San Francisco Classical Voice

New Music: It CAN Be Done

Michael Morgan's orchestras — the Oakland East Bay Symphony, OEBS Youth Orchestra and the Sacramento Philharmonic — are all "regional" organizations, meaning they are small outfits, struggling to stay alive to make music another day. And yet, when compared, pound by pound, to such large, commercially successful organizations as the San Francisco Symphony, Morgan's orchestras do impressively well by contemporary programming.

In addition to numerous 20th century works, Morgan has also commissioned the following world premieres, by local composers at that, for the next season: At OEBS, a cello concerto by Jake Heggie will open the season, with Emil Miland as soloist. There is a co-commission, with the Yerba Buena Center) from Afro-Cuban jazz pianist Omar Sosa, a work for jazz ensemble and orchestra.

There will be new orchestral pieces from Joshua Feltman (Commute) and Noah Schwartz (Kneading Closure), two composers who came through the East Bay's music education system. Feltman has been living in Europe, Schwartz is a student at Indiana University.

Young Oakland musicians will play alongside the parent orchestra in the premiere of a work by Kathrynn Lyle, and Morgan is planning to invite 15-year-old organ prodigy Keenan Boswell to write a short work for organ and orchestra for the Oakland Youth Orchestra.

On the Sacramento Philharmonic schedule: Valarie Morris' Symphony of Light and Shadows. Morgan, reached in Indianapolis (in residency at Butler University), told Music News that there may be even more premieres. He then added, with a hint of fatigue from fighting the good fight: "Commissioning is really going out on the limb. The results can be pretty uneven." That is too true, so all the more credit to Morgan who keeps going out on that slippery, necessary limb.

The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra this week is conducted by another Bay Area new-music advocate, Santa Rosa Symphony music director Jeffrey Kahane, in a program of works by Barber, and the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, with Max Levinson as soloist. With the departure of Raymond Leppard, the ISO is looking for its sixth music director among the guest conductors this year. Besides Kahane, they are James Judd (the English conductor formerly with the Florida Symphony and Opera), and the following with Bay Area connections: Marin Alsop (Cabrillo Festival), Jahja Ling (formerly with the SF Symphony) and Philharmonia Baroque music director Nicholas McGegan.

When Kahane returns to Santa Rosa next week, he will conduct performances of Tippett's A Child of Our Time at the Luther Burbank Center, April 13-15. The soloists are soprano Janice Chandler, mezzo Milagro Vargas (an Oregon Bach Festival and Stuttgart Opera regular), tenor Richard Clement and bass-baritone Derrick Parker.

Just as with Britten's War Requiem three years ago, Kahane has coordinated a year-long program with the Santa Rosa High School (whose combined choruses are featured in the production) for school and community study of historical, literary and fine-art aspects of Tippett's work. The school's ArtQuest program enables students to focus on the arts, spend time working in their chosen art form, and structure other academic studies around it. The school choruses in the Santa Rosa Symphony performances are directed by Dan Earl. Also participating: the Sonoma County Bach Choir, directed by Robert Worth.

San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles is doing his bit for contemporary music (besides preparations for the SFO US stage premiere of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise) in his capacity as principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony. His future concerts there include Hartmann's Concerto funebre for violin, with Cecylia Arzewski, Libby Larsen's Deep Summer Music, Messiaen's Les Offrandes oubliées, Dutilleux's The Shadows of Time. This month, Runnicles is busy at the Vienna Staatsoper, conducting the Willy Decker production of Billy Budd and Wagner Ring cycle, directed by Adolf Dresen, in Herbert Kapplmüller's production.

No report on contemporary music performances would be complete without reference to Kent Nagano. Besides dozens of new works he conducts with his orchestra in Berlin and in guest appearances, his May 9 concert with the Berkeley Symphony will sandwich between Schubert and Bruckner the world premiere of the flute version of Pierre Boulez's Dialogue de l'ombre double (with flutist Cécile Daroux) and Zdzislaw Wysocki's Double Violin Concerto (with Karen and Rick Shinozaki).

From Eileen Farrell's Funeral

A friend reports from New York: "I attended Eileen Farrell's funeral Wednesday afternoon. I was a bit disappointed at the turnout as there were no more than 75-100 people there. Beverly Sills came but she had to leave before the before the end. I recognized no representatives from major New York musical institutions.

"It was a beautiful funeral mass held in the magnificent St. Vincent Ferrer church on Lexington Avenue. Brian Kellow, Eileen's collaborator on her autobiography, delivered a touching eulogy that captured her personality and artistic persona perfectly. Her daughter spoke about her mother's suffering the last five years of her life and it was a heart-wrenching speech. There was some lovely singing from the church's soloists, but I wondered why nothing by Eileen was played. Farrell was one of my very favorite singers and the funeral served to bring a degree of closure to my grief."

Opera America Awards

At its April 20-24 conference in Toronto, Opera America will present awards to: Central City Opera and Orlando Opera (Success Award), Fort Worth Star Telegram (Spotlight on Opera Award) Alabama Power Company, Harley-Davidson, Audi of America, Dofasco Incorporated, HSBC Bank Canada and American Express (Bravo Awards), Houston Grand Opera and Canadian Broadcasting Company (special awards).

The Success Awards are given for increasing awareness of the genre and boosting attendance through innovative projects. Central City Opera was the first US company to stage Britten's Gloriana, and it did so within the multi-discipline framework of collaboration with other Colorade organizations in a festival called Gloriana 2001: A Celebration of Elizabethan England. Orlando Opera was recognized for its Pizza and Puccini community outreach program. For information about the awards and the Toronto conference, see www.operaamerica.org.

Trumpet News

Two noteworthy trumpet events are due in San Francisco: 24-year-old Sergei Nakariakov from Russia (San Francisco Performances, Herbst, May 8), and Japan's Natsuki Tamura (SF Alternative Music Festival, May 12). Nakariakov, who is accompanied by his sister, pianist Vera Nakariakova, has had a career a press agent's dreams are made of, with reviews calling him "the Paganini of the trumpet" at age 12 (do early teens have lips and lungs for the trumpet at all?) and "the Caruso of the trumpet."

If you check the International Trumpet Guild's Website, you will see news about the publication of Timofei Dokshizer's memoirs in English, called Trumpeter on a Horse. I suppose if you're not from that Eastern neck of the woods, the name may not mean much, but just about everybody in the former Soviet Union and in much of East Europe knew and admired the virtuoso who was the Bolshoi's trumpet soloist for over 40 years.

Pound Sterling Is Pounded

The Royal Opera House has just released a study that patrons are getting younger and poorer. One-fifth of those attending were under 35 years old and the same proportion of the audience showed annual income under $22,000. More than half of operagoers have income under $43,000.

The BBC Symphony, similarly impecunious, has cancelled its planned US tour next year, citing matters of economics. The orchestra's music director, Leonard Slatkin, will step down from his position in 2004.

(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.)

©2001 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved