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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Venues Future
Venues Present
The Flicka Benefit Machine in High Gear
The Last Messiah
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By Janos Gereben
New Gold Rush for S.F. Civic Center
Archives for David Hockney's and Eiko Ishioka's design will be major components of a planned San Francisco Museum
of Performance and Design, said to be the first such independent institution in the world, Classical Voice has learned.
A $35 million fund drive is in process to help pay for the facility, scheduled to open — with luck — in 2008 in the San Francisco
Civic Center. Total cost for the complex could be in excess of $70 million. Major sponsors of the project so far are Tiffany & Co.,
Burberry, and Sharper Image.
Between now and then, the area — already home to the War Memorial Opera House, Davies Symphony Hall, Herbst Theater, and
several other music venues — will also include the relocated San Francisco Conservatory of Music's concert halls, the S.F. Girls
Chorus' Kanbar Performing Arts Center, other new venues, and — further down the road — a major new performance space
adjacent to the Asian Art Museum. For details about these developments, see the next item, "Venues Future." A roundup of
information about existing facilities follows, under "Venues Present."
 No specific location has been announced for the Performance and Design Museum, but Classical Voice sources say the corner of Van Ness and Grove — literally across the street from the Opera House and Davies Hall — is the most likely place. The museum complex will include the SFPALM (S.F. Performing Arts Library and Museum) collection of nearly 3 million items dating back to the Gold Rush era, which are currently housed in the Veterans Building. The new facility will have large gallery spaces, an educational center, several performances spaces, including a 200-seat black box theater and a 500-seat theater/opera house, in the traditional European horseshoe shape, seating 320 in the orchestra, and the rest in two balconies. Significantly, the large theater facility is planned with an orchestra pit and flytower, providing the first real alternative for small-scale (but fully produced) music theater in the area. For organizations like S.F. Lyric Opera and The Lamplighters, this facility may signal a new era. "Nowhere in the world is there a museum devoted to stage, performance, and design," says SFPALM Director David R. Humphrey. "There are many distinguished performing arts libraries and collections, but all of them are integrated into other cultural and educational institutions." The David Hockney Stage Design Archive consists of some 2,500 set and costume designs in a variety of media, for Hockney's productions of Turandot, Die Zauberflöte, Tristan und Isolde, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, the French Triple Bill, the Stravinsky Triple Bill, and The Rake's Progress. Ishioka, an Academy Award winner for costume design, is responsible for film and theater design, including sets and costumes for M. Butterfly, production design for Mishima (the Japanese film with Philip Glass' score), and costumes for the Netherlands Opera production of Wagner's Ring cycle.
Venues Future Next summer, when the S.F. Conservatory of Music moves from its current 37,000-square-foot home on 19th Avenue to the Oak Street edifice that's twice the size, it will offer a 450-seat concert hall, a 140-seat recital hall, and the 120-seat Osher Salon. During the 2004-2005 season, the Conservatory — in its current, cramped space — produced almost 400 performances (317 of them with free admission), drawing a total attendance of 22,000. At Oak Street, that figure could double, bringing great musical experiences, even while contributing to a difficult-to-imagine driving/parking crisis in the already overloaded area. The new $80 million Conservatory — Simon Martin-Vegue Winkelstein Moris, architects; Kirkegaard Associates, acousticians — will have 41 teaching studios (versus 33 on 19th Avenue), 11 classrooms (8), 41 practice rooms (15), a 6,500-square-foot library (2,400 square feet), a large percussion suite, keyboard and computer labs, an ensemble room, an improv studio, and an electronic-music studio.
 Next door, the S.F. Girls Chorus is planning a recital hall in its new facility at 44 Page Street, a gift from Maurice Kanbar. Executive Director Rachel Malan foresees "a recital hall, seating between 300 and 350," in addition to several small rehearsal halls. At the east end of the Civic Center, the new Asian Art Museum (formerly the main library) has Samsung Hall for various events, but a vacant lot adjacent to the building has always been regarded as a potential theater/concert hall, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein as one of its proponents. Says the museum's Tim Hallman: "We envision a concert hall, costing $45 million to $60 million, and seating approximately 350. It would also include more special exhibition galleries. Ideally, we would have something by 2010, but we're still taking the temperature of the community for another campaign."
Venues Present Expanding the story here two weeks ago (www.sfcv.org) about the addition of new performance spaces with the completion of the new de Young Museum, following is The Classical Voice's guide to existing musical venues in the city. Excluding the many church, temple, and school spaces, these venues are shown with their capacity and approximate rental fees for noncommercial organizations, where available. Rental costs are always complicated by specific arrangements for insurance, security, box office, and so on, so the figures here are only approximate.
The Flicka Benefit Machine in High Gear Among Frederica von Stade's upcoming benefit appearances: November 5, Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, for Sonoma City Opera, and specifically for the company's commission of Every Man Jack, an opera by Libby Larsen and Philip Littell. For information, see www.lbc.net. Dec. 3, The Golden Age of Broadway, in Alameda's Cofman Auditorium, for the benefit of music education in Alameda, one of good-neighbor Flicka's favorite causes. The program will be hosted and conducted by Oakland East Bay Symphony Music Director Michael Morgan; soloists include Natasha Miller, Marisa Lenhardt, Joy Sherratt, Michael Denton, and Eileen Meredith, along with 100 students and 60 band members from the Alameda Unified School District. For information, www.alamedaeducationfoundation.org.
The Last Messiah A Bay Area music tradition, S.F. Conservatory of Music's "Sing-It-Yourself Messiah," will come to a close in Davies Hall on Dec. 2. The audience-participation performance began in 1979, with Louis Magor conducting the Conservatory Orchestra and an ad-hoc chorus of 3,000 in the Opera House, and over the years it has been broadcast to a national audience via KQED-TV. Conservatory President Colin Murdoch says the Conservatory will create "new traditions" once it moves into a new building, just a couple of blocks from Davies Hall. For information, see www.sfcm.edu.
(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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