Spoleto Festival USA: the April Release

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

Some readers may recall that, a little over two weeks ago, I wrote my first article about the release of a series of recordings of performances that took place last year at the annual Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. The full title of that album was Live from Spoleto 2025: Orchestra. This coming Friday will see the release of the second album: Live from Spoleto 2025: Chamber Music, Vol. 1. As of this writing, Amazon.com has created a Web page, which is processing pre-orders for MP3 downloads.

Each of the eight tracks on this album involves at least one composer and/or arranger. The oldest of those composers is Alexander Borodin, represented by the “Nocturne” movement from his second string quartet in D major, best known for having been transformed into a song (“And This Is My Beloved”) for the Broadway musical Kismet. “Ricercar” was composed jointly by Trollstilt, the partnership of Dan Trueman and Monica Mugan); and the vocal line for Caroline Shaw’s “Other Song” was arranged by Steven Banks for performance on saxophone. The penultimate track is an improvisation (spontaneous?) by Mahsa Vahdat. Sadly, my impression of this new release was no better than my account of the Orchestra album. My only real satisfaction came from the string quartet account of Terry Riley’s “G Song,” performed by Alexi Kenney, Geneva Lewis, Ayane Kozasa, and Paul Wiancko.

Sainte-Agathe to Conduct PBO in December

Valérie Sainte-Agathe has been Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) since 2013. According to my archives, my first encounter with her came at the end of February of 2014, when SFGC contributed to a performance by the San Francisco Symphony of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. She has served as Chorale Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO) since 2022; and she will make her debut conducting both the ensemble and the chorale at the beginning of December.

Banner design for the Gloria Web page on the PBO Web site

That debut will be a “seasonal” program, best typified by the performance of the eighth of the twelve concerti grossi in Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6 collection, composed in the key of G minor and given the title “Christmas Concerto.” This will be balanced by the second half of the program, which will be a performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s best known choral composition, his RV 589 setting of the “Gloria” portion of the Mass. The remainder of the program will consist of two premiere performances. The opening selection will be the world premiere of “Quem Pastores Laudavere,” composed by Roderick Williams. The remaining selection on the program will be the United States premiere of “The Holdfast,” composed by Caroline Shaw. She prepared her own libretto, weaving original texts with excerpts from Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Darkling Thrush.”

As usual, this performance will take place in Herbst Theater, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 5. (At 6:45 p.m. Sainte-Agathe will lead a performance by SFGC in the lobby.) Ticket prices range from $40 to $125, with a $20 rate for those under the age of thirty. They may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page, which includes a diagram showing where seats are still available.

Volti to Conclude Season at Z Space

Poster design for the event being discussed illustrating a “musical reflection” on Yggdrasil (from the Web page for purchasing tickets)

Next month will begin with three performances of the final program in the 46th season of the Volti vocal ensemble. The major work on the program will be the completed version of “The Guardians of Yggdrasil” by composer-in-residence Mark Winges. For those unfamiliar with Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is the great tree of all life. The narrative of the libretto that Lisa Delan prepared for Winges’ music explores what happens when the protectors of the tree become restless and negligent, serving as a metaphor for the many ways in which contemporary behavior has neglected the stewardship of our own planet.

There will be only one other work on the program. This will be a reprise performance of Caroline Shaw’s “Ochre.” Those familiar with the previous performance probably already know that Shaw set a text that similarly addresses how our actions in the present will affect the planet in the future.

This program will be given three performances beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 6, and Saturday, June 7, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 8. The venue will be Z Space, located in NEMIZ (the North East Mission Industrial Zone) at 450 Florida Street. Ticket prices range from $15 to $75. They may be purchased through a Z Space Web page. Volti can be reached by telephone at 415-771-3352.

Broken Hearts on Valentine’s Day

The members of the Shoreline Piano Trio: Katie Youn, Mengua Lin, and Sui-mi Shin (from the Old First Concerts Web page for this performance)

Last night at the Old First Presbyterian Church, Valentine’s Day was celebrated with a program entitled Explorations of Love and Art. This was the latest Old First Concerts performance; and it was presented by the Shoreline Piano Trio, whose members are violinist Sui-mi Shin, cellist Katie Youn, and pianist Menghua Lin. This was the latest endeavor to prepare a program of chamber music whose composers were all women. With the exception of Maria Theresia von Paradis, these were, in “order of appearance,” Caroline Shaw, Jessie Montgomery, Amy Beach, Jennifer Higdon, and Clara Schumann.

This made for a promising program. Then the musicians began to play. On the positive side, each of them was well trained in negotiating intricate passages. However, if they could get the rhythms right, neither the violinist nor the cellist could adjust her respective pitches to conform to the constraints of the equal-tempered scale on the piano. The result was three seemingly skilled musicians who could not come together as a trio.

This was one of those occasions when the live stream was decidedly an advantage, meaning that my squirming and cringing would not disturb anyone in the audience.

The Not-So-Dynamic Duo of Shaw and Kahane

Caroline Shaw and Gabriel Kahane (from the San Francisco Performances event page for last night’s program)

Last night Caroline Shaw and Gabriel Kahane returned to Herbst Theatre to launch the Art of Song Series presented by San Francisco Performances. Both of them are vocalists, contributing both music and lyrics to the songs they presented. They are also both instrumentalists with Shaw playing viola and Kahane at a piano keyboard. In addition, each performer has a desk on the stage with objects on them that could serve for percussion.

