Bobby Mitchell Plays World Premiere Rzewski

Composer Frederic Rzewski died in Montiano, Tuscany in Italy on June 26, 2021 at the age of 83. The cause of death seems to have been a heart attack. Like many of my generation, I first learned about him by reading the issues of Source: Music of the Avant-Garde; and he subsequently received a fair amount attention when Larry Austin and Douglas Kahn compiled their anthology of Source articles entitled Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966–1973. During that particular interval of years, Rzewski was based in Rome, where he had co-founded Music Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum.

In the years that followed, he would divide his time between Europe and the United States. Much of his work involved using music to tap into his own deep political conscience. Even when his compositions involved fantasias on folk music and work songs, there was a consistent sharp edge to his rhetoric, along with a tendency to inject fierce improvisations into notated music that was already prodigiously complex.

Sadly, I never had a chance to see Rzewski in performance. However, I continue to treasure my Hat Hut CD of him playing “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!,” which is available on Amazon.com for both physical CD (although the album cover on the Web page is incorrect) and digital download. I have been more fortunate in opportunities to listen to concert performances of his North American Ballads suite.

courtesy of Naxos of America

Today Naxos released the latest album in its American Classics series. Pianist Bobby Mitchell performs Rzewski’s much later piano compositions. The earliest of these, “War Songs,” was composed in 2008; and it amounts to a pastiche of war-related songs (both pro and anti) from the last seven centuries. This is preceded by the last two movements of the Dreams piano cycle, which was completed in 2014. Continuing in chronological order, “Winter Nights” is a three-movement composition (one movement for each night), which Rzewski composed for Mitchell in 2015. The album then concludes with “Saints and Sinners,” composed in 2016.

Here in San Francisco Mitchell is best known for his performances in the annual San Francisco International Piano Festival. He played music by Rzewski at Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral’s Noontime Concerts series in August of 2022; and, in August of 2020, he played the complete seven-movement “Songs of Insurrection.” That performance was captured on video and now has its own YouTube Web page. Thus, while all of the selections on the new Naxos release were new to me, I could listen to them with confidence in Mitchell’s authority in his performances.

However, in spite of that authority, I have to confess that none of the compositions on this release moved me as viscerally as either “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” or the North American Ballads collection. Thus, while Rzewski likened “Winter Nights” to Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 (“Goldberg”) variations as an antidote for insomnia, I felt that Igor Levit’s coupling of Bach with “People United” on his 2015 solo piano album (along with Beethoven’s Opus 120 set of 33 variations composed on the waltz theme given to him by the publisher Anton Diabelli) made for a far more satisfying listening experience. Nevertheless, Rzewski’s music deserves attentive listening; and it is likely to benefit from multiple encounters. In that context I am perfectly happy to let it share space with “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” in my CD cabinet.

Sarah Cahill Brings Four Premieres to O1C

Composer Frederic Rzewski (photograph by Christian Mondrup, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

Last night at the Old First Presbyterian Church, pianist Sarah Cahill presented the first Old First Concerts (O1C) program for the New Year. Four of the five works on her program were receiving premiere performances, while the final offering could be taken as a reflection on earlier times in the Bay Area. The composer of the first work on the program, Frederic Rzewski, died before he had the opportunity to listen to that work’s premiere performance.

Rzewski composed “Humanitas” to honor the 85th birthday of Terry Riley, who is now still alive and well at the age of 87. The composition interleaves spoken text with the piano performance. [updated 1/7, 4:25 p.m. The text sources for the first movement were Classical (Plautus, Cicero, and Catullus). The remaining sources were in English with the final selection taken from the conclusion of Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”]

Given the nature of the content, this is music that probably deserves more than a single listening experience. This is a bit disconcerting when one considers the accessibility of earlier Rzewski piano compositions, such as “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” and the four-movement North American Ballads. However, it may just be the case that one only begins to orient oneself to “Humanitas” after more than a single listening encounter.

The most recent work on the program was the third “Book” in Arlene Sierra’s ongoing Birds and Insects project. This installment (which has not yet been completed) currently consists of four relative short pieces. The first three account for the birds (Canyon Wren, Lovely Fairywren, Tawny Owls); and the suite concludes with “Great Grig,” an insect in the Orthoptera order, which encompasses animals such as grasshoppers and crickets.

Cahill’s notes provided an informative quote from the composer: “Each piece features distinct characteristics to fit its title: spelling the name in pitches, employing a transcription of an animal’s song from nature, recalling its physical movement in various ways, or developing ideas drawn from an animal’s cultural symbolism.” Those that enjoy Olivier Messiaen’s appropriation of birdsong in his music may be inclined to accuse Sierra of overthinking her work; and, for what it is worth, I was content to treat Cahill’s performance on its own terms without trying to revive any memories of high school biology.

The first half of the program concluded with the second and fifth movements in Robert Pollock’s “Enneagram.” Here again one had to resort to the program notes: “The Enneagram is a geometric nine-pointed figure which maps out the nine fundamental personality types of human nature and their complex interrelationships.” This was yet another listening experience that had to contend with too much theory and not enough practice. Like “Humanitas,” this is probably music that requires multiple encounters before any form of sense-making can be exercised.

Composer Carolyn Yarnell was in the audience for the premiere of her “Nocturne,” which took place immediately after the intermission. Ironically, she had composed the piece in 1982, when she was a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I must confess, however, that, even with the intermission break, I had become so saturated with the more recent compositions presented during the first half that I had trouble orienting myself into a “new” work that had been composed 40 years ago.

However, the Eighties also provided the conclusion of Cahill’s program. This was Peter Garland’s six-movement suite Walk in Beauty. Thanks to New Albion Records, this was the one piece I could approach with memory of past encounters. As Garland himself put it, the music was inspired by “the all-night peyote ceremonies of the Native American Church and the curing ceremonies of the Navajo.” All six of the movements are less than four minutes in duration; and, to some extent, that brevity establishes haiku-like qualities. If the many “first contact” experiences of this program had left me feeling more than a little disoriented, Walk in Beauty concluded the listening experience with a more comforting familiarity.

Old First Concerts: February, 2021

As of this writing, Old First Concerts has scheduled only one concert for next month. This will be the return of three of the members of the Wooden Fish Ensemble: violinists Terri Baune and Ilana Blumberg and pianist Thomas Schultz. The two violinists will present the world premiere of Hyo-shin Na’s “Weaving Variations,” preceding it with a performance Na’s “The Sway of the Branch II.” They will also perform the world premiere of “Three Pieces and More” by Boudewijn Buckinx. Schultz will play Frederic Rzewski’s North American Ballads, followed by Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangements of two chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach. There will also be duets for violin and piano by Erik Satie and Arvo Pärt.

