Listening Ahead
Our Critics’ Choices of Upcoming Events in the Bay Area
for July 22 – August 4, 2008
Choral
Sing for Your Schola Cantorum
If you want to be the concert, rather than see a concert, Schola Cantorum in Los Altos is the spot for you. Ambitious and enthusiastic South Bay choristers are gathering all this month and next to sing through some of the most popular choral repertory of our day. Next up: Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with the Fauré Requiem followed by the Mozart C Minor Mass paired with Brahms’ Schicksalied. Students in school chorale groups get in at half price.
July 28, 7:30 p.m., Los Altos United Methodist Church, $15 ($7 for school chorale members), (650) 254–1700, www.scholacantorum.org. (M.Z.)
Ritual of Virtues
Rarely do you get to hear Hildegard von Bingen’s extraordinary plainsong liturgical drama, the Ordo Virtutem (The ritual of virtues). Even rarer is to hear it performed in conjunction with classical music and dance of India. But that’s what Todd Jolly’s hipper-than-thou San Francisco Renaissance Voices propose to do in their version. In addition, Diana Rowan accompanies the piece on Celtic harp, an instrument that Hildegard once described as the instrument of heavenly blessedness.
Aug. 2, 7:30 p.m., Seventh Avenue Presbyterian, San Francisco; Aug. 9, 8 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco; Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m., Alameda Presbyterian Church; Aug. 16, 7:30 p.m., All Saint’s Episcopal, Palo Alto; Aug. 17, 4 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley, $12-$15, www.sfrv.org. (M.Z.)
Todd Jolly
Symphony
Beethoven and Bernstein
The UC Berkeley Summer Symphony, a one-time grouping of students and local amateurs led by graduate student conductors, has been known take on a musical challenge, dispatching arduous chops-busters as if it is all in a day’s work. This time around the musicians are conducted by Henry Shin and Hoh Chen, in a concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 (”Choral”) and Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances” from West Side Story.
Aug. 8, 8 p.m., Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, donations at the door, (510) 642-4864, www.events.berkeley.edu. (C.G.)
Festival
Mendocino Music Festival
Here’s a festival that sports an actual big-top tent. The 22nd festival, as always, adds a number of jazz and world music concerts into the mix. This year’s highlights include a performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with Brian Leerhuber (Figaro), Nicole Foland (Countess), Christine Brandes (Susanna), and Eugene Brancoveanu (Count Almaviva). Pianist Stephen Prutsman gives a concert mixing jazz and classical works, an evening is devoted to the “degenerate” musical culture of the Weimar Republic, and the festival orchestra brings the festival to a ringing close with Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
Through July 26, Mendocino, www.mendocinomusic.com. (M.Z.)
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
Marin Alsop has her ear to the ground for composers of contemporary orchestral music, and you could do no better than to let her Cabrillo Festival programs be your guide through this particular thicket. This year, the festival brings back some longtime associates, like Christopher Rouse, whose Concerto for Orchestra, a Cabrillo Festival commission, anchors the opening night concert, on August 1. John Corigliano’s percussion concerto, Conjurer, with its original soloist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, highlights the second concert. But in addition to these, plus works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, John Adams (the Doctor Atomic Symphony), and Osvaldo Golijov, there are a number of composers represented who are in their early 30s or younger. One of them, Matthew Cmiel, is all of 19. With Mason Bates performing on electronica in his Liquid Interface, composer Michael Daugherty featured in an evening of jazz, and cellist Matt Haimovitz and Bates combining for a concert with electronic soundscapes, this year’s Cabrillo Festival embraces the huge diversity of musical possibilities present at the beginning of the 21st century.
July 27 – Aug. 10, Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista, www.cabrillomusic.org. (M.Z.)
Evelyn Glennie
Stern Grove Festival
Once again we can enjoy the S.F. Symphony and Opera outdoors. On June 29, Orli Shaham plays Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini, with James Gaffigan on the podium, while the orchestra gives Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36. The San Francisco Opera closes the festival with a celebration of American opera and musical theater, on August 17.
