Music News
New Merolini, New Hope, New Love
They just keeping coming, young singers of extraordinary promise. But there was something different Tuesday night at Herbst Theater, where the 51st Merola Class’s first indoor, unamplified concert took place (following a Sunday outdoor event at Yerba Buena, attended by thousands).
The difference came in the person of Leah Crocetto, an omni-soprano from Michigan, trained at both the Moody Bible Institute and the Sarasota Opera Apprentice Program. In 30 years of exciting discoveries, listening to each group of Merolini for the first time, I have never experienced a singer springing as complete and awesome from terra incognita as Crocetto.
Leah Crocetto
What is an “omni-soprano”? It’s someone who shifts from dramatic to lyric fach, from tragic to comic performance seamlessly, amazingly. Crocetto’s first role on Tuesday night — in a program of four extended operatic excerpts, accompanied by an orchestra under the baton of Dean Williamson — was Manon from the Massenet opera, in the Saint-Sulpice scene.
Her note-perfect, solid, well-rounded performance peaked in thrilling notes that were powerful, not loud. At one point, I heard the broad, irresistibly penetrating voice of Birgit Nilsson … but more beautiful.
And then a look at the program, and something approaching incredulity: Crocetto’s next appearance was to be as Norina in a Don Pasquale scene! Norina? Not the heaviest of Verdi heroines, maybe Brünnhilde, perhaps Fidelio? Surely a dramatic soprano of such heft is misled into Donizetti’s lyric, comic role.
Instead of disappointing, Crocetto’s Norina blew everyone away, with wicked humor, sensational performance of the heroine’s many voices, and — in confrontation — to Ben Wager’s outstanding Pasquale: Just one sustained note from Crocetto, and a foot away from Wager, the poor man was, well, blown away for real. As the make-believe country girl from the convent, Crocetto’s “Sofronia” was hysterically funny, without overacting. The trick was in the voice — when “Sofronia” pretends to realize that she is being courted by a man, her first “Come? Un uomo!” came with the prescribed “con terrore” up high, but when she repeated “Un Uomo?!” her voice dropped about three octaves, booming out as if channeling Boris Godunov haunted by a ghost, and several audience members slid off their chairs, helpless with laughter.
The entire Don Pasquale Act 2 scene was a triumph. Wager — although an improbably young and handsome Pasquale — sang well, but acted just a bit too fussy. René Barbera’s Ernesto was impressive, his aria ending on a blown high note, cleary due to nerves (the voice is there) … and that’s exactly what the Merola Program is there for. David Perhall’s Malatesta was smooth and strong, a comprimario role sung and performed to a T.
YoungJoo An
The evening began on a high note, as YoungJoo An sang a velvet-smooth Prologue to Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci. The Korean baritone’s warm, medium-sized, beautiful voice came across with radiant musicality, the singer focusing on the music, rather than “showing off” the voice.
Inexplicably, An’s second appearance, as Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata, was disappointing with its blandness. The scene from the end of Act 2 also featured Nathaniel Peake as Alfredo. Too bad the excerpt began after Violetta’s departure — Crocetto would have been delightful in the role. Peake’s big chance came in the Manon scene, as des Grieux.
Nervous, melodramatic acting, on order of The Drunkard, and audible effort reaching high notes counteracted the gift of a fine voice the tenor possesses.
The rest of the large Merola group can be heard July 18 and 20 (Albert Herring), Aug. 1 and 3 (Don Giovanni), and then it’s time for all at the Aug. 16 Grand Finale in the Opera House.
Creative Taxing of Creative Artists
This is not about federal or state income taxes. No, the news — at least to me — is that cities are charging licensing or registration fees for freelance artists. What fees, which cities, what kind of artists, the meaning of “resident” — all that is a story in progress, and like Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes, I know nothing! Your contributions to the discussion are invited, your corrections anticipated, and your ire feared. Considering that the majority of Bay Area musicians are freelancers, rather than employees, this could be of interest.