As is currently the case, this concert will be live-streamed through YouTube. The specific link to the YouTube streaming will be found on the event page for this concert. The performance will take place at 8 p.m. on Friday, February 26; and a hyperlink to the program notes will be added to the event page a few hours before the beginning of the concert. There will be no charge for admission, but all are invited to choose an amount to donate through the hyperlink on the event page. As usual, any changes in current plans will be updated through the Web page you are currently reading and the Facebook shadow site for this series of articles.

Slotchiver’s “Americana” Debut on Zoho

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording begin discussed

Earlier this month Zoho (last discussed this past May for its release of two albums of guitarist Sharon Isbin) released its first CD of solo piano music performed by Jeni Slotchiver. The title of the album is American Heritage, and it surveys 125 years of music by American composers. The “early bookend” for this recording is the nineteenth-century composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, represented by one of his best-known works, “The Banjo” (Opus 15), as well as the thematically innovative “Paraphrase de Concert,” the Opus 48 “Union.” The other end of the survey is occupied by Frederic Rzewski with a recording of “Down by the Riverside” from his North American Ballads collection.

Just as important, if not more so, is the overall scope of the album. Two of the composers are women, both of African descent: Margaret Bonds and Florence Price. Four of the male composers are also of African descent: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Harry Burleigh, Robert Nathaniel Dett, and William Grant Still. Only the “bookend” composers fall into the “White American male” category.

As a result, the album, taken as a whole, makes for a stimulating journey of discovery; and that journey applies as much to my own listening experiences as to those of any readers! Most of those readers hopefully cultivated some awareness of Price as a result of learning about Rae Linda Brown’s biography of her, The Heart of a Woman. On Slotchiver’s album she is represented by the three-movement suite Dances in the Canebreaks, listed as composed in 1953, which was the last year of Price’s life. Actually, the suite was composed in 1933 and was not published until twenty years later. Brown also observes that the second of the three dances, “Tropical Noon,” may have originally been entitled “Little Cabin Lullaby.” Mind you, none of this factual background should interfere with the delightful rhetoric of all three of this suite’s movements.

Where technique is concerned, Slotchiver does a far-more-than-creditable job of managing the superposition of familiar tunes in Gottschalk’s “Union.” I just hope she had fun playing it, since it is difficult to listen to that piece without at least chortling. On the other hand I was a bit concerned that, by paying too much attention to technique, Slotchiver may have smoothed over some of the sharper edges of the Rzewski selection. This was unabashedly political music that deserved more than just a “faithful keyboard account.”

Taken as a whole, however, the album is a valuable reference resource; and, for the most part, it makes an excellent case for music that deserves more attention in the “standard repertoire” than has been accorded to date.

SFIPF Revisits a Rzewski Premiere

Last night the San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF) revisited a United States premiere performance presented by Bobby Mitchell at last year’s Festival. The composition was Frederic Rzewski’s seven-movement “Songs of Insurrection.” The performance took place at The Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. An audio recording captured the performance, which has been uploaded to a YouTube file, whose only video is a static image of one of Rzewski’s score pages. The PDF program book for the Festival also included a hyperlink to the score that the composer uploaded to IMSLP. That hyperlink was incorrect; but there still is a “Songs of Insurrection” Web page from which the score can be downloaded.

Rzewski is probably best known for “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!,” a set of 36 variations on the Chilean song "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayún, which has probably assumed the status of the variations composition of the twentieth century. The nineteenth century provided two such prodigious undertakings, one by Ludwig van Beethoven, his Opus 120, on a simple waltz by Anton Diabelli and one by Johannes Brahms, his Opus 35, on the theme for the theme-and-variations caprice that concludes Niccolò Paganini’s Opus 1 set of 24 caprices for solo violin. Rzewski decidedly raised the bar set by his two predecessors.

“Songs of Insurrection” is very much another matter. The score itself never identifies any specific songs associated with revolutionary movements. Indeed, there are so many opportunities for improvisation (which the composer insists should be spontaneous, that the pianist is free to add his/her own favorite folk songs to the mix (or, for that matter, any of the pop and rock songs that emerged during protests against the Vietnam War). It might even be fair to say that each of the seven movements is an extended fantasia imposing a wide variety of technical demands on the pianist over and above what is expected through improvisation.

Just listening to Mitchell makes for engaging listening. Nevertheless, watching would probably have been even more informative. There are a variety of percussive passages that clearly involve much more of the piano than the keyboard. I also detected several movements that involved reaching over the keyboard and stroking the strings by hand. This is one of those compositions in which what the pianist is doing is as significant as what the ear perceives.

Nevertheless, because this music is so challenging, there are few opportunities to encounter it. An audio-only experience may not be optimal. However, if that is all that is available, it should be approached as at least an introduction to one of the most challenging compositions of the current century (a status that is likely to endure for many decades into the future).

Pianist Conrad Tao Revives the “Protest Genre”

from the Amazon.com Web page for the album being discussed

According to my records, I have been listening to recordings of pianist Conrad Tao since February of 2012, shortly after a partnership was formed by (now defunct) EMI Classics and the Juilliard School. This was one of the earlier migrations of “singles” albums into the digital domain. Pianist Tao was one of three Juilliard students to be featured on a half-hour digital release. At the core of his album was an intense account of Igor Stravinsky’s “Trois mouvements de Petrouchka” (three movements from [the ballet] “Petrushka”), which was more than enough to command my attention. This selection was preceded by two selections from Claude Debussy’s first book of piano preludes. However, a real kicker came at the end, when Tao performed his own Three Songs set, which he had composed in 2010.

In building up a catalog of recordings, Tao has subsequently covered equally interesting ground. Since that “debut” release, his approaches to repertoire have been consistently adventurous. However, on his latest album, American Rage, released about a month ago, his adventures have led him into the genre of protest music, resulting in a recording that serves up an unabashedly political reminder that, as Mao Tse-Tung once wrote, revolution does not take place at a dinner party.

The “program” of the album is framed by two protest songs, both realized as virtuoso solo piano music by composer Frederic Rzewski for his North American Ballads collection. The album opens with “Which Side Are You On?,” originally written by Florence Reece, whose husband Sam was a union organizer involved in the bitter and violent struggle between miners and mine owners in 1931 now known as the Harlan County War. The final selection, “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues,” evokes the dehumanizing machines of industrialized cotton production and its violent impact on the workers. Rzewski’s settings are technically demanding unto an extreme, delivering an uncompromising rhetoric to account for the darkest consequences of the Industrial Revolution; and Tao’s account of that rhetoric could not have been more consistent with the composer’s intentions.

