Maazel’s 19th Century (“beyond” Bruckner)

Having given special attention to Anton Bruckner in writing about the CDs collected in Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition, I can now shift attention to nineteenth-century composers more familiar to many (if not most) readers. The composer that receives the most attention is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky with Emil Gilels as soloist in all three of that composer’s piano concertos. The CD with the last of those concertos, Opus 75 in E-flat major, also includes the Opus 35 violin concerto in D major with soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann. On that CD he also performs Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 19 (first) violin concerto in D major.

1882 photograph of Antonín Dvořák (photographer unknown, from the Gallica Digital Library, public domain)

The other concerto in this set is Johannes Brahms’ Opus 83 (second) piano concerto in B-flat major. This is an “international” performance with Sviatoslav Richter at the keyboard and Maazel conducting the Orchestre de Paris. The only other CD in this category involves the Berliner Philharmoniker playing all of the Slavonic Dances compositions by Antonín Dvořák, Opus 46 and Opus 72, both consisting of eight of the dances.

I have to confess that the Slavonic Dances are some of the earliest works that I encountered in childhood. It was only much later that I learned about the four-hand version; and I had the good fortune to work through all of them with a colleague. As a result, listening to the orchestral version brought back many pleasant memories! That said, I was most impressed by the thoroughness of repertoire when it came to the Tchaikovsky concertos. Such thoroughness is not as present for any of the other composers in this collection!

Center for New Music: October, 2026

This will be a relatively quiet month at the Center for New Music (C4NM). There will be only three performances, one of which 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 event. As usual, 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. Each of the below dates is hyperlinked to an event page through which tickets may be purchased as follows:

Saturday, October 17, 7:30 p.m.: Visual and sound artist Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson will be visiting C4NM on a trip from Iceland. As of this writing, it appears that his will be one of four sets for the evening. At least some of the other three are likely to be familiar to readers: Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase, Mystic Commandos, and The American Flag. General admission will be $17.85 with a discounted rate of $12.51 for students and C4NM members.

Saturday, October 24, noon: As was the case last month, this month’s G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S event will have five sets of performances, most of which will again be identified by what I have previously called “bleeding edge eccentricities.” Those sets will be as follows:

1. Kevin CK Lo
2. Auca/Elome
3. Mas Coad
4. Human De-Selection & Realization Nature Group
5. Fognozzle

The entrance fee will be $10 general admission with a service fee of $2.51 with a $6 rate for students and C4NM members with a service fee of $2.24. There will be no further charge for the gourmet pancakes being served.

Poster design for H. Carr’s C4NM performance

Sunday, October 25, 2 p.m.: Bassist H. Carr will be accompanied at the piano by Unpil Baek. He has prepared a diverse program with the earliest selections taken from the six volumes of Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos. The most recent offering will be a performance of long forms based on an approach to chromaticism by David Liebman. General admission will be $10 with a discounted rate of $5 for students and C4NM members.

Cellist Queyras to Perform for SFP Gala

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

Once again, this will be the month when San Francisco Performances (SFP) presents its annual Gala, which will celebrate the beginning of its 47th season. For those interested only in the music, concert-only tickets are now available. The program will be a duo performance with cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras accompanied at the piano by Alexandre Tharaud. As was previously observed, the earliest composer on the program will be Marin Marais with selections from the second of the five books of Pièces de viole; and the most recent work on the program will be the Dialogo and Presto movements from Benjamin Britten’s duo sonata in C major. The cello will substitute for the arpeggione (which was basically a bowed guitar) in the Adagio movement from Franz Schubert’s D. 821 duo sonata. The program will conclude with an arrangement by both performers of three of the 21 Hungarian Dances, the WoO 1 collection composed by Johannes Brahms, originally composed for piano four hands. Another interesting substitution will be the performance of Alban Berg’s Opus 5, four pieces originally composed for clarinet and piano.

This performance will begin earlier than usual at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 29. As usual, the venue will be Herbst Theatre  at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The prices for concert-only tickets will be $85, $75, and $65. Tickets may purchased through a secure Web page managed by SFP or by calling 415-392-2545.