Through Aug. 17, Sundays at 2 p.m., Stern Grove, San Francisco, $10-$30, (415) 252-6252, www.sterngrove.org. (M.Z.)
Orli Shaham
Photo by Christian Steiner
Music Academy of the West Summer Festival
This festival is centered on an eight-week summer program for pre-professional musicians. Concerts involve students and faculty, along with a few guest artists. This year’s big deal is a performance of William Bolcom’s 2004 opera, A Wedding, based on the Robert Altman film. The Takács Quartet also drops in for a visit, performing with faculty on July 15, and on their own on July 17. Christopher Taylor does Messiaen’s complete Vingt regards again (July 9), and the Academy Orchestra, under the Philharmonia Baroque’s own Nicholas McGegan, performs Messiaen’s Un sourire, along with Mozart, Ibert, and Schumann.
Through August 15, Santa Barbara, (805) 969-4726, www.musicacademy.org. (M.Z.)
Takács Quartet
Photo by Peter Smith
Midsummer Mozart Festival
This movable feast of a festival doesn’t invite you to go to the mountains, it brings the mountain to you. The two main Mozart programs include Jon Nakamatsu playing the A-Major Piano Concerto, K. 488, Nikolai Demidenko working over the C-Minor Piano Concerto, K. 491, and Laura Griffiths, principal oboist of the S.F. Ballet Orchestra, performing the Oboe Concerto, K. 271k. This year’s festival is expanded to reach San José, with a semi-staged performance of The Abduction From the Seraglio, at the California Theatre, and starring some recent Opera San José stalwarts, and a concert at Le Petit Trianon on August 2.
Through Aug. 3, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Sonoma, Berkeley, San Jose, www.midsummermozart.org. (M.Z)
Jon Nakamatsu
Music@Menlo
The impressively funded Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival offers multimedia full immersion, if you want to take advantage of the lectures, “Café Conversations,” open houses, CD-based listening guides, art displays, and “Encounter” discussion centers. It is also a training program for young musicians, who merit their own series of concerts. The main concerts this year present a chronological march through the development of chamber music beginning with a survey of the Baroque period from Salamone Rossi through to J.S. Bach and ending with a program of contemporary music including a premiere of a piano trio by Kenneth Frazelle. The recital series includes the Borromeo String Quartet playing the complete Bartók string quartets; Stephen Prutsman in a program that juxtaposes preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier with a kaleidoscopic variety of works, classical and not; and Gary Graffman in a program of left-hand piano music.
Through Aug. 8, Atherton and Palo Alto, www.musicatmenlo.org. (M.Z.)
Borromeo String Quartet
Photo by Christian Steiner
Carmel Bach Festival
The Carmel Bach Festival packs an awful lot of music into three weeks. This year, the theme seems to be the Bach-Brahms connection. The main concerts include Bach’s B-Minor Mass, the complete Brandenburg Concertos, a concert that connects the Viennese School greats, and one that pairs Brahms’ German Requiem and Bach’s Cantata No. 21. In the chamber concerts series, Sanford Sylvan sings Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise, and an all-Brahms vocal evening. In addition, there are the preconcert (Twilight) concerts, and the postconcert (Candlelight) concerts. You could spend a day and hear a week’s worth of music.
Through Aug. 9, Carmel, www.bachfestival.org. (M.Z.)
Sanford Sylvan
Photo by Susan Wilson
Opera
Tosca
The tiny Julia Morgan Theater will play host to the big passions of Puccini’s Tosca in the new Berkeley Opera production featuring Jillian Khuner, Kevin Courtemanche, and John Minagro.
Through July 20, various times, Julia Morgan Theater, Berkeley, $15-$44, (510) 841-1903, www.berkeleyopera.org (M.Z.)
