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Month: April 2023

Smuin artists Cassidy Isaacson and João Sampaio in the revival of Val Caniparoli's “Swipe."
GOING FRENCH, SEIWERT STEPPING UP AT THE BALLET

GOING FRENCH, SEIWERT STEPPING UP AT THE BALLET

We tumble and we fumble, and then we meet the compact Smuin Ballet which has emerged from the pandemic seemingly unscathed. Its newest Bay Area run showed off 17 beautifully coordinated and trained dancers in pieces new and old, bursting with precision and energy. Purists may carp about the troupe’s leanings toward the commercial, but this group under Celia Fushille offers both sides, serving up contemporary with a capital C, abetted by the new associate director and adroit choreographer Amy…

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LOSE YOURSELF IN JULIET LOVE

LOSE YOURSELF IN JULIET LOVE

Oversize Renaissance palaces, over some dozen danced scenes, played out on dual tiers. An oversize pit orchestra for the eloquent Prokofieff music, the most majestic ballet score of the 20th century, stamping this as the preeminent evening-length achievement of the post-Tchaikovsky era. And a massive cast set opulently in Shakespeare’s Verona. Can anything top this ballet for sheer performance power resonating with romanticism? And the feel of a lavish city state of half a millennium ago, with enough period costumes…

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ELOQUENCE IN AFTERMATH

ELOQUENCE IN AFTERMATH

         In this age of distress, disease and discord, how welcome to encounter a composer both mellow and inventive. He was an innovator and modernist, not in harmonies, but rather in building strangely compatible  pairings of live and canned sounds. The posthumous tribute by SF Performances provided an all-Ingram Marshall concert combining live musicians with electronic input (or, as he’d have called it, with tape). The career of Marshall (1942-2022) the sometime mystic has spilled over both coasts with commitments…

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The Fully Automatic Orchestra Premiered

The Fully Automatic Orchestra Premiered

The self-driving orchestra, with vacant podium, has arrived at center stage. Credit local composer Brian Baumbusch, 35, along with a Covid quarantine, electronics and a touch of Indonesia. Yes, finally, one tiny benefit we gained from that scourge of a Covid virus, leading to some invention and dispersion of musical ideas. Marooned in a Djakarta quarantine last year, Baumbusch composed his “Polytempo Music” which was premiered here April 13 by the elite S.F. Contemporary Music Players. His inspiration relegated conductor…

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ECSTASY AND DESPAIR, SYMPHONICALLY

ECSTASY AND DESPAIR, SYMPHONICALLY

How can so much exuberance emanate from one of the most depressing large-scale symphonies ever written? Easy. You put a beloved ex-maestro like Michael Tilson Thomas back on the podium. Upon entry, the revered 78-year-old conductor got a standing ovation from the near-sell-out crowd. And at the end, the fired-up patrons accorded the S.F. Symphony and him an inordinately rare six-minute ovation. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) himself would never have believed it for the deeply aggrieved Sixth Symphony of 1904, which…

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