San Francisco Performances: November, 2026

As was observed this past Sunday, the first Saturday of next month will be shared by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) and San Francisco Performances (SFP) with the first performance in the afternoon and the second in the evening. That latter of those events will be a solo recital by Djiboutian-French artist Raphaël Feuillâtre, the second performer in the SFP Guitar Series. There will be only two more SFP events during the month, both of which will be performed in Herbst Theatre (401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street) beginning at 7:30 p.m. Program details are as follows:

Jan Lisiecki at the piano (photograph by Christoph Köstlin, courtesy of SFP)

Thursday, November 12: Jan Lisiecki will return as soloist in the Shenson Piano Series. The title of his program will be World of Dance. That program has not yet been finalized; but the contributing composers will be Bohuslav Martinů, Manuel de Falla, Karol Szymanowski, Franz Schubert, and Béla Bartók.

Saturday, November 14: Guitarist Antigoni Gori was previously an SFP Artist-in-Residence. She will return to Herbst as a member of the Volterra Project Trio, a guitar trio whose other members are Luca Isolani and Maarten Vandenbemden. The most intriguing work on the program will probably be “Pornografia,” composed by Manos Hatzidakis. This composer is probably best known for having won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, which he wrote for the film Never on Sunday. In a similar vein, the trio will perform selections composed by Leonard Bernstein for West Side Story. The more “classical” offerings will include the eight Valses poéticos, composed by Enrique Granados, incidental music by Edvard Grieg for the play Peer Gynt, and Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) suite.

The Bleeding Edge: 10/5/2026

The major event of this week has already been announced. That will be the Other Minds Festival 30 with concerts beginning at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, Friday, October 9, and Saturday, October 10, and a Sunday performance at 4 p.m. on October 11. There will be three other events, one on the evening before the Festival and the other two taking place during the last two Festival days. Specifics for those events will be as follows:

Wednesday, October 7, 7 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: This will be a live performance of the album Traveling Shoes with music composed by Damani Rhodes. He will be joined by the vocalist VADIA and poet Tongo Eisen-Martin. The performance will take place inside the exhibition Dread Scott: The Body Politic. RSVP is recommended and available through a Web site. The performance will take place in the gallery, and there will be an open bar in the lobby. Most readers probably know that the venue is located at 701 Mission Street.

Poster design based on the LOOK set for Medicine for Nightmares

Friday, October 9, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: This week’s program has a special title: LOOK, LISTEN! - a Concert for Peace. It will be a two-set performance based on that title. The first set will be LISTEN, and there will be two instrumental groups. Dr Bob is the duo of Bob Marsh, alternating between cello and voice, and David Michalak, known for his skatchboxes. He will also play lap steel guitar. The second group is a trio called The Out Patients. Kersti Abrams will take the front line on alto saxophone. Rhythm will be provided by bassist Pete Schmitt and Cindy Webster, adding vocals to performances on both singing saw and hurdy gurdy. The second set will be LOOK and will present five films made by Michalak between 1999 and the present. This is another familiar venue, 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.

Sunday, October 11, 8 p.m., Great American Music Hall: The week will conclude with a special performance of the program entitled Divine Offering: Celebrating the Legacy of Alice Coltrane. The performance will be led by vocalist and composer Sita Michelle Coltrane. She will be joined by special guests to celebrate the music and legacy of Alice Coltrane. Doors will open at 7 p.m., and the venue is located at 859 O'Farrell Street.

Has NYCB Forgotten “Metastaseis?”

Mira Nadon, principal with NYCB, preparing to perform “Pithoprakta” (from an article by Gia Kourlas for todays New York Times)

I see from a Web page for today’s New York Times that Suzanne Farrell is teaching the choreography for “Pithoprakta” to the current dancers in New York City Ballet (NYCB). The music, which has the same title, is by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis; and I first encountered it on an album that coupled it with another Xenakis composition, “Metastaseis.” George Balanchine created choreography for both pieces, beginning with “Metastaseis.” I remember seeing the performance of the two ballets in the original order, having already gotten to know the music through an album I had purchased.

Back in those days, I was a Balanchine fanatic. I particularly appreciated how he would create a ballet based on the music without necessarily introducing a narrative. In that context, both Xenakis ballets were about as abstract as could be imagined. This was no surprise, since I had come to know the composer’s book (in its English translation) Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition.

My guess is that Balanchine was never as well-versed in mathematics as Xenakis was. When it came to creating choreography for a composition like Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 48, the four-movement “Serenade for Strings,” he knew how to reflect his listening experiences into choreography. However, listening to any composition by Xenakis is a far cry from listening to any composition by Tchaikovsky. Mind you, I am not saying that Balanchine needed to know more about mathematics in order to listen to Xenakis; but a command of techniques for listening to Tchaikovsky just could not be deployed for just about any composition in the Xenakis catalog.

