the usual suspects!”).

January 17: Dramatic soprano Heather Hjelle will make her LIEDER ALIVE! debut with a program devoted entirely to Richard Wagner. Her accompanist will be John Parr. She will begin with WWV 91, the five songs the Wagner collected for female voice and piano often given the title Wesendonck Lieder. This will be followed by the “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde with piano accompaniment arranged by Franz Liszt. The program will conclude with the piano transcription of the funeral march from Götterdämmerung; and, as many readers will expect, Hjelle will perform the entire concluding Immolation Scene of that opera.

February 28: Two vocalists will make return appearances: soprano Charlotte Kelso and tenor Thomas Kinch. They will perform selections from Ludwig van Beethoven, Giuseppe Verdi, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Once again, details (including accompaniment) have not yet been finalized.

Peter Grünberg accompanying soprano Esther Rayo at the piano (from their LIEDER ALIVE! Web page)

May 16: Just as familiar will be the return of soprano Esther Rayo with her accompanist Peter Grünberg. Her selections will include works by Schubert, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina, and Giacomo Puccini. Specifics will, again, be forthcoming.

Summer Begins at Davies Symphony Hall

Conductor Chloé Van Soeterstède on the Web page for last night’s performance

Yesterday evening saw the beginning of the Summer with Symphony series of concerts in Davies Symphony Hall. A few performances by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) are interleaved with a diversity of “pops” repertoire event. Fortunately, things got under way with a Summer Classics SFS performance. Chloé Van Soeterstède made her debut on the Davies podium; and the concerto soloist was violinist Paul Huang, who made his SFS debut in February of 2024. The overall program followed the usual overture-concerto-symphony structure, with the intermission between the concerto and the symphony.

The concerto selection was Max Bruch’s Opus 26 violin concerto in G minor. I am not sure I can account for how many recordings I currently have of the concerto, but I am pretty sure I first came to appreciate it through my “complete works” collection of the recordings Jascha Heifetz made for RCA. My guess is that there are many discophiles that would declare that the Heifetz version is the “gold standard” of recordings of Opus 26. While I appreciate its historical significance, I am always interested in what new soloists bring to the table, so to speak.

Sadly, Huang did not have very much to bring, but, to be fair, neither did Van Soeterstède. Mind you, I have had many enjoyable encounters of performances of Opus 26; and I always appreciate a violinist with enough inventiveness to “go beyond Heifetz.” Last night, on the other hand, was little more than a here-we-go-again account of a warhorse. Mind you, the audience, as a whole, was receptive; but Huang’s performance left me hungry for a more engaging listening experience, which, sadly, was not delivered in the encore selection, whose title he failed to announce.

Following the intermission, my quibbles about Huang transmogrified into quibbles about Felix Mendelssohn. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to his Opus 107 symphony in D major, given the title “Reformation.” The title of this symphony is realized in the final movement, which involves a fantasia on Martin Luther's hymn “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.” However, where musical rhetoric is concerned, the overall succession of four movements is more than a bit of a slog or, as I scribbled in my program book, “desperately in need of ‘reformation!’”

The overture for the program was given its first SFS performance. It was a concert overture written in the key of D major in 1873 by the Swedish composer Elfrida André. This perfectly served its role as a “warm up” for what was to follow, but it turned out to be the most engaging selection on the entire program! This is a composer that deserves a good biography to provide further examination of her musical talents. Of course, that biography would have to account for how she persuaded the Swedish government to hire women as telegraph operators!

Pocket Opera to Conclude Season this Month

The 2026 season of Pocket Opera performances in San Francisco will conclude on the final Sunday of this month. The opera to be presented will be Giacomo Puccini’s three-act La rondine (the swallow). This is one of the few comic operas in the Puccini catalog, the best-known being the one-act “Gianni Schicchi.”

Angela Gheorghiu singing the “Doretta” aria during a gala concert for the Silver Jubilee of Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands

I have to confess that I have never seen this opera in its entirety, and I suspect that most readers are just as unfamiliar with any of the arias in it. At best, there is probably one exception, “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta,” which the courtesan Magda sings in the first act. The poet Prunier presents himself as an authority on love. He is the author of the words for that song, but he never manages to finish it until Magda takes over to prove a love-conquers-all conclusion. All of this takes place at a salon in Paris, but it is only the first of the three acts.

The overall narrative accounts for Magda’s relationship with the young Ruggero. In the first act we learn that he meets Magda on his first visit to Paris and is smitten by her. By the end of the second act, they have decided to begin a new life together. That “new life” takes them to the French Riviera in the final act. It that setting Magda eventually concludes that she is just not the right women to be Ruggero’s bride. She goes back to Paris to maintain her social life; and Ruggero is devastated at having been abandoned. Nevertheless, he is still young and will probably be better equipped for any future romantic encounter!

As of this writing, casting has not yet been announced. However, a Web page has been created for purchasing tickets at prices from $45 to $89. (That Web page says even less about the narrative than the preceding paragraphs!) The performance will begin at 1:30 PM on Sunday, July 26. in the Gunn Theater at The Legion of Honor. For those that do not yet know, this building is located in Lincoln Park, which involves following 34th Avenue into the Park after it crosses Clement Street.

Buster Williams’ 1975 Debut Album Reissued

Cover of the album being examined

This past Record Store Day, April 18, Time Traveler Recordings released three albums, along with digital copies, of three particularly adventurous jazz performers from the second half of the last century. One of them was bassist Buster Williams, whose name always seemed to come up whenever I was in conversation with San Francisco performers particularly devoted to contemporary music. Ironically, my first encounter with Williams’ music (as both composer and performer) came from one of those albums released on Record Store Day. The title of the album is Pinnacle, consisting of five tracks amounting to a little less than 45 minutes of music.

Williams leads a septet with a front line of trumpeter Woody Shaw and two saxophonists. The first of them, Earl Turbinton, doubles on clarinet, and the other, Sonny Fortune, also plays both flute and alto flute. Rhythm is provided by percussionist Guilherme Franco, Billy Hart on drums, and Onaje Allan Gumbs, who divides his time across acoustic and electric piano, Moog synthesizer, and an ARP String Ensemble. (I suspect I am not the only one to find Shaw the only familiar name!)

I came away from this album feeling that the overall duration was just about right for the listening experience. The diversity of instruments allows for an engaging variety of approaches to improvisation. Williams has performed with the likes of Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Miles Davis; but there is much to engage the attentive listener as he finds paths to improvisation of his own. As I write this, the album is available from Amazon.com only on vinyl; but I am hoping that it will be available to “digital listeners” in the near future.