Broaching the subject, a music critic friend of modest income (a tautology) e-mailed:
The City of San Diego, in its desperation to find money anywhere it can, has descended on freelance writers telling them they need to buy business licenses, and is fining everyone retroactively for every year of freelancing.
Aghast, I put out a global e-mail alert, and received the following instantly from across the Bay:
Oakland has a business tax. Any Oakland resident who earns any money in Oakland — that is, while a resident in Oakland and including money earned elsewhere from one’s Oakland address — is liable for a business tax, with a minimum $60 per annum. I pay it for money earned outside Oakland, believe it or not. This is equivalent to a license, of course. There has been enormous resistance to this via a chain of letters that come and spin around from artists of all kinds, and from others of course, but to no avail. Oakland must have the income to pay the salaries, benefits, pensions, and severance pay of its numerous Edgerlys. God bless America.
What, I wondered, would be the rules in Los Angeles? There is a “city business tax” there there, and it’s rather overwhelming:
Every person engaged in any trade, occupation, vocation, profession, or other means of livelihood in the City of Los Angeles must obtain a Tax Registration Certificate (TRC).
But what if you have the good fortune to get a short gig in L.A. and then return to rural Sonoma? Behold:
You are considered to be engaged in business in the city of Los Angeles when you physically perform work within the City of Los Angeles seven or more days per year.
And yet, it is in seven-days-make-you-resident L.A. that there is relief for the artistically inflicted:
Creative Artist Exemption: No tax is required to be paid by a person for gross receipts attributable to “Creative Activities” earned when that person is engaged in business as a “Creative Artist,” unless the total taxable and nontaxable gross receipts from within and without the City exceed $300,000 annually. Creative Activities shall mean activities performed by Creative Artists primarily for entertainment and/or aesthetic purposes, including assistants or professional trainees performing those same Creative Activities.
“Creative” and $300,000? Are we talking about Enron here? But what if you are involved in “Entertainment” or “Multimedia,” rather than “Creative Activities”? (The distinction will come as a surprise — and insult — to many.) If so, and if you are in the right “redevelopment area,” the ceiling drops dramatically:
For every person engaged in an entertainment or multimedia business, which business is located in either the Hollywood Redevelopment Area or the North Hollywood Redevelopment Area, the total tax due at each such business shall not exceed $25,000 plus 10 percent of the amount in excess of $25,000.
Well, how are things in Gloccamora … or in your city? Send an e-mail to editor@sfcv.org, with the subject line: “Taxing the Creative.”
Swenson Honored for the ‘First 25 Years’
After the summer’s final San Francisco Opera performance on Sunday afternoon, General Director David Gockley presented Ruth Ann Swenson with the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor. Gockley pointed out that the event came 25 years to the month after Swenson’s professional debut in the War Memorial, where as an Adler Fellow she sang the role of Despina in Cosi fan tutte. The irrepressible singer responded: “I am looking forward to my next 25 years.”
Having just performed the long and difficult role of Ginevra in Ariodante to a fare-thee-well, the singer — who has just overcome breast cancer and chemotherapy — was in her usual lively, spirited mood, cracking jokes, and making the best of a delightfully restrained, two-minute speech. She concluded acknowledgments to those — such as James Schwabacher and former General Directors Terence McEwen and Lotfi Mansouri — who have “nurtured and supported me,” and the “San Francisco public who has from the beginning till today given me appreciation, love, and support … there really is no place like home.”
Swenson, receiving the Opera Medal
Photo by Steve Fisch
Young Americans Conquer European Audiences
Coming from the New World, young musicians played Dvořák’s similarly named Symphony No. 9 in Berlin last week, and on the Fourth of July, the Berlin Morgenpost review exclaimed:
In Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra really showed off its strengths. Benjamin Shwartz conducted from memory, dancing elegantly among the musicians. Time after time he searched for the heavenly length in Dvořák’s music and found moments of meditative strength. Full of pride and passion, the musicians threw themselves into the hymnlike finale. The Americans offered three encores, Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, Tchaikovsky’s Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, and a crowd pleasing surprise, a snappy Indian raga for voice.
