Music News
Bicoastal Namedropping
Berkeley Opera Artistic Director Jonathan Khuner was working at the Metropolitan Opera last week when a page one story in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported on his heroic doings in his capacity as a member of the San Francisco Opera music staff:
Soprano Christine Brewer has a voice critics have described as “brilliant” and “golden,” yet she admits that her mind sometimes drifts during long performances.
In the middle of a recent five-hour production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the San Francisco Opera, the 52-year-old singer started daydreaming and lost her place. She got excited, she says, then sped up and began singing the lines of her co-star, who started cracking up.
Ms. Brewer’s salvation came from a little box at the foot of the stage. Unseen by the audience, prompter Jonathan Kuhner climbed part-way out of his box and yelled, “Stop singing!”
“Prompters are like gods,” says Ms. Brewer, who quickly recovered and went on with a well-received performance.
Jonathan Khuner
I heard about the Journal article from another Met/SFO bicoastal artist, Patricia Kristof Moy, who is a French diction coach for both companies (she is part of the current and much-praised Daughter of the Regiment production in New York), and executive director of Music at Kohl Mansion.
The question — put to both Khuner and Moy — was irresistible: Simultaneously or sequentially, who is associated with the country’s largest and second-largest opera companies? With their help, here is but a beginning of that list, certain to represent only part of the cross-country operatic traffic. (Please be civil when exclaiming: “How could you omit him or her?!”)
Assistant conductors currently working both coasts: Khuner, John Churchwell, and Carol Isaac. Pianists currently at the Met, but with deep San Francisco roots: Robert Morrison and Jeffrey Goldberg. Recent Merola apprentice coach now at the Met: Milos Repicky.
Administrators and production artists at the Met, previously of SFO: Assistant managers Sarah Billinghurst and Elena Park
Carol Isaac
Christopher Bergen
Craig Rutenberg
Dennis Giauque
Gina Lapinski
Gregory Keller
Jeffrey Goldberg
Joseph Colaneri
Kathleen Belcher
Kristine McIntyre
Laurie Feldman
Marty Sohl
Patricia Kristof Moy
Paula Williams
Peter McClintock
Sharon Thomas
Steven Eldredge
Theresa Ganley
William Berger
Yefim Maizel
Mark Delavan
Just some of the singers currently at the Met, who started at the San Francisco Opera Center, or were regulars here:
Anna Netrebko
Caroline Worra
Claudia Waite
Deborah Voigt
Dennis Petersen
Earle Patriarco
Elizabeth Bishop
James Morris
John Del Carlo
John Relyea
Joshua Bloom
Mark Delavan
Patricia Racette
Rolando Villazon
RuthAnn Swensen
Sean Panikkar
Thomas Hampson
Sean Panikkar in a San Francisco Magic Flute
Also, according to Khuner, “still within the opera family are people such as John and Bernice Lindstrom, who are opera fans, rooted in S.F., but spending considerable time going to performances at the Met, and other far-flung opera houses.”
Khuner, incidentally, is on the Left Coast right now, preparing the Berkeley Opera double-bill of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, May 3-11.
Patrick Dowd in the Berkeley L’enfant et les sortilèges
Photo by Eliot Khuner
Tenor Phenoms: Villazón, Flórez
See last Sunday’s NPR program about Rolando Villazón, a 1998 Merola alumnus, and now steadily rising in the ranks of stars.
Then hear the nine high Cs of Pour mon âme from Juan Diego Flórez, who became the toast of not only one town, but throughout the world of opera, last week. Flórez opened the new Metropolitan Opera production of La Fille du Régiment, and sang the first solo encore in the house in 14 years (since Luciano Pavarotti’s E lucevan le stelle). Flórez’s performance is available on video from last year in in Vienna and on audio of the Met opening night.
Rolando Villazón and Juan Diego Flórez
Andsnes Happening in Davies Hall
Leif Ove Andsnes is the Ian McKellen of the piano. Just as the actor disappears in his roles, the pianist is transparent behind the music he plays — quite unlike the otherwise brilliant Lang Lang, whose fingerprints are all too audible most of the time.