“Bohemians” at the Metropolitan Opera

A little over two weeks ago, I wrote about the Great Performances at the Met on Public Television this past March 15, which I had saved in my xfinity list of recordings. The performance on that occasion was Kevin Puts’ two-act opera The Hours, which was very much a “first contact” experience. Today turned out to be my latest opportunity to view another saved broadcast from the Great Performances series. This time, however, the opera was one so familiar that I have lost count of all of the times I have seen it in performance.

Juliana Grigoryan and Freddie De Tommaso in the leading roles of Puccini’s La Bohème

The opera was Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème, which could not have been more familiar in the number of past accounts both in opera houses and on television. This was the latest in many stagings initially directed by Franco Zeffirelli. What was new, however, were the performances of the leading characters in the cast: Mimi, sung by soprano Juliana Grigoryan, and Rodolfo, portrayed by tenor Freddie De Tommaso. Sadly, the PBS Web page for this broadcast felt it would be superfluous to provide the name of the director that reconstructed Zeffirelli’s direction. More informative were the rolling credits at the end of the video itself, which identified the Revival Director as Mirabelle Ordinaire. Those credits also turned out to be the only source identifying the conductor as Keri-Lynn Wilson.

While this is far from my favorite opera, I feel a need to give any new production that is made available a fair shake. As a result, I was particularly drawn to Ordinaire advancing the narrative at just the right pace, even if she was doing little more than following in Zeffirelli’s footsteps! This is particularly crucial in the final act, where things just keep getting worse and worse leading up to Mimi’s death. Ordinaire delivered just the right pace to keep the narrative from descending into bathos. (I might almost suggest that her delivery was more convincing than Puccini’s music or, for that matter, the libretto text by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa!)

The fact is that whenever I encounter a Puccini score, I brace myself for the onset of squirming; but, thanks to both Ordinaire’s revival staging and Wilson’s command of the music, I managed to hold off squirming until the last half-hour of the performance!

SFP 2026–2027 Guitar Series

As I had observed this past Friday, during the coming season San Francisco Performances (SFP) will not share recitals with the Dynamite Guitars series presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. That said, there will be more diversity of instrumentation in the coming SFP Guitar Series, beginning with the very first recital to be presented. One of the five recitals will be performed at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street); and the other performances will take place in Herbst Theatre (on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue). All of the events will begin at 7:30 p.m., four on Saturday evenings and the last one on a Wednesday evening. Specifics dates and venues are as follows:

Saturday, October 24, Herbst Theatre: Guitarist Berta Rojas will make her SFP debut. She will be joined by clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, with whom she has collaborated frequently. Program specifics have not yet been announced.

Saturday, November 7, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: This will be a solo performance by Djiboutian-French guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre. He is a previous winner of the Guitar Foundation of America Competition. He has prepared a program with a rich diversity of composers: Francisco Tárrega, Isaac Albéniz, Miguel Llobet, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Domenico Scarlatti, Agustín Barrios, Antonio Lauro, Leo Brouwer, Sergio Assad, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Astor Piazzolla, and Roland Dyens.

Saturday, November 14, Herbst Theatre: Guitarist Antigoni Goni is a former SFP Artist-in-Residence. She will return with two other guitarists, Luca Isolani and Maarten Vandenbemden. Together they form the Volterra Project Trio. Isolani will also contribute as composer of the final selections on the program. All of the preceding selections will be arrangements, beginning with the eight Valses Poéticos, composed for piano by Enrique Granados. This will be followed by arrangements of orchestral sources: music composed by Edvard Grieg for the play Peer Gynt, the “Danse Macabre” composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, and selections of music that Leonard Bernstein composed for West Side Story.

Saturday, January 23, Herbst Theatre: Ziggy and Miles are Australian brothers (and guitarists), whose program has not yet been finalized.

The Dreamers’ Circus trio of Nikolaj Busk, Ale Carr, and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen (from the SFP Web page for their coming performance)

Wednesday, April 7, Herbst Theatre: Dreamer’s Circus last visited Herbst at the beginning of March in 2023. The guitarist of the group is Ale Carr from Sweden, who specializes in Nordic folk music; but, when he is playing with his Dreamers’ Circus colleagues, he plays a Nordic cittern. He is joined by Dane Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, a classical violinist in the Danish String Quartet, who plays fiddle for the trio’s repertoire, and Danish jazz pianist Nikolaj Busk, who will probably put more time into playing the accordion. They plan to announce their selections from the stage (which is what they did when they last visited in March of 2023).

The Bleeding Edge: 6/29/2026

If last week on the Bleeding Edge was a busy one, this week the pendulum will swing about as far as it can in the opposite direction. As of this writing, there is only one event to take into account. As might be expected, it is a reliable one: the weekly Sunday evening gig at Bird & Beckett Books and Records.

The members of the End of the World Coretet

Some readers may recall that yesterday evening’s performance was by the trio of saxophonist Kasey Knudsen with Mat Muntz on bass and drummer Scott Amendola. This coming Sunday, July 5, again at 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett will host a quartet calling itself the After the End of the World Coretet. This will involve many instruments and four performers. On the front line Jon Birdsong will account for brass with reeds played by Annelise Zamula. Bill Noertker will play strings, perhaps dividing his time between the front line and rhythm. Percussion will be provided by Dave Mihaly. As most readers probably know by now, the venue is located at 653 Chenery Street; and admission will be $20.

SFS: Final 2025–26 Chamber Music Program

Yesterday afternoon Davies Symphony Hall saw the final chamber music recital the concert season performed by members of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). As usual, the program was an engagingly diverse one with music from the current century in the first half and selections from the twentieth in the second. It may also be interesting to note that the first half concluded with the newest work on the program, and the program ended with the oldest.

Cover of the first edition of the opera score that may have influenced Fauré (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Indeed, that “final gesture” was the only selection that was familiar to me. That is because the EMI complete-works collection of the chamber music of  Gabriel Fauré has been in my collection for longer than I can remember! The music itself portended some finality of its own, since Fauré composed his Opus 120 piano trio in D minor in 1923, the year before the year of his death. That said, there is nothing moribund about the music itself, which was clearly evident in the performance given by Samantha Cho at the piano performing with violinist Florin Parvulescu and Amos Yang on cello. Indeed, Fauré began the final movement with a “punch line” quoting the “climax phrase” from “Vesti la giubba,” the aria from Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci.”

The other twentieth-century work on the program was composed over half a century later, Joan Tower’s “Petroushskates.” Ironically, this music had previously surfaced in the 53rd season of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, when it was performed on April 21, 2024. Sadly, I was unable to attend that program; so yesterday afternoon was my “first contact.” Most memorable was the cello pizzicato performance by Amos Yang accompanying the saucy clarinet work by Yuhsin Galaxy Su. (Those familiar with the music of Igor Stravinsky know that his music for the “Petrushka” ballet had some saucy clarinet work.)

