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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Del Sol Quartet on Top
Grants to Berkeley Opera
Seven Deadly Sins Forged at the Crucible
New Knight Joins Dame of Sonoma
Wozzeck by Verdi on KUSF?
Oil in Alaska Fuels Public Television
Virtuoso Program on the Air
Checking the Miami Music Scene
Anniversaries of '06
Fletcher to Head Aspen Festival
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By Janos Gereben
Hi-Ho, Siegfried!
The new year brings the first-ever "American Ring" for the
San Francisco Opera and Washington National
Opera. The two companies are co-producers of a Star-Spangled
Wagner cycle, opening with Das Rheingold in D.C. this spring.
The four operas come to the West Coast in 2008.
This will be a Ring des Nibelungen with "a design
inspired by the history and landscape of the United States," presenting
Erda, for example, as a Native American woman. Company director
Plácido Domingo has been planning "... an American
atmosphere ... [feeling] that this is not only an original, but also a
proper concept for the Ring in the capital of the United States."
Domingo also plans to sing the role of Siegmund in the following
year's Die Walküre. Leading the Rheingold cast are
Robert Hale as Wotan, Robin Leggate as Loge, Gordon Hawkins as
Alberich, and Elizabeth Bishop as Fricka.
for The Fiery Angel she directed at the Bolshoi. Neither the Washington company's Web site (http://www.dc-opera.org) nor San Francisco's (http://sfopera.com/) has much information about the curious production plan of an American setting, but a report last weekend by Ben Mattison in PlaybillArts.com, quoted stage director Francesca Zambello discussing it: "[With Domingo], we have coined the term 'American Ring,' and the designers and I are using American history, mythology, iconography, and landscape to set the operas. We are creating a world in some ways familiar to our audience but also one that will feel very mythic as we look to our country's rich imagery. The great themes of the Ring — nature, power, and corruption — resound through America's past." Sets in Washington are designed by Michael Yeargan, and costumes by Anita Yavich. SFO General Manager David Gockley is likely to disclose some of the San Francisco-specific information when he holds the first press conference in his new capacity on January 11. (At Domingo's other company, the Los Angeles Opera, the fate of a long-planned "Star Wars Ring" has been up in the air, so perhaps the "American Ring" could fill the bill.)
Del Sol Quartet on Top San Francisco's Del Sol Quartet has been named the year's winner of the Chamber Ensemble/Mixed Repertory category for 2005-2006 by Chamber Music America and ASCAP. The quartet's Kate Stenberg, Rick Shinozaki, Charlton Lee, and Monica Scott have been much in the news lately, especially with their release of the complete string quartet repertory of George Antheil on the Other Minds label, which was nominated for a Grammy. As reported in Music News, the quartet has also engaged in an extensive exchange program, both touring Korea and sponsoring concerts here of musicians from Korea (under the title of "Del Seoul," har, har).
Charlton Lee, Kate Stenberg, Rick Shinozaki, Monica Scott Photos by Mark Rutherford and John Champlin
Del Sol's new award will be given at CMA's 28th annual national conference ("Chart Your Course: Navigating in an Unpredictable Culture") in New York City, January 12-15. The quartet will perform at the conference, as well. Among the other local winners is Babatunde Lea of Vallejo in the jazz ensembles category. For the first time, the recipient of the CMA's highest honor, the Richard J. Bogomolny Service Award, is a jazz artist: Billy Taylor, pianist, educator, TV and radio host, member of the National Council on the Arts, Kennedy Center Artistic Advisor for Jazz, and recipient of major honors, including the National Medal of Arts.
Grants to Berkeley Opera Berkeley Opera has received two major donations at the end of 2005: a $100,000 challenge grant from the Marco H. Goodman Trust, and $25,000 from the Argosy Foundation. The challenge match must be met during the next two years. The Argosy grant is specifically given to support yet another Berkeley Opera premiere, a commissioned work from Clark Suprynowicz titled Chrysalis, to appear in April. The company's next production, beginning at the end of January, is Verdi's Falstaff. See www.berkeleyopera .org.
Seven Deadly Sins Forged at the Crucible The Crucible in question is not the Miller play or the Ward opera, but rather a 56,000 sq. ft. studio in West Oakland. It's a seven-year-old industrial and fine arts education center, and it's beginning to make a name for itself. The Bay Area's only nonprofit sculpture studio, educational foundry, and metal fabrication shop is also offering ... opera! Fire Opera, that is.
Oakland Crucible's "fire opera" production of Dido and Aeneas Photo by Edgar Lee
Following up on its initial opera production, of Dido and Aeneas two years ago, the Crucible now presents — with the participation of San Francisco Opera artists and 30 musicians from the Oakland East Bay Symphony — Kurt Weill's Seven Deadly Sins. Dates are January 11-14 (with a preview on January 9) at 1260 7th Street in Oakland. More information is at www.thecrucible.org. Participants from the Opera: conductor Sara Jobin, and singers Catherine Cook, Eugene Brancoveanu, Kevin Courtemanche, Joe Meyers, and Jere Torkelsen. (The stage director is Roy Rallo, whose trashy 2002 San Francisco Opera Center production of La Finta Giardiniera remains unforgotten and unforgiven.)
