Music News
Music on the Brain
The Third Annual International “Symposium on Music and the Brain: Exploring Emotion” is taking place at Stanford this week, May 16-17. It is open to the public, but with advance online registration required; the Web site says that with registration already closed, walk-ins are welcome, if space permits.
The symposium brings together scholars, researchers, neuroscientists, and musicians “to explore the question why music is such a pervasive and important aspect of human behavior,” and seeks explanation for “the enormous emotive powers of music.” (Good luck!)
Neuroscientists of music examine the subject “from multiple perspectives on the roles of pitch, rhythm, and timbre, as well as performance aspects such as prosody, and inflection.” A few intriguing topics: the ability of tone-deaf people to perceive emotion in music, the investigation of autistic perception of expressivity in piano performance, musically triggered resurfacing of repressed trauma, and the role of the amygdala in emotion formation. (The amygdala is the neural structure in the anterior part of the temporal lobe of the cerebrum, but “emotion formation” is more difficult to define.)
Musician participants (and performers at the conference) include pianist Stephen Prutsman, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Santur player Bahram Osqueezadeh. Among inviting topics: on Friday, Stanford English Professor Blakey Vermeule on the question “Can artists meddle with evil and remain emotionally unscathed?” And on Saturday, David Huron’s “Music-Evoked Frisson: How Music Produces Gooseflesh and Why Listeners Enjoy It.”
Daniel Levitin — author of This Is Your Brain on Music — Edward Large, David Huron, Petr Janata, Jenny Olivia Johnson, Psyche Loui, Vinod Menon, and Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts Co-Director Jonathan Berger are among presenters.
Does the name Psyche Loui ring a bell? It should: Not long ago, Loui received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley for research on the psychology of music, following her studies at Duke University, where she was also concertmaster of the Duke Symphony Orchestra. Loui is now with the Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School. Her presentation Friday afternoon is titled “Emotion and the Dark Side of Music Perception.”
All events take place at the Campbell Recital Hall and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Another event sponsored by SICA, the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts, is the Wednesday, May 14, presentation by New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini, in the “Arts Critics in Residence” series. Tommasini will speak in the Stanford Humanities Center, beginning at noon. Admission is free.
Neurologist and Musician Psyche Loui
Sound Is in the Ear of the Beholder, But …
Praising the acoustics of Lafayette’s Acalanes Performing Arts Theater in his review of the Gold Coast Chamber Players in this issue of SFCV, my highly esteemed colleague Jason Victor Serinus holds up (or down) Herbst Theatre as an example of poor acoustics, referring to its “deadness and lifeless highs.” Arguing matters of taste, especially in the elusive domain of acoustics, is not a particularly productive business, but there is a sliver of method in my apparent madness, speaking up for good old Herbst. The purpose is to prompt Classical Voice readers to render their judgments about the area’s concert and recital halls in e-mails to editor@SFCV.org, with the subject line “Acoustics.”
Given that appreciation of a hall’s sound is highly subjective, I must admit to being influenced by others when it came to Herbst. It was easy to be relieved and appreciative after the old War Memorial Building theater was reconstructed, but the excellence of its acoustics didn’t strike me until Barbara Bonney stated surprisingly that it’s one of her favorite performance venues, rivaling London’s Wigmore Hall. Besides Bonney, artists such as Thomas Hampson, Matthias Goerne, Leif Ove Andsnes, and the late Hermann Prey have all spoken about their liking for Herbst, so I paid extra attention at subsequent concerts, and came away with more respect for the hall.
Two points: Performers and audience rarely experience acoustics in the same way (however, both Bonney and Hampson spoke of the sound on stage and as heard from the main floor); and it’s undeniable that there are bad or downright dead spots in Herbst. Beyond that, there are several other venues in the area with worse sound — none more awful than the one right above Herbst, the dinfull Green Room. Ugh.
But let’s come to the point: What say you?
Herbst Theatre
Photo by Steve Whittaker
Henkel New S.F. Opera Artistic Administrator
San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley appointed Gregory M. Henkel as director of artistic administration, beginning June 1. Succeeding Shane Gasbarra, Henkel will share responsibility with Gockley, current Music Director Donald Runnicles, and incoming Music Director Nicola Luisotti for casting, contracting, and choice of repertoire.
A native New Yorker, Henkel comes to San Francisco from his position as artistic planning manager with Los Angeles Opera, where he worked with Plácido Domingo and James Conlon on casting, concert programming, and other areas of artistic planning. Before Los Angeles, Henkel served as associate artistic administrator at Lyric Opera of Chicago, after working in the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. He has a master’s degree in music from DePaul University in Chicago, and graduated summa cum laude from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He also studied at the Juilliard School and New England Conservatory of Music.
Big Challenge Grant to Green Music Center
An anonymous Sonoma County family has made a $2.5 million challenge grant to the Green Music Center, under construction at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park.
