Choices for April 18, 2026

Signs of this being a busy month were already surfacing at the end of last month. Now it turns out that the mid-month weekend will be busy enough to warrant separate articles for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday afternoon will see the latest announcement of a Groupmuse event, and there will be overlapping performances in the Civic Center during the evening. Specifics are as follows:

3 p.m., Parnassus Heights: The earliest event will be Virtuoso Duo in Cole Valley. Pianist Ian Scarfe will be familiar to many for his virtuoso talents, and he will be joined by Czech violinist Petr Mašek. Full specifics have not yet been announced, but the program will feature one of the ten violin sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. There will also be a set of romantic pieces by Antonin Dvořák and a vigorous account of the Hungarian Czárdás. As of this writing, only six of the 25 spots are still available; so those interested in attending should not wait too much longer, after which details about the venue will be provided.

7:30 p.m., Old First Church: Soprano Molly Netter will be the soloist performing with the Voices of Music ensemble. She has prepared a program entitled The Secret Garden, which will begin with the medieval mysticism of Hildegard von Bingen. More familiar will be English folk tunes including “In a garden so green” and “Gather ye rosebuds.” There will also be selections of fiddle tunes from John Playford’s The English Dancing Master. Finally, the program will conclude in the immediate present with the world premiere performance of a composition by Voices of Music Co-Director Hanne van Proosdij. Voices of Music has created a Web page for online purchases between $10 and $63.

Claire Chase with one of her flutes and another in the background (from the SFP Web page for purchasing tickets)

7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: For those that prefer the new to the old, San Francisco Performances (SFP) will present a flute recital by Claire Chase. For the most part this will be a solo performance, given the title Density 2036. However, she will be joined by pianist Sarah Cahill to present Terry Riley’s “Pulsing Lifters.” Chase will also play The Holy Liftoff, a solo suite by Riley, as well as solo compositions by Annea Lockwood, Susie Ibarra, Marcos Balter, and Du Yun. SFP has created a Web page for online purchases between $50 and $70.

French and German Composers for Clarinet

Anthony McGill with his clarinet (photograph by Martin Romero, courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Last night in Herbst Theatre San Francisco Performances presented the final program in The Shenson Great Artists and Ensembles Series. The “great artist” was clarinetist Anthony McGill. accompanied at the piano by Gloria Chen. McGill prepared a “two nationalities program.” He began the evening with an engaging diversity of French composers: Claude Debussy, André Messager, and Camille Saint-Saëns (the “order of appearance”). The second half was devoted to two German composers from either end of the nineteenth century, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

In the first half Messager could have won a prize for the abundance of notes in his “Solo de concours.” Actually, all those notes were conceived for the end-of-term examination of clarinet students at the Conservatoire de Paris (Paris Conservatory). This could not have been a better offering for McGill to unleash the full extent of his technical skills without devolving into banal “exercise music.” Messager was preceded by Debussy’s “Première rhapsodie” (first rhapsody), which he composed as an examination piece for students at the Conservatoire de Paris. The “French portion” then concluded with Saint-Saëns’ Opus 167 sonata in E-flat major for clarinet and piano. The third movement involved the lower register of the clarinet, which was my favorite area back when I played the instrument. (Sadly, I never had an opportunity to play bass clarinet.)

The second half of the program began with Schumann’s Opus 73, a three-movement duo entitled simply “Fantasiestücke.” This was followed by the second of the two Opus 120 clarinet sonatas composed by Brahms. Those sonatas were the composer’s final chamber music compositions, written about three years before his death. They were composed for Richard Mühlfeld, who had impressed Brahms with his performances of Carl Maria von Weber’s first clarinet concerto and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 581 clarinet quintet.

Taken as a whole, this was an impressive diversity of rhetorical approaches to chamber music. Fortunately, McGill captured the unique foundation for each of the five selections, providing the attentive listener with an engaging journey (which probably included at least one “way station” of discovery in Messager’s competition composition). McGill made his first SFP debut in November of 2021, and his most recent visit was in December of 2024. The clarinet is a rather sophisticated instrument with registers in three distinctively different sonorities, and McGill had no trouble making the most out of all of them.