At the risk of being too harsh, I find myself thinking about Xenakis’ efforts as, according to the old joke, “music of the future whose time has passed!” According to my archives, he has not surfaced on my site since a performance of his “Miika” at the Center for New Music in May of 2024! My own listening experiences go back even further, to the performance of his “Theraps” by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players early in December of 2022. The “bottom line” for that occasion was that the performance was neither convincing nor memorable!

What I found interesting about today’s article is that, as the text unfolded, I felt as if abstraction was giving way to personality. Thus, while Balanchine was the original choreographer, I suspect that the revival will deserve to be known as “Farrell’s ballet.” So much has changed since the ballet was created in 1968 that both performers and audience would do best by dwelling on the present, rather than the past. Furthermore, since Farrell herself is not much older than I am, I am all for her continuing to make engaging dance performances when both of us are now in our eighties!

Word of What Day?

Apparently, as a regular user of the Dictionary.com Web site, every morning my Inbox gets a “Word of the Day” message. This morning’s “word” was “déjà vu.” I am waiting to see if it will turn up again tomorrow!

The Wide Expanse of Lang Lang’s Program

Photograph of Lang Lang by Xin Qiu (courtesy of San Francisco Symphony)

Last night saw the first solo piano recital of the season in Davies Symphony Hall. Lang Lang has been performing in Davies since October of 2020, when he made his San Francisco Symphony debut as a Shenson Young Artist. Since that time he has made regular appearances, including a contribution to the Gala concert for the Centennial Season. To be fair, he is not my favorite pianist; but I continue to be impressed by the diversity of his repertoire.

For all I know, I was the only one sitting in Davies who was not bubbling over with enthusiasm. From my more detached point of view, the occasion felt a bit like feeding time at the zoo! Nevertheless, I was impressed by Lang Lang’s approach to programming. The first half established a mature aspect of the First Viennese School, beginning with a relatively late composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the K. 485 rondo movement composed in the key of D major. This was followed by the “early” and “late” periods of Ludwig van Beethoven with two sonatas. The first was particularly familiar, the Opus 13 (eighth) sonata in the key of C minor, given the title “Pathétique.” The second was the penultimate sonata, Opus 110 in A-flat major.

The second half of the program was more “international.” It began in Spain with six of the movements from the Suite española composed by Isaac Albéniz. It then remained in Spain with one of the movements from Enrique Granados’ suite Goyescas, the movement title being “Quejas, o La Maja el ruiseñor” (the maiden and the nightingale). This was followed without pause by the second of Franz Liszt’s “Consolation” compositions, written in the key of E major. The “Liszt segment” then continued with the “Tarantella” movement from Venezia e Napoli, the “appendix” to the second “year” in the Années de pèlerinage cycle. Things then quieted down a bit with an encore performance of Claude Debussy’s “Clair de lune,” the third movement from his Suite bergamasque. There was a second encore with no announcement of title and far too many notes (particularly in light of the number of all the preceding notes during the evening)!

To be fair, I was impressed with the selection of every one of the compositions in the program; but, as in the past, I came away disappointed that the pianist seemed more interested in being a virtuoso pianist than he was in doing justice to each of those compositions.

Confronting Anton Bruckner Again

Lorin Maazel on the cover of the forthcoming box of his Complete Warner Edition

I usually do not write about recordings that will be released more than a week in the future. However, I have begun listening to the CDs collected in Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition; and I realized that the first two CDs sent me on a chase down past articles, not only on this site but also from my tenure with examiner.com. Both of those CDs contain a single symphony by Anton Bruckner: WAB 107 (the seventh in E major) and WAB 108 (the eighth in C minor). That chase had much to do with the fact that, during his tenure with the San Francisco Symphony, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) was not shy in introducing Bruckner symphonies to the audience; and, as many might guess, there was a fair amount of different reactions!

To be fair, I put a lot of my own effort into the twenty CDs in the Profil release, Anton Bruckner: The Collection. I encountered that collection during my tenure with Examiner.com. At that time I knew I was constrained to keeping my article relatively brief, so I tried to restrict myself to “nuts and bolts.” The fact that Maazel limited his Bruckner albums (originally from EMI) to only two symphonies urged me to take a “deeper dive.”

