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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
JCC Starts Up Season
Berkeley World Premiere
Bass on Top at Kohl Mansion
A Gathering of Gamelans
Norma Cast Change
Ballets Russes Opens Film Festival
Left Coast's American Masters
Chanticleer's Youth Choral Festival
Mauceri to Step Down
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By Janos Gereben
New de Young Multiplies S.F. Music Venues
At first look, the new, $202 million de Young Museum's Koret Auditorium, which opened last weekend, promises to be a great space for small-scale music performances. Steeply raked, similar to Hertz Hall in Berkeley, with perfect sightlines and located in a beautiful setting, the 280-seat auditorium should be heaven-sent for San Francisco's mostly out-of-luck musicians, who must put up with such acoustical horrors as the War Memorial's Green Room. It should be, because there is no guarantee yet that it really is a fitting theater for music.
Visually attractive, with a huge "panoramic" screen (a complex sound system embedded behind the porous canvas), the Koret has dark walls that are covered with a felt-like material. And therein lies the rub: Amplification works just fine in the new hall, but there are no hard surfaces to readily reflect music for a live (and lively) sound — so the crucial matter of acoustics remains to be . . . heard.
San Francisco owns the new museum (built without any government expenditure, paid for by Dede Wilsey's private fund drive, after two bond measures failed at the ballot box), but rental fees are surprisingly high. For a seven-hour period (including two hours of setup, and a two-hour takedown), the rate for nonprofit organizations is $1,500. Contrast that with 960-seat Herbst Theater (with excellent acoustics), which rents for approximately $1,650 under the same conditions.
That figure for Herbst is just a ballpark, considering a complex set of optional and mandatory charges, some included — such as security, stage hands, and so on — but some not, such as insurance and box office services. Even at a maximum estimate of $2,400, however, the per-seat rental cost at Herbst works out to about $2.50 vs. $5.35 for the untested Koret Auditorium.
Another comparison, at a cost of $4.27 per seat, is with Kanbar Hall in the San Francisco Jewish Community Center. Opened just last year, the 468-seat auditorium has good sightlines (when a built-in modular riser structure is employed), cranberry-colored walls, black-and-red carpet, and white acoustic tiles forming the high ceiling. Kanbar's good acoustics are marred only by the occasional hiss from the pesky air-conditioning. The rental fee to nonprofits is $2,000 per event, inclusive of all charges.
In addition to Koret, the de Young is offering a multitude of rental spaces, including the Piazzoni Mural Room (capacity of 150), the de Young Café (190), the Café with the terrace (500), Wilsey Court (500), or — for a big event — the Wilsey Court with the Café and the Barbro Osher Sculpture Garden Terrace, seating 1,250 and costing $20,000. Don't expect your typical string quartet there anytime soon.
JCC Starts Up Season Speaking of Kanbar Hall, the San Francisco JCC classical-music season is starting on October 27, with "Keyboard Conversations" as Jeffrey Siegel explores Beethoven's music in talk and performance. On October 30 at 4 p.m., the Community Music Center Orchestra, with soprano Dorothy Barnhouse, performs works by Borodin, Berg and Rimsky-Korsakov — it's a free event. Free also are numerous Fisher Family Hall concerts in the JCC, featuring students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. For information, see www.jccsf.org.
Berkeley World Premiere Small, spunky and adventurous, Berkeley Opera will include in its next season a Creative Work Fund-sponsored world premiere: Clark Janusz Suprynowicz's Chrysalis, with libretto by John O'Keefe, to be directed by Mark Streshinsky, with musical direction by Jonathan Khuner, the company's artistic director. The opera, performed April 22-30, 2006, is about "the world of body transformation, cosmetic surgery and genetic alteration." Other Berkeley Opera productions are the season-opening Verdi Falstaff (January 28 — February 6) and Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (July 15-23). See www.berkeleyopera.org.
Bass on Top at Kohl Mansion With a new executive director (Patricia Kristof Moy), and featuring the new San Francisco Symphony principal bassist, Scott Pingel, Music at Kohl Mansion in Burlingame opens its 23rd season on October 30. Bass players don't often get star billing, but — supported by his colleagues from the orchestra — Pingel will provide an exception. The program includes Villa-Lobos' Assobio a Jato ("Jet Whistle"), Dvořák's String Quintet in G major, Op. 77 (nicknamed "Bass"), Rossini's Duetto for Double Bass and Cello, and Mozart's Quartet in D major for Flute and Strings. Kohl Mansion's Sunday Chamber Music Series continues on November 20, with the Poulenc Trio, with this lineup to follow: Trio Solisti (1/8), Cavani String Quartet (1/29), Triple Helix Piano Trio (2/26), Moscow String Quartet (3/19) and the Miró Quartet (4/9). On April 23, pianist Garrick Ohlsson appears in recital. The "Kohl for Kids" Family Series opens January 13, with the Jacques Thibaud String Trio, continuing on February 3, with John Santos, and concluding with Melody of China, on March 31. See www.musicatkohl.org.