Danny Clay to Bring New Work to Roar Shack

Composer Danny Clay has enjoyed a long and productive engagement with The Living Earth Show (TLES). My last encounter with him was almost exactly two months ago, when his composition “Still Cycles” was choreographed by Dani Rowe for the final program in this year’s PIVOT Festival. One week from today TLES will host a visit by Clay to their “home base” at the Roar Shack.

Poster design for the performance being discussed (from its Eventbrite Web page)

Clay has prepared a full-evening performance entitled Possible Paths. Departing about as far as possible from the usual concert experience, Clay’s composition will involve (in the words of the TLES announcement) “musical scavenger hunts, improvisatory games, and video-game-style musical obstacle-courses to create interactive, immersive, and achingly beautiful music that can be played by any human at any age or level of musical experience.” (Those of my generation might recall “Anything Can Happen Day,” which took place on every Wednesday broadcast of The Mickey Mouse Club.)

Possible Paths will be given only one performance taking place at The Roar Shack, which is located in SoMa at 34 Seventh Street (just south of Market Street). The entire performance will be for 90 minutes, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 10. Eventbrite has created a Web page for online advance purchases. Admission will be on a Pay What You Can basis.

Clarinet Quintets Two Centuries Apart

Cover of the album being discussed, presumably on the Dorset coast of England, near where the album was recorded

A new Orchid Classics album of quintets for clarinet and strings is due for release from Orchid Classics one week from today. The composers are from two centuries on either side of the nineteenth century: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gordon Jacob. The latter’s quintet was composed in 1940.

I must confess that I know very little about Jacob other than his textbook The Elements of Orchestration, which was used for the orchestration class I took at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since my “primary” instrument was the clarinet, I was well aware of Mozart’s K. 581 quintet, even if I never had an opportunity to work on it with a willing string quartet. The album concludes with a “bonus track” of sorts. K. 516c is a fragment of the first movement of an earlier Mozart quintet in B-flat major. On this album that single movement was provided with a completion by Duncan Druce.

From a purely personal point of view, there was little on the track to draw my attention. However, 75 minutes has become a familiar maximum duration for CD; and that last track comes to close to filling out that duration. Where the Jacob quintet is concerned, I am just beginning to get to know it; but I found myself enjoying its contrast against the all-too-familiar K. 581. It is also worth noting that Mozart extended the range of the clarinet in that quintet, which the clarinetist on the album, Richard Hosford, managed by switching to a basset clarinet when necessary. The members of the string quartet with which he performed, violinists Marieke Blankestijn and Ulrika Jansson, Iris Juda on viola, and cellist Ursula Smith, did not have to worry about any “out-of-range” notes in the score!

Congress Questions Executive Authority (at last)

As I was going through this morning’s news feeds, I found two back-to-back articles from The Guardian (which, hopefully, at least a few readers may know began as the Manchester Guardian) involving efforts of the Legislative Branch of our government to have as much say as the Executive Branch. Mind you, I suspect that the current President of the United States may not be informed about what the Constitution has to say about both of those branches. Fortunately, there are members of the Congress who are better informed about these matters and have decided to push back against some of the President’s latest efforts.

The first of the two articles involved the President considering withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The treaty was signed in 1949 to create an alliance that would deter any threat from the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact countries. The second involved providing funds to aid Israel’s defense forces. For the second half of the twentieth century, Israel had reason to be threatened by all of the countries on its borders. (Full disclaimer: My first job after receiving my doctoral degree involved teaching graduate and undergraduate computer science at the Technion, often called, with a nod to the state of Massachusetts, the “Israel Institute of Technology.”)

The focus of the first article is Mitch McConnell, currently Chair of the Senate Rules Committee; and it concerns the fact that the Senate has a NATO observer group, which is chaired jointly by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Thom Tillis. Both of them are strong advocates of NATO, strong enough for McConnell to agree with their rejection of the possibility of withdrawal.

The leader in the second article is Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She used social media to release a statement beginning as follows:

The Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system, which has proven critical to keep innocent civilians safe from rocket attacks and bombardment.

Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law.