That “dive” took me back to the days when MTT was responsible for my earliest efforts of “deep listening” to Bruckner symphonies. I wrote about his encounter with WAB 107 in November of 2016, when I wrote about a concert that previewed the selection to be performed at the concerts taking place during a tour of Asia. By that time I was able to write: “MTT’s Bruckner performances just keep getting better;” and these days I relish opportunities to listen WAB 107, both of the multiple recordings I have and those rare opportunities when the symphony shows up on a concert program.

Quite honestly, I wish I had a time machine that would enable me to compare MTT’s approach with Maazel’s. On the other hand, Maazel’s two recordings deserve to be experienced on their own terms, rather than through comparison. In that context, I shall probably return to both of the Warner CDs with generous frequency while continuing to maintain fond memories of MTT!

November 7 will be a Full Saturday

The first Saturday of next month will be shared by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) and San Francisco Performances (SFP). The good news, however, is that the performances will not overlap. The first will take place in the afternoon and the second in the evening. Specifics are as follows:

Saturday, November 7, 3 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall: As in the past, the month will begin with the annual Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration. This will open with an afternoon of festivities in the lobby followed by a concert. The SFS musicians will be joined by two musicians playing salterio, the Spanish version of a dulcimer. David Hernández will play the soprano instrument, joined by Claudio Israel Vázquez on tenor. There will also be a solo violin performance by Francisco Fullana. As in the past, SFS will share the stage with the Casa Círculo Cultural ensemble. The program will include two compositions by Carlos Chávez, beginning with 1947 toccata for orchestra, originally composed as incidental music for a staged version of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The other selection will be the “Zarabanda” movement from the score for the ballet “La hija de Cólquide” (the daughter of Colchis). As always seems to be the case, the program will include a performance of José Pablo Moncayo’s “Huapango.”

Photograph of Agustín Barrios taken late in his life in the early 1940’s (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Saturday, November 7, 7:30 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Following the beginning of the SFP Guitar Series with the debut of guitarist Berta Rojas, the second Guitar Series program will be a solo recital by Djiboutian-French artist Raphaël Feuillâtre. His program will include his own arrangements of piano music composed by Isaac Albéniz, as well as an arrangement of Domenico Scarlatti’s K. 492 sonata in D major by Gérard Abiton, and Sergio Assad’s arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Invierno Porteño," the “winter” movement of Estaciones Porteñas (known in English as “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”). Assad will also contribute to the program with music composed for guitar, “Caterete,” the fourth movement in his Suite brasileira. Other composers of guitar music will include Francisco Tárrega, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Agustín Barrios.

SFP Guitar Series to Begin with Imaginative Duo

Berta Rojas with her guitar and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera (from the SFP Web page for their coming performance)

The first performance in the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Guitar Series will feature a debut. The guitarist will be Berta Rojas, who has performed extensively in the United States, as well as Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. She has prepared an all-Latin duo program, joined by clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera.

This will begin with an original composition by Agustín Barrios Mangoré entitled “Un Sueño en la Floresta.” The other original work will be “Pajaro Chogui–Galopera,” composed jointly by Néstor Zavarce and Maricio Cardozo Ocampo. Ocampo has also provided arrangements of music by José Asunción Flores and Paquito D’Rivera, as well as Mangoré, whose final selection will be “Tribute to Dizz,” a set of improvisations on compositions by Dizzy Gillespie.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 24. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is located in the heart of the Civic Center at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices are $95, $85, and $75; and a Web page has been created for online purchases. Because this is the first program, there is also a Web page for purchasing tickets for all four of the recitals in the series.

SFS: the Memorial Concert for MTT

2008 photograph of Michael Tilson Thomas by Jbitman (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

I find it somewhat interesting that both Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and I made moves to the Bay Area around September of 1995. MTT had just concluded his tenure as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and became the eleventh Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). I had the less glamorous position of Group Leader for research in multimedia at the newly-formed Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory. Mind you, since 1991 I had been working on video classification research at the Institute for Systems Science in Singapore, meaning that both MTT and I had made “transnational” trips to the Bay Area!