The most recent work on the program was composed by Sarn Oliver, a member of the SFS First Violin section. The full title of his offering was “CAT (Contemporary Artful Sonorities) String Quartet.” This was a four-movement composition inspired by the cats in Oliver’s house. He led the quartet with violinist Mariko Smiley, Leonid Plashinov-Johnson on viola, and cellist Davis You. They were joined by soprano Jesslyn Thomas delivering the text from (in Oliver’s program note) “cat-themed poetry by Emily Dickinson, Edward Lear and T.S. Eliot.” Unfortunately, Thomas had serious diction problems, which pretty much undermined all of those sources. (I was able to make out “Macavity” from Eliot’s Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and the Lear phrase about “a ring at the end of his nose” from “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.”)

Clarity was much more solid in the opening selection. “Taheke” is the Māori word for “waterfall” and the title of a three-movement composition by Gareth Farr. Each movement depicts a different waterfall in New Zealand, the second being on the grounds of the composer’s home. The music is a duo for flute (Blair Francis Paponiu) and harp (Katherine Siochi); and the clarity of their interplay could not have been better. They provided the perfect overture for the high spirits of Oliver’s composition.

Let the summer season begin!

New Kenny Barron Album Over 30 Years Late

A little over two weeks ago, Elemental Music released an album of a performance at the Brycheiniog Theatre in Wales at the Brecon Jazz Festival. Pianist Kenny Barron led a trio, whose other members were Ray Drummond on bass and drummer Ben Riley. The full title of the album is So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon.

This is a generous offering: ten tracks distributed across two CDs providing one hour and 48 minutes of music. This is jazz as I like to listen to it (as, presumably, at least some readers will have guessed from encounters with previous jazz articles). Barron delivers a solid upbeat rhetoric in his keyboard work but also makes sure that both Drummond and Riley can pursue explorations of their own.

Front cover of the album being discussed

I have to wonder why it took three decades before this generous content was released. Physical packaging is a fold-out of two sleeves, providing only four surfaces for printed content. Two of them are, of course, the front (with a photograph of the three musicians) and the back, with a usefully detailed track listing. On the inside, the left-hand side provides three individual black-and-white photographs and most of the production details.

That leaves the other side for an essay by American jazz journalist Ted Panken. The advance material I received describes this as “extensive liner notes and detailed tune annotations;” but I am afraid that there is more about the background than about the music itself. Personally, I think that those familiar with twentieth-century jazz will have no trouble finding their own way through the inventive tropes of all three of the players. Those not previously acquainted with at least three of the tunes might do well to build up a bit of background before venturing into this album!

SFP 2026–2027 Art of Song

This coming season the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Art of Song series will present only three recitals, one less than the four presented this past season. However, the second of the three will be a debut performance by a vocalist that has already won two Grammy Awards. The other two are likely to be familiar to those that follow vocal performances. As many (most) readers will expect, all of the events will, as usual, take place at 7:30 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.  Selections for all of the programs have have been finalized as follows:

Tenor Nicholas Phan (photograph by Club Soda Productions courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Thursday, October 22: Tenor Nicholas Phan was the selected artist for the SFP 45th Season Gala in 2024. This year he will lead off the series with a program entitled Fellow Citizens. His intention is to reflect on two enduring narratives in American history: one that asserts America is for Americans, and another that celebrates the country as a “Nation of Immigrants.” In the last century, Irving Berlin was about as American as a composer could get; and in Phan’s program he will rub shoulders with Franz Schubert to reflect on European influences. The program will also include a new work by Shawn Okpebholo. He will be accompanied at the piano by Myra Huang.

Friday, December 11: This will be the SFP debut for soprano Angel Blue. The program has not yet been finalized; but it will include the art song repertoire, American spirituals, and “favorites” from the Great American Song Book. Her accompanist will be pianist Bryan Wagorn, who is also Assistant Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera.

Saturday, April 3: Bass-baritone Dashon Burton will perform with accompaniment by the Calder Quartet. This ensemble last performed for SFP in March of 2024; and the members are still violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Tereza Stanislav, violist Jonathan Moerschel, and cellist Eric Byers. The program will include one of the best-known vocal compositions for string quartet accompaniment, Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach.” There will also be the West Coast premiere of a quintet composed by Christopher Cerrone. Other composers to be represented on the program will include Thomas Adès, John Tavener, Jessie Montgomery, Caroline Shaw, and Thomas Oboe Lee.

Subscriptions are now on sale for $220 for premium seating in the Orchestra, the Side Boxes, and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $190 for the center rear of the Dress Circle and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $160 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. When single tickets go on sale, they may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.

SFS: A “Summer Classic” in Mid-July

Geneva Lewis, violinist for the selections by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Franz Waxman (from the event page for her performance)

“Serious” music tends to take a back seat in Davies Symphony Hall during the summer months. However, in a few week’s time the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will present a program in its Summer Classics series given the title A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That title will refer to the music the Felix Mendelssohn composed for a performance of the play by William Shakespeare of that title. This will begin the second half of the program, and it will be followed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which he called a “Fantasy-Overture.” The program will begin with the instrumental “Forest Murmurs” excerpt from Richard Wagner’s opera Siegfried, arranged for concert performance by Hermann Zumpe. This will be followed by Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.” The program will then return to opera with Franz Waxman’s “Carmen Fantasy,” edited for violin and orchestra by Jascha Heifetz. The soloist will be Geneva Lewis, and the conductor will be Nicolas Ellis.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place in Davies Symphony Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, July 17. As usual, a Web page has been created for purchasing tickets online, showing availability and prices for the different seating areas. Tickets may also be acquired at the Box Office, which is at the entrance to Davies on the south side of Grove Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street.

Pride 2026 Begins (Again) at the Opera House

As was the case last year, this year’s 56th annual Pride Celebration got under way at the War Memorial Opera House with San Francisco Opera (SFO) hosting its seasonal Pride Concert. The program was curated by Gregory Henkel; and, as was the case last year, the SFO Orchestra was conducted by Robert Mollicone with Kay Stern as Concertmaster. This being an opera house, most of the music was vocal with leading soloists Melody Moore (soprano), Nikola Printz (mezzo), and Reginald Smith, Jr. (baritone). When the selections required, they were joined by soprano Alexa Franklin, mezzo Sadie Cheslak, and tenor Thomas Kinch. Sapphira Cristál, best known as Miss Congeniality for Season 16 of RuPaul’s Drag Race served once again as emcee.

Ironically, the program began with the same music the opened last week’s memorial program for Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) performed by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). This was his “Agnegram,” and I have to confess that my second encounter with this music was no more satisfying than my first! Indeed, I am afraid that the paragraph about this music in last night’s program book was more memorable than the music itself. Fortunately, once the vocalists took charge, things picked up for both the classical and pop offerings.