The primary selection on the album is Aaron Copland’s three-movement piano sonata. By the time I was born in 1946, Copland had established an “American as apple pie” reputation, making him our country’s “unofficial representative” of “American style.” This amounted to a decision to overlook the political sentiments that Copland cultivated in Paris during his work with Nadia Boulanger in the Twenties. He never enrolled as a member of a political party, but his progressive sympathies definitely aligned with the miners in Harlan County. His biographer Howard Pollack wrote about Copland’s “deep admiration for the works of Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, all socialists whose novels passionately excoriated capitalism’s physical and emotional toll on the average man.”

Those sympathies probably motivated Copland’s well-known “Fanfare for the Common Man,” long before the media turned that music into an anthem for mindless tub-thumping nationalism. Composed between 1939 and 1941, the piano sonata reflects those aforementioned influences from writers such as Norris, Dreiser, and Sinclair. As a result, the music established a sense of social struggle that Rzewski would subsequently escalate to a more intense level of virtuosity and rhetoric.

Less convincing is Julia Wolfe’s “Compassion.” At best the piece suggests that Wolfe had a keen understanding of Rzewski on both technical and rhetorical grounds. However, this is a post-9/11 composition. By all rights, Wolfe’s music should have reflected an overall change in worldview that was global, rather than merely national. However, there is little sense of either Copland or Rzewski serving as a point of departure. At best the score draws upon the rhetoric of minimalism; but that rhetoric does little to reinforce any semantics of protest, let alone the bridge that rage establishes between semantics and rhetoric.

Four Pianists and Two Keyboards at O1C

Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers (from the O1C event page for this performance)

Last night at the Old First Presbyterian Church, Old First Concerts (O1C) presented a program organized by pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers around musical selections exploring different aspects of social justice as motivation and inspiration. The compositions themselves were for both one and two pianos. For the most part, Cahill and Myers played different instruments; but they shared a common keyboard for two selections. For two of the compositions, they were joined by two additional pianists, Riley Nicholson and Monica Chew, with four hands on each keyboard.

The works on the program were composed between 1979 and the immediate present. Two of the piano solo selections, divided between Cahill and Myers, were premiere performances. Myers played the world premiere of Sharmi Basu’s “A muted body,” which recalled John Cage compositions that dealt more with activities to be engaged by the performer, rather than just a matter of fingers picking out notes based on score pages. Cahill gave the West Coast premiere of Teresa Wong’s “She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, inspired by a Nina Simone song based on a text by Harlem Renaissance poet William Waring Cuney.

Only three of the offerings were written before 2000, and I have to confess that they awakened several comforting feelings of nostalgia. The oldest was “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues,” the last of the four pieces in the North American Ballads collection that Frederick Rzewski composed between 1978 and 1979. Cahill and Myers played a two-piano version that enhanced the emergence of rhythmic complexities derived from the inventions of the Industrial Revolution. The ballad itself, however, is more concerned with the dehumanization of the worker than the complexity of the machine; and the performance elicited a poignancy upon reflection on how much further dehumanization has advanced under the Digital Revolution.

The program began with music for two pianos that Meredith Monk composed for her multimedia Ellis Island project. Rather than focusing on the usual American-the-land-of-immigrants trope, Monk and her colleague Bob Rosen chose to dwell on those turned back from Ellis Island, for whom the venue was known as the “Isle of Tears.” Cahill and Myers played an almost hypnotizing keyboard composition based on elaborate polyrhythms. I may have been fooling myself, but I liked to believe that Monk’s elaborate textures could be sorted out better because one piano was a Steinway and the other a Baldwin.

The other twentieth-century piece was Elinor Armer’s “Mirror, Mirror,” which she wrote in 1992 for a centennial celebration of her composition teacher Darius Milhaud. This was the piece that Cahill and Myers played on a single keyboard; and it was a satirical work based on the premise that four-hand performances have a tendency to be competitive, rather than cooperative. As the piece evolved, it was clear that sharing the keyboard was a contentious issue with each pianist reaching over into the other’s “turf.” There is, of course, the four-hand sonata by Milhaud’s former colleague Francis Poulenc, which divides the keyboard up into “center,” played by one pianist, and “outer margins” played by the other. That is music that is as much fun to watch as it is for listening; and Armer’s composition makes for a latter-day reflection on that same virtue.

The risk of the sort of program prepared for last night is that it serves up too much of a good thing. However, the pieces were short enough that all of the selections could be played without intermission. As a result, the programmatic undercurrents made for an experience more in the manner of an extended suite, rather than a sequence of separate works. Yes, there were intervals of rearranging who was sitting at which keyboard; but they were brief. More important was unification under different perspectives on the social world that made the entire program a highly satisfying journey.

Rzewski’s Variations on Dark Political Times

Pianist Ran Dank (from the San Francisco Performances event page for last night’s concert)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances presented the first of four concerts to be performed on the four consecutive evenings of the 2019 PIVOT Series. The opening program was given by Israeli pianist Ran Dank playing a single composition whose duration tends to run roughly an hour, Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” The work is a set of 36 variations on the Chilean song “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!,” composed by Sergio Ortega working with the Chilean folk music group Quilapayún. Rzewski composed it on a commission from pianist Ursula Oppens, who gave the world premiere performance on February 7, 1976.

Rzewski’s choice of a theme is sufficiently political to deserve a bit of context. It had been composed as an anthem for the Popular United (Unidad Popular) coalition in Chile that was instrumental in the 1970 election of Salvador Allende as the country’s president. Allende was the first Marxist to win an election in a democratic country; and, as might be guessed, his election through indisputable democratic means made the United States more than a little nervous. As also might be guessed, Allende’s administration did not last very long. It was brought down in a coup d’etat on September 11, 1973. (Note that date.) Allende committed suicide, and it was no secret that the Central Intelligence Agency supported the coup with planning assistance from Henry Kissinger. To this day the United States is still not a member of the International Criminal Court, and all efforts to bring Kissinger before that court have been futile.

As far as the music is concerned, Rzewski’s composition was as ingenious and inventive in the twentieth century as the extended compositions of variations by both Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms had been in the nineteenth. Indeed, those who write about this piece tend to overflow with references to composers from both the twentieth century and earlier periods. However, while listening to Dank’s performance last night, I realized that there was one composer that I had never encountered in these “roll calls,” Sergei Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff was not only wildly imaginative in his approach to variation but he also knew how to twist his theme to add new themes to the mix. Rzewski may not have been as skilled at twisting; but he drew upon the theme’s political context to add citations of two other significant anthems, the Italian socialist song “Bandiera Rossa” and Hans Eisler’s “Solidarity Song,” setting the words of Bertolt Brecht.