The major work on the program was a joint composition effort entitled “Hexagons,” inspired by “The Library of Babel,” one of the stories that Jorge Luis Borges collected in his 1941 publication, El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan (the garden of forking paths). This was preceded by five individual songs, two by Shaw embedded among three by Kahane; and the last three of those songs were solo performances, the first by Shaw and the others by Kahane. Both performers were more than a little casual when it came to identifying the song titles; but, when Shaw delivered her solo, I jotted “deconstructed Tallis” in my program book!

Indeed, if I were to try to coin a category for the approach that both Shaw and Kahane take to performance (solo and duo), it would probably be “playful deconstruction.” However, the problem with this approach is that the performers seem to be the only ones having fun. They may relish each other’s insights and laugh at each other’s jokes, but none of that spirit ever spilled off the stage to engage the audience. As a result, the evening had far less to do with the mind-bending fictions of Borges and more to do with the Monty Python’s Complete Waste of Time computer game!

PIVOT Festival Concludes with “All Hands” Show

Last night in Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Performances PIVOT Festival, curated by Gabriel Kahane, concluded with an “all hands” program. The semicircle of the eight Roomful of Teeth vocalists, who were featured on Thursday evening, now enclosed the four members of the Attacca Quartet, who performed on Wednesday. Kahane contributed to the program as composer, vocalist, and electric guitarist.

As was the case on Wednesday, the program involved the interleaving of the works being performed. Like the four movements of Maurice Ravel’s quartet on Wednesday, the four movements of Caroline Shaw’s four-movement partita, scored for eight singers, provided the “spinal cord” of the program with the movements alternating with string quartet arrangements of an “unmeasured prelude” by Louis Couperin followed by selections from the 27 suites (ordres) composed by his nephew, François Couperin, all of which were originally written for keyboard. Vocal selections composed and sung by Kahane opened the two halves of the program, and the entire program was wrapped up by Paul Simon’s “American Tune.” Kahane provided the arrangements for all of the selections other than the Shaw partita.

This was far from the first time I had encountered instrumental versions of music composed for keyboard. (Indeed, these were the sort of exercises I had to prepare when studying orchestration.) The “unmeasured prelude” was particularly interesting, since it included a fugue and a coda, making it as sort of “mini-suite.” All the titles from the suite movements were in French without any translations provided. However, the attentive listener could still appreciate the different “personal characteristics;” and Kahane’s arrangements suggested that any of the selections could have originally been composed as chamber music, rather than keyboard music.

Shaw’s selection of “partita” as a title suggested that her music would “rub shoulders” with the early eighteenth-century music of the Couperin family. Indeed, she even gave the movements titles that were consistent with other partitas from that period: Allemande, Sarabande, Courante, Passacaglia. Nevertheless, the music itself never gave the slightest impression of any of those four familiar genres. Indeed, the impression provided by the cycle, taken as a whole, was that eighteenth-century practices were best forgotten and needed a thorough overhaul. However, if that overhaul was to be a thorough one, why go to the trouble of keeping those “outmoded” titles! Particularly when interleaved with “the real thing,” the impressions provided by Shaw’s music ran the gamut from puzzling to annoying.

With the closing of the Simon tune, however, all was well again. Indeed, I could have sworn that, woven within that tune was a subtle suggestion of the music for the Passion hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” Was that Simon’s idea or Kahane’s arrangement? The answer does not matter. The concluding selection allowed the attentive listener to dwell on the best parts of all that had preceded.

Roomful of Teeth Continues SFP PIVOT Festival

The Roomful of Teeth “family portrait” (photograph by Anja Schütz, courtesy of SFP)

The second offering in this season’s PIVOT Festival, presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP) and curated by Gabriel Kahane, consisted of a program performed by members of the Roomful of Teeth vocal ensemble. This was a vocal octet led by Artistic Director Cameron Beauchamp (who was also one of the vocalists), whose other members were five women (Estelí Gomez, Jodie Landau, Virginia Kelsey, Caroline Shaw, and Martha Culver) and two men (Steven Bradshaw and Thann Scoggin). The group made its SFP debut in April of 2017, and this is their second appearance.

This is an ensemble known for its talent for eliciting a wide variety of thoroughly engaging sonorities. Harnessing those sonorities in the service of texts, whether narrative or reflective, is another matter. Where reflection, which tends to be preferred genre, is concerned, the ensemble can establish a setting in which the words themselves are secondary, if not tertiary.

The opening selection by Caroline Shaw, “The Isle,” is a case in point. Taken on their own merits, the sonorities summon up a mental image of a small isle in the middle of a vast sea. However, as fragmented words begin to emerge, the attentive listener will recognize that this song does, indeed, have a libretto. On further listening, one encounters familiar texts from William Shakespeare, after which it is a modest leap to the conclusion that the isle itself is the setting for The Tempest. Whether the ensemble selected this work to begin the evening with auditory calisthenics is left for the listener to decide!

In any event, Shaw’s composition is excellent preparation for the novice listener encountering the ensemble for the first time. Sadly, the remainder of the program amounted to little more than “more of the same.” The second selection was the fourth movement from Peter Shin’s “Bits torn from words,” which amounted to a study of the diversity of phonemes. On the other hand, Angélica Negrón’s “Math, the one which is sweet,” composed on a 2022 commission from the New York Philharmonic, amounted to a case study in what linguists would call “referential opacity.”

