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IN Music News Changes at Old First Concerts
Boar, Swine, New Century's Guest Concertmasters Keep A-coming Can Midsummer Mozart Be Far Behind? A Monty Python Messiah Faust on the Air
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Changes at Old First Concerts
By Janos Gereben
William Bowles resigned as executive director of Old First Concerts last week by saying that "it will be tough to say goodbye, but four years and 300 concerts are enough for me." He noted that during his tenure Old First Concerts "successfully maintained its reputation for offering local music aficionados a wide variety of musical forms and expressions, a diverse, often unconventional, and sometimes adventurous repertoire, ranging from classical recital and chamber performances to blues, folk, avant-garde, and jazz, as well as multicultural concerts and world music performed by distinguished professional musicians."
Under Bowles' direction Old First established a new Web site that offers audio samples of featured artists. Before joining Old First in 2003, he spent 12 years in the San Francisco Opera administration. For several years he was the touring manager of Western Opera Theater, the organization eventually abolished by the general manager at the time, Pamela Rosenberg, and Opera Center Director Sheri Greenawald. Old First is recruiting a successor.
Boar, Swine, Hog, or Pig: It's a New Year It's now approximately the year 4705 (allowing for pre- and post-Gregorian calendar changes here and each Chinese dynasty counting time in its own way to that year). The San Francisco Symphony is celebrating the event in a precisely delineated time slot. The Year of the Pig will be marked by a colorful, ever-so-family-friendly Chinese New Year concert on Saturday, Feb. 24, at 4 p.m., postmeridian.
Chinese New Year at S.F. Symphony Music — varied and interesting, with some top local performers — is surrounded at these annual events by a lot of fun stuff: lion dancers, kids dressed to the nines, fortune tellers, desserts, and all the tea in China. Action in Davies' three lobbies is just as busy and colorful as inside the hall. The music director this year is Carolyn Kuan, originally from Taiwan, who is also the assistant conductor of both the Seattle and the North Carolina Symphony orchestras. Melody of China will perform, and the well-known local composer Gang Situ is represented by his Drum Overture. The 14-year-old virtuoso Peng Peng — visiting from Juilliard and who made his West Coast debut last year with the California Symphony — will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.
Carolyn Kuan Also on the program: a sing-along for the traditional Gong Xi Gong Xi ("Gong Xi Fa Cai" is the Mandarin version of the better known Cantonese greeting "Kung Hei Fat Choi"), Mao Yuan's Dance of Yao People, Nie Er's Golden Snake Dance, Yinjun Huang's Beautiful Flower, Full Moon, and Bright Sheng's orchestration of Brahms' A-Major Intermezzo for piano, Op. 118 No. 2, called, somewhat mysteriously, "Black Swan."
New Century's Guest Concertmasters Keep A-coming As the search goes on for a new concertmaster at the New Century Chamber Orchestra, the group will host Stephanie Chase. She comes after a sensational bow by Axel Strauss. Next up this season are appearances by Geoff Nuttall, and Cho-Liang Lin, and next season, NCCO's 16th, begins with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. For a small organization, it's extraordinary to have such an illustrious lineup of artists interested in succeeding Krista Bennion Feeney, who retired as concertmaster of the conductorless orchestra. Chase — cofounder and artistic director of the Music of the Spheres Society, and veteran of concert tours in 25 countries — will lead a program of the premiere of Berkeley composer Jorge Liderman's Rolling Strings, Hindemith's The Four Temperaments (with pianist William Wolfram), and Bruch's Serenade on Swedish Melodies. Performances will be held at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley on March 22; St. Mark's Episcopal in Palo Alto on March 23; Florence Gould Theater in San Francisco on March 24; and at the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center in San Rafael on March 25.
Stephanie Chase
Can Midsummer Mozart Be Far Behind? Some of the hightlights of Midsummer Mozart Festival's 33rd season, July 19-29, include: pianist Janina Fialkowska, soprano Elspeth Franks, the Haffner Serenades, and the Coronation Mass. Once again, as for the last third of a century, founder/director George Cleve will lead the festival. Performance venues are San Francisco's Herbst Theatre, San Jose's St. Joseph Cathedral Basilica, Sonoma's Gundlach Bundschu Winery, Berkeley's First Congregational Church, and Mission Santa Clara.
A Monty Python Messiah Following on the heels of Monty Python's Spamalot, Eric Idle has announced his next project will be Not the Messiah. The comic oratorio is set to have its premiere in Toronto in June as part of the city's inaugural Luminato Festival of the Arts. As reported by Richard Ouzounian in Daily Variety, just as the Tony-winning Spamalot was based on the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Idle's new work is adapted from the troupe's 1979 Life of Brian. John Du Prez is the cocomposer of the work, which was commissioned by the Toronto Symphony. The music director, Peter Oundjian, is Idle's cousin, although the comedian insists that had nothing to do with his decision. "Who would want to work with their relatives, anyway?" Idle says. "They're usually unpleasant, dishonest, and slow to pick up the check." Still, the comic allows that Oundjian may be an exception because "he's got a bit of class, which is something my family has always desperately needed." Idle promises the new work "will be funnier than Handel, although probably not as good." Luminato is a new 90-event, multidisciplinary, mostly free arts festival scheduled to run June 1-10. It will be led by Janice Price, previously head of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Festival participants include Philip Glass, Leonard Cohen, Atom Egoyan, and Isabel Bayrakdarian.
Faust on the Air Gounod's Faust, the first opera ever heard at the Metropolitan Opera (it opened the Met's original house in 1883), will be broadcast on Saturday, March 17, on the Internet and locally, on KUSF, 90.3 FM. It will be conducted by Maurizio Benini, and the cast includes Ruth Ann Swenson as Marguerite, Ramon Vargas in the title role, and Ildar Abdrazakov as Mephistopheles. On KUSF, the postopera program, with Al Covaia, will feature recorded arias sung by Swenson.
(Janos Gereben is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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