Where the former genre is concerned, the most memorable offering involved one of the most familiar works in the standard repertoire. This was “Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour” (beautiful night, oh night of love), best known as the barcarolle from Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Moore and Printz brought just the right chemistry to the music, which I found refreshing no matter how many times I have heard it in the past. Printz was just as compelling on the pop side with her command of Stevie Wonder’s “I Can Only Be Me,” in an orchestral arrangement by Christopher Willis.

Last night’s “after party” at the Opera House

In many ways the evening was a party that no one wanted to end, which is why the “all hands” medley for the finale was followed by a sumptuous reception in the Opera House lobby!

Dynamite Guitars: 2026–2027 Season

Poster design for  the 2026–2027 Dynamite Guitars season

In the coming season the 2026–2027 Dynamite Guitars schedule will no longer overlap the San Francisco Performances Guitar Series. Only one of the performances will take place in Herbst Theatre (on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue); and the remaining seven recitals will be performed at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street). All of the events will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday evenings. Specifics dates and venues are as follows:

October 17, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The first soloist will be the Scottish-Indian classical guitarist Samrat Majumder.

November 21, Herbst Theatre: Croatian guitarist Ana Vidović last visited this venue on April 12, 2025, and we can probably expect just as much diversity as she brought to her previous recital.

December 5, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: ArcoStrum is a violin-guitar duo of brothers whose names are never identified on their Biography Web page!

January 16, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Kanahi Yamashita was born in Nagasaki in 1997 and received her early musical education from both of her parents, guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita and composer Keiko Fujiie.

January 30, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: This will be a double bill with classical guitar performed by Virgile Barthe in contrast with the flamenco performance by Grisha Goryachev.

February 27, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Last season guitarist Su Meng gave a solo recital; next year she will return with her Beijing Guitar Duo partner Wang Yameng.

March 13, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Eliot Fisk, who has by now attained “legendary” status, will return for his latest solo recital.

April 10, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Xuefei Yang last visited St. Mark’s in September of 2025, at the very beginning of the season; and this time she will return to perform towards the end of the season!

A single Web page has been created with hyperlinks for both subscription options and individual tickets.

Olivier Latry Returns to Davies Ruffatti Organ

Conductor Stéphane Denève (courtesy of SFS)

The Ruffatti organ in Davies Symphony Hall is having a workout this week with the return to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) of organist Olivier Latry performing under the baton of Stéphane Denève, who made his SFS debut in 2009. The first half of the program concluded with Francis Poulenc’s organ concerto, whose full title is “Concerto pour orgue, cordes et timbales” (concerto for organ, timpani and strings), structured as a single movement with six changes in tempo. The second half was devoted entirely to Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 78 (third) symphony in C minor, known as the “Organ Symphony” for the addition of a pipe organ during the latter portions of both movements. The “overture” for the program was “Flammenschrift” (fire-letter), composed by Guillaume Connesson and performed by SFS for the first time. At the beginning of the performance, Denève announced that the program would be dedicated to the memory of Michael Tilson Thomas.

The program was at its strongest in the second half. The symphony has a four-movement structure, but there is only a pause between the end of the Poco adagio movement and the Allegro moderato. Furthermore, the organ first appears toward the end of the Poco adagio, meaning that it figures as a “conclusion” for both of the halves. That said, the organ dominates over that conclusion, particularly towards then end, when it takes the “pedal point” motif literally! In his opening remarks, Denève made it a point to observe that the symphony had the same key structure as Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 67 (fifth) symphony in C minor. As far as I am concerned, however, any connection to Beethoven would have been incidental, if not accidental!

Nevertheless, the performance was a solid one, reminding me that occasional visits to Opus 78 tend to leave me in an upbeat mood. Sadly, this was not the case for the Poulenc concerto. Latry seemed to have difficulty finding the right way to balance his instrument against the ensemble. As a result, the clarity of the instrument was significantly more muddled than it would be during the performance of the Saint-Saëns symphony. This was a personal disappointment, since I have enjoyed Poulenc’s concerto ever since I first encountered it in my student days.

Ironically, Beethoven’s presence was much more evident at the beginning of the program. Unfortunately, Connesson never quite knew what to do with that presence. Once “Flammenschrift” established the “fatal fifth” gesture, the composer did little more than work it to death. Granted, the performance took only ten minutes; but that was five minutes too long (at least)!

Buchbinder Celebrates Birthday with Schubert

The first day of this coming December will mark the 80th birthday of pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. I must confess that I have probably not given this pianist due attention. It has been almost two years since I Iast wrote about one of his Deutsche Grammophon albums. That was when the Song Transcriptions CD was released, on which he performed solo piano transcriptions of 28 songs by Johannes Brahms.

Cover of the album being discussed

Tomorrow will see the release of his latest album. The title is Schubert Treasures, consisting of 160 tracks of Schubert’s compositions of a diversity of different styles of dances (with a distinctive preference for waltzes). If the number of tracks seems daunting, readers should be informed that a significant majority of these tracks are less than one minute in duration!

Clearly, this album was not conceived for the purpose of listening to all of those tracks from beginning to end in a single sitting. Indeed, even the D. 145 set of 38 waltzes was probably not intended for sitting still for the entire collection. Fortunately, in our “digital age,” it is easy to visit these tracks, sampling different collections at different times. Schubert was certainly prodigious in composing all of this dance music, but the listener should be free to explore his own strategies for getting to know this music. I have been doing this over the last month, and I have to say that encountering any of the collections leaves me in a good mood!

Plans for Other Minds Festival 30

The beginning of this month saw the release of the plans for the Other Minds Festival 30. It will again take place in October, somewhat earlier than last year. The venue will be the same, but the name has expanded to the Brava Theater for Women in the Arts. (It is still located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street. As was observed last year, the venue is a few blocks to the east of the Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery.) Concerts will again begin at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, Friday, October 9, and Saturday, October 10, with a Sunday performance at 4 p.m. on October 11. Panel discussions will precede each performance, beginning an hour before the concert. City Box Office has created a single Web page for purchasing tickets for each of the events, as well as a single Festival Pass for all performances. The works to be performed will be as follows:

• October 8: This will be an evening-length multimedia performance created by Joseph Bohigian entitled I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment. The title refers to the Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov. Vocalist Khatchadour Khatchadourian will also play duduk with electronic accompaniment by Ensemble Decipher.
• October 9: This will be a three-set performance. Sylvie Courvoisier will begin the program with a solo piano set influenced by both European chamber music and American avant-garde jazz. Vocalist Mahsa Vahdat will perform original settings of Persian poetry, accompanied on the setar by Atabak Elyasi. The program will conclude with Friction Quartet performing works by Juri Seo.

