Music News
Venues, Cont’d
There were a couple of lamentable omissions in last week’s roundup of San Francisco music venues, especially of two places I have visited dozens of times over the years. How I missed them, I’ll never know.
They are Cowell Theater at Fort Mason (437 seats) and the Palace of Fine Arts (962 seats). Cowell is located next to several large exhibition halls, but those are quite without facilities or anything approaching decent acoustics for performances. Nearby, in the Presidio, there are some possibilities, all of which require significant development or repair costs. The 300-seat theater/screening room in George Lucas’ Letterman Digital Arts Center, behind Yoda’s Fountain, has potential, but it’s unlikely to be available — unless “you know somebody.”
Yoda guarding a new theater in the Presidio
Several readers brought up the business of “Lake Louise,” the large lot next to (Louise M.) Davies Symphony Hall, used for parking. Long ago, it was to be the site of a 1,200-seat recital hall.
Peter Winkelstein suggests a novel solution to the quest for an “opera piccola.”
Insert a midsized performance space into the Civic Auditorium which is under-utilized and in the perfect location. It should be economical to do as the building itself already exists and has been seismically upgraded. You would build a complete hall in the existing large open space in the center of the building, which once housed circuses, boxing matches, and, of course, the opera, while the Opera House was being seismically upgraded and refurbished. It would also provide other spaces surrounding the hall for rehearsals, offices, and so on.
Civic Auditorium: What’s good for boxing may do for opera
Bill Whitson, board member of the San Francisco Lyric Chorus, wrote:
It will be interesting to see how many of the new performance spaces in museums prove to be both suitable and affordable for performing groups with smaller audiences and budgets.
My wife, Helene, and I are lifelong choral singers, and for the last 12 years we have managed and sung with the San Francisco Lyric Chorus. She is also the compiler of the San Francisco Bay Area Chorus Directory, and I maintain the San Francisco Bay Area Choral Archive Web site, as well as the ba-choral Yahoo group. We have also sung with several other choruses over the last 40 years, have friends in many choruses, and have attended innumerable choral concerts — most of which have been given in churches. [Note: my article specifically excluded churches and schools.]
A couple of years ago we wrote an article about the problem of performance spaces in the Bay Area, which was published in the then new Web magazine Choral Music Magazine. I think you might find it interesting, in light of your current article. We were somewhat more concerned with the problems of design for concert performance and acoustics, but certainly share your general concern about the inadequate numbers of suitable smaller performance spaces.
The Whitsons’ article is now available on the Web. Here’s a particularly significant passage from it:
In compiling the most recent edition of the San Francisco Bay Area Chorus Directory, and examining the list of choruses on the Choral Archive Web site, we have estimated that there are at least 25,000 people singing weekly in greater Bay Area choral groups. That is a large number of people. If we feel there is a need for better medium-sized concert halls, it seems as if we certainly should be able to organize to draw attention to this need, and find a way to work for the creation of such facilities. After all, we live in our communities and contribute to their economies and our art contributes to their artistic enrichment.
S.F. Lyric Chorus: in need of a hall
Todorov to Direct SFSU Music Program
Violinist Jassen Todorov has been named director of the San Francisco State University School of Music and Dance. Originally from Bulgaria, the 33-year-old musician has been teaching at SFSU since 2003.
He is “more than a prodigious talent in music and teaching. He is also a natural leader,” said Kurt Daw, dean of S.F. State’s College of Creative Arts. “He has ambitious goals for the School of Music and Dance, a strong ability to work in teams, and remarkable energy and enthusiasm.”
Todorov has taught courses in violin, strings, chamber music literature, and career management in music.
The School of Music and Dance offers professional and liberal arts degrees, with more than 400 students enrolled in major programs. Music students can study jazz, classical, choral, world music, electronic music, composition, music education, and more. Dance students are trained in techniques such as ballet, modern, jazz, capoeira, flamenco, kathak, Afro-Haitian, and “Dunham,” as well as preparation for K-12 dance education.