On Sunday, Andsnes’ Davies Hall recital, works by Bach (the Toccata in E Minor), Beethoven (the too-rarely-performed Sonata No. 13), four Sibelius pieces (including a hypnotic excerpt from Kyllikki), a fabulous Grieg (Ballad in the Form of Variations on a Norwegian Folk Song), and six preludes by Debussy, sounded as differently as each of those distinct composers … not as one artist performing various works.
Andsnes is a marvelous musician in every way. Beyond his self-effacing ways and his clean (but never bland) performances, there is a plethora of excellence in his flawless technique and phrasing — the way he makes the piano sing, the way he brings out the inner voices in each work.
Still mysteriously in a kind of second echelon of pianist stardom, evidenced by the disappointingly smallish audience on Sunday, Andsnes takes the top spot every time he performs, the old-fashioned way: He earns it. Locally, the next chance to hear him is at the S.F. Symphony Brahms Festival, playing the Second Concerto, at concerts with MTT, May 8-11.
Leif Ove Andsnes
Rheingold Director ‘In Conversation’
In advance of the 11th Annual National Queer Arts Festival, June 1-29, the Queer Cultural Center presents San Francisco Opera stage director Francesca Zambello “in conversation about the challenges, quirks and joys of working in opera.”
The event with Zambello — whose production of Wagner’s Ring cycle will open here on June 3, with Das Rheingold — takes place at 7:30 p.m. on May 12 at the LGBT Community Center in San Francisco.
The festival, a San Francisco event with national participation, presents music, dance, visual art, spoken word, comedy, theater, and film, involving more than 400 artists in 75 events and some 100 performances in 20 venues in the city.
Francesca Zambello
Photo by Daniel Chavkin
A Youthful Lollapalooza
John Adams’ Lollapalooza, Stravinsky’s Le chant du rossignol, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 are on the program at the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra’s next concert, beginning at 2 p.m. on May 18, at Davies Symphony Hall. Wattis Foundation Music Director Benjamin Shwartz conducts. The Youth Orchestra, founded in 1981, consists of some 100 musicians, between the ages of 12 and 21. Members of the Symphony coach Youth Orchestra players each Saturday afternoon in sectional rehearsals.
The Youth Orchestra, Bridging Generations
Doctor Atomic at the Met, in Movie Theaters
John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, developed and premiered at San Francisco Opera, will be produced at the Metropolitan Opera in November, with some of the same principals who sang in the War Memorial: Gerald Finley, Eric Owen, and Richard Paul Fink. On Nov. 8, the production, conducted by Alan Gilbert, will be broadcast and shown in the Met high-definition theater simulcast program.
Reno Rocks as Jekowsky Leaves
How’s that for an attention-getting headline? Alas, we cannot substantiate a connection between the current swarm of earthquakes in and around the “Biggest Little City in the World” and the news from the Reno Philharmonic. Barry Jekowsky, 53, also founder-director of the California Symphony in Walnut Creek, is relinquishing his position as the music director in Reno after a 10-year stint there. Back in 2006, he gave an unusual two-year notice of leaving.
Jekowsky is conducting the season’s last subscription concerts this week at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts, in a program of Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Orff’s Carmina Burana. On May 17, Jekowsky leads the orchestra as music director for the last time at Peppermill’s New Tuscan Ballroom, featuring Western balladeers and cowboy poets. The event is cosponsored by the Philharmonic and the Reno Rodeo Foundation.
Jekowsky will also lead Carmina Burana performances in Walnut Creek on May 4 and 6, with the participation of the Oakland Symphony Chorus, the Contra Costa Children’s Honor Chorus, soprano Kiera Duffy, tenor Tyler Nelson, and baritone Keith Phares. These California Symphony concerts also feature the premiere of Music from Underground Spaces by Young American Composer-in-Residence Mason Bates.
A Sunday The Reno Gazette-Journal article quotes the conductor about his career:
Jekowsky said his childhood was unusual, as he was able to play with some of the finest musicians in the world while most kids were still slogging through high school. Among his many early musical adventures was a stint playing for a Broadway production of The Man of La Mancha when he was just 14. Jekowsky also toured as Tony Bennett’s drummer just a couple of years later.
“I substituted at the last minute on a New Year’s performance of his, and he loved what I did,” Jekowsky said. “It was one of those magical moments I’ll never forget my entire life.”