Photograph of King Britt by Colin Kerrigan

• October 10: The three sets will present two duos and one solo. Elizabeth Gaver will alternate between Hardanger fiddle and rebec to accompany vocalist Kristin Nordeval, who will augment her performance with live electronics. In the second duo drummer John Diaz will perform with  guitarist Zachary James Watkins, who augments his performances with electronics. The title of the final set is “Blacktronika,” performed on live electronics by King Britt.
• October 11: The Festival will conclude with a solo performance by pianist Charlemagne Palestine.

Stratigou’s 4th Album of Farrenc’s Piano Works

This week began with word from the Naxos of America PR Team of the latest installment in recordings of the complete piano works of nineteenth-century composer Louise Farrenc performed by Maria Stratigou. This is about a year and a half since the release of the third album, and the new release is the second with the Theme and Variations subtitle. About half of the album is devoted to variations on music from operas by Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti.

Once again I feel a need to invoke that “this is the sort of thing that people who like that sort of thing are bound to like.” However, when I cited it this past March, the “sort of thing” involved four nineteenth-century composers: Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, and Johannes Brahms. It goes without saying that none of them are associated with opera! However, if the sources for the variations on this new release are unfamiliar, Stratigou’s performances are as engaging as ever. As a result, my interest in learning more about Farrenc’s repertoire is as strong as ever.

Portrait of Louise Farrenc on the cover of the fourth Naxos album of her piano music (which is the same as the portrait on the previous album)

A “head count” of her Web page reveals 36 pieces for solo piano. The first four albums released to date account for 25 of those works. Presumably, the “complete works” collection will conclude with the next album!

SFP 2026–2027 Chamber Music Series

Yesterday morning this site wrote about the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Great Artists & Ensembles series, whose first recital will begin the 2026–2027 season. A little less than a week later will see the first performance in the Chamber series. This will also consist of four programs, three of which will be performed by string quartets. The “outlier” for the season will be a piano trio. For this series, all of the events will, as usual, take place at 7:30 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.  Selections for all of the programs have have been finalized as follows:

Thursday, October 8: The Brooklyn Rider quartet last performed for SFP in Herbst in March of 2022, when they were joined by guest artist Avi Avital on mandolin. The musicians are violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobson, Nicholas Cords on viola, and cellist Michael Nicolas. Their repertoire favors the contemporary; but they will begin with the fifth of Joseph Haydn’s six Sun Quartets, his Opus 20, this one in the key of F minor. The other “numbered” string quartet on the program will be Don Byron’s third. These will be separated by Angélica Negrón’s “Our Children Speak English and Spanish.” Byron’s quartet will be followed by “We Are Working Tirelessly For A Ceasefire” by Ted Hearne. The program will conclude with Jacobsen’s arrangements of one of the best-known songs by Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are  A-Changin’.”

Saturday, February 6: The Junction Trio will begin with a new work by Andrew Norman. There will be only two other works on the program from the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, respectively. The more recent offering will be Maurice Ravel’s only piano trio. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Robert Schumann’s first piano trio, his Opus 63 in D minor. The performers are violinist Stefan Jackiw, Jay Campbell on cello, and pianist Conrad Tao.

Isidore Quartet members Joshua McClendon, Devin Moore, Adrian Steele, and Phoenix Avalon (from their “Members” Web page)

Thursday, February 18: The Isidore Quartet will also perform a new  composition, this one the fourth quartet by Billy Childs. The violinists are Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon with Devin Moore on viola and cellist Joshua McClendon. The new quartet will be “framed” by two selections from the Classical period. The program will begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 575 quartet in D major. Mozart will be coupled with Ludwig van Beethoven at the conclusion of the program. The quartet will perform the second of his Opus 59 (Razumovsky) compositions in the key of E minor.

Thursday, April 8: The series will conclude with the return of the Jerusalem Quartet, which last visited SFP in November of 2024. The members of that quartet are still violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov; and the program will begin with a Haydn quartet. This will be the fifth of the Opus 76 quartets in the key of D major. This will be followed by Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 92, his second quartet. The second half of the program will be devoted to the first of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 51 quartets, composed in the key of C minor.

Markovina Begins Another Mendelssohn Project

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Classical Music Communications)

It seems that any time I decide to write about a recording of a performance by Ana-Marija Markovina, it turns out to be a “complete works” release. My most recent encounter with her was in January of 2022 when she released a twelve-CD collection of all of the piano music composed by Felix Mendelssohn. This morning I listened to the last of the four CDs in her latest release, which turns out to be only the first volume of her latest project, recording the complete solo piano compositions by Fanny Hensel, named on the cover of the album as “Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.” She was older than her brother Felix by about four years.

The amounts to 78 individual tracks. Most of the selections are individual selections. There are only three grouped selections. The shortest of them is the three-movement H 128 solo piano sonata in C minor. The longest consists of six compositions collected in the H 214 Klavierbuch. The third is the four-movement “Ostersonate,” H 235. There are also fourteen pieces given the title “Übungsstück,” which Hensel seemed to prefer to the French “étude.” The entire album serves up slightly less than four and one-half hours of music.

Like the “Felix project,” Markovina recorded these four CDs for Hänssler Classic, which is the “in-house record label” for the German music publishing house, Hänssler-Verlag. I must confess that I may have warmed more to Fanny than to Felix because I had to listen to fewer CDs. (Markovina’s “Felix collection” was released in a single box of 26 CDs.) Nevertheless, I have given the new release a generous amount of listening time, and I find myself warming to her approaches to all this music I have not previously encountered.

My guess is that these CDs will not be gathering dust any time soon!

SFP 2026–2027 Great Artists & Ensembles

Having provided the “overview” for the San Francisco Performances (SFP) 2026–2027 season this past Sunday, current events are quiet enough that this site can begin to account for the individual series. In the coming season, the first performance will be in the Great Artists & Ensembles series. This will involve one solo violin recital, two duo programs for cello and piano, and the opening concert, which will be one of the events in the Gala Benefit that will begin the season. Not all program details have been finalized, but the current specifics are as follows:

Friday, October 2, 7 p.m.: Violinist Geneva Lewis will be accompanied at the piano by Joshua Mhoon. The program will be structured around three duo sonatas at the beginning, middle, and conclusion of the program. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will be the first composer on the program with a performance of his K. 379 duo sonata in G major. The program will conclude with Richard Strauss’ Opus 18, his only sonata for these two instruments, composed in the key of E-flat major. The “middle sonata” will be Mieczysław Weinberg’s Opus 53, his fifth sonata composed for these two instruments. This selection will be preceded by two pieces for violin and piano composed by Valentyn Silvestrov in 2010. The Strauss sonata will be preceded by Anton Webern’s Opus 7, four pieces for violin and piano, all usually shorter than 90 seconds in duration.