La bohème
In La bohème, Puccini works his musical gifts, playing with the music, and skewing the narrative away from its darker aspects — the desperate circumstances of women up against men of privilege pretending to be starving artists. One of Puccini’s tricks is a subtle nostalgia that seems to inspire recollections of déjà-vu style memories. The score is worth it on its own, but the Pocket Opera production looks promising: Bharati Soman is Mimi, Erina Newkirk is Musetta, and Debra Lambert directs.
July 27, 2 p.m. Legion of Honor, San Francisco, $20-$34, (415) 972-78934, www.pocketopera.org. (C.G.)
Contemporary
117 Strings
Another in the series of Pamela Z’s “Room” concerts at the Royce Gallery, this one devoted to strings, features Barbara Imhoff on harp, Donald Swearingen on laser harp, Dan Joseph playing hammer dulcimer and electronics, and Miya Masaoka playing koto and electronics. It should be as interesting as the last “Room” concert, devoted to percussion, and probably less noisy as well.
July 11, 8 p.m., Royce Gallery, San Francisco, $10, www.pamelaz.com. (M.Z.)
Recital
Bach To Bright Sheng
Robert Howard pulls some strings as a cellist for the Philharmonia Baroque and the San Francisco Symphony. At Old First Church he’ll be going solo in Bach’s D major Suite for Cello, and Bright Sheng’s Seven Tunes Heard in China. The latter piece is fast becoming standard rep, and it makes an inventive pairing with Bach. The program is filled out with two duet pieces, performed by Howard and violinist Adam LaMotte.
July 25, 8 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $12-$15, (415) 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (M.Z.)
Music Installation
ARIA
Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud and Italian designer/artisan Alessandro Moruzzi present their music installation ARIA, as part of a Yerba Buena Center of the Arts Galleries event. Inspired by the many permutations of air (”aria” in Italian), the artists explore the politics and poetics of this powerful, invisible element. Politics of air? That could be about polution, but until the premiere takes place on July 19, there is no way to know. Warning to unadventurous classical-music fans: ARIA on that evening is followed by Bay Area Now, a compendium of exhibits and bands, including Softhug, Bronze, Eugene International, and the like, with the promise: “We turn YBCA upside down as we open up every available space to party …”
July 26, 7 p.m., Yerba Buena Gardens; $12-$15, free to museum members; July 26 is free with museum admission, (415) 978-2787), www.ybca.org. (J.G.)
Joan Jeanrenaud
Photo by Michele Clement
Music Theater
The Mikado Returns
Lamplighters’ Music Theatre revives Gilbert and Sullivan’s evergreen satire of English society dressed a la Japonais, The Mikado. The show, directed by Phil Lowery and starring the company’s stalwart G&S experts, opens in Walnut Creek, spends the next weekend in Napa, and finally turns up in San Francisco in mid-August.
July 31-Aug. 2, 8 p.m. (and 2 p.m. Saturday matinee), Dean Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek; Aug. 8, 8 p.m., Aug. 9, 2 p.m., Napa Valley Opera House; Aug 15, 16, 8 p.m., Aug. 16, 17, 2 p.m., Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; $11-$46, (415) 227-4797, www.lamplighters.org. (M.Z.)
Chamber Music
Six-String Shootout
The Guitar Foundation of America holds its annual conference on the San Francisco Conservatory’s campus, August 5 to 9. If you’re a fan of guitar music, you have to check out the roster of stars and young talent who will give concerts throughout the four days. They include Hopkinson Smith (on lute), Zoran Dukic, Duo Melis, Raphaella Smits, Xue Fei Yang, and others. Many of these artists will also give masterclasses. And of course there will be lectures, a vendor fair, and competitions. August 5-9, recitals at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Herbst Theatre, $30-$38, www.guitarfoundation.org. (M.Z.)
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
Catherine Getches is managing editor of San Francisco Classical Voice. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Salon.
Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph.D. in music history from UC Berkeley.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, Catherine Getches, Michael Zwiebach, all rights reserved.