In the second half of the program, Kahane joined the ensemble, playing both piano and electric guitar for a performance of his Elevator Songs. As was the case with the first half, no text sheets were provided. Kahane explained that members of the audience would be able to find the texts online after the performance had concluded. I have to say that, personally, I felt that this undermined any effort on the part of a listener to appreciate how a composer achieves interplay between words and music, suggesting that such interplay did not matter very much to this particular composer. Nevertheless, there were at least a few moments of engaging (and sometimes amusing) staging and what sounded like a (very) brief “guest appearance” of a fragment from the second (A major) intermezzo in Johannes Brahms’ Opus 118 collection of six short piano pieces.

Taken as a whole, the evening struck me as one in which self-indulgence rose above any consideration for the audience. On the other hand, much of that audience provided the performers with enthusiastic applause after each selection. Could it be that “being there” was all that mattered?

Friction Quartet Explores Vocal Repertoire

Mezzo Melinda Martinez Becker (center) performing with Friction Quartet members (left to right) Kevin Rogers, Mitso Floor, Doug Machiz, and Otis Harriel (screen shot from last night’s video stream)

Last night at Old First Presbyterian Church, the Friction Quartet, whose members are violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers (sharing first chair), violist Mitso Floor, and cellist Doug Machiz, shared their Old First Concerts (O1C) program with mezzo Melinda Martinez Becker. Roughly half of the program was devoted to the music of Caroline Shaw, with Becker providing the vocals for two of the four selections. The second half of the program involved three premiere performances.

The most important of those premieres was the song cycle Canto Caló, composed by Nicolás Lell Benavides. Both Becker and Benavides were born in New Mexico, and the music reflects their respective grandparents’ life experiences. The texts of the songs drew upon a distinctive dialect that was popular among those involved with the Pachuco movement of the Thirties and Forties. Unfortunately, the O1C event page did not provide the texts for this song cycle, putting those of us watching the live stream at a disadvantage; but there was still much to be gained from the expressiveness of Becker’s delivery. The good news is that this piece will be released on an Innova Recordings album; and, hopefully, the texts will be part of the package!

The other two premieres were Becker’s arrangements of two mariachi songs for voice and string quartet. Friction has accumulated such a diverse repertoire that there was no surprise in encountering its venture into the mariachi repertoire. The composers of the two selections were Gilberto Parra and Raymundo Pérez y Soto. Here, again, remote viewers had no access to the texts; but, also again, it was the spirit of Becker’s performance that made the listening experience so engaging.

The spirit also brought life to the two vocal selections by Shaw, “Other Song” and “Cant Voi L’aube,” the latter taking a twelfth century lament for its text. The two instrumental selections by Shaw were “First Essay” and “Blueprint.” The first of these justified its title with its reflections of the rhythm of speech. “Blueprint,” on the other hand, emerged as a reflection of the early string quartet music of Ludwig van Beethoven. I have to confess, however, that neither of these registered as much expressiveness as the vocal works did. On the purely instrumental side, the greatest impact came from Dan Becker’s “Lockdown.”

CMSSF to Launch Tenth Anniversary Season

In a few weeks the Chamber Music Society of San Francisco (CMSSF) will launch its tenth anniversary season. The occasion will be marked by performances of two of the most ambitious string quartets from the First Viennese School. The first half of the program will feature Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 465 string quartet in C major. This is the last in the set of six quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn; and, because of harmonic ambiguities of its introduction, it has been nicknamed “Dissonance.” The second half of the program will be devoted entirely of one of the “late quartets” of Ludwig van Beethoven, Opus 132 in A minor. The program will begin with Caroline Shaw’s “Valencia.”

For those unfamiliar with the ensemble, the musicians are violinists Natasha Makhijani and Jory Fankuchen, violist Clio Tilton, and cellist Samsun van Loon. The San Francisco performance of this program will begin 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 18. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street, a short walk from the Muni stops at the corner of 24th Street and Church Street. General admission will be $25 with a special Supporter rate of $50. Students and seniors will be admitted for $15. All tickets are available through and Eventbrite Web page.

All patrons will be required to show proof of full COVID vaccination (defined as two weeks after your final shot, plus boosters as eligible) before entering the venue. A face covering is required for entry and must be worn at all times. Face masks must completely cover nose and mouth and have ear loops or similar to hold in place. No gaiters, bandanas, or masks with valves will be allowed. Doors and windows of the venue will remain open for added circulation. Ticket holders that may be compromised (exposed to someone with COVID, having symptoms, or just feeling ill) will be able to receive a refund or a ticket for a future performance.

Avi Avital’s Delightful Return to Herbst Theatre

Brooklyn Rider Members Nicholas Cords, Colin Jacobsen, Michael Nicolas, and Johnny Gandelsman with Avi Avital (from the San Francisco Performances event page)

Last night in Herbst Theatre mandolinist Avi Avital made his debut as a San Francisco Performances artist. However, this was not his first appearance in Herbst. He had previously appeared in March of 2010, when he was the guest soloist with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. He fulfilled that same role last night, performing as guest artist in a program prepared by the Brooklyn Rider string quartet of violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Michael Nicolas.

If this article has accorded Avital “top billing,” it is because his were the most satisfying contributions to last night’s program. His solo performance of a prelude composed by Giovanni Sollima reinforced his reputation for expressive performances of a diverse repertoire, both in concert and in his catalog of recordings. He then contributed to two world premiere performances, Osvaldo Golijov’s “Arum der Fayer” and Jacobsen’s recently completed “Time and Again,” conceived as a “biographical memory” of Brooklyn Rider activities.