Contributions to the matching grant are doubled in value and go toward completing construction. The anonymous family is also supporting a local effort underway to secure the naming of the concert hall Innovation Hall in honor of Sonoma County’s telecommunications industry. Donald Green and his wife Maureen, for whom the center is named, and others in the industry have been responsible for raising $5 million toward the $7 million opportunity to name the hall.
Sonoma State University has been successful in securing over $90 million from more than 1,400 local donors toward the $110 million project to date. The 105,435-square-foot complex’s buildings are now in various stages of completion, scheduled to open in 2010, pending continued success at fund-raising. Naming rights to the Music Education Hall complex are still available and valued at $5 million.
The complex hosts classrooms, rehearsal rooms, and offices for faculty and staff, who will be moving in during July. Classes will be offered for the first time in August.
The concert hall is modeled after the Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, seating 1,400 inside, with a terraced lawn for 3,000 or more outside.
Green Music Center Concert Hall Plan
Dalis Vocal Competition
The second annual Irene Dalis Vocal Competition will take place on May 31 in San José’s California Theatre. Opera San José General Director Dalis has raised sufficient funds — including $1,000 from the Wagner Society of Northern California — to offer a $15,000 first prize, $10,000 second, $5,000 third, and $2,000 Encouragement Awards to each of the remaining seven contestants, plus a $5,000 Audience Favorite award.
Irene Dalis
Leyla Gencer
Known as “La Diva Turca” (The Turkish Diva) in the opera world, Leyla Gencer died Saturday in Milan, at age 79. World-famous in the 1960s, the soprano made her U.S. debut in San Francisco years before in 1956, in the title role of Francesca da Rimini. She appeared with the San Francisco Opera in numerous productions, through 1967.
From veteran San Francisco Opera Chorus singer Tom McEachern:
Never will I forget her Gioconda, or the time we were doing that opera on the Sunday after our opening in 1967. The performance took place in the evening, in Sacramento, following a rodeo that afternoon. A group of us went to Sacramento early so we could have a leisurely dinner at the Mansion Inn.
We were more or less well dressed (slacks and clean shirts) when a hush went over the entire restaurant and who was standing at the top of the stairs leading into the dining room, but Gencer, literally dragging a full-length chinchilla coat on the floor behind her, with her secretary a few paces behind the fur. As she passed our table — there were five or six of us choristers there — she nodded slightly to us, gave us a big wink, and continued on to her table. That entrance was almost more operatic than the big duet she sang with Bumbry later on that night. I always wondered if she realized that just a couple of hours before that there had been horse judging going on in that same space.
Leyla Gencer
And a Woman Shall Lead Them
The orchestra of the Vienna State Opera is composed mostly of members of the famed Vienna Philharmonic, a great orchestra with an ugly history of bias against women and numerous ethnic groups. To this day, the Philharmonic is all-Caucasian, and until recently it was all-male, except for a harpist with a tortured history. Against that background, it’s impossible not to experience a measure of schadenfreude at the news that the new concertmaster of the Wiener Staatsoper is Albena Danailova, very much a woman (and from Bulgaria; you know, in the Balkans).
A former London Philharmonic concertmaster, who has played in the violin section of both the Vienna and Munich opera orchestras, Danailova will take the first chair in the Opera pit this fall.
Podleś Cancels, Prina to Make U.S. Debut
Contralto Eva Podleś, originally scheduled to sing Erda in the San Francisco Opera’s Das Rheingold, next month and later, and retained for appearing only in Ariodante, has just canceled the latter because of illness. Her replacement is Sonia Prina, who will make her U.S. debut in the Handel opera.
Originally a trumpet and voice student, Prina began her singing career in 1994 when she won admission to a training program at Milan’s La Scala. She has specialized in Baroque music; there are several YouTube videos of her Vivaldi performances available online.
Sonia Prina
Musica Sacra’s Fauré
Conducted by John Kendall Bailey, Voices of Musica Sacra will perform the chamber edition of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem on May 17 at the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, and on May 18 at the Piedmont Community Church. Soloists are soprano Christa Pfeiffer, baritone Jeffrey Fields, and tenor Kevin Gibbs. Also on the program: works by Duruflé, Saint-Saëns, and Canteloube.
Bailey — who also conducts Trinity Lyric Opera and the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, and is artistic director of the San Francisco Song Festival — will have a busy weekend, serving as baritone soloist in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs in two Sunday morning services on May 18 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Orinda.
John Kendall Bailey
Kapell Recordings Published
On National Public Radio’s All Things Considered program, the story of the discovery of 1953 performances by pianist William Kapell was broadcast, along with several recordings.
Kapell spent 14 weeks that year touring Australia, playing 37 concerts. On the return home, he was killed when the plane crashed before reaching its destination in San Francisco. He was only 31. By the 1960s, Kapell’s recordings were out of print. Only the most dedicated of collectors hunted them down in secondhand stores, and Kapell was largely forgotten. But long before TiVo, MP3s, or even cassette tapes, there was an Australian music fan named Roy Preston. He avidly recorded concerts broadcast on Australian radio, including several from Kapell’s last tour.