Through all of this, Jekowsky continued his studies at Juilliard, working on both performance and conducting and earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the 1970s. Upon graduation, he decided to audition for the San Francisco Symphony, where he landed the job of principal timpanist.
By the mid-1990s, Jekowsky had decided that conducting was his future, but the transition wasn’t immediate. He became the first conductor and music director of the California Symphony in the mid-’80s (a position he still holds), but he continued to play with the San Francisco Symphony. By 1995, he knew he couldn’t continue at that pace.
“That year, I was the music director of the California Symphony, I was the timpanist for the San Francisco Symphony, and the associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra,” he said. “That was a record year for me.” So, Jekowsky quit playing to concentrate on conducting full time, and in 1998, he won the music directorship in Reno.
Barry Jekowsky
Winners’ Concert at San Domenico
Student musician winners of the 2008 Marin Music Chest scholarship awards will give a free concert this Sunday, at San Domenico School’s Music Pavilion, in San Anselmo. The organization is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.
Rosenberg to Leave Berlin Post
Former San Francisco Opera General Director Pamela Rosenberg, who has been serving as a director of the Berlin Philharmonic for the past two years, decided not to stay in the post after her contract expires in 2010. An orchestra spokesman said Rosenberg, 63, “has decided she no longer wants to be attached to an institution and wants to spend her time on individual projects. That means she won’t go to any other institution, like an opera house, either.”
Meanwhile, Berlin Philharmonic Music Director Simon Rattle, much praised since taking over the position in 2002, but recently under attack by a few critics, had his contract with the orchestra extended beyond 2012. No details have yet been announced. The Philharmonic, which has a democratic management tradition, voted to retain Rattle, 53, as chief conductor.
Later this week, San Francisco Opera Music Director Donald Runnicles will lead the Berlin Philharmonic and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus in the German capital in performances of the Berlioz Requiem. Runnicles is principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony.
Simon Rattle
Global Opera Experienced Locally
Martinez’s Terri Stuart (whose devotion to the genre had prompted her to select the AOL e-mail name of “Mad4Opera”) reports on watching the Met simulcast of The Daughter of the Regiment iat a Walnut Creek theater on Saturday:
There was a sold-out, packed house and I’m glad I got into the queue early because I was able to save great seats and dash out of the theater to hand off my friend’s ticket (he was late). Otherwise, I’ve been going to Met HD casts in nearby Pleasant Hill, because Walnut Creek seems to sell out every time.
Opera companies hope to bring in a new audience with these simulcasts, but they also bring in an old audience. There are many seniors who cannot make their way to a distant opera house and even if they could get there they might not be able to manage the steps, the “iffy” seats and calls of nature, not to mention the cost.
In Walnut Creek, for example, there were senior citizens in the audience who couldn’t possibly manage to get to the Opera House in San Francisco. But with the movie theater near their East Bay homes, it’s a much better possibility. In fact, it was wonderful to see how people at these telecasts enjoy themselves — in wheelchairs, or with walkers, and canes — a Herculean effort for some of them, but what most of us take for granted.
New Music From the New Works Festival
At three consecutive evenings of world-premiere dance in the War Memorial Opera House last week, an exhilarating mix of commissioned, rarely heard, and war-horse material accompanied the 10 pieces making up the San Francisco Ballet’s unprecedented New Works Festival. The celebration by the country’s oldest ballet troupe of its 75th birthday turned out to be a bonanza for music — in helping to create new compositions and allowing the Ballet Orchestra and its principal players to shine.
The 10 new works, first presented April 22-24, are being repeated through May 6. Whether a balletomane or a music enthusiast (and why should the two be separate?), you would do well to head to the Opera House. Ballet, it is said, is “music in motion,” so take in one or the other — or, maximally, both.
From the first work, Yuri Possokhov’s Fusion, to music by Graham Fitkin and Rahul Dev Burman — a mix of lush romanticism and vaguely whirling-dervish sound — to the last, Double Evil by Finland’s Jorma Elo, accompaniment kept shifting in every work, all the better to allow dance’s infinite variety to impress and delight. Double Evil was especially notable in its inventive and memorable use of excerpts from Philip Glass’ Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra and Vladimir Martynov’s Come In! The alpha and omega of the festival — four composers combining their great talents in two works — received loving treatment from the Ballet Orchestra under the baton of Music Director Martin West.
