|
IN Music News THIS WEEK: Music Critics to San Francisco?
|
By Janos Gereben
Music Critics to San Francisco?
It was generally understood that the Music Critics Association of North America, which rarely ventures to the West, would be prompted to do so next year, in order to attend the Los Angeles Philharmonic's opening of Disney Hall in October. Through postponements and indecision, however, San Francisco became the favorite and it looks like the MCANA convention is heading this way in June.
Attractions here, besides the tattered remains of what was a few weeks ago the country second-best baseball team, include the San Francisco Symphony's "Wagner, Weill and the Weimar Republic" Festival. The highlight is a series of Flying Dutchman concert performances, Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the cast, which includes Mark Delavan (Dutchman), Jane Eaglen (Senta), Mark Baker (Erik), Eric Cutler (Steersman), Stephen Milling (Daland).
During the same period, the San Francisco Opera's summer season will offer Rossini's La Cenerentola (with Sonia Ganassi and Juan Diego Flórez, Patrick Summers conducting), Verdi's Il Trovatore (with Marina Mesheriakova, Dolora Zajick, Richard Margison and Carlos Alvarez, Marco Armiliato conducting), and Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust (with Marguerite Angela Denoke, David Kuebler and Kristinn Sigmundsson, Donald Runnicles conducting).
On Monday, Runnicles received a contract extension at one of his posts (he is also the SF Opera music director and principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke's), as principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony, to run for a total of five years. Both Runnicles and Atlanta music director Robert Spano have contracts through the 2006-2007 season. In other city exchanges of music directors, MTT is due in Disney Hall in December, to conduct the LA Phil in Mahler's Sixth Symphony, while that orchestra's Esa-Pekka Salonen will appear in Davies Hall during the following season.
Opera Smoking, Singers Steaming Stage smoke has lately been a fairly big issue, especially for chorus members who get pickled in the stuff. At the San Francisco Opera, upcoming contract negotiations for the chorus will deal with the matter, with the participation of AGMA, the American Guild of Musical Artists, which has gone on record, nationwide, against use of smoke or fog on stage. The organization's policy now states that "no smoke and fog devices or effects should be permitted to be used in any production unless each AGMA member scheduled to perform in that production shall be given two weeks advance notification of the company's intention to use same, and no smoke or fog effects should be used in any production except for those generated by dry ice or steam." How to enforce this? According to the AGMA magazine, "negotiators will have to propose it to employers and bargain for its inclusion in AMGA's collective bargaining agreements. The first test opportunity... will be at the renegotiation of the San Francisco Opera contract early next year."
Adler Fellows in Met Auditions Adler Fellows Tiffany Abban (soprano) was the first runner-up in the finals of the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in San Francisco over the weekend, Saundra DeAthos (soprano) was a finalist.
Employ Your Local Musicians The Lawrence Pech Dance Company has just spent $83,000 of its $332,000 annual budget to produce a program of three commissioned premieres, including a new score, a chamber orchestra and chorus for live music at three performances over the weekend. Besides Julia Adam's charming and amazingly athletic The Medium Is the Message and Val Caniparoli's hilarious boink! (to the music of Juan Garcia Esquivel's orchestration of 'Sixties pops, the program's main event was Pech's Angels: Fallen and Otherwise, a 40-minute story ballet. The commissioned score, by Kurt Erickson, was performed by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Baroque Choral Guild (whose director, Sanford Dole, conducted the performance), and Joyce Keil's Ragazzi Boys Chorus. Even with the understanding cooperation of the musicians in the matter of fees, that's what Ed Sullivan used to call "a really big shoe" for a small, financially strapped company. LPDC executive director Gigi Pagani says that given budgetary constraints, "every effort was taken organizationally to trim operating as well as production costs to the bare essentials . . . provided there would be no adverse impact on artistic quality." The only impact of live music, of course, is to enhance the production. Speaking of angels for Angels, help for underwriting's Pech's work came from James Hormel, the Leof family, the Simcha and Wolfston foundations; Caniparoli's boink! got special support from Dr. Kevin and Susan Stone.
Another Success Story The San Francisco Girls Chorus is turning in an impressive fiscal performance (in addition to all that singing) even during the hard times. Operating on an annual budget of $1.6 million, SFGC has net assets totaling nearly $1 million, and it's launching a $10 million capital campaign. Even the anticipated loss of its lease on the present headquarters isn't fazing the organization, which nears the end of a year-long search. Another search, for a new executive director, is also under way, Susan G. Duncan serving in an interim capacity. Susan McMane is artistic director.
Poppea Dethroned Los Angeles Opera's fiscal problems continue to modify the season. With War and Peace already scratched, expect an announcement about the scheduled January production of The Coronation of Poppea. Cast members, it now seems, including Frederica von Stade and Placido Domingo, will be conducted by Kent Nagano in concerts of selections from works by Verdi, Massenet and Berio instead. Berio was to do a new orchestration for Poppea, but the 77-year-old composer is reported to be ill and late with the score. The company's "Star Wars Ring" is a fast-disappearing dream (as, indeed, the San Francisco Opera's Berlioz Les Troyens may turn out to be).
Kernis Turns to Opera Aaron Jay Kernis is completing his first opera, to be performed in Santa Fe next summer. It is based on Ann Patchett's novel, Bel Canto. The story is about a birthday party in honor of a Japanese industrialist somewhere in South America, rebels entering the house and taking the guests hostage. It may be the second "terrorist opera" since John Adams' The Death of Klinghoffer, unless I missed one.
All the Beethoven Good to Play As he did in two concerts at home last year, Santa Rosa Symphony's Jeff Kahane will conduct and solo in all five Beethoven piano concerti at the next Oregon Bach Festival, July 1 and 3. The festival has also scheduled Al Huang and Robert Levin to collaborate in a concert called the Tao of Music, Huang dancing to Bach, performed by Levin.
She Doesn't Mean the Classical Side, Does She? The Guardian reports that Joni Mitchell regards her new album, Travelogue, as her last. The music industry, she told the newspaper is a "corrupt cesspool" and she is "quitting because the business made itself so repugnant to me. Record companies are not looking for talent. They're looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate."
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the
Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.)
|