Sadly, “Time and Again” won the award for most tedious composition on the program. It amounted to an exploration of a brief motif that had become a “signature” of Brooklyn Rider technique. Unfortunately, Jacobsen had exhausted the potential of exploring that motif even before the performance had hit the halfway mark in its duration.

Indeed, that underlying premise of having little to say and saying it over an extended duration seems to have become a bit of a trademark for Brooklyn Rider. Last night’s program was brief enough to be performed without intermission; but, with few exceptions, the interpretation of the selections on the program emerged as little more than an extended slog. Even the original inventiveness of Clarice Assad’s “Obrigado” could not hold its own during last nights presentation; and the abundant humor of Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte,” matching Joseph Haydn joke-for-joke, was a mere shadow of the splendid interpretation of this music presented by the New Esterházy Quartet as an “overture” to a concert (in Herbst) by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale in October of 2019.

The best part of the program turned out to be the opening selection, which was the only work on the program by a deceased composer. Luigi Boccherini was represented by “Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid” (night music of the streets of Madrid). This was originally composed as a string quintet, but last night’s quintet served the interpretation of the score quite well.

Sadly, no program notes were provided for a highly programmatic composition; and the title listed in the program was misleading: “La Musica Notturna Ritratta di Madrid.” The final movement is given the title “Ritirata” (as spelled on the Wikipedia page), depicting the changing of the guard for the night watch. However, the program began with the performance of all seven movements of the composition; and the imagery of each of the movements was engagingly depicted through the quintet’s interpretations of the score.

Once the guard had retreated, the dark cloud of tedium descended over the remaining quintet performances.

Brooklyn Rider to Bring Eclectic Program to SFP

Next month the Brooklyn Rider string quartet of violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Michael Nicolas will return to San Francisco Performances (SFP), having given a PIVOT Festival performance this past October with tenor Nicholas Phan. Their second appearance of the season will also include a guest artist, mandolinist Avi Avital, who has previously performed in Herbst Theatre as a guest soloist with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in 2010. Readers probably also know that Gandelsman was the second solo recitalist to perform in the SFP Sanctuary Series this past Friday.

The program will be an eclectic one, featuring the world premiere of “Arum der Fayer,” composed for mandolin and string quartet by Osvaldo Golijov. Avital will also give a solo performance of a prelude by the contemporary Italian composer Giovanni Sollima. The quartet repertoire will also be diverse, beginning with “La Musica Notturna Ritratta di Madrid” by Luigi Boccherini and recent compositions by Caroline Shaw and Clarice Assad.

This program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 12. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

Ticket prices are $65 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $55 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $45 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. Single tickets can also be purchased at the door as available with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Sasha Cooke’s Davies Recital: Prima le parole

Mezzo Sasha Cooke (courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Last night mezzo Sasha Cooke returned to Davies Symphony Hall as recitalist in the latest installment of the Great Performers Series produced by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). She was accompanied at the piano by Kirill Kuzmin, currently Principal Coach for the Houston Grand Opera, making his debut under SFS auspices. The title of the program was how do I find you, a cycle of seventeen songs, each with music by a different composer and all receiving world premiere performances.

The only composer with whom Cooke had previously worked by Nico Muhly, since she had performed the title role in his Marnie opera. All of the composers were in their forties or younger. The idea of a cycle of songs by multiple composers emerged during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020. All but one of the resulting songs involved a partnership between composer and librettist. The one exception was Muhly, whose source was the seventeenth-century English poet Thomas Traherne. Nevertheless, Traherne’s reference to “Those hidden Plagues which/Souls may justly fear” was as relevant to living through pandemic circumstances as were the the texts by the sixteen contemporary authors.

Indeed, relevance was a key feature (if not the key feature) of all the texts that were set to music. It would not be exaggeration to say that every member of the audience could find reflections of the words Cooke sang with the recent past and current situations. All of the texts were printed in the program book and were also projected as supertitles. I should confess that, personally, I spent more time looking at the pages of the program book than I did looking up at the stage or the titles.

I like to think of a poem as an architecture to be “viewed” both in-the-large and in-the-small. My awareness of the overall structure of the text then guides me through my auditory awareness of how the music unfolds. However, I must confess that, last night, I was so drawn into the interplay of semantics and rhetoric in each poem that my attention to the music itself was significantly diminished. For what it is worth, I do not think I was the only one to experience the performance this way. Four of the contributing composers participated in a post-performance panel discussion; but almost all of that discussion tended to focus on the words themselves, rather than the contributions of the music.

Fortunately, the music will not be totally lost on me. Prior to preparing last night’s recital, Cooke and Kuzmin recorded all of the songs on an album with the same title as the program. That album became available on Amazon.com this past Friday. Currently, availability is limited to an MP3 album; but the Amazon.com download includes the booklet with the texts of the poems, affording an auditory experience comparable to that enjoyed by everyone in last night’s audience.

I plan to listen to this new release in the near future; and I am hoping that, having become familiar with the texts behind the seventeen songs in last night’s program, I can begin to cultivate a similar acquaintance with the music.

Sasha Cooke to Premiere Seventeen Songs

Mezzo Sasha Cooke (courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

At the end of next month, mezzo Sasha Cooke will visit Davies Symphony Hall for her contribution to the Great Performers Series of recitals presented by the San Francisco Symphony. Her program will consist entirely of seventeen world premiere performances of songs written specifically for her during the pandemic. All of these songs have been recorded, with Kirill Kuzmin accompanying her on piano, for a Pentatone album, which will be released two days before her performance, entitled how do I find you.