In that context, I felt well-prepared for last night’s Special Event entitled A Concert for MTT. This involved a rich diversity of compositions, primarily from the twentieth century (the one exception being the world premiere performance of a composition by Mason Bates completed earlier this year). At the other end of the time-line, the earliest composer on the program was Charles Ives, represented by two of the movements from his 1913 New England Holidays symphony. The podium was shared by two conductors, both with close associations to MTT, Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater. Jenny Wong led the SFS Chorus; and four pianists contributed to the occasion (in order of appearance): Yuja Wang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, John Wilson, and Jeremy Denk. (Abrams also performed four-hand with Wang for two movements from a sonata by Francis Poulenc.) There was also a selection of popular songs sung by Audra McDonald accompanied by Bruce Forman on guitar, but I am afraid that her command of pitch was not what it used to be in the MTT days. Far more satisfying was Renée Fleming’s account of Richard Strauss’ “Morgen!,” which she took as her encore with SFS this past Thursday afternoon.

In other words, the program for the evening unfolded as a "mixed bag.” Personally, my greatest frustration was the final offering (before the encore), the choral selection from Aaron Copland’s opera The Tender Land, entitled “The Promise of Living.” In the absence of any text titles, it was virtually impossible to grasp just what that “promise” was! Fortunately, Copland faired much better with that encore, which definitely is one of the twentieth-century war horses, the concluding “Hoe-Down” from Copland’s “Rodeo” ballet, composed for Agnes de Mille. On the other hand, I could not have been more delighted with the nod to John Cage, Lou Harrison’s orchestration of the last three of the five movements of Cage’s Suite for Toy Piano. The other memorable orchestral offering was the Andante moderato movement from Gustav Mahler’s sixth symphony in A minor, conducted by Outwater.

Finally, I found myself wondering whether last night was the first time Meredith Monk’s music was performed in Davies. The Chorus got to perform on its own to present “Panda Chant II.” This is one of the movements from one of Monk’s major works, The Games, which she composed in 1983. Monk has always had her own unique approach to composition; but, under Wong’s direction, the Chorus made this brief eccentricity a high point of the evening.

Old First Concerts: Only One Recital This Month

Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel and pianist Allegra Chapman (from the O1C Web page for their coming performance)

The only performance to be presented this month by Old First Concerts (O1C) will take place two weeks from today (which is basically the middle of the month). This will mark the beginning of the Women of Note multi-season project conceived by cellist Jennifer Kloetzel and pianist Allegra Chapman. Their objective is to celebrate music composed for cello and piano by women. As of this writing, specific selections have not yet been announced, but the contributing composers will be Hélène Liebmann, Luise Le Beau, Mel Bonis, and Leokadiya Kashperova.

Most readers probably know by now that O1C events take place at Old First Presbyterian Church. This is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, October 16. Tickets are available for purchase through the hyperlink attached to that date, and the performance will also be available for live-stream viewing. General admission will be $30 with reduced rates for seniors, students, and children age twelve and under. The O1C Web page includes the hyperlink for live-stream viewing, leading to a YouTube Web page, which, in turn, includes a hyperlink to encourage viewers to support O1C with a donation.

Two Orchestral Programs Prior to LINES Ballet

Unless I am mistaken, the last time the Alonzo King LINES Ballet performed with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) In Davies Symphony Hall, they provided King’s choreography for the performance of the one-act ballet version of Maurice Ravel’s suite Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose). They will return to Davies in the third week of next month, but the collaboration will be preceded by two Orchestral Series performances earlier in the month. Specifics for those two offerings will be as follows:

Mezzo Isabel Leonard (from the Web page for the SFS program on which she will be vocalist)

Friday, November 6, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 8, 2 p.m.: Mezzo Isabel Leonard will be the soloist in the performance of Maurice Ravel’s “ouverture de féerie,” given the title “Shéhérazade.” This will be followed by Vincent d’Indy’s Opus 42, a set of symphonic variations entitled “Istar.” The first half of the program will conclude with “Le jet d’eau,” the third movement in Claude Debussy’s Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire. Leonard will again be the vocalist. Following the “French half” of the program, the intermission will be followed by the first SFS performances of the symphonic fantasy that Richard Strauss composed based on music from his opera Die Frau ohne Schatten. Fabien Gabel will conduct the program.

Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, November 15, 2 p.m.: Violinist Sayaka Shoji will be the soloist for a performance of Ottorino Respighi’s “Concerto gregoriano.” The “overture” for the program will be the first SFS performances of Augusta Holmès’ “Andromède.” The intermission will be followed by a selection of excerpts from the music that Sergei Prokofiev composed for his Romeo and Juliet ballet. The conductor will be Marie Jacquot.