Jassen Todorov
Adams’ Sonic Youth
Beginning on page 32 of the Aug. 25 New Yorker, John Adams recounts his “formative years” in San Francisco and Berkeley, in a autobiographical sketch that also provides the picture of a political/social/musical era — including an unwelcome brush with history:
In April 1974, Adams was living in the Sunset District and set out to his bank to cash a $10 check, only to find that it was surrounded by police and paramedics. “The bank had just been hit by the Symbionese Liberation Army. … Had I arrived a few minutes earlier, I might well have been staring straight down the barrel of Tania’s submachine gun.” Adams describes this as having occurred at perhaps the peak of his own “radical phase.”
The description of Adams’ work at the S.F. Conservatory of Music and of the genesis of Harmonium is particularly interesting. The article is not online, but an interview with Adams is on the New Yorker Web site, although the sound quality is poor.
Gergiev in Georgia, Misusing Shostakovich
“The theme was Russia’s victory over Georgia, the spirit was Second World War defiance, the music was from Leningrad — and the conductor was from London,” reports The London Times:
Surrounded by soldiers and barbed wire, hundreds crowded into the center of Tskhinvali to see Valery Gergiev conduct the Maryinsky Orchestra from St. Petersburg as Russia staged a victory concert amid the ruins of the capital of South Ossetia.
From the mournful first bars of Shostakovitch’s Symphony No. 7 (known as the “Leningrad”) in the makeshift arena, it was clear that the theme of the night was a stirring appeal to patriotism and the memories of Russian suffering during the Second World War.
Gergiev is an Ossetian, and grew up in North Ossetia. He is also a close friend of Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister. The two men are godfathers to each other’s children.
This is the same man whom I heard to say that he misses the law-and-order-and-national-power days of Stalin. And here he is, celebrating the Russian occupation of Gori, the very birthplace of Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (a.k.a. Stalin). And, do Georgians (all 4 million of them versus Russia’s 142 million) really qualify as modern-day Nazi superpower aggressors?
The concert is available online.
Gergiev in South Ossetia
More on Supertitle Anniversary
We already chronicled the 25th anniversary of Lotfi Mansouri’s introduction of supertitles, but this note from the former general director of the San Francisco Opera should be on record too:
When I first used supertitles (or Surtitles, as we called them) with my production of Elektra at the Canadian Opera Company, I was attacked and generally vilified in a number of publications. The British Opera magazine called them “the plague from Canada,” and The Los Angeles Times accused me of vulgarizing opera. James Levine opined that they would be used at the Met over his dead body. All I wanted to do was share my love for the greatest art form created by the human mind, and I think, to some small degree, I have succeeded.
How is he doing these days?
I am keeping busy, directing several productions a year. For example, last year I did a Boris Godunov and Samson and Delilah for the San Diego Opera, and new productions of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci for them this past spring. I also did a Merry Widow for L.A. Opera and La Rondine for Michigan Opera.
For the last few summers, I’ve been doing dramatic workshops and a Showcase program for the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, and I’m scheduled to do a series of masterclasses for the University of Toronto Opera School in the fall. In addition, I’m working on a “tell-all” book!
And when that book is published, you will read about it here first.
Lotfi Mansouri
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.
Sadly, and unfortunately, neither the Cowell Theater nor the theater in the Palace of Fine Arts are easily disabled accessible. Since becoming disabled I have become increasingly frustrated by the inequality of accessiblity in music venues and have had to miss events I would have loved to attend.
Even with a rolling walker I cannot walk from the parking at Fort Mason Center to Cowell Theater, and although I believe there is some disabled parking at the theater in the Palace of Fine Arts (it has been a while since I have been there) most of the parking is uphill, and I am unable to navigate slopes. And as I recall from the ballet performances in 1996, the theater itself is not ADA compliant.
I re-iterate my recommendation last week for the Conservatory of Music, which has a number of performing spaces, is completely disabled accessible and which has abundant parking nearby, and the Phyllis Wattis theater in SFMOMA, which is also disabled accessible and the garage therefor has an entire floor of disabled parking.
Posted by Ruth C. Jacobs on August 26, 2008 at 10:41 pm