All of the composers that Cooke commissioned are currently in their 40s or younger. In “order of appearance” on her Davies program, those composers are as follows:

1. Caroline Shaw
2. Kamala Sankaram
3. Matt Boehler
4. Missy Mazzoli
5. John Glover
6. Rene Orth
7. Christopher Cerrone
8. Gabriel Kahane
9. Andrew Marshall
10. Huang Ruo
11. Timo Andres
12. Nico Muhly
13. Hilary Purrington
14. Lembit Beecher
15. Frances Pollock
16. Joel Thompson
17. Jimmy López

With only one exception all of the songs involve new creative partnerships. (The exception is Muhly, since Cooke sang the title role in his Marnie opera.)

The performance in Davies will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 30. Ticket prices range from $25 to $50, and an event page has been created for online sales. They may also be purchased by calling 415-864-6000 or by visiting the Davies Box Office, whose entrance is on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday.

Dover Quartet’s Brahms-and-Beyond Program

Last night in Herbst Theatre the Dover Quartet launched the first of the six programs to be performed in the Shenson Chamber Series presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). This was the third visit to SFP made by violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw. The group had made its SFP debut on October 30, 2016. It then launched the 2018–2019 season, also by presenting the first concert in the Shenson Chamber Series. Last night’s program also featured bass-baritone Davóne Tines as guest artist. The program was framed by string quartets at beginning and end, with Tines contributing to two sections in the middle of the program.

One can probably make a case for the program following a “trajectory of influences;” but the path was not a straight one. The oldest work on the program was the conclusion, the second, in the key of A minor, of the two string quartets that Johannes Brahms published as his Opus 51. Brahms took his time in composing and publishing the Opus 51 quartets. He began work in 1865 but did not complete the quartets until 1873. He had twenty previous efforts, of which eighteen were destroyed and the other two never published in his lifetime. 1865 was also the year of his Opus 40 horn trio in E-flat major, which was preceded by the F minor piano quintet (Opus 34) and the first two piano quartets, Opus 25 in G minor and Opus 26 in A major. Brahms was clearly building a solid portfolio in the chamber music genre.

Of the two Opus 51 quartets, the A minor gives the sense of having been composed by a surer hand, which probably explains why it is performed more often than its predecessor in C minor. The textures tend to be thick; but, when given an effective performance, the attentive listener can appreciate the elaborately embellished intertwining of the instrumental voices. The Dover players could not have been more effective in doing justice to not only those technical details but also the overall tone of expressiveness emerging from those details.

While leaving Herbst I found myself reflecting on how seldom I had encountered any of the Brahms quartets prior to my move to the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of those encounters have taken place in Herbst under SFP auspices. I just hope that New York City has been catching up on all those efforts I have encountered to give those quartets their proper due!

The A minor quartet concluded a program which began in A major with Alexander Zemlinsky’s Opus 4 (first) quartet. The rhetorical intensity of this music contrasted sharply with the Brahms quartet, which seems to have scrupulously avoided overstatement. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of moments when the attentive listener can identify the composer’s awareness of the influences of both Brahms and Antonín Dvořák. Zemlinsky completed this quartet in 1895. Brahms was still alive and seems to have appreciated the young composer’s efforts. (Zemlinsky was 24 at the time.) Indeed, through Brahms’ influence, Zemlinsky’s quartet was was published by N. Simrock, which was also Brahms’ publisher.

Zemlinsky would only begin to find his own unique voice during the twentieth century with influences from both Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg. In the opera world he is probably best known for two one-acts, both based on works by Oscar Wilde. San Francisco Opera had planned to present one of them, “Der Zwerg” (the dwarf), in the summer of 2020; but that event had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. Over the course of his life, Zemlinsky composed four quartets, each with the capacity to reward the attentive listener. Given the compelling expressiveness that Dover brought to the Opus 4 quartet, I found myself wondering if they were planning to undertake the entire cycle. Having enjoyed that cycle through recordings, I would be more that delighted to experience it through a series of concerts.

On this program, however, the twentieth century was represented by Samuel Barber. Tines’ first performance as guest artist was an account of that composer’s Opus 3 “Dover Beach,” a setting of the poem of the same name by Matthew Arnold. Barber composed his setting for medium voice and string quartet in 1931, when he was still only twenty. The poem itself is a tough nut to crack, but it is clear that Barber had a strong appreciation of English literature. There is a clear sense that he established a firm command of reading Arnold’s text before beginning to set it to music. The result is an impressively clear-eyed view of text passages that seem puzzling, if not hopelessly opaque, when first encountered.

The clarity of Barber’s score was perfectly matched by Tines’ expressive delivery and its intertwining with the quartet textures. Mind you, there are times that the music threatens to go overboard. However, Tines kept a sure hand on his own expressiveness, providing at least the sense of a convincing account while negotiating both syntax and semantics that run the risk of being little more than cryptic. Barber himself was a baritone. and there is a 1935 recording of him singing with the Curtis String Quartet, which was released on the Victor label. It was through that recording that I first became aware of this music; and, in that context, I could not have been more satisfied with the immediacy of Tines’ grasp of the many tricky details in Arnold’s text.

Tines was equally convincing in his account of By and By, four traditional gospel songs given decidedly unique arrangements for voice and string quartet by Caroline Shaw. Tines’ vocal delivery provided just the right blend of gospel tradition with art song technique. Shaw’s writing for the quartet, on the other hand, tended to walk the line between playful and provocative. She seemed to be interested in how many different things could be done with the instruments of the string family without drawing the bow across the strings. Some of the results, such as the sound of rhythmic knocking, seemed to align with the text that Tines was singing. Others seemed to be superfluous, if not on the brink of fatuous. One almost came away with the impression that Tines was a passionately devout preacher ministering to a restless audience.