From a structural point of view, there is a mathematical elegance to the overall plan of Rzewski’s composition. The theme itself is 36 measures in duration. Rzewski thus conceived 36 variations on that theme, organized into six groups of six. The final variation is followed by an improvisation, after which the theme returns as it was originally stated. That overall framework parallels the conclusion of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 “Goldberg” variations (whose variations happen to be organized as ten sets of three).

None of this background, however, prepares the listener for just how demanding the virtuosity of Rzewski’s expressiveness is. In the booklet for the HAT HUT recording of Rzewski himself playing the variations, Tom Johnson makes passing reference to the composer’s “post-Webern textures.” This verges on the height of understatement. Many of Rzewski’s variations involve mind-bending acts of deconstruction through which the individual notes of the theme are splayed out across the entire length of the keyboard. However, as the variations progress, each of those isolated points is subjected not only to finger-busting embellishments but also whistling by the performer (along with one slam of the piano lid). By the time the variations have run their course, it feels as if Rzewski has explored every possible avenue for transforming pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and texture. Thus, when the theme returns in its original simplicity, there is a sense of closure that is downright exhilarating, rather like the high that some marathon runners experience at the finish line.

Sony Classical Releases New Igor Levit Album

courtesy of Sony Music Masterworks

This Friday Sony Classical will release its fourth solo album featuring the prodigious Berlin-based pianist Igor Levit. Over the course of his first three albums, Levit made it clear that he has never been shy about rising to major challenges. His first album took on the last five sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, each of which presented its own set of ambitious demands on the performer. This was followed by a comprehensive account of the six solo keyboard partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 825–830). His most recent album then juxtaposed three radically different approaches to composing variations, Bach’s BWV 988 (“Goldberg”) variations, Beethoven’s Opus 120 set of 33 variations composed on the waltz theme given to him by the publisher Anton Diabelli, and, in what almost feels like a defiant can-you-top-this gesture, Frederic Rzewski’s 36 variations on the Chilean song “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” (the people united will never be defeated). Such a sequence makes for a tough act to follow, and Levit’s new album is entitled simply Life. For those who wish to get the jump on others, Amazon.com is, as usual, currently processing pre-orders.

It goes without says that Life will probably strike many as an idiosyncratic title. (Those of my generation may well think that it will mark the beginning of a new trilogy of recordings, the remaining two of which will be entitled The Universe and Everything.) However, Levit’s approach is far more sober, since it was triggered by the tragic death of a close friend in an accident. Such an event brings out the introspective in many of us. Perhaps the best justification for the album title may have to do with the extent to which each of the nine compositions on this album pursues the same intense virtuosity encountered in Levit’s previous recordings but this time motivated by the composer’s capacity for introspection.

This may cause some listeners to raise their respective eyebrows. Composers like Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Ferruccio Busoni tend to be viewed as extroverted unto an extreme. However, Schumann is represented by his WoO 24 “Geistervariationen” (ghost variations), the last piano work he composed before being committed to an insane asylum, not the best time for the extroverted Florestan side of his personality. Similarly, two of the Liszt selections are transcriptions of scenes from operas by Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, both involving episodes of intense introspection, while Busoni is represented by the last of his seven elegies for solo piano.

In this vein it is also interesting to note how Levit has decided to return to Rzewski’s music. This time his selection comes from a series of compositions that the composer collected under the title Dreams. Specifically, Levit plays the third of these pieces, entitled “A Mensch.” Listening to this music unfold, one can easily imagine Rzewski pursuing his own identify through the evocation of a European-Jewish personality type.

Clearly, this is not music for casual listening. One is not expected to hit the “Play” button and let this music roll into the ears. Levit seems to have prepared a program that reflects his capacities for introspection; and, through presenting these selections, he encourages the listener to explore introspection from his own point of view. This is an ambitious undertaking; and, quite honestly, I have no idea how will it will succeed for how many listeners. For my part I am impressed with how Levit seems to have established new grounds upon which listener and performer may engage with each other.

NakedEye Ensemble Debuts on Starkland

courtesy of Starkland

Starkland is one of those labels that has provided me with valuable introductions to “new music,” by which I mean not only compositions but also the performers of those compositions. However, when I consulted my archives, I realized that I have not written about a Starkland release for over two years, which reaches back to when I was writing for Examiner.com. However, at the middle of this month, the label put out a new release; and I was glad to be fortunate enough to have it come to my attention.

The title of the album is Storylines Crossing, and the performers are the eight members of a group that calls itself the NakedEye Ensemble. The group seems to be led by pianist Ju-Ping Song, who plays other keyboard instruments when necessary. The remaining players make for a rather eclectic bunch. The winds are Matthew Allison on flute, Christy Banks on clarinets, and Ryan Kauffman on saxophones. Naomi Gray’s cello is the only consistently bowed instrument; and it is complemented by Chad Kinsey’s electric guitar and Mike Bitts on bass (both acoustic and electric). Finally, percussion is provided by Paul Murr.

The album title seems to reflect a preference for compositions with some connection to narrative, either explicit or implicit. However, the group seems to have been one of the serendipitous products of New Music Gathering, an annual conference that was launched at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in January of 2015 and seems to live by the rule that, the more casual things are, the more things are likely to happen. Through that spirit of casualness, the album includes two pieces that are more abstract in nature, rather than narrative-based.

I must confess that I am far to “old school” to embrace such a casual spirit. Nevertheless, I can also confess that I was totally blown away by the album’s opening track, a sextet by Jonathan Russell, which was one of those pieces that struck me as having little, if anything, to do with a storyline, let alone one that crossed other storylines. I have been following Russell’s work for some time, ever since I encountered him as one of the members of the bass clarinet duo Sqwonk. He has a refreshingly imaginative approach to “music with repetitive structures” (the description that Philip Glass prefers to “minimalist”), which unfolds through a thoroughly absorbing sense of both rhythm and choices of sonorities. The sextet instruments were originally flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion; but, because NakedEye does not have a violinist, Russell reworked the violin part for soprano saxophone. The result is an engaging kaleidoscope of sound colors, which nicely complements the other “non-narrative” track, Rusty Banks’ “Surface Tensions,” basically an exploration of new territories for the sounds of an electric guitar.

Whether or not the storylines of the remaining four selections cross will be left as an exercise for the listener. There is no question that they contrast; and, at the very least, there is some sense of a “crossing” between a pioneering approach to narrative written in 1971 (Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together”) and the three more recent offerings, Richard Belcastro’s “Smoke n’ Wid,” written in 2006, and two pieces completed in 2015, Zack Browning’s “Decade of the Dragon” and Randall Woolf’s “Punching the Clock.” What particularly struck me was that three of these pieces (those by Rzewski, Browning, and Woolf) all constituted reflections on history. This registered with me because I have long railed against a prevailing social environment that is not only ignorant of history but also proud of that ignorance. Another exercise for the reader is to consider whether or not such ignorance correlates with that spirit of casualness against which I am inclined to rant!