Jean-Guihen Queyras with his cello (photograph by Marco Borggreve, courtesy of SFP)

Thursday, October 29, 7:30 p.m.: Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras last visited SFP in February of 2020, performing in a trio with violinist Isabelle Faust and pianist Alexander Melnikov. For his return, he will be accompanied at the piano by Alexandre Tharaud. The program will focus on selected movements from longer compositions, including Franz Schubert’s D. 821 sonata for pianoforte and arpeggione, Benjamin Britten’s Opus 65 duo sonata in C major, and Claude Debussy’s D minor sonata. Queyras will also give a solo performance of the “Prélude” to a suite in D minor from the second book in the Pièces de viole collection by Marin Marais. The program will begin with Francis Poulenc’s Suite Française, followed immediately by Alban Berg’s Opus 5 collection of four pieces for clarinet and piano. The program will conclude with two “consecutive” compositions by Gabriel Fauré, his Opus 78 “Sicilienne” followed by the Opus 77 “Papillon” duo. These will then lead to three of the Hungarian Dance compositions by Johannes Brahms, the first in G minor, the seventh in A major, and the fifth in G minor.

Tuesday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.: Pianist Juho Pohjonen will accompany cellist Jonathan Swensen; the program has not been finalized beyond identifying composers Frédéric Chopin, Francis Poulenc, Arvo Pärt, Witold Lutosławski, more Fauré, and probably others.

Thursday, April 22, 7:30 p.m: The soloist will be Tessa Lark, performing a program entitled Stradgrass–Works for Solo Violin. The title refers to bring bluegrass together with the more “classical” repertoire. She will conclude the program with the bluegrass tune “Sally Goodin’,” which will be preceded by John Corigliano’s “STOMP.” The program will begin with a pairing of Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach. The former composed a set of twelve fantasias for solo violin, and Lark will play the fifth of them: TWV 40:105. The Bach selection will be the BWV 1002 partita in B minor, which is much more familiar. This will be followed by the fifth of the seven solo sonatas in Eugéne Ysaÿe’s Opus 27. The remaining work on the program will be Nathan Milstein’s “Paganiniana.”

The Bleeding Edge: 6/22/2026

This promises to be a busy week on the Bleeding Edge. There will be three more BIOMETRICKS performances on Thursday, June 25, Friday, June 26, and Saturday, June 27. The other events that have already been reported are those taking place for the remainder of this month at the Center for New Music: the three solo sets of New Queer Music on Thursday, June 25, and the three sets of different approaches to synthesis on Saturday, June 27. That leaves a generous number of other performances at a diversity of venues as follows:

Tuesday, June 23, 7 p.m., Artists Television Access: Stone•House•Street: Reactivating the Archive is a joint project of three Armenian-Americans, filmmakers Chris Atamian and Tina Bastajian and sound artist Joseph Bohigian. Atamian’s film is entitled “House Culture,” part of his CivilNet series. It explores Armenia’s historic house museums, offering an intimate look into the lives, environments, and creative legacies of influential cultural figures. Bohigian’s “Stone Dreams” uses a stone to act as an instrument evoking folk songs. Bastajian’s film is entitled “A Tree Once Grew on Pushkin;” and it examines issues of post-Soviet gentrification and loss in Armenia's capital city of Yerevan. For those that do not already know, the venue is located in the Mission at 992 Valencia Street. Admission  will be $10 at the door, and light refreshments will be available.

Wednesday, June 24, 7 p.m., Mr Tipple’s: Saxophonist Beth Schenck will return to this venue with her last quartet included bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, Brett Carson on piano, and drummer Jordan Glenn. This is another venue familiar to readers, located at 39 Fell Street, on the south side of the street between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street. The venue is basically a supper club, so listeners are encouraged to purchase food and drink.

Thursday, June 25, 6 p.m., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Pamela Z will collaborate with poet Dan Waldman and dancer Suzanne Beahrs for an evening of performance and poetry that will unfold throughout the museum’s galleries. The performance is inspired by Atria, the debut of a poetry collection by Waldman. The performance will be structured as three movements, each of which will bring together artists working across sound, poetry, clay, cello, dance, video, and performance. The Museum is located near Yerba Buena Gardens at 151 Third Street, just south of Market Street.

Thursday, June 25, and Sunday, June 28, 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., Friday, June 26, and Saturday, June 27, 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Black Cat Jazz Supper Club: George Colligan has earned an international reputation as a multi-instrumentalist (drums, trumpet, organ, keyboards), composer, accompanist, teacher, and bandleader. He will perform with vocalist Zyanna. Rhythm will be provided by bassist David Ewell and Mike Mitchell on drums. Admission will be $30. The venue is located at 400 Eddy Street.

Thursday, June 25, 8 p.m., Noisebridge: On the fourth Thursday of every month, this venue hosts the resident electronic music series, Electronic Music OM. Those interested in performing can register through the Web page for this month. All sets must be at most twenty minutes in duration. There is no charge for admission, but it will not be hard to find the donation box! There is also a Web page for both donations and membership dues. Sets are multimedia, but there will be three audio performances. softCOUP is the duo of David Leikam and Ahmed Kap Animo. There will also be solo performances by Jah’s Tin and Okvit Noize. The venue is located at 272 Capp Street.

Friday, June 26, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: David Boyce will curate another two-set evening. The first set will be taken by the Boohabian Black Edgar. The second set will be performed by Angel, about whom no information has been provided. 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.

The interior of Old First Church (from the Web page for this Sunday’s performance.

Sunday, June 28, 4 p.m., Old First Church: Duo Soriga brings soprano Josephine Lee together with gayageum virtuoso Hwayoung Shon. Shon is also the composer of the last three works on the program, all of which will be receiving world premiere performances. Her arrangements of the first four works on the program will also be premieres. This will be an Old First Concerts performance. A Web page has been created for the purchase of general admission tickets for $30, with discounts available for seniors and students. The church is located on the southeast corner of Sacramento Street and Van Ness Avenue.

Sunday, June 28, 5 p.m. and 7:45 p.m., Audium: There will be two performances of the Honey Gold Experience. This involves immersive audio/visual performances blending visual art installation, live music, layered sound design, projection, and meditative atmosphere into a unique sensory experience. Admission will be $50 at the door and $45 if paid in advance. The venue is located at 1616 Bush Street.

Sunday, June 28, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: This will be saxophonist Kasey Knudsen’s latest performance. She will lead a trio with rhythm provided by Mat Muntz on bass and drummer Scott Amendola. The venue is probably known to many (most?) readers, located at 653 Chenery Street.

