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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Tebaldi Dead at 82, Te Kanawa Retires 'Discreetly'
NEA, James Irvine Fund Awards
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By Janos Gereben
Our New-Music Mecca
Against all odds, the Bay Area remains one of the best places to hear contemporary classical music. Those odds against, of course, include the all-too-human resistance to anything new, the presence of a great deal of chaff among the wheat (something that shakes out much more readily as the years go on, hence "classical" meaning "that which survived"), and general lack of market- and sponsor-support.
New music means small, pioneering groups, but even so, local mainstream organizations have done well: the San Francisco Symphony, at least, at the beginning of the Michael Tilson Thomas era; Kent Nagano's Berkeley Symphony bravely and consistently; Michael Morgan's Oakland East Bay Symphony going well beyond the call of duty; and Jeffrey Kahane's Santa Rosa Symphony until now, although the future is very much in question with the music director's departure for Colorado.
Here's just a quick look at new-music concerts with the coming of the new year. George Thomson will conduct the Berkeley Symphony in Zellerbach Hall on January 26, in Charles Wuorinen's commissioned Symphony Seven, Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9, Carlos Chavez' Sinfonia India (and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto). See www.berkeleysymphony.org.
David Milnes' SF Contemporary Music Players will perform a generous, all-contemporary program in the Yerba Buena Center on January 31. Violist Benjamin Simon (see below) is featured in a number of works, including Bent Sorensen's The Lady and the Lark, Liza Lim's The Heart's Ear, and Toshio Hosokawa's Slow Dance; also on the program: Ligeti's Piano Etudes (with Lucille Chung) and Javier Maldonado's Claroscuros. See www.sfcmp.org.
Simon's own SF Chamber Orchestra offers a New Year's Eve concert in Berkeley's First Congregational Church (repeated on January 2, in Herbst Theater), a largely classical program, in memory of the orchestra's founder-director, Edgar Braun, but including the world premiere of Harold Meltzer's Concerto for 2 Bassoons, with Peter Kolkay and Rufus Olivier. (See www.sfchamberorchestra.org. In the next issue of Music News (January 4), we'll have details of a major local new-music event, the 11th Other Minds Music Festival in February.
Tebaldi Dead at 82, Te Kanawa Retires 'Discreetly' Coincidentally with the death of Renata Tebaldi on Sunday, came a private message from Los Angeles about Kiri Te Kanawa. Apparently, after the final performance of Vanessa at the Sunday matinee there, the soprano singing the title role of the Barber opera told friends and colleagues in her dressing room that she has just sung her last staged opera performance. The retirement announcement was so private that several Los Angeles Opera staff members, reached on Monday, did not know of it (but confirmed it later). Apparently, Te Kanawa had planned to speak from the stage, but then decided to do it privately instead. Reports from the dressing room said the soprano will continue her concert career and her foundation work Tebaldi, who would have turned 83 on February 1, died in San Marino, her home for many years. Although her stage career ended four decades ago, news of her death prompted a spontaneous response in Venice's La Fenice, the audience observing a minute of silence in her memory. La Scala music director Riccardo Muti said Tebaldi was "one of the greatest performers with one of the most extraordinary voices in the field of opera."
NEA, James Irvine Fund Awards The National Endowment for the Arts has given $1.7 million in Challenge America Fast-Track Review Grants, including these Bay Area music organizations receiving $10,000 each: Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose Kulintang Arts and Opera Piccola. For a full report, see www.arts.endow.gov. The James Irvine Foundation has announced grants totaling $8.4 million to 24 Californa arts organizations, including $1.65 million to the San Francisco Symphony, $75,000 to Stanford University, and $465,000 to the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, which itself is supporting arts organizations.
(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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