To be fair, most of my first-encounter experiences with Shaw’s music have left me perplexed. Sometimes things begin to get clearer with further listening. Sometimes they get more opaque. Where By and By is concerned, the jury is still out on just what is taking place between a passionate vocalist and obstreperous instrumentalists.

Dover Quartet to Launch SFP Chamber Series

Dover Quartet members Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Camden Shaw, Bryan Lee, and Joel Link with bass-baritone Davóne Tines

Next month San Francisco Performances (SFP) programming will begin with the launch of this season’s Shenson Chamber Series. The program will be a recital by the Dover Quartet, whose members are violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw. The ensemble made its SFP debut on October 30, 2016; and it launched the SFP 2018–2019 season following the opening gala festivities.

For this season’s program, they will appear with a guest artist. Bass-baritone Davóne Tines will be the vocal soloist in a performance of Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach.” This will be preceded by a performance of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Opus 4 (first) quartet in A major. Tines will then return after the intermission as the vocalist in a performance of Caroline Shaw’s “By and By.” The program will then conclude with the second of Johannes Brahms’ three string quartets, Opus 51, Number 2, in A minor.

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 9. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

Ticket prices are $70 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $55 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $45 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. As available, single tickets will be sold at the door with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Finally, because this is the first program of the series, subscriptions are still on sale for $405 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $315 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $245 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may also be purchased online in advance through a different SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325 (also different from the number for single tickets).

“Vocal++” Adventures from SFCMP

Last night the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) presented their Voices in Reverberation program, the on STAGE streamed offering in its 50th season. The members of the ensemble were joined by guest artist Pamela Z, a leading figure in the creation and the performance of adventurous vocal music. Not only did she give a solo account of the “Breathing” movement from her Carbon Song Cycle, completed in 2013; but also she was the soloist in “Pine Tree,” composed for her by Caroline Shaw and scored for clarinet (Peter Josheff), piano (Kate Campbell), viola (Meena Bhasin), cello (Hannah Addario-Berry), and voice. In both of these works, Z’s vocalizations were augmented through real-time processing by laptop computer.

I have always had a soft spot for “Breathing.” This is not just due to Z’s inventive approaches to electronic augmentations to “natural” vocalization. What I enjoy is the extent to which those approaches make the music an étude directed as much at the listener as at the performer. Through her capacities for subtlety, Z draws the listener into her rich diversity of sonorities, thus cultivating that capacity for attentiveness wherein listening overtakes mere hearing. Those capacities served her equally well in “Pine Tree,” where vocalization included the delivery of the text from Yoni Noguchi’s “I Hear You Call, Pine Tree.” Sadly, however, Shaw never really homed in on a compelling instrumental rhetoric that would provide a suitable context for Z’s vocal work.

Ironically, that sense of interplay between text and context emerged with greater clarity in the strictly instrumental offerings of the evening. This was particularly the case in the opening selection, “Inexpressible v.2” by Amadeus Regucera. Indeed, the very title suggests an interplay of text and context that may not be entirely amicable. The work was scored for flute (Tod Brody), violin (Hrabba Atladottir), and cello (Addario-Berry); and the “text” relied heavily, if not entirely, on non-standard performance techniques. To some extent, this served as a “primer” for the devices Z would subsequently evoke in her solo work; and, as if to reinforce that premise, towards the end of his piece Regucera had Brody augment his flute work with simultaneous vocalization of phonemes.

Atladottir also gave a solo account of “Sabina,” Andrew Norman’s sonic account of his impressions of  the basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome. This involved a subtle account of a variety of violin sonorities, concluding with what amounted to an unembellished account of plainchant. The overall idea was imaginative, and Atladottir’s interpretation was technically impressive. However, Norman never seemed to home in on those rhetorical factors that keep the listener as absorbed in the music as the performer needs to be.

Eric Dudley conducting SFCMP in the performance of John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony” (screen shot from the video being discussed)

The program concluded with a full ensemble performance of John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony.” Almost exactly a month ago I wrote about the recording of this music that had been released by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, coupling the piece with Adams’ earlier “Chamber Symphony.” The earlier composition was influenced by, in Adams’ words, “American cartoon music,” complete with clever titles including “Roadrunner” as a nod to the Warner Brothers cartoon character. The movements of “Son of Chamber Symphony,” on the other hand, have no titles; but, as conductor Eric Dudley (SFCMP Artistic Director) observed, the music began with an unmistakable nod to the Scherzo (second) movement from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 125 (ninth) symphony in D minor. While that opening gesture clearly seized listener attention, I found myself more than a little disappointed that, as the three movements of the piece unfolded, there was less to sustain attention than I had previously thought.

SFCMP to Present Vocal Program Next Month

SFCMP’s “poster” for its on STAGE program showing the contributing composers (from its Web page for ticket purchases)

Next month the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) will present the on STAGE  event planned for the streamed offerings of its 50th season. The title of the program will be Voices in Reverberation; and Pamela Z, who has figured significantly in both the creation and the performance of adventurous vocal music, will join SFCMP as guest artist. She will present the “Breathing” movement from her Carbon Song Cycle, completed in 2013. She will also give the world premiere of a new composition written for her by Caroline Shaw. The title has not yet been announced, but the piece is being scored for clarinet, piano, viola, cello, and voice.

