San Francisco Classical Voice

25 Candles for San Francisco Performances

Expect a star-spangled 25th season to be announced for Ruth Felt's San Francisco Performances later this week. One of the busiest and most successful small nonprofit presenters in the US, SF Performances offers lengthy seasons of concerts that feature both internationally acclaimed and emerging performers, while building new and diversified audiences for the arts through education and outreach activities. For information about the current season and, soon, the next season, see www.performances.org.

Akos to Fort Worth

New Century Chamber Orchestra board member Katherine E. Akos — who has served in the administration of several San Francisco Bay organizations — has been named executive director of the Fort Worth Symphony. The Texas orchestra has conducted a nine-month-long national search for a new CEO. Miguel Harth-Bedoya is music director of the Symphony, which has a 52-week season, operating on an annual budget of $10.2 million, with a $23 million endowment fund.

Akos will leave her position as vice president for advancement at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., where she has been responsible for development, marketing and public relations programs for a consortium of seminaries. She served previously in the administration of the San Francisco Symphony and as vice president for advancement at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she helped launch an $80 million capital campaign for the Conservatory's relocation to the Civic Center. She was also concertmaster of Symphony Parnassus in San Francisco for six years.

Stanford Season

Next season's Stanford Lively Arts will feature traveling soloists and groups in addition to such local organizations as the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Chanticleer, and the Philharmonia Baroque. Information is at livelyarts.stanford.edu

Van Waynen Strings Competition Winners

Li Pan, a 20-year-old violinist, a student of Camilla Wicks, took first prize at the 2004 Berkeley Piano Club Van Waynen Strings Competition, followed by Juliana Athayde (violin), and Adelle-Akiko Kearns (cello). Athayde has served as concertmaster of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra; Kearns has played solos in SF Conservatory of Music concerts and appeared in recitals there.

Judges of the competition, chaired by Gigi Dang, were Nina Flyer, Vivian Warkenton, and Rae Ann Goldberg. Berkeley Piano Club will sponsor a winners' recital at 3 p.m., Sunday, May 2.

Met Grand Finals

Contralto Meredith Arwady, a San Francisco Opera Center Merola Program graduate, won third place on Sunday in New York, at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals. Soprano Laquita Mitchell, from Houston Opera, was the first-prize winner, and mezzo Claudia Huckle took second place.

Finalists included Tamara Wilson, Adelaide Muir, and Charles Mays Jr. Guest artists performing at the concert were Samuel Ramey, Hei-Kyung Hong, Alyson Cambridge, and three singers who cut their grand-finals teeth in the War Memorial: Deborah Voigt, Dolores Zajick and Thomas Hampson. Beverly Sills was the MC, replacing the previously scheduled Frederica von Stade, who successfully nursed a daughter through illness in their Alameda home, and couldn't make it to New York.

SF Symphony Tour

The San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas are getting high praise in advance reports as they begin a tour of the Midwest and the East Coast. Donald Rosenberg, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, writes about the MTT-SFS partnership "stretching the programmatic boundaries and welcoming new listeners into the orchestral fold," singling out a five-year multimedia project, which includes PBS television specials, a Website, NPR programs, and an enhanced DVD.

Richard Dyer, of the Boston Globe, writes that "a symbiotic relationship has developed among the conductor, the orchestra, and the community." He calls MTT "a man with a mission from the beginning," and adds that he is "still focused on bringing forward new music, American music, and neglected repertory as well as refreshing the standard classics."

Kanbar Hall Opens

David Milnes and the SF Contemporary Music Players gave the first concert on Saturday in the new SF Jewish Community Center's Kanbar Hall. The handsome theater is yet another contribution to the arts by Maurice Kanbar, whose gifts have made a huge difference from coast to coast, from NYU's Institute of Film and Television to a splendid new home for the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

The JCC hall provides a large, handsome space for about 400 people. It has cranberry-colored walls, black-and-red carpet, white acoustic tiles forming the high ceiling, with lights and speakers built into the large rectangular panels. The small stage is sufficient for a small orchestra. It is a multi-purpose hall, and can be used either with chairs or with a large modular riser structure, which is stored in the back when not used. In spite of the rule that multi-purpose halls — especially those with risers — have terrible acoustics, Kanbar Hall is pretty good. The sound is direct and live, undiminished by the black, full-length curtain upstage. The only major acoustical problem is the air-conditioning, hissing away from the ceiling most of the time.

Tower Rising from Bankruptcy

Sacramento's Tower Records has just emerged from bankruptcy protection, sporting new ownership, a positive balance sheet, and reporting that 90 of its 93 stores are making money. Under a court-approved program, majority ownership of the music retailer chain was transferred from the Solomon family of Sacramento to a collection of insurance companies, pension funds and other investors. In return for majority ownership, the bondholders forgave $80 million worth of debt that Tower, battered by a multiyear slump, decided it couldn't pay. Bankruptcy lasted a record-short period of just 35 days. It's unknown at this point what a sale means for Tower's headquarters and wholesale-distribution facilities in West Sacramento.