THE MODERNS ARE COMING!!!

THE MODERNS ARE COMING!!!

The indestructible Contemporary Music Players have a new lease on life with a new director, a play-in at a much improved hall, and sizable programs requiring close to two dozen musicians. Long the most venerable and biggest of the area’s modern-music specialists, the 47-year-old SFCMP unreeled a terrific season-opening concert Oct. 20 at the Taube Theater, with the main thrust being on Elliott Carter’s inventiveness. Among the marvels of the SFCMP miracle is a focused mature audience denying the old…

Read More Read More

ASHEN COMMUNITY AND ITS CULTURE: RENEWAL!

ASHEN COMMUNITY AND ITS CULTURE: RENEWAL!

The Phoenix of the Moment Leads the Way ROHNERT PARK, CA—Inspiration from the Santa Rosa Symphony is smoothing the long winding trek back to a vibrant life in fire-wracked Sonoma County. Music’s healing force has been much needed, particularly for those imperiled symphony-goers who fled for their lives at 3 AM to escape the Tubbs wildfire and experienced destruction of  their dearest belongings. Some 44 died. To mark the one-year anniversary on the first weekend of October when the renewal…

Read More Read More

BERKELEY’S UNIQUE VACANCY IN MUSIC HISTORY

BERKELEY’S UNIQUE VACANCY IN MUSIC HISTORY

There’s a notable changing of the guard on area symphonic podiums. Two of the new figures are Asian-American, perhaps destined to follow the earlier Northern Californian paths of Seiji Ozawa and Kent Nagano. While Francesco Lecce-Chong  starts his tenure at the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Berkeley Symphony hosted guest Ming Luke for its opening concert Oct. 4. Luke stepped in to a vacancy unique in music history, caused by departing Music Director Joana Carneiro missing most of the past two…

Read More Read More

SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN A VINTAGE ITALIAN OPERA

SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN A VINTAGE ITALIAN OPERA

I’ve heard various “shabby little shockers” in opera, but “Tosca” is not one of them. The late (and revered) Berkeley musicologist Joseph Kerman called it that 66 years ago, dismissing one of the most hot-blooded dramas of the early 20th century, powered by a very current theme of sexual harassment. And, as usually happens, the woman is a victim. Yes, Prof. Kerman, that theme is always a shocker, but far more “elegant, monumental” than shabby in this reprise. “Tosca” is…

Read More Read More

STRAVINSKY’S SUPER NOVA, REVIVED

STRAVINSKY’S SUPER NOVA, REVIVED

If ever there was a super nova explosion to radically realign the orderly world of music, it was Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” currently the focal point of the S.F. Symphony’s Stravinsky Festival. Over the past century, it has lost that sting originally setting off what’s called the biggest concert-hall riot in history. But it has lost none of its impact, bringing the audience to its feet, not clubbing nearby patrons as in the Paris world premiere, but this time cheering…

Read More Read More

THE METEOR THAT WAS AND IS STRAVINSKY

THE METEOR THAT WAS AND IS STRAVINSKY

The S.F. Symphony’s Stravinsky Festival spotlights the mercurial composer who flew like a brilliant comet from Russia to Paris to America, launching new musical expression while changing music forever. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) reminds me of the legendary prince who cut through impenetrable thickets and brambles to reach his prize, revealing a beauty of a different sort. The composer took out the lush undergrowth and cleared the footing, to where the new modern prince could gallop through with puckish delight  and…

Read More Read More

WHIRLWIND ITALIAN OPERA ABOUT BRITISH MONARCH

WHIRLWIND ITALIAN OPERA ABOUT BRITISH MONARCH

What more could any one want in grand opera—abundant arias, duets, cabalettas and scenas, plus choruses, opulence, a melodious score, and three superlative lead voices? Plus political intrigue and intimations of infidelity. In addition, Queen Elizabeth the First (QE1) played as much as a harridan as a hurricane leading the vocal fireworks in a Maria-Callas-like role. This one scores  A+ in these departments. This was Donizetti’s historical opera “Roberto Devereux” (1837) at the S.F. Opera, a work that curiously was…

Read More Read More

PERLMAN AND HIS SIX VIOLINISTS AT SYMPHONY OPENER

PERLMAN AND HIS SIX VIOLINISTS AT SYMPHONY OPENER

The San Francisco Symphony’s two favorite 73-year-olds made music in what the audience regarded more as entertainment than concert. The stars were in conjunction when violinist Itzhak Perlman and his friend, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, collaborated on several works, both classical and movie, in the SFS season-opener gala Sept. 5. Of special interest were a sextet of former Perlman violin students  shouldering some of the performance burden alongside the master, all seven joining in a wild and woolly fiddle-faddle…

Read More Read More

Richard Howell. Photo by Devi Pride
MELDING BALLET WITH JAZZ

MELDING BALLET WITH JAZZ

Gregory Dawson, the leader and choreographer for the dawsondancesf ensemble, nurtures the belief that jazz and ballet can create a happy, conflict-free partnership. Dawson wants his ballets to emulate the improvisational aesthetics of jazz, in which musicians in turn riff off of a basic theme or motif, first the sax, then the trombone, then the piano, before putting all of them together again. Something similar with the choreography: take a movement trope, riff on it, then move on to the…

Read More Read More

DEBUSSY MARCHED TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

DEBUSSY MARCHED TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

Illuminating the otherwise underlit transition from summer stuff to the fall concert season, a four-concert splash of Debussy’s chamber music in San Francisco was welcome indeed, lighting up the night with as few as four performers each night, commemorating 100 years since the fascinating innovator’s death. Composer Claude Debussy, as much as any one, had ushered in the era of modern music—plain and simple, he marched to another drummer. He broke with the strict dictates of the Theory of Harmony…

Read More Read More