SFS: October Begins with Renée Fleming

Yesterday afternoon saw the first of three performances by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in Davies Symphony Hall. The conductor for this occasion was Santtu-Matias Rouvali, and the soloist was soprano Renée Fleming. Each half of the program was devoted to a single composition by Richard Strauss.

1894 photograph of Richard Strauss at the age of thirty (photographer unknown)

Fleming was the soloist for the first of those compositions, Strauss’ final completed work, given the title Four Last Songs when these four pieces scored for piano and orchestra were published by Boosey & Hawkes. The second half of the program was devoted to a much earlier work, the Opus 40 tone poem “Ein Heldenleben” (a hero’s life). (Those familiar with the Strauss biography will have no trouble identifying who the “hero” is!) Following the Four Last Songs, Fleming provided an encore with yet another song! This was a much earlier composition, “Morgen!” (tomorrow), the last of the four songs that Strauss collected in his Opus 27, composed in 1894.

Like (probably) most of the audience, I experienced my “first contact” with Rouvali on this occasion in the Davies podium. There is no question that he has established a solid command of Strauss’ music. One might almost have called this program “From the End to the Beginning.” That said, the performance left me curious as to how Rouvali approaches other composers, both before and after Strauss!

The Lab: November, 2026

Hopefully, at least some readers may recall that performances at The Lab this month will not begin until Thursday, October 15, which will be the first of two weeks of diverse offerings. Once again, this site will use the beginning of the current month to prepare for the following one. As of this writing, musical performances will be limited to the first half of November, probably to avoid conflicts with plans for the Thanksgiving holiday.

As most regular readers know by now, 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 the date and time of each event provides a hyperlink to the Web page that accounts for both background material and a hyperlink for ticket purchases as follows:

Friday, November 6, 8 p.m.: Eternities is the duo of Katie Porter and Bob Bellerue. Porter plays bass clarinet, accompanied by Bellerue performing with zither, harmonica, whistling, and electronic feedback. Bellerue will also give a solo performance utilizing electronics and resonant feedback through The Lab’s grand piano. The second set will be taken by Antimatter, which is the solo performance project of Xopher Davidson, who now works with industrial oscillators and military surplus equipment.

Friday, November 13, 8 p.m.: Dorian Wood created Canto de Todes as a twelve-hour vocal composition and installation. This performance will be a 70-minute distillation of the full score. There will also be a second set by vocalist and composer Roco Córdova, but no further information has been announced as of this writing.

Drummer Max Jaffe (from the Web page for his performance on the Web site for The Lab)

Saturday, November 14, 8:30 p.m.: Drummer Max Jaffe will reimagine music he recorded for his 2025 album You Want That Too! This will be a trio performance with two other rhythm players: Gavin Gamboa and Logan Kane. The second set will be performed by Burden of Dreams, a quartet led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Nathan Clevenger. The other three performers will be Brett Carson on Hammond organ, vibraphonist Mark Pascucci-Clifford, and Jason Levis on drums. They describe their performances as “dark and dense, drawing from 20th Century classical, doom rock, and jazz.”

SFCCO Shifting to St. Mark’s Church

In about a month’s time, the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra (SFCCO) will present the second of the two programs it has prepared for this year. (I seem to have missed any information about the first concert, entitled Shifting Grounds, which was held on June 6 at Old First Church.) Next month’s performance will take place closer to the Civic Center in St. Mark’s Church, which is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street.

Poster design for the concert being discussed

The title of the new program will be Portraits in Sound. There will be seven compositions in the program, all recent works and all with “visual” contexts. Composers and titles are as follows:

1. Hussein Al-Nasrawi, BABA
2. John Beeman, Jane Goodall: A Musical Portrait
3. Michael Cooke, Bassoon Concerto No. 1
4. Kyle Hovatter, Four Sandburg Poems
5. Michael Orlinsky, Down the Rabbit Hole
6. Michael Orlinsky, Genesis
7. Les Thaler, All Hallows’ Eve

All selections will be performed by SFCCO, conducted by John Kendall Bailey.

The performance will begin at 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 24. General admission will be $25 with a $20 rate for seniors and students. However, the Web page for ticket purchases also has an option for a “pay what you can” sliding scale. Additional donations to benefit the performers will also be available through that Web page.