Sagi’s “Barber” Abounds with Engaging Visuals

Rosina (Hongni Wu) and Almaviva (Jack Swanson) in their happily-ever-after conclusion of The Barber of Seville

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I returned to the War Memorial Opera House for the final performance by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) of Emilio Sagi’s staging of Gioachino Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville. Colm Seery revived the original choreography by Nuria Castejón, providing a generous serving of eye candy as intervals along the advance of the narrative. As I had observed at the end of the last month, the four principal roles were double cast, allowing me to appreciate the second round of leading performers. These were tenor Jack Swanson (Count Almaviva), baritone Justin Austin (Figaro), mezzo Hongni Wu (Rosina), and bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi (Doctor Bartolo), all with a solid command of humor and romance in the tried-and-true staging by Emilio Sagi. Castejón’s choreography served somewhat as a “Greek chorus” in the intervals between the principal episodes of the narrative.

As always seems to be the case, that sense of humor was as fresh and engaging as it was in previous performances. This was particularly the case for the mimed performance of Berta given by Catherine Cook, who managed to find humor in just about every gesture. Similarly, there is no shortage of engaging and amusing tropes in the score for the orchestra, making the spirit of Conductor Benjamin Manis as valuable a contribution to the overall narrative as all of the activity up on the stage.

The month gave me the opportunity to attend both the opening and closing performances of The Barber of Seville. That meant seeing two different casts in action, each with its own sense of humor but also each with thoroughly engaging delivery. The Barber of Seville may be an “old-timer” in the SFO repertoire. Nevertheless, I have come away from every performance I have experienced over the years with a sense of freshness. Here is hoping that next season will also provide at least one opportunity for such a fresh and engaging approach to light comedy.

Twentieth-Century Cello Sonatas from Paris

Basile Ausländer and Jansen Ryser on the cover of their debut album

This coming Friday will see the release of a somewhat delayed debut album of two laureates of the Crescendo Young Swiss Artists. The performers are cellist Basile Ausländer and Jansen Ryser at the piano keyboard. Their “program” presents three sonatas for cellos and piano by composers that were trained in Paris during the first half of the last century. The first of these is Romanian George Enescu. The other two were French, both members of “Les Six,” Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc.

There is often a tendency for every new century to regard its predecessor as a distant past. Nevertheless, all three of these composers seem to have dodged that dismissal to at least a moderate extent. Closest to home, so to speak, is Enescu, whose string octet in C major was performed by musicians of the San Francisco Symphony, whose Chamber Music recital took place this past February 1. Similarly, violinist Agustin Hadelich made his debut with San Francisco Performances (SFP) as a soloist in the Shenson Great Artists & Ensemble Series this past March with a program that included Poulenc’s only sonata for violin and piano. Finally, Honegger’s 1920 sonatina (which he dedicated to Darius Milhaud) was performed at Mills College in October of 2020.

I must confess that I have had a soft spot for Les Six for some time. On the other hand, Enescu was given utterly terrible treatment by my high school music teacher (who clearly knew little more than what had appeared in the textbook he used). As a result, it took me quite some time to get to know not only that composer’s spirit but also the Romanian context in which that spirit had been cultivated. Nevertheless, in the “immediate present,” I found the performances by Ausländer and Ryser to be as refreshing as they were to the many “marks on paper” that they confronted.

Those (like myself) that feel that the last century still deserves some respect are likely to find the “program” that these performers prepared an engaging encounter.

SFP Plans for 2026–2027 Season

Last year plans for the San Francisco Performances (SFP) 2025–2026 season were announced at the beginning of April. The timing was the same for the coming 47th season, but things have been busier than usual on the “Bleeding Edge.” Nevertheless, as in the past, this site will, prior to the beginning of the season, give a series-by-series account of the programs that have been planned.

This year’s Gala will be on October 2 and will be held in conjunction with the first Great Artists & Ensembles recital of the season, which will be performed by violinist Geneva Lewis, accompanied at the piano by Joshua Mhoon. The season will again conclude at the beginning of May with a recital by pianist Fazil Say, who will juxtapose his own compositions with two of Ludwig van Beethoven’s best-known piano sonatas, Opus 13 (“Pathétique”) and Opus 57 (“Appassionata”).

The new season will also mark the beginning of a new series with the first performance in the Beethoven Anniversary Series. Over the course of two seasons, the Esmé Quartet, the SFP Artists-in-Residence, will perform all of the string quartets composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. The first half of the survey will consist of three performance, all at 7:30 p.m., on March 26, April 23, and May 6 of next year. Dimitri Murrath has replaced violist Jiwon Kim. The other three members are still the same: Wonhee Bae (first violin), Yuna Ha (second violin), and Yeeun Heo (cello). The PIVOT Festival will again return at the end of January with performances on January 27, 28 and 29. As usual, the other series will be familiar to SFP audiences:

• Great Artists & Ensembles
• Chamber
• Art of Song
• Guitar
• The Shenson Piano Series

The members of the Paul Taylor Dance Company (from the SFP event page)

Finally, following the conclusion of the season, SFP will join forces with the Presidio Theatre to present four performances by the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The program will include Taylors “Junction,” “3 Epitaphs,” and “Esplanade,” as well as “Tensile Involvement,” created by Alwin Nikolais. Further information about the program, including other works, will be announced in the fall. There will be three performances at 7:30 p.m. on May 20, 21, and 22, as well as a Saturday Family Matinee performance at 2 p.m. on May 22. All ticketing will be handled by the Presidio Theatre. All of the other SFP performances will take place in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street.

Old First Concerts: August, 2026

Once again, August will be the month of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. True to the festival’s name, programs will celebrate a kaleidoscope of international voices from the present and both recent and distant past. The Festival will begin on Friday, August 21, and run through Sunday, August 30. Dates and times are as follows:

• Friday, August 21, 8 p.m.: The pianists will be Festival Director Jeffrey LaDeur and Éva Polgár, who will be making her San Francisco debut. The title of the program is Postcards, which reflects on the opening selection, Samuel Barber’s four-hand composition Souvenirs. The first half of the program will then conclude with Derek Bermel’s “Turning.” The second half of the program will be devoted to three compositions by Franz Liszt as follows:
• S. 628: Bénédiction et serment, composed for piano four-hands
• S. 175: the two Légendes: “St François d'Assise: la prédication aux oiseaux” and “St François de Paule: marchant sur les flots”
• S. 586: the four-hand arrangement of the choral setting of “Gaudeamus igitur”
• Sunday, August 23, 4 p.m.: Pianist Alexandre Dossin will present a solo recital entitled American piano music from the last 100 years. Dossin has recorded the complete works for piano by George Walker, and four of those compositions will provide the core of his program as follows:
• Prelude and Caprices
• Variations on a Kentucky Folk Song
• Guido’s Hand No. 4
• Piano Sonata No. 5

          He will begin the program with selections from the Thirteen Anniversaries suite compiled by Leonard Bernstein, which will be followed by Robert Pollock’s collection, Piano Miniatures. He will conclude with two significant works from the last century:

• the fourth of the Bachianas Brasileiras suites composed by Heitor Villa-Lobos
• the solo piano arrangement of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”
• Friday, August 28, 8 p.m.: The TNTeague Duo is a father-and-son partnership. Both of them (father Liam Teague and son Jaden Teague-Núñez) are steelpan virtuosos. Jaden will alternate between steelpan and piano. Selections will be announced from the stage.
• Sunday, August 30, 4 p.m.: The title of the program will be Symphonic Dances, which will also be the title of the final work on the program. This is also the title of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 45, originally composed as an orchestral suite in three movements. The composer subsequently arrangement the score for two pianos. The performers will be pianists LaDeur and Elizabeth Dorman, making her Festival debut. This will be the final work on the program, preceded by “A Visit to Hell,” more steelpan music composed by Liam. This, in turn, will be coupled with Kevin Bobo’s “Rhapsody in Steel.” The program will begin with the two-piano version of Gershwin’s “Cuban Overture.”