A Gathering of Gamelans Gamelan — the Indonesian musical form and orchestral ensemble of xylophones, chimes and gongs — has always been well represented in the Bay Area, ever since the beginning of Berkeley's "world music" movement a half century ago. And yet, the festival called "A Gathering of Gamelans," October 13-23, goes well beyond previous, mostly individual efforts. Gamelan performances ruled at Fort Mason last weekend, with dance and shadow theater from Java, Bali, Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand; this weekend in Cowell Theater look for the premiere of a unique gamelan-and-shadow-play interpretation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
 Puppet master Larry Reed's ShadowLight Productions and Gamelan Sekar Jaya are collaborators in presenting a full reading of the Shakespeare play in a combination of ancient Asian traditions and state-of-the-art American technological/cinematic techniques. For information, see www.shadowlight.org.
Norma Cast Change Citing family reasons, Nancy Maultsby has withdrawn from the San Francisco Opera's production of Norma, opening next week. The role of Adalgisa will now be sung by Irina Mishura. The title role will be sung by Catherine Naglestad; Zoran Todorovich is Pollione, and Attila Jun is Oroveso. Oleg Caetani conducts performances between October 23 and November 5, and Sara Jobin takes over November 10-21. The stage director is James Robinson. See www.sfopera.com.
Ballets Russes Opens Film Festival A new documentary, by Dan Geller and Dayne Goldfine, about a line of history-making dance troupes, will open San Francisco's 21st annual Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema, November 3-9. Ballets Russes documents the story that began in 1909, when Sergei Diaghilev premiered his Ballet Russe company in Paris, and ended in 1962, when Serge Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performed its final show in Brooklyn. With the involvement of Nijinsky, Balanchine, Massine, Stravinsky, Ravel, Picasso, Matisse and scores of other artistic luminaries, the dance companies were at the forefront of innovation.
 Besides dealing with the world-famous, the documentary also tells of Yvonne Chouteau, one of five Native American dancers from Oklahoma to join in 1943. In 1954, Raven Wilkinson became the first African-American woman accepted as a permanent member of a major ballet company. See www.filmarts.org.
Left Coast's American Masters The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble begins its new season on October 20, with a concert titled "American Masters." It presents music by John Adams (Road Movies for violin and piano), Aaron Copland (Duo for flute and piano), Leonard Bernstein (Clarinet Sonata), Charles Ives (Largo for violin, clarinet and piano), and George Crumb (Eleven Echoes of Autumn for violin, flute, clarinet and piano). See www.chambermusicpartn.org.
Chanticleer's Youth Choral Festival Chanticleer, the Bay Area's 12-man a cappella ensemble, will hold its sixth annual Youth Choral Festival on Friday, October 21, at San Francisco's First Unitarian Universalist Church. More than 250 students from the area's high school choral groups will participate in the all-day event, culminating in a joint concert, beginning at 7:30 p.m. The event is free, but seating is limited and reservations are required. See www.chanticleer.org. In November, Chanticleer presents a day-long choral workshop for 100 adult singers in Tokyo, along with appearances in front of 400 students at two elementary schools there. This is the ensemble's first major educational event in Asia. Chanticleer's first Middle School Youth Choral Festival will be held in January in San Francisco; additional festivals for high school students will take place this season in Fresno, California; New Canaan, Connecticut; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Two dozen Bay Area school visits will take place throughout 2006, conducted by music director Joseph Jennings and ensemble members. Major funding for the Youth Choral Festival has been provided by Bettye Poetz Ferguson Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Walter and Elisa Haas Fund, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, David Henry Jacobs, Jordan Family Fund, Jim Meehan and Bernard Osher Foundation.
Mauceri to Step Down John Mauceri, founder and principal conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, says he will leave the position next year, "to pursue other opportunities." Mauceri has led the orchestra since 1991, when it was revived. In its previous incarnation, from 1945 to 1947, the orchestra was known as the Hollywood Bowl Symphony, and was founded by Leopold Stokowski. Contrary to the still-persisting image of Bowl concerts, Mauceri resisted pops programs, saying in a speech in 1990 that "pops concerts are the worst idea in the world. It's like putting a leech on a corpse." His concerts with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra have included music by film composers, such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner and Nino Rota, and many American composers, including Leonard Bernstein (who was his mentor) and John Williams. The orchestra's summer 2006 season will include a series of farewell events for Mauceri.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the
Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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