Before departure
That last, mysterious-sounding item about the “raga for voice” is further explained in French horn player Kalyn Jang’s tour diary: “… an energetic Mela Prati, a fun piece in which we imitate the sound of Indian drums with short, explosive syllables: Bop! Shoo! Boo! Doo! Da!” (Rick Kvistad, (Bay Area) percussionist, arranged the mela prati.)
Some of the SFSYO
Follow the Youth Orchestra’s progress in their blog. The youngsters appear next on Thursday in Prague’s Smetana Hall, under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy to the Czech Republic. They will perform the Adams Lollapalooza, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op.26 (with Julian Rachlin as soloist), and scenes from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet.
After arrival (in Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall)
Levine’s Illness Forces Withdrawal from Tanglewood
James Levine, who celebrated his 65th birthday on June 23, announced on Tuesday that he will have to withdraw from the Tanglewood season because of urgent surgery. The Boston Symphony (and Metropolitan Opera) music director will have a kidney removed, “as a curative measure, with no other treatment necessary and with every expectation for a complete recovery.” The anticipated recuperation period is six weeks, “leaving ample time to prepare and conduct the season openings of the BSO and the Metropolitan Opera in September,” said the announcement from Lenox, MA.
James Levine
“It is extremely frustrating that I need to have this surgery now,” said Levine. “My projects at Tanglewood have been planned so carefully and coordinated in such detail by the Festival administration. I especially regret not being here with Elliott Carter for his 100th birthday celebration, which I was looking forward to more than I can say. And I’m very disappointed at having to miss concerts with my colleagues in the BSO, as well as my work with the young musicians of the Tanglewood Music Center.”
Mark Volpe, BSO Managing Director, expressed the sentiments of everyone at the Festival: “All of us at Tanglewood are very disappointed that James Levine will not be with us for his remaining concerts this summer. However, we are primarily concerned for Jim’s health and well-being, and that everything be done to ensure a complete recovery so that he returns as soon as possible to his musical life with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera.”
ODC ‘Summer Sampler’
Brenda Way’s ODC San Francisco is giving a summer sampler of wine and dance, at the ODC Dance Commons on Aug. 5 and 6, beginning at 6 p.m. on both days. The event serves as fund-raiser and interest-sustainer during the period that’s usually dance-lite locally (even as the company is touring the U.S. and Europe).
Shenanigans, with Anne Zivolich and Brandon Freeman
Photos by RJ Muna
Winetasting and conversations with choreographers Way and KT Nelson precede an hourlong program of selections from the ODC repertory, including:
- Way’s 2008 Unintended Consequences: A Meditation, to music by Laurie Anderson
- Nelson’s 2005 Shenanigans, to music by Milhaud
- Way’s 2001 24 Exposures, to music of Appalachian recordings by Mark O’Connor, Yo-Yo Ma, and Edgar Meyers
ODC’s Shenanigans
Zimmermann’s ‘Very Big’ Soldaten at N.Y. Festival
Martin Bernheimer reports from the Licoln Center Festival in the Tuesday Financial Times:
It is big. Very, very big.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann began to write Die Soldaten in 1957. The first version turned out to be so complex, so sprawling, so forbidding and foreboding in idiom and scope that no company would produce it. In 1965 Cologne introduced a somewhat simplified revision. The opera, still preposterously gargantuan, was hailed as the most significant advance in deepest, darkest expressionism since Berg’s Wozzeck and Lulu. The language was atonal, the technique serial, the impact staggering.
From Die Soldaten
A few companies have attempted Die Soldaten in the interim, but most settled for compromises. Zimmermann, after all, had envisioned a socio-critical Gesamtkunstwerk that demanded massive resources in music, theater, and technology. His hyperlofty goal: a fusion of “architecture, sculpture, painting, musical theater, spoken theater, ballet, film, microphone, television, tape and sound techniques, electronic music, concrete music, circus, the musical … forming the phenomenon of pluralistic opera.”