Martynov was a heartening “discovery,” at least to me. The 52-year-old Russian composer first made his mark with serial music (still a no-no in the Soviet Union of the late 1960s). But as evidenced in Come In! he can also offer a sound in the “born-for-ballet” category of Adolphe Adam (of Giselle) or Riccardo Drigo. One man’s corny-syrupy ballet music is another’s bliss. And in this case, the latter was true for me (although I draw the line at Minkus). According to reports, current Martynov is writing large works on Christian themes, and his magnum opus — while still very much alive — is the hour-long Opus Posthumum.
Paul Dresher
Former minimalists are well represented in the festival (the Glass Concerto itself seems “postminimalist” in its excellence), the best example being Paul Dresher’s splendid commissioned score for Margaret Jenkins’ Thread. With the indefatigable West on the podium again, Dresher’s music moved forward smoothly even when the choreographer’s movements didn’t, an aural counterpoint to a visual theme.
Jenkins’ Thread
Photos by Erik Tomasson
The greatest ex-minimalist of them all, John Adams, conducted the orchestra in his new work, written for Mark Morris’ Joyride, but the main section’s prominently “pulsing” sound seemed to represent a long step back in the composer’s “evolution.” A short slow section offered more musical variety, but a kind of disconnect seemed to prevail — probably not helped by the fact that the choreography itself seemed reaching, kicking, and flying about. The cast of eight danced sensationally, but quite without the emotional impact of Morris’ V or the hilarious entertainment of his Hard Nut.
Morris’ Joy Ride
New, if not novelty, music was also in Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour. Ezio Bosso’s gentle accompaniment, with imaginative, effective music, was at times reminiscent of the best of Philip Glass and Transfigured Night. “Classical pop” was represented by John Phillips, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and John Hartford for Paul Taylor’s strangely downbeat Changes.
Wheeldon’s Within The Golden Hour
More conventional classics received brilliant treatment: David Briskin conducted Poulenc’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Pianos, with Roy Bogas and Michael McGraw as soloists for Stanton Welch’s Naked. Julia Adam’s A rose by any other name is set to music from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, arranged for orchestra and conducted by West, and with McGraw at the piano in an intense, percussive, exciting treatment. James Kudelka’s The Ruins Proclaim the Building Was Beautiful was a sensation, as danced to mesmerizingly romantic music by Rodney Sharman after César Franck (but with a touch of Carl Nielsen).
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.
Dear Mr. Gereben,
I very much enjoyed your article about the bicoastal nature of opera singers and those involved with opera. I am especially happy that you decided to feature Jonathan Khuner. He is a very talented musician and conductor and deserves all the accolades he can get for his work at the Met, San Francisco Opera, and, especially, Berkeley Opera, where I have worked very closely with him.
Thank you also for highlighting the work of those, principal artists, conductors, stage directors, pianists, coaches and administrators who have worked at both, sequentially and/or simultaneously. One category that you neglected, in my humble opinion, is members of the chorus and other solo artists who have worked at both esteemed opera venues. Not to toot my own horn, but I am a bicoastal musician as well. I was a member of the San Francisco Opera Chorus, 2004-08, covered a solo role while there and sang the role of the Brigadier General in 2007’s World Premiere of Appomattox. I am to become a member of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus starting in May 2008. In addition, I have sung leading roles with many Bay Area companies mentioned in your fine online magazine, including Mission City Opera, Symphony Parnassus, Cinnabar Theater and, especially, Berkeley Opera. SF Classical Voice reviewed the productions in which I participated at Berkeley, including Il trittico, Macbeth (2005) and Aida (2007). Jonathan Khuner and I will be collaborating on this season’s Tosca at Berkeley (opening July 12th). While in New York I am singing with Radames with New Rochelle Opera in June 2008.
I am sure that there are a number of other SF Opera Chorus Members who are, have been, or will be bicoastal. When acknowledging the work of others, please do not give us short shrift. We are a valuable component of the opera company and the opera scene.
Thank you for a wonderful article and please keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
Kevin Courtemanche
Proud member of both the San Francisco and Metropolitan Opera Choruses
Posted by Kevin Courtemanche on April 29, 2008 at 2:55 pm