S.F. Symphony’s Streamlined Set, Streaming
In this pandemic era, it’s still feasible to produce ensemble music with eloquent messages, up to a point.
For the S.F. Symphony’s latest aphoristic SoundBox set “Lineage” curated by mezzo Julia Bullock, a nonet performs under a conductor on a sound stage, assisted by a far-off chorus, with some musicians entering remotely via modern technology. With most of them well-spaced and masked. Welcome to the unique era of Covid and formats which will challenge many fans attempting to explain these to baffled grandchildren many years hence.
With the technology, Bullock assembled a moving and high-quality program appropriate to our unique times, lifting spirits and consoling, while showing creativity of several black artists and of women composers. Like a conductor, she has a keen sense of program assembly and organization. In the 45 minutes of the streamed SoundBox format we get a mosaic of pieces small and even smaller, ranging from Bach to 12th-century hymns to poet Langston Hughes’ lament on behalf of “the sick, depraved,….all the scum.”
It’s like digging into a bowl of mixed candies, only not as sugary. And Bullock’s bits-and-pieces programming is superlative. (You may recall that she was one of the designated collaborative partners named by SFS Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, though he was unable to define what that would mean.)
If there is a more soulful mezzo than Bullock around these days, you have a long search ahead of you. She brings forth the depths of emotion and reflection with here keen musical sense and a voice even delving down in the contralto range for Nina Simone’s “Images” sung a cappella over a pedal-point held over from that 12th-century hymn by St. Hildegard—a brilliant juxtaposition that may have the latter composer smiling benignly from above.
Any one accessing this “Lineage” program should know that the vocalist/pianist Simone was a heroic American figure of a half-century ago, battling discrimination while producing deeply affective songs that stand the test of time.
All this is carried out with imaginative camera work (a mite too restless in its brief, shifty images) and artistic background projections. And when Bullock isn’t “taking the stage” from distant recording studios, we have conductor Daniel Stewart leading ensembles in the late George Walker’s “Lyric for Strings” and an excerpt from Elizabeth Ogoneck’s “In Silence” with Benjamin Beilman on lead violin, backed by SFS players.
“Lineage,” a SoundBox discovery program, created by mezzo Julia Bullock, with members of the S.F. Symphony, streaming every day on www.sfsymphonyplus.org/products/lineage-julia-bullock or www.sfsymphony.org. For further info, (415) 864-6000.