Read the full report from The Park Avenue Armory, see also coverage in The New York Times, and watch a preview.
Claudio Otelli and Kathryn Harries in the New York production
Photo by Matthias and Clärchen Baus
Another Opening Night for Paremski
At age 21, Natasha Paremski has already set a trend in rescuing festival opening nights. Having stepped in as the last-minute soloist replacement at the Caramoor and Vail Valley festivals last year (just four days apart), the pianist is now substituting for André Watts at the July 12 opening night gala of Napa’s Festival del Sole.
Watts has reported a “minor injury to his arm,” and Paremski is taking over as the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. Born in Moscow, later a resident of Fremont, Paremski attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and graduated from the Mannes College of Music, where she studied with Pavlina Dokovska.
Paremski made acclaimed debuts as a prodigy in Cupertino and San Jose, won the Gilmore Young Artist Award, made her local recital debut with San Francisco Performances, and later appeared with orchestras elsewhere in the country, as well as Europe. Next year, she will make several debuts in Asia.
To be led by San Francisco Symphony Associate Conductor James Gaffigan, the July 12 concert at Yountville’s Lincoln Theater will also feature Ravel’s Shéhérazade (with soprano Measha Brueggergosman), the Prelude to Mussorgsky’s Khovanchina, and Bizet’s L’Arlesienne, Suite No. 2.
Natasha Paremski
Photo by Leslie van Stelten
Stern Grove’s Arboreal Threat
It’s probably unprecedented that a music festival must deal with killer trees, but such is the situation at San Francisco’s venerable Stern Grove Festival.
The Grove’s beautiful forest setting (featured prominently on the festival Web site) became the cause of a fatal accident three months ago when a tree branch snapped off and killed a woman. It was regarded as a freak accident, but now the city’s Park Department is warning that some 100 trees in the grove are similarly aged and therefore hazardous.
Although San Francisco (struggling with a diminished budget) has only three crews dealing with the city’s 100,000 trees, one crew is now assigned to the Grove to take care of the situation. Meanwhile, although the performance space and the central meadow for the audience look safe enough, problem areas are likely to be in the reserved-parking area, and on the various paths approaching the festival site.
Note by Note, Step by Step
Movies about music and dance at the upcoming San Francisco Jewish International Film Festival from July 24 to Aug. 11, cover a wide range of topics. Screenings are scheduled July 24-31 at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, Aug. 2-3 and 9-10 at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, Aug. 2-9 at the Roda Theater (Berkeley Repertory Theater) in Berkeley, Aug. 2-7 at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto, and Aug. 9-11 at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.
Here are some examples of the Note by Note, Step by Step series:
- Out of Focus is a portrait of the Batsheva Dance Company’s Ohad Naharin; the company is a frequent visitor to San Francisco Performances.
- Anvil! is Sacha Gervasi’s documentary about “nice Jewish boys Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and Robb Reiner in Toronto, who at 14 made a pact to rock forever, and went on to become the ‘demigods of Canadian metal’.”
- Black Over White is Tomer Heymann’s film about Israeli pop/world-beat band Idan Raichel Project, on their concert tour to Ethiopia.
- Georgia My Love is about two Georgian immigrants in Israel, working together in a bridal salon: Maya, a singer, pursues her love for traditional Georgian songs and Manana, a dancer, practices her moves with fellow Georgians as they prepare for a performance.
- Tulip Time is the Northern California premiere of a film by Italian directors Marco De Stefanis and Tonino Bionotti about Trio Lescano, a musical group of Dutch Jewish sisters who were enormously popular in the 1930s and 1940s in Italy. The daughters of Hungarian circus artist Alexander and Dutch operetta singer Eva Leschan, Sandra, Giuditta, and Caterinetta grew up in Holland, performed around Europe until running into trouble in fascist Italy at the beginning of World War II.