Most readers probably know by now that Old First Concerts events take place at Old First Presbyterian Church. This is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Tickets will be available for purchase through the above hyperlinks, which are also available for live stream viewing.

Tickets Still Available for Merola Strauss

Cover of the vocal score for Ariadne auf Naxos published in Berlin in 1916 (from its Wikipedia Web page)

Merola Summer Festival performances will get under way on the evening of Thursday next week. However, readers may recall that, when I announced the season schedule, tickets for the performance of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos were already sold out for the first of the two shows on Thursday, July 30. The good news is that tickets are still available for the second, which will take place in the afternoon at 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 1. Merola alumnus (2014) Omer Ben Seadia will direct this two-part production, the second part of which is basically an opera within an opera. (The first part is about all the bickering that takes place before the curtain rises.) The conductor will be Ann-Katrin Stöcker.

The performance will take place in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Most readers probably know that the venue is located in the Civic Center at 50 Oak Street. The only tickets remaining are Orchestra seats selling for $75. San Francisco Opera has created a Web page for online purchases. Tickets are being managed by the San Francisco Opera Box Office in the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue, across the street from City Hall to the east and Davies Symphony Hall to the south. The Box Office may also be reached by calling 415-864-3330.

An SFS Memorial Program for MTT at Davies

Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) became the eleventh Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in 1995, meaning that my wife and I made our move from Singapore to Palo Alto in time to enjoy his first full season with that orchestra. This week’s performances, beginning last night, were dedicated in his memory. As might be expected, one of his own works was on the program, “Agnegram,” which he composed in 1998, giving its world premiere with SFS. This was preceded by the music of another American composer from the other end of the twentieth century. MTT clearly showed a particular fondness for Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question,” which served as a “prelude” to “Agnegram.” The first half of the program began with the SFS Chorus, directed by Jenny Wong, singing the fourth of the seven movements in Johannes Brahms’ Opus 45, A German Requiem. The Chorus returned following the intermission for the performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 125 (ninth) symphony in D minor, whose final movement included both chorus and four vocal soloists: soprano Jessica Faselt, mezzo Kelley O’Connor, tenor Thomas Cooley, and bass Peixin Chen.

Conductor James Gaffigan (photograph by Miguel Lorenzo, courtesy of SFS)

Taken as a whole, this was a major undertaking to honor the memory of a conductor, who was never shy about major undertakings. Conductor James Gaffigan is no stranger to SFS, and he found just the right chemistry for approaching the contrasts of the different works on the program. The members of the orchestra (many of whom were familiar with MTT) followed Gaffigan every step of the way to give each of the offerings its own uniquely well-defined statement.

Both concert repertoires and their audiences tend to approach performance as an act of the present honoring the past. Between the twentieth century of MTT and Ives and the nineteenth century of two of the “three B’s,” Beethoven and Brahms, there was more than enough to honor. However, what was most important was that Gaffigan led the performers in the spirit of the immediate present, reflecting on the past but establishing a unique voice of its own.

This program will be given two more performances, tomorrow night (Saturday) at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday (June 21) at 2 p.m.; and the offering is definitely “one for the books!”

Zephyr Symphony: The 2026–2027 Season

Don Scott Carpenter conducting in St. Mark's Lutheran Church 

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church will again serve as the home for the Zephyr Symphony led by conductor Don Scott Carpenter. The new season will present five programs (one more than last season). Three of them will involve vocal soloists, and one will have guitarist Thibault Garcia as the visiting soloist. Most readers probably know by now that St. Mark’s Lutheran Church is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. All performances will begin on Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m. on the following dates:

September 26, The Work at Hand: Mezzo Jamie Barton and cellist Nathan Chan will be featured in the Bay Area premiere of Jake Heggie’s song cycle The Work at Hand. The program will begin with Arvo Pärt’s “Trisagion.” The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 90 (MWV N 16), his fourth (“Italian”) symphony composed in the key of A major.

November 14, Trans Requiem: The title of the program is the title of the work to be performed during the second half, composed by Andrew Yee in 2025. Soprano Breanna Sinclairé and vocalist Katherine Goforth will be soloists performing with the Zephyr Chorus. Yee will also be cello soloist. The program will begin with Jesse Montgomery’s “Banner,” followed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 48 in C major, his four-movement “Serenade for Strings.”

December 19, Mozart’s Messiah: K. 572, is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1789 German-language version of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio Messiah. This version has its own Wikipedia page, which describes Mozart’s efforts as follows:

The libretto of Mozart's adaptation was largely based on Luther's translation of the Bible. Mozart re-orchestrated about three-fifths of Handel's composition, primarily providing additional parts for an extended section of wind instruments, which was called Harmonie at the time. In general, a half-century after the inception of the work, Mozart adapted an English-language work conceived for a baroque orchestra in a public venue, to accommodate the constraints of private performances and the musical tastes of Vienna. 

The vocal soloists for this performance will be soprano Nicole Heaston, mezzo-soprano Kayleigh Decker, tenor Isaiah Bell, bass-baritone Sreten Manojlović. The chorus will be Vox Humana SF.

March 6, Sacred & Sensuous: Music of Devotion: The next performance by Vox Humana SF will be of the Missa pro defunctis (a setting of the Requiem mass) by Cristóbal de Morales. The second half of the program will be devoted to the best-known composition by Joaquín Rodrigo, his “Concierto de Aranjuez” guitar concerto. The soloist will be Thibault Garcia.

May 8: Kindertotenlieder: Music of Sorrow, Serenity, and Radiant Joy: Baritone Benjamin Appl will be the vocalist in the performance of Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (songs on the death of children) song cycle. This will be followed by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 92, his seventh symphony in A major. Musicologist Harry Goldschmidt has suggested that (as noted in the Wikipedia page for the symphony) the symphony “seems to be another one of his musical confrontations with Napoleon, this time in the context of the European wars of liberation from years of Napoleonic domination.” The program will begin with Anna Clyne’s “Within Her Arms.”