With "friends" like these …

United States President Donald Trump meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Korean Demilitarized Zone in Panmunjom, South Korea, on June 30, 2019 (photograph by Kevin Lamarque for Reuters)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/30/trump-calls-kim-jong-un-a-friend-and-plays-down-n-koreas-nuclear-arsenal  

Jazz Chez Hanny to Begin October with Sextet

David Ambrosio playing his bass and drummer Russ Meissner

Some readers may recall that the summer of last year saw the return of the Dave Scott Quartet to Chez Hanny. Next month’s first performance in October will be led by two of the members of that quartet: drummer Russ Meissner and David Ambrosio on bass. They will provide rhythm for a front line of two wind players, saxophonist Loren Stillman and Matt Renzi, who plays tenor saxophone, oboe, and English horn. The rhythm section will be filled out by guitarist Nate Radley and Leonard Thompson on piano.

By now regular readers “know the drill” for these house concerts hosted by Frank Hanny. The show will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, October 11. Hanny’s house is located at 1300 Silver Avenue, and the performance takes place in the downstairs rumpus room. Admission will be $35 due to the larger ensemble; and checks will be accepted, as well as cash or Zelle. All of that money will go to the musicians. 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; and the doors will open at 3:30 p.m. Reservations are preferred and may be made by sending electronic mail to jazz@chezhanny.com.

The Bleeding Edge: 9/28/2026

Unless my search engine has not been behaving itself, there has not been a Bleeding Edge confined entirely to a busy weekend since this past May. However, this week has a fewer number of events; and Sunday will be the only day on which a choice will have to be made. It is probably also worth noting that none of this week’s performances were previously reported, as is often the case. That said, the roster of “brand new” programs is as follows:

Friday, October 2, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: The weekend will begin with the next Other Dimensions in Sound performance to be curated by “Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinaire David Boyce.” This will be a two-set program with Boyce deploying his reed instruments (augmented with special effects) in the second set. That will be a duo performance by RedFast Luck, whose other member is percussionist PC Munoz. The first set will also be a duo performed by Mystic Commandos. Saxophonist Jaroba will be joined by Alphastare commanding a modular synthesizer. Once again, many (if not most) readers already know the drill: 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, October 3, 1 p.m., Project Artaud Theatre: More specifically, this performance will take place on the 3rd floor north stairwell of the venue, which is also located in the Mission at 401 Alabama Street. The building is making its studios available for the Crow’s Nest Fest. This will be another duo performing (in their words) a “burst of wurst as you float in a sea of narcotic noise.” Edward Schocker will perform on shō, which is the Japanese version of the Chinese sheng reed instrument. Somewhat more cryptic will be Suki O’Kane’s performance on “Jurassic pedals” with contact microphones.

An appropriate poster for Brutal Sound Effects Mini Pfist (from its BayImproviser Web page)

Sunday, October 4, 7 p.m., Dead End Vintage: The next performance of free improvisation at this vintage clothing store will be a generous one. It will feature a visit from Iceland by Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, who works with both sound and visual images. There will be four other sets identified only by their names: Brutal Sound Effects Mini Pfist, Heartworm, KROB, and Wilderman. The venue is located at 3370 19th Street.

Sunday, October 4, 8 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: Clarinetist Ben Goldberg will lead a “joint” called Haymaker. Rhythm will be provided by David Ewell on bass and drummer Tim Bulkley, along with Matt Robidoux providing electronics. Admission will be a $20 cover charge at the door with a $10 student rate. Since the shop has limited space for a performance, reservations are advised and can be made by calling 415-586-3733. This is another familiar venue for readers, located at 653 Chenery Street, a short walk from the Glen Park station for both Muni and BART.

Sunday, October 4, 8 p.m., Bottom of the Hill: The program will present four diverse sets of rock. Acid Mothers Temple performs psychedelic rock, Magic Potion specializes in acid rock, The Green Door play alt rock, and the final set will be Krisa Cupcake, “spinning '60s and '70s international psych/rock.” It has been a while since I have written about this venue, which I had previously described as having “a reputation for being one of the noisiest venues in the city.”

Many readers probably know that the venue gets its name from being located at the foot of Potrero Hill at 1233 17th Street. However, prices have gone up, since I have not written about the venue since 2017! Admission is now $25 at the door. However, tickets purchased in advance will be $22; but there will be a service fee of $5.51.