Darwin and Music Journalism
Consider two sets of data, one from today, the other from the 1850s; comparing them seems to point at a steep devolution, not the development that Darwin had posited in the case of natural selection. When it comes to music journalism, apparently, evolution is not the operative word.
Last weekend, Martin Bernheimer published an essay in The Financial Times, titled “Critics in a Hostile World,” about the hard times for journalism in America. He wrote:
Newspapers are shrinking at best, folding at worst. Fewer than ten cities still support more than a single daily. Writers face buyouts, layoffs or firing. The papers that survive are making do with fewer employees, fewer pages, fewer articles and, not least, fewer opinion-pieces. Critics are looking more and more like dodos.
Compare this restrained and valid jeremiad with the existence in San Francisco alone of 132 newspapers in the 1850s — offering more dedicated classical-music reporting than exists in the entire country today. Consider also the contrast between 132 papers in this small post-Gold Rush city and the “fewer than 10″ cities with more than one newspaper.
True, that was before the Internet, and yet is this really evolution, survival of the fittest, or just devolution from an era of wanting to write (and read) versus today’s sole determinant of the bottom line, which dictates layoffs when profit dips below 20 percent?
Bernheimer writes:
Of the thousand journalism jobs reportedly lost during the past year, 121 belonged to specialists covering music and dance, also film, books, and television. The music critic at The Kansas City Star was told to walk after eight years of heavy duty. The critic at The Miami Herald was granted eight weeks’ severance pay (never mind that massive arts center across the street). The Los Angeles Times no longer employs a dance critic. The Village Voice in New York and the Los Angeles Weekly, have ceased coverage of “classical” music. The Seattle Times no longer employs a music critic. Even the relatively secure New York Times has found two of its venerable critics — one in music, one in dance — expendable. Time and Newsweek gave up earnest arts-coverage long ago.
There are some bleak takes on the situation:
I think the deeper and sadder point, underlying Martin Bernheimer’s comments on the loss of so many classical music, dance and theater critics, is that newspapers and magazines no longer value those arts. Why should they? Only a small minority of the public enjoys them, which automatically make those arts (ugh!) “elitist.” Classical artists generally don’t act out their dementias in public. And even if they did, they are such “unhousehold” names, they wouldn’t sell a single paper.
So, sad as it is that newspapers and magazines have cut down on serious art coverage and criticism, my guess is that going forward, their readers won’t notice the loss.
And yet, not all is lost, as the evidence shows right here in River City. Music organizations in the Bay Area, receiving less and less coverage in the print press, have come to rely on Web coverage, prominently by The San Francisco Classical Voice for the past decade. This is especially important for organizations without the advertising budget of the S.F. Symphony or S.F. Opera. Responding to the Bernheimer column about music journalism, Pocket Opera’s Donald Pippin (a veteran of fostering young operatic talent and new audiences) said:
There was a turning point in 1992 or 1993 in the history of Pocket Opera when many arts writers for newspapers were laid off. Pocket used to be reviewed by numerous papers, including the The San Francisco Chronicle. Then, the layoffs and no more reviews (except in SFCV). Reviewers are the lifeblood for small companies. They get the word out. Without them, the companies do not survive.
What makes a professional (as in, paid) nonprofit Web site possible is contributions from foundations and individuals: See Friends of SFCV.
On Board: Who Are They?
Symphony boards are an essential, but often unsung part of the collective effort that keeps an orchestra going. As the Santa Rosa Symphony is announcing a new board president and five new board members, we take a quick look at who are the people making their valuable time and services available to the Symphony.
- The new board president is Charles J. Abbe, former president and COO of JDS Uniphase. He had been a senior executive at Raychem Corporation in Menlo Park, after a lengthy career at management consultants McKinsey & Company. In addition to serving on several public and private corporate boards, Abbe is also a board member of the Community Foundation Sonoma County. He and his wife Karen live in Healdsburg.