On the instrumental side, Amadeus Regucera, whose “IMY/ILY” was performed by Andy Meyerson to conclude this month’s in the COMMUNITY concert, will again be featured, this time in a performance of “Inexpressible v.2,” scored for flute violin, and cello. In addition violinist Hrabba Atladottir will play Andrew Norman’s solo composition “Sabina.” The program will conclude with a full-ensemble performance of John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony.”

As with all other streamed offerings (including the free ones), tickets will be required. Acknowledgement of the ticket will include information for connecting to the streamed content. Streaming will be available on the date and time for each event as specified below, and content will be accessible for one month. General admission will be $15. However, there is a Pay What You Can rate, which has a minimum of $5, intended for the benefit of students, teachers, and those with limited financial resources. There will be a processing fee of $1.85 for all tickets. All ticket purchases will be processed through a single Web page. The one-month availability will begin when the program is premiered next month on Friday, June 18, at 8 p.m.

Sō Percussion’s Meany Center Video

Having written yesterday about the video performance of Sō Percussion (which Wikipedia insists of calling “So Percussion”) being served by the Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington in Seattle, I decided to let my curiosity get the better of me and give it a viewing. The ensemble is the quartet of percussionists Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting, all commanding a diversity of pitched and unpitched instruments, as well as other physical objects not intended for making music. The entire video is 40 minutes in duration, presenting excerpts from three compositions in the quartet’s repertoire. Its Web page will be available for viewing until next Friday, May 14, at 11:59 p.m.

The program began with the first movement of Angélica Negrón’s “gone.” Written on a commission by the quartet, at the time of the performance it was apparently the only movement of a work-in-progress effort. The score is intended as a reflection of the destructiveness of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island of Puerto Rico, where Negrón was born. This was followed by the second and third movements of Vijay Iyer’s “Torque,” the only piece of the program involving only pitched instruments: two marimbas and two vibraphones. The program then concluded with the last three movements of Caroline Shaw’s “Narrow Sea,” jointly commissioned by the quartet along with soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Gilbert Kalish. Treuting served as “master of ceremonies” for the entire video, sounding too much as if he did not see a need for writing out or rehearsing his comments.

I have to confess that I am a sucker for percussion ensembles, probably because performance is almost always as much a matter of choreography as it is of doing justice to what has been notated in the score. This was particularly interesting in the case of Negrón’s movement, since each percussionist was joined by a “robotic” sound source. Since Treuting never explained what made these devices robotic, I can only assume that each had some form of audio sensor that would play a role in the sounds that would emerge. (“I listen, therefore I click.”) I suppose this was Negrón’s way of reflecting on the extent to which hurricane destruction is beyond the ability of humans to either anticipate or control.

Gilbert Kalish at the piano keyboard with two percussionists playing the interior of his instrument (screen shot from the video being discussed)

“Narrow Sea” was particularly interesting when the percussionists applied their mallets to the strings in the interior of the grand piano Kalish was playing. The interplay of such “interior” sonorities and keyboard work figured in some of the piano music composed by George Crumb (whose music Kalish has performed). However, I was more drawn to Upshaw singing Shaw’s reworking of the tune for “The Wayfaring Stranger.” I once had a chance to listen to Shaw sing rural folk music as part of a pre-concert discussion, leading me to conjecture that she invented her own tune by singing it for herself.

As far as “Torque” is concerned, I suspect it deserves more listening. First impressions came across as little more than abstraction for its own sake. Mind you, it is a far cry from the sorts of jazz improvisations that Iyer plays at the piano; and “Torque” is definitely not as referentially opaque as many of those improvisations. I am just not yet sure where the journey was or why it was worth traversing.

Nevertheless, there was more than enough to draw my attention to Sō Percussion; and I hope I shall not have to wait much longer for an opportunity to listen to them performing in a concert hall before a “live” audience.

SFSymphony+ Begins with First SoundBox

This morning SFSymphony+, the new on-demand streaming service presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), got under way with the first SoundBox program of the new year. The program was only about half an hour in duration, a far cry from the original full-evening concept of SoundBox presenting adventurous programming in a context allowing for extended socializing. The title of the program was Nostalgia, introduced in the program book as “three composers look to a past that may or may not exist, while opening new portals to the future.”

In order of appearance, those composers were Freya Waley-Cohen, Missy Mazzoli, and Caroline Shaw; and all three of their respective efforts were created in the last decade. All of the works were composed for strings, with Mazzoli’s “Vespers” requiring only a single performer playing amplified violin with delay and soundtrack at one extreme and Shaw’s double-quartet version of her “Entr’acte” at the other. The program began with Waley-Cohen’s “Conjure,” scored for string trio.

Unless I am mistaken, this was my third encounter with Mazzoli’s instrumental music in performance, the first having been presented by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. However, my most memorable encounter with her work was the West Edge Opera production of her reworking of Lars von Trier’s 1996 film Breaking the Waves into a full-length opera with a libretto by Royce Vavrek. “Vespers” was quite another beast, situating soloist Polina Sedukh in an environment of disembodied voices and other sampled sound sources. Ironically, while the resources were a far cry from those of a full-length opera, it was hard to avoid a sense of alienation associated with Sedukh’s role in this highly-theatrical creation, an alienation not unlike what Bess McNeill experiences as that plot of Breaking the Waves unfolds. The impact of that alienation on “the small screen” may not have been as intense as the operatic experience; but Sedukh’s performance was still unmistakably compelling.

