Quartets for Civil Rights Leaders

Not to be outdone by Chanticleer in offbeat and timely programming, the ever-pioneering Del Sol String Quartet is getting ready for a world-premiere presentation of the complete string quartets of Haitian-American violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain. To be held in the San Francisco JCC's Kanbar Hall on March 6, the concert is called "A Civil Rights Reader."

The works honor Malcolm X (Quartet No. 1), Martin Luther King, Jr. (No. 2), Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (No. 3), and Maya Angelou (No. 4), the last with Roumain on electric violin and DJ Scientific, turntablist. Roumain's music combines traditional counterpoint with pop and hip-hop. See www.OtherMinds.org

Official Birthday for San Jose's First Lady

If Elizabeth II can have both an actual and official birthday, why not Irene Dalis, founder-director-magician of Opera San José? It was Dalis who first reached 80, last October 8, while HRH won't hit the big Eight-O until next month. Dalis canceled a planned birthday gala last fall because she didn't consider a celebration appropriate in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, but now the event is on again.

The date is March 11, the place is the Silicon Valley Capital Club, and it's a fund-raiser for Opera San José: tickets are $350 ($225 tax-deductible). Contact the company for information at www.operasj.org.

After a brilliant international career as one of the best-known American mezzo-sopranos in Europe, and following 19 seasons at the Met, Dalis founded Opera San José in 1984 for the specific purpose of developing and showcasing young professional singers. Over the years, she has accomplished two distinctions unique in the U.S.: maintaining a resident company of principal artists (a strictly European mode of operation), and having a successful run without ever showing a deficit.

Olivia Stapp, a fellow singer and formerly a colleague as company director (of Walnut Creek's Festival Opera), admires equally Dalis' ability to shed 90 pounds and maintain an ensemble opera company. "She provides housing, coaching, and so on, along with the all-important performance opportunities," Stapp says of Dalis. "To one married couple, the Detweilers, she even gave her family home to live in. Irene is going to the Met in May to participate in a tribute to the late Birgit Nilsson, but I think that even more important than her fame as an artist is how she has served young artists. She has worked tirelessly to help them, and to create a great artistic legacy."

The company's current run of La Bohème in the California Theater features the resident company in major roles, including Deborah Berioli, Lori Decter, Janelle Laurenti, Sandra Rubalcava, Christopher Bengochea, and Adam Flowers. See www.operasj.org/boheme.

Boys to Sing for More Than Their Supper

Ian Robertson's San Francisco Boys Chorus will have S.F. Opera general manager David Gockley as guest of honor at their annual gala fund-raiser on March 4. Robertson's other hat is as chorus master of the S.F. Opera, so he has no trouble importing some major Opera Center talent — such as soprano Kimwana Donner, mezzo Kendall Gladden, and tenor Sean Panikkar — to sing with the chorus in the Marines Memorial Club Ballroom. Featured on the program: excerpts from Purcell's 1694 Ode for Queen Mary's Birthday, with guest baritone Jere Torkelsen, music by Fauré and Duke Ellington. See www.sfbc.org.

R.I.P., Calvin Simmons Theatre?

An awful footnote to the already tragic story of the Oakland Ballet folding is that the 1,877-seat Calvin Simmons Theatre, where the company performed recently, appears closed permanently. Named for the late Oakland Symphony's late Calvin Simmons, a wonderfully talented young conductor, the old theater has obviously been in poor repair lately, but its demise is still a loss to the music community.

The Mozart Brand Name

As Nikolaus Harnoncourt and others blast the "commercial exploitation" of Mozart's name on his 250th birthday, the Office of Austrian Promotion wears the condemnation as a badge of honor. The director of the office declared that "the Mozart brand is one of the most known in the world" and set its value at 5.4 billion euros ($6.4 billion), suggesting that if the Mozart Corporation CEO were only here now, he could be hobnobbing with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett ... as far as net worth is concerned. (In fact, Mozart remains in his pauper's grave.)

Met Turns to the Future

The Metropolitan Opera, the country's largest musical-theater company, historically failed — or, rather, didn't even try — to produce new works. In the last 60 years, the Met gave 12 world premieres — while in half that time, David Gockley's Houston Grand Opera offered 33.

On Monday, the Met's incoming general manager, Peter Gelb, joined neighboring Lincoln Center Theater to announce a large-scale program of commissions, initially involving San Francisco's Jake Heggie, Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, Wynton Marsalis, Rachel Portman, Nicholas Wright, Jeanine Tesori, Tony Kushner, Michael Torke, Craig Lucas, Rufus Wainwright, and Scott Wheeler.

"As Lincoln Center Theater continues its support of serious musical theater at a time when Broadway has turned increasingly to pop music," Gelb said, "it is logical that the Met and L.C.T. should join forces, since we believe that the thin border between opera and serious musical theater can easily be crossed. Pooling our creative resources, we will jointly foster new work as these artists create both grand and smaller-scale operas for the respective sizes of our theaters."

Area's Grammy Winner

Slim pickings for San Francisco and East Bay classical musicians this year at the Grammies. In contrast to the awards (or, at least, nominations) showered on the San Francisco Symphony and various Bay Area chamber music ensembles in recent years, there is just one (indirect) award: John Adams' Shaker Loops is part of Tim Handley's win in the "Producer of the Year, Classical" category. And that's all she wrote.

Some Big Bucks in Nonprofit Music

The sky is said to be falling, as ever: Between 2000 and 2004, concert attendance declined 13 percent nationally — a significant figure — and nine orchestras went out of business. But top salaries are actually going up. A survey in the Saturday Wall Street Journal details some eyebrow-raising salaries (from 2004 tax returns), and asks the question: "Can orchestras afford to conduct themselves this way?"

With $1.9 million each going annually to Daniel Barenboim (Chicago Symphony only, without his salary from the Berlin Staatsoper), Lorin Maazel (New York Philharmonic), and James Levine (just from the Metropolitan Opera, not counting his Boston Symphony salary), they lead the way but are not unique. A dozen conductors in the U.S. made more than a half million dollars per season. (Barenboim is leaving Chicago, which remains without a music director for the time being.)

The Wall Street Journal does not give salary figures for Michael Tilson Thomas (the last publicly available tax report, also from the WSJ's baseline year of 2004, put it at $1.5 million), but has this comment:

The past few years have seen some contentious battles between arts organizations and their unions. In some cases, the high salaries of both conductors and executive staff have given rank-and-file musicians a more convincing case to ask for wage increases and to refuse concessions. At the San Francisco Symphony, musicians just ended 10 months of bargaining with a 15 percent raise over the next three years and a 21 percent increase in annual pension payments. In the previous five years, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas's salary grew 31 percent, compared with 22 percent for the musicians.

Also of local interest: "Executive compensation is also rising in other performing arts that are struggling with declining attendance. At the San Francisco Ballet, artistic director Helgi Tomasson earned $374,000 in 2003-2004, a 25 percent increase over the previous five years. The ballet posted deficits for three of those years." A major difference between MTT and Tomasson, of course, is that the former is a star performer, and Tomasson's dancing days are behind him.