The first page of the first edition of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The American Crisis (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

I have to confess that, for the most part, I tend to be skeptical of “social media.” Nevertheless, if The Guardian was willing to accept Ocasio-Cortez’ post on X, I am willing to take the same stand. The fact is that we are now back on a “turf” that Thomas Paine first published in 1776 under the title The American Crisis: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Our President may be happy enough with the state of his soul, but it looks like there is a rising tide of those disagreeing with him. Since that tide involves Republicans as well as Democrats, I personally think that it is too serious to be ignored!

The Lab: April, 2026

Next month The Lab will host three concert events. For those that do not yet know, The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street. This is particularly convenient for those using public transportation, since it is a short walk to the corner of 16th Street and Mission Street. Busses stop at that corner for both north-south and east-west travel, and downstairs there is a station for the BART line running under Mission Street. Doors open half an hour in advance of the performance; and specific information for each event, including a hyperlink to the Web page that provides both background material and hyperlinks for ticket purchases, is as follows:

Friday, April 17, 8:30 p.m.: The first performance of the month will be a two-set evening. Skylight is a duo with vocals by Gelsey Bell accompanied on saxophone by Erin Rogers. Both are members of the new music collective thingNY, where they have worked for over fifteen years. The other set will be taken by the Thingamajigs Performance Group, which rang in this year with its concert at Artists’ Television Access. Co-founders Edward Schocker and Dylan Bolles will join forces with composer Suki O’Kane, sound artist Keith Evans, and guest artist Wayne Grim. The performance will be based on “traditions of durational performance, alternate tuning, group and open compositional formats, interdisciplinary and inter-cultural collaboration, and site work.”

Friday, April 24, 8 p.m.: Lea Bertucci will present her new composition for sampled and live early flutes in 8-channel sound. The title of her work is The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity. She composed the work for Norbert Rodenkirchen, who played flute with the early music group Sequentia. She describes the piece as follows: “this work reaches back through the spans of history and catapults ancient music into an immersive present.” She will share the program with Rodenkirchen, who will perform “live fragments of ancient songs and improvisations related to the origin of the flutes.”

Dafne Vicente-Sandoval and Charles Curtis giving one of their duo performances (from the event page for the concert they have prepared)

Saturday, April 25, 7:30 p.m.: The month will conclude with two musicians that present adventurous performances of low-register instruments. Those instruments will be bassoon (Dafne Vicente-Sandoval) and cello (Charles Curtis). They have worked collectively with composers Alvin Lucier, Tashi Wada and Éliane Radigue. They will also give solo performances of works by Jakob Ullmann, Phill Niblock, Peter Ablinger, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela (a partnership), Christian Wolff, and Vicente-Sandoval; and Curtis will present at least one of his own compositions.

Dennis Mitcheltree Returning to Chez Hanny

Dennis Mitcheltree on the cover of his Union album (from its Amazon.com Web page)

Some readers may recall that saxophonist Dennis Mitcheltree visited Chez Hanny a little over a year ago. On that occasion he shared leadership of a quartet with pianist Johannes Wallman. Rhythm was provided by Will Lyle on bass and drummer Andy Sanesi.

One week from this coming Sunday, Mitcheltree will return to Chez Hanny. He will again lead a quartet consisting of three “new faces.” The pianist will be Adam Kipple, influenced by both McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. In that context it is also worth adding Kipple’s past performance with the Sun Ra Arkestra. The other rhythm players will be Jesse Crawford on bass and drummer Bill McClellan, the latter being a veteran of the Mingus Big Band.

As always, Chez Hanny is located at 1300 Silver Avenue; and the performance takes place in the downstairs rumpus room. It will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 12. Admission will be $25, payable by check, Zelle, or cash. Because Jazz Chez Hanny is now a 501(c)(3) public charity, tax-deductible donations will also be accepted.

There will be two sets separated by a potluck break. As a result, all who plan to attend are encouraged to bring food and/or drink to share. Seating is first come, first served, meaning that reservations are strongly recommended. They may be placed through an electronic mail address: jazz@chezhanny.com. Mail messages received after noon on the day of a performance are unlikely to be seen until after the show is over, and cancellations should be given at least 24 hours advance notice. Finally, volunteer efforts for cleaning up after the show and moving furniture to accommodate both players and listeners are always appreciated.