Mind you, when Rzewski composed “Coming Together,” he was not reflecting on history as such. He was using music to document his own impressions of the 1971 riots at Attica prison in New York. The piece was structured around the text of a letter by Sam Melville, one of the Attica inmates that was killed during those riots. What resulted was an exercise in repetitive structures that was uncompromisingly political and now induces a shudder among those of us who remember the news reports of those riots.

Quite honestly, I have no idea what impact this music may have on the generations that follow my own. However, when I listened to Woolf’s “Punching the Clock,” which draws upon work songs as source material, I remembered that, when I used to listen to performances of “Sixteen Tons,” I had no idea what a “straw boss” was! (At least I did know that a lot of those work songs were sung by chain gangs, and I also knew what a chain gang was!) My guess is that, for contemporary listeners, Woolf is more likely to hit the mark in his rhetorical approach to “Punching the Clock,” even if Rzewski’s piece is the more uncompromising politicized gesture.

The historical detachment of the listener is also likely to be a problem with “Decade of the Dragon” as a reflection the Vietnam War. Again by virtue of my own personal experience, I could appreciate the rebellious rhetoric of Browning’s approach to both electric guitar and drums. On the other hand I’ve had generous exposure to this movie through the instrumental work of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Zappa was, of course, always in his element when working with narrative. He could do wonderfully bizarre things with words; but, even when the words were absent, it was difficult to listen to his music without some sense of provocative narration. Yet again, the reader is left with an exercise: Is “Decade of the Dragon” Browning’s “response” to Zappa’s “call?”

Only Belcastro serves up narrative in a lighter vein. As the booklet observes, “Smoke n’ Wid” was inspired by the composer putting his wife’s two cats in a cardboard refrigerator box with a pile of catnip. This is a case in which, once the situation is defined, the narrative takes care of itself. This is the “fun track” of the album; and its high spirits nicely complement those of Russell’s sextet.

SFCM Students Visit the SFCMP “Laboratory”

This season the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) prepared only a single concert for their in the LABORATORY series, conceived to focus on experimentation and exploration. That concert was held last night at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM); and it benefitted from significant contributions by SFCM students and alumni. Given that the resulting program may not have emerged as refreshingly energetic without them, one might almost call the student performers “laboratory assistants.”

Their presence was particularly appreciated at the end of the program with a performance of John Zorn’s “Cobra.” Created in 1984, Zorn has called this a “game” piece, particularly since it is based on a set of instructions rather than the usual score. The “game” is one of exchanging signals and the interpretation of those signals in terms of the relationships between the performers and their respective instruments. As might be guessed, any number can play; and the instruments in the performance depend entirely on who the players are.

“Cobra” is as much a visual piece as it is an auditory one. The game is well defined, but the rules are not disclosed to the audience. I was reminded of José Arcadio Buendia, the patriarch figure in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Near the end of his life, he goes mad and is tied to a tree in the center of town. A visiting priest tries to strike up a relationship with him and offers to teach him chess. Buendia replies that he never saw the point in playing a game in which both sides had agreed upon the rules.

“Cobra” is a case in which one side (the performers) has agreed upon the rules; but the other (the audience) is not supposed to have the slightest idea what they are. Listening thus becomes a free-for-all experience seasoned with physical antics that punctuate any frustrations in trying to identify cause and effect. It was a thorough delight to watch how the students bought into Zorn’s rules without ever trying to bend them and barely concealing the fun they were having in following them. Indeed, when one of the rules seemed to allow for playing familiar music, it was as if the students could take all of their previous coaching sessions and turn them all on their respective heads.

“Cobra” was preceded by another “rule-based” composition, Frederic Rzewski’s 1969 “Let Moutons de Panurge.” Panurge is one of the secondary characters in François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. While at sea Panurge argues with a sheep dealer about having been overcharged. In a fury, he picks up one of the sheep he had purchased and throws it overboard, whereupon all the other sheep follow their leader.

“Les Moutons de Panurge” is not explicitly about the sheep; but it involves an unanticipated breakdown of a sense of order similar to the unintended consequences of Panurge’s act. All musicians play from the same score, which is designated “For any number of musicians playing melody instruments and any number of nonmusicians playing anything.” The score consists of a single line of notes numbered from 1 to 65. Below those notes are the following instructions:

Read from left to right, playing the notes as follows: 1, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, etc. When you have reached note 65, play the whole melody once again and then begin subtracting notes from the beginning: 2 through 65, 3 through 65, 5 through 65 . . . 62-63-64-65, 63-64-65, 64-65-. 65. Hold the last note until everybody has reached it, then begin an improvisation using any instruments.

In the melody above, never stop or falter, always play loud. Stay together as long as you can, but if you get lost, stay lost. Do not try to find your way back to the fold. Continue to follow the rules strictly.

While the musicians are playing the score, the nonmusicians can make any sounds they wish (“preferably very loud”). They have a leader, “whom they may follow or not.” The leader establishes the pulse for both musicians and nonmusicians, after which “any variations are possible.” The nonmusicians are also provided with a “suggested theme” in the form of a single sentence:

The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.

Thanks to Rzewski’s “stay lost” instruction, “Les Moutons de Panurge” emerges as a study of how disorder emerges, even when the order has been very strictly defined. In contrast to compositions that explored the use of chance procedures, Rzewski created a music-making situation designed to illustrate the inevitability of entropy. As in “Cobra” the ensemble again involved SFCM students joining the SFCMP players. However, in contrast to “Cobra,” this was a case in which the attentive listener could quickly figure out the nature of the rules and appreciate the effects brought on by following them. I was reminded of an earlier concert in which SFCM students joined SFCMP for a performance of Terry Riley’s “In C,” another piece that involves entropic effects. Nevertheless, Rzewski’s approach to that concept had its own brand of uniqueness while making for a listening experience as exhilarating as any encounter with “In C.”

The first half of the evening involved more modest resources but still entailed student participation. Most impressive was the appearance of students coached by Meredith Monk in the performance of her music. Soprano Courtney McPhail and mezzo Marina Davis (accompanied by SFCMP harpist Karen Gottlieb) gave as compelling and (in its own way) affectionate account of the encounter depicted by “Cave Song” (1988) as could be imagined. Just as striking was the serene account of Monk’s 1981 “Ellis Island” for two pianos, in which student Taylor Chan joined SFCMP pianist Kate Campbell. Campbell also excelled in her performance of four of the seven études for piano composed by Don Byron in 2009, one of which involved a brief moment of vocal punctuation.