New Knight Joins Dame of Sonoma On New Year's Eve, the announcement came from England's St. James's Palace: "The Queen has been graciously pleased to signify her intention of conferring the Honour of Knighthood (Knights Bachelor) upon DANKWORTH, John, C.B.E., Jazz Musician. For services to Music." And so, longtime Sonoma residents John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, both 78, are now titled, the singer — Clementina Dinah Campbell Dankworth — having been made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1997.
Wozzeck by Verdi on KUSF? While awaiting Berg's Wozzeck from New York, on San Francisco's only FM station(ette) that carries the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturdays, the fine Houston production of Trovatore popped up instead on New Year's Eve, without any explanation as far as I know, having tuned in late. Trying to get in touch with anyone during vacation time at KUSF-FM, a small, 3,000-watt college station, proved to be futile. (Déja vu all over again: a storm played havoc with the station during the very first KUSF Met broadcast in 2002. The opera missed back then: yes, Il Trovatore.) Let's hope things return to normal next Saturday because there are no alternatives to KUSF. "The" classical-music station for Northern California, KDFC-FM, remains resolute in eschewing vocal music, and the Croesus-like public KQED-FM repeats NPR news programs three times in a row (3 a.m. to 9 a.m. continuously for "Morning Edition"), instead of mixing talk with music, as the station did in the good old days on a fraction of its current $90 million annual budget.
Oil in Alaska Fuels Public Television Hidden in the federal budget bill that was fought over by Congress late in December, as Alaska's Sen. Ted Stevens tried to ram through opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, was an actual increase for the Public Broadcasting System. It got there, apparently, through the good offices of Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, a leading member (like Stevens) of the Appropriations Committee. There was some large-scale horse-trading, Inouye voting for Stevens' amendment ("as long as they don't explore the Islands for oil"), and Stevens coming to the aid of Big Bird and his pinko playmates. The outcome: Regardless of Inouye's vote, ANWR remains undisturbed, and PBS gets a raise. As they say in Washington, never ask how laws or sausages are made. Note to KQED: Sen. Inouye is a fan of classical music.
Virtuoso Program on the Air Marin's San Domenico School is "just a high school," a small one, and yet its music curriculum and Virtuoso Program keep getting high grades far away from the San Anselmo campus. Orchestra da Camera, the program's top ensemble, conducted by music director George Thomson, has now been selected to appear on the nationally broadcast radio program "From the Top," a showcase for young musicians around the country, hosted by pianist Christopher O'Riley. Live taping of the broadcast concert will be on February 4, in Dinkelspiel Auditorium, part of the Lively Arts at Stanford concert series, but tickets have sold out long ago. The programs usually air about a month after taping; locally, check http://www.kdfc.com/ for the broadcast date and time. Included in the program is the young musicians' amazing treatment of the Finale from Beethoven's Op. 59, No. 3, music that you may preview by downloading the MP3 file of a previous performance excerpt from http://www.Op59no3. The Virtuoso Program musicians next appear live at home, in their new Carol Franc Buck Hall of the Arts, in "Mozart at San Domenico," a benefit concert on February 12 at 3 p.m. (phone 415-258-1921 for information and reservations). The ensemble will then appear at the 20th-anniversary gala concert for Strings Magazine, on May 2, in San Francisco's Herbst Theater, accompanying guitarist Sharon Isbin and participating in the world premiere of a concerto by Jeremy Cohen.
Checking the Miami Music Scene Michael Tilson Thomas celebrated turning 61 on Dec. 21 by taking on Shostakovich's most Mahlerian Symphony No. 7 ("Leningrad") with his New World Symphony in Miami, getting such rave reviews as "monumental aural canvass ... proving an awesome vehicle ... [forming] a searing, emotionally powerful soundscape," wrote Lawrence Budmen in the Miami Herald. (Local angle: Former San Francisco Chronicle music critic Octavio Roca, who left here to rejoin the Herald, is now writing for the Miami New Times.) The unique thing about the high-achieving New World Symphony is that it is a post-conservatory training organization, called "America's Orchestral Academy." It is the first opportunity for many young musicians to play in a professional orchestra. For considerably longer than his decade in San Francisco, MTT has headed the New World, which he founded in 1987. Venturing out of its Lincoln Theater base in Miami (a former movie theater), the young musicians have performed in New York's Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, London's Barbican Centre, Paris' Bastille Opera, and Argentina's Teatro Colón. New World Symphony was also in the news late last year, when the orchestra's first conducting fellow, the Bulgarian Danail Rachev, who assisted MTT in 2002-2003, was named assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
Anniversaries of '06 Sure, it's Mozart's 250th birthday (January 27, 1756), but who else should blow significant candles out (some, like Mozart, posthumously) in 2006? Reader Gerald Waldman compiled a long list of significant musical birthdays, which we abbreviated greatly:
Fletcher to Head Aspen Festival Alan Fletcher, head of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Music, has been named the new president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School, succeeding Don Roth. Fletcher is the seventh CEO in the institution's 57-year history. David Zinman remains the festival's music director.
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