- SRS Board Vice President Eric Rossin and his wife Beth Weisburn moved to Sonoma County in 1995. They and their two children live in Sebastopol. Rossin was a co-founder of Alantro Communications, and served as president from its inception in 1997 until it was acquired by Texas Instruments in 2000. Currently, Rossin is advising technology startup companies.
- SRS Board Treasurer Art Matney worked for Merrill Lynch for 35 years, and held posts in several cities in the Northeast before moving, with his wife Lynda, to Santa Rosa in 1998. He was manager of the Santa Rosa Merrill Lynch office until he retired in 2002, and continues to serve on boards and committees of various civic and cultural institutions.
- SRS Board Secretary Peggy Elliott is a partner in the law firm of Anderson, Zeigler, Disharoon, Gallagher, and Gray in Santa Rosa. Since 1993, she has served as adjunct faculty for SSU Attorney Assistant Program and the Estate Planning and Gift Taxation faculty at Empire College School of Law.
- Newly appointed Santa Rosa Symphony board member James Hinton is a graduate of Stanford, a former Air Force officer, and a 1964 graduate of Boalt School of Law at UC Berkeley. He began his law practice in Santa Rosa in 1964 with the firm of Spridgen, Moskowitz, Barrett & Achor; in 1988 he established his own law partnership, now known as Hinton, Cochran, Borba, and Beckwith. After more than 33 years in civil litigation, Hinton retired from law practice in 1997. After retiring, he served the City of Santa Rosa for six years on the board of the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, has been an active member of Santa Rosa West Rotary Club.
- Robert J. Melder, originally from western Pennsylvania, developed his affection for classical music while listening to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and chamber music groups in the city. While completing his professional training and postgraduate research work at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, he met and married his wife Diane, an organist and musicologist. Dr. Melder assumed a faculty position at the Harvard Medical School and worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital for several years, teaching and conducting research in oncology, vascular biology and biomedical engineering. He subsequently joined Medtronic in 2004 as Director of Preclinical Development for the cardiovascular division.
- Irene Sohm is the 2008-2009 president of the Symphony League, a position she previously held during the 1999-2000 season. She has been a member of the Symphony’s Music Education committee since 1994 and served as chair for one year. Sohm is married to David Sohm, president of Contactual in San Carlos, and has two married daughters. She is retired now but was an elementary school music teacher for six years, and an interior designer for 15 years. Her family moved to Santa Rosa in 1992 and she joined the Symphony League and became a season subscriber that year. She sings with the Santa Rosa Symphonic Chorus, and is also a dancer.
- Jane Weller is a fourth generation Californian. She has lived in the Bay Area since childhood and began attending performances of the San Francisco Symphony when she was 8 years old. She and her husband Nelson, who is a retired investment professional, have been subscribers and supporters of the San Francisco Symphony and the Santa Rosa Symphony for many years. Weller graduated from Cal, following a family tradition started by her grandfather. A lifelong music lover and gardener, she and Nelson live in Healdsburg where they tend a vineyard on their country property.
- Roy Zajac, orchestra representative on the Board, has been the Santa Rosa Symphony’s principal clarinetist since 1998 and has served on the artistic review committee. He frequently coaches woodwinds in the youth orchestras. During the course of his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Zajac studied in Vienna with Peter Schmidle, the principal clarinetist of the Vienna Philharmonic. After completing his undergraduate degree, Zajac was selected to play with the Filharmoni del Bajio orchestra in Guanajuato, Mexico. He returned to the U.S. and earned a Master’s Degree in Music Performance at the University of Minnesota. Zajac lives in Santa Rosa, and teaches privately and at Sonoma State University. He is also a potter and has donated his pottery for auction at the Symphony’s annual fund-raising gala.
Charles J. Abbe
A complete list of board members is available at the Santa Rosa Symphony Web site.
Roy Zajac (clarinet), with Jerome Kuderna (piano), and Elaine Kreston (cello)
Photo by Guy Poole
Bathseva Dance Company in Out of Focus
Israeli-Ethiopian-Yemenite band of Black Over White
Maya and Manana in Georgia My Love
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.