The “new generation” of composers was represented by Vivian Fung and SFCM alumnus Ryan Brown. Fung’s 2014 Twist was a short suite for guitar (David Tanenbaum) and violin (Roy Malan), each of whose movements involved a “twist” on a past familiar form. The score required some highly demanding technical skills associated with each of the distinct styles in the different movements; but this was technical work that was the bread-and-butter of SFCMP “core competences.” Nevertheless, each movement was straightforward in making its case and benefitted from Fung’s keen appreciation of brevity.

Ryan Brown’s 2010 “Under the Rug” was a far more lyrical duo for viola (Clio Tilton) and harp (Gottlieb), along with Nick Woodbury using the body and strings of the harp for the percussion line of the score. There was also accompaniment provided by a percussion “chorus” of four players, two of whom were SFCM students. Taken as a whole, the first half of the evening was one of quietude that turned out to be the calm preceding the storm of the second half.

A Disappointing Piano Festival Conclusion

Yesterday afternoon the San Francisco International Piano Festival concluded in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The title of the program was Looking Back, Looking Forward. It allowed for a variety of interpretations, which were not always satisfying, although some were certainly thought-provoking.

Consider the opening set, which was the San Francisco debut of pianist Albert Kim. This involved coupling music by Joseph Haydn and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Haydn was firmly situated in the eighteenth century; but he always seemed to be looking to the future by taking new, and occasionally daring, approaches to making music in a wide diversity of genres. On the other hand, we call Rachmaninoff a twentieth-century composer, since that is the century of most of his mature life; but his music always seems to be a reflection on the previous century, to which he knew he could never return.

Both of these composers have many familiar compositions, but Kim did not play any of them. His Haydn selection was the Hoboken XVI/31 sonata (also called a divertimento) in E major. In the spirit of a divertimento, its three movements are relatively short. Nevertheless, Haydn has his thematic material jump through a variety of inventive hoops; and it is easy to imagine that he wrote this piece for instructional purposes to demonstrate to the student how easy it is to depart from the routine into more imaginative inventiveness. Kim basically let this music speak for itself through a clear account of the marks Haydn had put on paper without trying to overdo any of the inherently clever rhetorical turns.

The Rachmaninoff selections came from the two collections of études that he called Études-Tableaux (study pictures). From the first set, Opus 33, he played the first in F minor and the fourth in D minor. From the second set, Opus 39, he played the second in A minor, the fifth in E-flat minor, and the seventh in C minor. Rachmaninoff described these pieces as “music evocations of external visual stimuli;” but he was not specific about those stimuli. Rather, he felt that, for any one of these pieces, listeners (and, presumably, the pianist) should “paint for themselves what it most suggests.”

As a performer of études, Kim certainly worked hard to make sure that all the notes were in their proper place. However, he never seemed quite to catch on to how Rachmaninoff could weave elaborate textures of counterpoint, often summoning up more voices than one feels capable of counting. As has been the case since Renaissance counterpoint at its most ornate, this is often a matter of highly fluid movement between foreground and background. Sadly, Kim showed few signs of appreciating what foreground and background were, let alone how he could express that fluidity through his execution. Instead, the listener was treated to the spectacle of jumping through an imposing series of hoops with little recognition that playing an étude might involve something more. Ironically, it was through Rachmaninoff’s efforts to find a link to those “visual stimuli” that we can appreciate that he was as capable of “looking forward” as Haydn was; but, apparently, Kim never saw that memo.

The final set by Bobby Mitchell, on the other hand, involved a clearer distinction between present and past. However, while Frederic Rzewski’s “Ruins” is situated very much in the present, there is good reason to see a retrospective connotation in his title. Structurally, “Ruins” is a chaconne. However, Rzewski runs his chaconne through the same sort of meat-grinder of provocative contemporary virtuosity that had “processed” the traditional theme-and-variations form in “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” (which Mitchell had played this past Thursday). “Ruins” is a much shorter piece; but it is a stimulating example of how tried-and-true approaches from the past can find a new set of unique voices in the immediate present.

“Ruins” was followed by a performance of Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 58 sonata in B minor. To call Mitchell’s approach idiosyncratic would be the height of understatement. One might almost accuse him of deliberately reducing the score to “ruins” from which any recognition of Chopin would be, at best, fragmented. Perhaps Mitchell wished remind us that the need for intense political conscience, which seems to be a dominant quality in Rzewski’s lifeworld, has no room for the likes of a Chopin.

The most challenging portion of the program was the second set presented by Eunmi Ko, making her San Francisco debut. She has taken a great interest in the Korean composer Isang Yun, who was forced to move to Germany after he defied South Korean law by visiting North Korea. Yun died in Berlin in 1995; and, over the last few years, Ko has commissioned composers to write “tribute pieces” to honor the memory of Yun’s life and works. She played seven of these recent works (six of which were world premieres), along with Yun’s “Interludium A.”

The problem is that Yun’s music has not been given very much attention in this country. As a result he was probably unfamiliar to just about everyone in the audience. Unfortunately, the only way that such listeners could orient themselves was by visiting a Web page on Ko’s Web site. Listeners were advised to do so when Ko was introduced (provided they turned off the ring-tone on their cell phones). However, there is considerable detail on this Web page, not the sort of thing that can be read while listening at the same time, let alone on the limited size of a phone display.

At best one could appreciate Yun’s approach to abstraction. One might even begin to recognize how that abstraction triggered the efforts of the composers Ko had commissioned. (However, Yun’s own piece was not the first one to be played.) However, all of this was really too much, particularly in the context of two other very full sets. This is a project that cries out for an extended lecture-demonstration with just as much attention paid to the quality of the lecture text as to the music being performed. That would be a full-evening project. which would require as much commitment to persuasion through text as to offering a compelling piano performance.

New Piano Collective to Launch San Francisco International Piano Festival

Last year Bay Area pianist Jeffrey LaDeur founded the New Piano Collective, bringing together six of his fellow alumni from the Eastman School of Music. The group presented its very first recital on August 12, 2016 at the Old First Presbyterian Church as part of the Old First Concerts series. Almost exactly one year later, the Collective will present the inaugural San Francisco International Piano Festival. The repertoire will involve a mix of solo piano music (continuing the spirit of last year’s concerts) with both instrumental and vocal chamber music. The full scope of the festival will involve nine concerts in seven different venues with ten pianists participating. In spite of the Festival’s name, those venues will take in much of the Bay Area, meaning that only three of the concerts will take place within the San Francisco city limits. Specifics for those concerts are as follows:

Sunday, August 20, 2 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), Voice of the Piano: Johnandrew Slominski will be soloist in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 414 piano concerto in A major. The instrumental accompaniment will be provided by the members of the Thalea String Quartet: violinists Christopher Whitley and Kumiko Sakamoto, violist Luis Bellorin, and cellist Bridget Pasker. Pianist Paul Sanchez will then accompany his wife Kayleen (who will be making her San Francisco debut) in a performance of his own composition, “Horizon: for Harlan.” For the second half of the concert Daria Rabotkina will play a collection of humoresques by three different composers: Max Reger, Antonín Dvořák, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. This will be the official opening of the Festival, and it will be followed by a reception.