Those recordings have just been issued commercially in a two-CD set called Kapell reDiscovered: The Australian Broadcasts. (Listen here.)
YouTube has a few clips of performances by Kapell, and NPR still has a 2003 feature about him online.
William Kapell
Photo by Bettmann/Corbis
Our Gaffigan, Their Favorite
In North Carolina, where Christof Perick has just decided to stay on another year as the head of the Charlotte Symphony, conductors vying to succeed him include San Francisco Symphony Associate Conductor James Gaffigan. Although — with the extension of time and the addition of other contestants — Gaffigan may not get (or take) the job, his appearance there created quite a stir, according to Steven Brown of The Charlotte Observer:
… after James Gaffigan’s second concert, I ran into a music-loving couple from Davidson. It would be presumptuous to claim that I know them well, but I can safely say that they’re not gushy people. The first word out of them: “Fabulous!”
Considering the freshness and sweep that Gaffigan and the orchestra had just given Antonín Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, the couple’s reaction wasn’t excessive. And they were only the latest people to get worked up.
After William Eddins’ tryout in January, which culminated in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a veteran concertgoer declared it the most exciting Charlotte Symphony performance he had heard in 40-plus years. In February, Stefan Sanderling capped off his program with music by a more recent Russian, Dmitri Shostakovich. That powerful performance generated not only the ovation, but murmurs of player approval that still continue.
The enthusiasm about them — and now Gaffigan — may have dimmed everyone’s memories of Edwin Outwater [former resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony], who visited in late November. Outwater went first, which can be precarious in any competition. Later candidates’ ovations echo more clearly.
James Gaffigan
With Gaffigan, the most notable show of appreciation came early in his Friday concert, and from the stage. The program started with ballet music from Mozart’s Idomeneo — little-known fare. But the orchestra’s life and spirit suggested that Gaffigan had made the players at home. As the audience applauded afterward, a dozen or so players did, too.
Wow. Musicians, even when they’re impressed with a conductor, almost never do that after an opening piece. They just save it for the end. When that point arrived this time, even more of them applauded. Later, several players complimented Gaffigan’s gifts. At least one added: “He’s so young!”
Yes, Gaffigan, born in 1979, looks like somebody who gets carded when he orders a drink. But when orchestral musicians comment about age, they also have their day-to-day work in mind.
In rehearsal, less experienced conductors may talk more or repeat passages of music more than the players think they need. To them, that wastes time and causes pointless strain on their hands, lips, and muscles. I’ve heard a bit of that attributed to Gaffigan and the other young candidate, Andrew Grams, who guest-conducted the orchestra last year and returns next season for his full-scale tryout.
So experience is a factor. Gaffigan is gaining his in front of the United States’ top ensembles. He has worked on the conducting staffs of the orchestras in Cleveland and San Francisco; he has guest-conducted those in Philadelphia and New York; and next season, he’ll visit those in Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and St. Louis.
“Unlike most of us, he has spent most of his time at the top,” said the Charlotte Symphony’s resident conductor, Alan Yamamoto, introducing Gaffigan at a preconcert talk.
That’s a tribute to Gaffigan’s abilities. Yet there are two sides to this. It also means that Gaffigan has spent little time with orchestras like Charlotte’s: smaller, battling red ink, wondering how to expand its audience.
Gaffigan, who also leads a chamber orchestra in Cleveland, does have ideas about cultivating not-so-famous organizations. Talking with Yamamoto about luring new people into the concert hall, he offered some strategies, from more-casual concert formats to shorter programs to special admission deals — maybe combining the concert tickets with tickets to sporting events. He pointed out that the Cleveland group provides a nursery to make concertgoing easier for parents.
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.
Your photo for Sonia Prina has a distinct resemblance to Joyce DiDonato. A quick google search of Sonia Prina yielded the following photo video with audio http://www.compositiontoday.com/show_video.asp?video_id=17572
Posted by Jonathan Smucker on May 13, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Thank you for the catch. The photo has been corrected in the article.
Posted by getchesc on May 13, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Okay, Janos, I rise to your challenge to discuss bay area performance space acoustics, from my amateur performer and listener’s perspective.
Berkeley’s First Congregational Church is a hall I am familiar with, having sung there as part of an amateur chorus, as well as hearing many concerts in the hall. I think the space is well suited to small ensembles like Philharmonia Baroque and other period instrument ensembles who use it, but wonder if the musicians had the same inability to hear each other as I did as part of a chorus. I also find the reverberance annoying when lots of tympani or brass play together. This annoyance only surfaced recently; I connected it with the removal of those cloth banners that formerly hung in the hall. Has anyone reacted similarly?
Posted by Tom on May 15, 2008 at 4:34 pm