Some of that alienation also seemed to permeate “Conjure.” This may have been due, in part, to the face masks worn by violinist Yun Chu, violist Jonathan Vinocour, and cellist Jill Rachuy Brindel under pandemic conditions. However, just as significant was the sinister quality of the dark projection behind the players created by Yee Eun Nam:

Yun Chu, Jonathan Vinocour, and Jill Rachuy Brindel playing “Conjure” (screen shot from the video being discussed)

Indeed, there were occasions when the projection could be seen on the bodies of the performers, almost as if they were being consumed by the environment in which they were situated. James Keller’s note for the program book suggested that the “conjuring” of the title involved “the summoning of a mystical, perhaps malign, spirit;” and it was hard to avoid that sense of malignancy while listening to Waley-Cohen’s music.

I have had a variety of different reactions to previous encounters with “Entr’acte” in its string quartet version, which I first heard in April of 2015 when the Chamber Music Society of San Francisco played it in a Noontime Concerts recital at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral. The piece was conceived as a deconstruction of music from the string quartets of Joseph Haydn; and it did not surprise me that my most satisfying experience came from listening to the piece played by an ensemble with considerable Haydn experience,  the New Esterházy Quartet of violinists Lisa Weiss and Kati Kyme, violist Anthony Martin, and cellist William Skeen. These players always knew how to play up the element of wit in Haydn’s music, and they had no trouble giving Shaw the same treatment. When they played “Entr’acte” prior of a concert by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale in October of 2019, I finally recognized how much of Shaw’s score could evoke “a series of subtle grins and the occasional belly-laugh.”

Sadly, that rhetoric never emerged in the SoundBox performance by violinists Sarn Oliver, Leor Maltinski, Jessie Fellows, and Darlene Gray, violists Yun Jie Liu and Nancy Ellis, cellist Barbara Bogatin, and bassist Charles Chandler. This may have been due to the intense solemnity of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s conducting, if not the need for a conductor in the first place, which seemed to suggest that the octet lacked the intimacy of the original quartet setting. The quotation from Shaw included in Keller’s program note seems to suggest that such solemnity was not intended as a factor, and I found myself wishing that the SFS musicians had stuck with her original version.

Philharmonia Baroque’s Caroline Shaw Album

Composer Caroline Shaw (photograph by Kait Moreno, from Shaw’s Web site)

Those that have followed my work for at least half a decade know that my relationship with the compositions of Caroline Shaw has not been a smooth one. Indeed, my “first contact” took place almost exactly five years ago, in April of 2015, when the (at the time) recently formed string quartet calling itself the Chamber Music Society of San Francisco played Shaw’s “Entr’acte” in a Noontime Concerts recital at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral. Writing a fair account of this event was not an easy matter, and I found myself concluding that the composition had more to do with ideas than with any practices of making music.

To be fair, I should note that this punch line has now been superseded. This past October, at the first San Francisco performance in the 39th season of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO) & Chorale, the second half of the program presented the fourth Shaw composition to be commissioned by PBO. As usual, there was a pre-concert event, which began with the members of the New Esterházy Quartet (NEQ), violinists Lisa Weiss and Kati Kyme, violist Anthony Martin, and cellist William Skeen, playing “Entr’acte.” The piece was chosen since it had been written as a deconstruction of music from the string quartets of Joseph Haydn, which I had known when I first heard Shaw’s music. However, it took NEQ’s approach to performance to convince me that there was as much wit in Shaw’s marks on paper as there had been in her Haydn sources; and, as I put it when writing about the experience, listening involved “a series of subtle grins and the occasional belly-laugh.”

At the beginning of this month, Philharmonia Baroque Productions released a new CD consisting of all four of the Shaw compositions written under PBO commissions. The most recent of these, which was performed at the beginning of the season, was an oratorio entitled “The Listeners,” scored for PBO, the Philharmonia Chorale, and two vocal soloists, contralto Avery Amereau and bass-baritone Dashon Burton. The album begins with the first three commissioned compositions, all written for mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter, collected into a single suite entitle Is a Rose.

Sadly, the primary impact of this new album has been to revive those impressions that had been formed five years ago. Once again I found myself encountering listening experiences that had more to do with ideas than with making music. To be fair, Shaw herself can be up-front about her interest in such ideas. The sixth movement of “The Listeners,” entitled “That’s us,” is a tape recording of a lecture by Carl Sagan, while the third movement, “Geeting,” plays back the opening track from the “Golden Record” attached to the Voyager satellite, consisting of a welcome-from-our-planet message given in English by Kurt Waldheim (then Secretary-General of the United Stations), followed by greetings in 55 other languages. These tracks make for highly absorbing listening experiences, particularly for those of us that were around when the Voyager was launched; but, as a result, the music itself comes across as an uninspired account of texts that leave little impression on the attentive listener, no matter how much expressiveness was engaged by both conductor Nicholas McGegan, Chorale Director Bruce Lamott, or the vocal soloists.

The bottom line is that Shaw has yet to establish a solid command of how her music can provide just the right environment for words that have already been structured around principles of syntax, semantics, and rhetoric. Ironically, I have had an opportunity to listen to her sing gospel songs from her By and By collection; and there is no question that she knows how to “get the spirit.” Some of that spirit can be found in her approach to Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose,” which concludes Is a Rose. This is the earliest of the three songs in the Is a Rose collection; and it is more than a little disappointing that, over the course of the remaining music she composed for PBO, the flesh should be as weak as it is.