Thursday, August 24, 9:30 p.m., PianoFight, PianoFight Back: This will be a “club scene gig,” which will probably take advantage of the venue’s cabaret setting. LaDeur will open with a performance of Stephen Hartke’s piano sonata. Bobby Mitchell will then play Frederick Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!,” 36 variations on Sergio Ortega’s anthem for the followers of Chilean president Salvador Allende. Many have approached this as a latter-day take on the variations that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote on Anton Diabelli’s waltz theme; but my own bias is towards the uncanny virtuosity of Johannes Brahms’ variations on the 24th caprice from Niccolò Paganini’s Opus 1.

Sunday, August 27, 3 p.m., SFCM, Looking Back, Looking Forward: The closing concert will return to the SFCM Concert Hall. The first half of the program will feature two pianists both making San Francisco debut performances. Albert Kim will play one of Joseph Haydn’s E major sonatas (probably Hoboken XVI/22 but possibly Hoboken XVI/31), followed by selections from the two sets of études that Rachmaninoff collected under the title Études-Tableaux. Eunmi Ko will then play Isang Yun’s “Interludium A.” This will be followed by a series of six tributes that Ko commissioned as a memorial tribute to Yun. The composers of these tribute pieces will be Ingrid Stölzel, John Liberatore, Alejandro Roman, Eduardo Costa Roldan, Christos Samaras, and Fabio Massimo Capogrosso. Mitchell will then play during the second half of the program. His performance of Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 58 sonata in B minor will be preceded by “Ruins,” one of the pieces collected in Rzewski’s Dreams. This final concert will also be followed by a reception.

PianoFight is located at 144 Taylor Street, which puts it right on the boundary between Union Square and the Tenderloin. (It is also almost exactly one block north of the Center for New Music and on the other side of the street.) Tickets are usually not required for cabaret events, since one of their functions is to encourage purchases of drink and food from the bar. At past cabaret performances I have attended, donations were collected for the performers. Specific information about how the August 24 concert will be handled is not yet available.

SFCM is located at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Muni Van Ness Station. Tickets for the opening and closing concerts will be sold separately. Adult admission will be $25 with a $15 rate for students and seniors. Tickets may also be purchased online through the hyperlinks attached to the dates in the above descriptions.

Pianist Sarah Cahill Surveys 100 Years of Imaginative Modernism at SFCM

Last night’s Faculty Artist Series recital in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) was given by pianist Sarah Cahill. Cahill has been a great champion of the many diverse aspects of modernism. The program she prepared last night fit comfortably into a 100-year span, ranging from 1927 to 2014, and was organized around two “themes,” each represented by three composers.

The focus of the first half was Henry Cowell, who was not only adventurous in his own approaches to making music but also prodigiously industrious in encouraging and promoting the pursuits of others, particularly through his New Music publications. The ordering of the three selections in this portion was chronological, beginning with two of the nine preludes for solo piano composed by Ruth Crawford between 1927 and 1928. (These were composed before she met and subsequently married the musicologist Charles Seeger, then taking the name Ruth Crawford Seeger.)

The preludes were written during Crawford’s time in Chicago, where she studied composition at the American Conservatory of Music. Through Djane Lavoie Herz, with whom she studied piano privately, Crawford came to know Cowell and became one of those composers he encouraged and promoted. Herz also introduced her to the music of Alexander Scriabin, who may well have influenced the preludes she then composed. She shared with Scriabin the role of dissonance as a harmonic ambiguity, rather than as a technique unto itself that needed to be “emancipated” (as Arnold Schoenberg put it) from traditional practices. Crawford used repeated patterns as a means through which the ambiguity of a dissonance could be accepted on its own merits, rather than as a “transitional” phenomenon. Cahill’s performance lent clarity to Crawford’s intentions, taking two short examples of seldom-performed twentieth-century music and rendering them thoroughly engaging.

The preludes were followed by Cowell’s 1945 sonata for violin and piano. This was written in the period after Cowell had served his sentence on a morals charge at San Quentin State Prison. (While serving time he also served the prison itself by offering music classes to the inmates.) Cahill observed that Cowell’s style tamed down significantly following his penal servitude. The sonata is basically a reflection on traditional sources and the performing styles associated with them, in sharp contrast to the stormy tone clusters that dominate the 1925 suite performed by violinist Donald Weilerstein and his pianist wife Vivian last week. Nevertheless, Cowell’s evocation of traditions did require Cahill to play the piano from the inside as well as the keyboard. Cahill was joined in this performance by violinist Kate Stenberg; and, if the music served up a tamer side of Cowell, the two of them brought both energy and affection to presenting that side.

Cowell’s interest in percussive effects, such as his tone clusters, was shared by several other American composers whose work was emerging during the first half of the twentieth century. The most memorable of these were John Cage and Lou Harrison, both of whom had close relationships with Cowell. One of Harrison’s most stimulating compositions involving percussion was his “Varied Trio,” which added a percussionist to a violin-piano duo. This piece also reflected Harrison and Cowell’s shared interest in “world music,” with an emphasis on Harrison’s particular attention to Indonesia. His use of percussion, as well as some of the melodic lines for the violin, reflect both the Javanese and Balinese styles of gamelan. Even the movement entitled “Rondeau in Honor of Fragonard” suggests Indonesian melodies while evoking a painter halfway on the other side of the globe.

Cahill and Stenberg were joined by percussionist William Winant, who gave the first performances (and recording) of “Varied Trio.” Winant presented a highly personal introduction reflecting back on the circumstances of how the piece came to be. He also tended to serve as conductor, attentively guiding Cahill and Stenberg through the intricacies of interleaving rhythmic patterns. The result was an exhilarating alternation of bursts of energy and quiet introspection, simulating enough that the following intermission was definitely in order.

The focal point of the second half was the composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski, who had highly imaginative approaches to thematic development that tended to have more to do with permutations than with harmonic progression. Cahill played his Peace Dances, a set of seven shorty pieces published as his fourth book of “nanosonatas.” This collection was written for Cahill in 2007 on a commission by Robert Bielecki. Each of these miniatures is packed with virtuosic demands; and, while Cahill could not have been more skilled in rising to the occasion, the “mind behind the ear” still had to orient itself to Rzewski’s complexities. This is music that deserves more listening opportunities to allow the listener to make better acquaintance.

Peace Dances was followed by Endless Shout, composed by George Lewis. Lewis performed with Rzewski as a member of Musica Elettronica Viva, and in Chicago he was a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Endless Shout is a solo piano suite in four movements, each of which evokes the memory of one of the great stride pianists from the history of early jazz. (Lewis’ background included a stint on trombone playing for Count Basie.) This made for a rather abrupt shift away from Peace Dances, but Cahill made the transition feel like the most natural thing in the world.

She then concluded with a venture into ragtime by Terry Riley. She observed that Riley tended to create through improvisation, allowing this thoughts to spill out spontaneously. After several passes through recalling and reconstructing, he would find himself ready to write down what he had been playing. Last night’s offering was “Be Kind to One Another” (a phrase attributed to Alice Walker). It was his contribution of Cahill’s A Sweeter Music commissioning project (as was Peace Dances). After writing it all down in 2008, Riley subsequently revised his score in 2014. This was the version that Cahill played. (The version on her A Sweeter Music recording is a revision that Riley made in 2010.) Riley’s meditative style was then followed by an encore selection, Ann Southam’s “Glass Houses,” weaving just the right spell to send audience members out the front door of SFCM to be confronted by the supermoon.

Center for New Music: August, 2016

As an “annex” to the Bleeding Edge articles, I feel it would be valuable to track the concert offerings at the Center for New Music (C4NM). In the past I tended to fold these into the Bleeding Edge announcements, but C4NM casts a broader net that often reaches back to roots in the past while also going boldly into the future. For those who do not already “know the drill,” C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, about half a block north of where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. Tickets tend to be available only at the door. There are occasional events that set up a Web page for advance purchase, but none of them will be taking place this month. August will be a relatively quiet month but definitely not an uninteresting one. The scheduled concerts are as follows:

Tuesday, August 9, 8 p.m.: This will be the next installment in the sfSoundSalonSeries curated by Kyle Bruckmann. The title of the program will be Voices & Such, and it will offer an evening of unique approaches to the vocal repertoire. “& Such” refers to pianist Julie Barwick, who will be the only non-vocalist of the evening. She will accompany Lorin Benedict in a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 40 cello sonata in D minor with the cello part reworked for voice. From a point of phrasing, this is definitely a realistic undertaking; and the major challenge lies in Shostakovich’s exploitation of the wide pitch range of the cello. Prior to this performance, Benedict will perform a few improvised pieces with Ron Heglin; and Heglin will also improvise with Katt Atchley during the second half of the program. As is the case for all sfSoundSalonSeries concerts, general admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members, students, and the underemployed.

Sunday, August 21, 2 p.m.: Thomas Schultz has been working on the complete piano music of Arnold Schoenberg, compositions that he originally studied under the tutelage of Schoenberg’s long-time assistant in Los Angeles, Leonard Stein. The entire solo piano Schoenberg canon does not occupy a particularly long duration, and Pina Napolitano’s recording of this music runs only about 55 minutes in duration. As a result, Schultz will devote the remainder of his program to two composers with extensive knowledge of Schoenberg’s music, Frederic Rzewski and Hyo-shin Na. General admission will be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.

Sunday, August 28, 8 p.m.: Composer Zachary James Watkins will curate a visit to C4NM by New York improvising vocalist Amirtha Kidambi. The two met in a bar in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood on the border between Brooklyn and Queens and discovered that they shared concern over the impact of gentrification on their respective home bases. This led to Kidambi preparing the program We Insist! Freedom Now!: Free Improvisations for Revolution. Her performance amounts to a continuation of her conversation with Watkins through the medium of free improvisation. Kidambi and Watkins will be joined by four local improvisers, percussionists Marshall Trammell and Nava Dunkelman, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, and Jeanie-Aprille Tang working with her own electronic gear. The improvisations will involve both the entire group and smaller formations. General admission will again be $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members.

What is Remembered

Since I am not particularly big on top-ten lists, I decided to set myself the exercise of trying to identify one event for each month of this year that I would be only too glad to experience for a second time. Here are the results:

January: The San Francisco Performances recital by violinist Christian Tetzlaff accompanied by pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. This was one of the most imaginative programs I have experienced, bringing together Leoš Janáček, Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Schubert. The encores were then by Jean Sibelius.

February: Sofia Gubaidulina's extended visit to the San Francisco Symphony (which is probably my one point of agreement with Joshua Kosman's "Top 10" list).

March: Frank French's two recitals covering all 48 preludes and fugues in Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, performed on a modern piano tuned according to a system developed by Thomas Young in 1799. This could well have been the most fascinating recital of the year, and we have a local artist to thank for it. French's intention was to restore the distinctive character of each of the keys covered in Bach's two cycles, a character that is totally lost under equal temperament. By the end of the first recital, my capacity for listening was just beginning to grasp what he was trying to demonstrate. Of all the experiences I would like to repeat, this is the one that means the most to me, just in my own interests of being a better listener.

April: My discovery of selections from György Kurtág's Játékok, performed by Jonathan Biss in a "Concert with Conversation" event organized by San Francisco Performances at the Community Music Center at 544 Capp Street in the Mission District. I was first exposed to Kurtág during Marino Formenti's "San Francisco Piano Trips" recitals in 2007. Since then my primary exposure to his music has come from recitals at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Not only would I enjoy hearing Biss' performance again, but also I suspect I could get more out of his remarks by being more familiar with the music.

May: Bernard Labadie's visit as guest conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, providing highly stimulating accounts of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and George Frideric Handel.

June: The coupling of Alban Berg's 1925 "Chamber Concerto" with Schubert's D. 944 C major ("Great") symphony during the Dawn to Twilight series of concerts by the San Francisco Symphony.

July: Tien Hsieh's recital for the InterHarmony Music Festival, in which she demonstrated her capacity for giving equal "justice" to both Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms.

August: A thoroughly compelling performance of Frederick Rzewski's "Coming Together," given as part of an evening of chamber music at the Old First Concerts series, at the Old First Church.

September: The opening program of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra season, particularly in the approach Nicholas McGegan took to the seventh symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven.

October: Osmo Vänskä's visit as guest conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and the delightful repertoire he prepared for his two concerts.

November: The visit to Davies Symphony Hall by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, particularly with regard to the program Rattle prepared to cultivate an appreciation for the music of Arnold Schoenberg.

December: The two Aspects of the Divine recitals arranged by pianist Marino Formenti for his second San Francisco Performances visit.

From this point of view, 2009 was definitely a stimulating year. Furthermore, not all of the stimuli came from the usual venues of Davies Symphony Hall and Herbst Theatre, which should serve as encouragement to see what lies beyond the beaten path in 2010!