San Francisco Classical Voice

Oregon Symphony: Of a Dozen, One

Over the past two seasons, 12 candidates had guest-conducting auditions to become the Oregon Symphony's next music director, the orchestra's tenth, when the position is vacated by James DePreist at the end of the next season. The news from Portland is that Carlos Kalmar will take over the podium, beginning with the 2003-2004 season. The Viennese maestro is music director of that city's Tonkünstlerorchester and principal conductor of Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival.

Born in Uruguay in 1958 of Austrian parents, Kalmar has served as music director of the Hamburg Symphony, the Stuttgart Philharmonic and Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau, Germany.

Heggie's Next?

Word from the Houston Grand Opera is that it will commission Jake Heggie's second opera, after the signal success of his very first effort, Dead Man Walking. Apparently, Heggie will follow the same book-to-film-to-opera route again, writing to a libretto based on Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair and the subsequent film version, Neil Jordan's 1999 film version (with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes). Heggie, who is composing a cello concerto for the the Oakland East Bay Symphony and several other works on other commissions, is expected to finish work on the opera for a late 2004 premiere in Houston and, soon after that, a production in his hometown of San Francisco.

Silow to Santa Rosa

Alan Silow has been named as the new executive director of the Santa Rosa Symphony, succeeding Joan Lounsbery, who resigned in January. Silow spent the past three years as executive director of Ohio's ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus. Previously, he served as director of marketing for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and executive director of the Santa Fe Convention and Visitors Bureau. Jeffrey Kahane is the Santa Rosa orchestra's music director, beginning his 9th year there.

Hello, Sweeney Todd, Goodbye, London Times

A world premiere this week at the Cannes Film Festival: the feature debut of documentary filmmaker Francesca Joseph's Tomorrow La Scala!. It is an account of an opera company's performance of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd' in a maximum-security prison, using a chorus of lifers.

Another Todd item of the Royal Opera's upcoming production in Covent Garden, with Tom Allen in the title role. The San Francisco Symphony's concert production last year left behind a valuable Website about the work: www.pbs.org/kqed/demonbarber/.

When I tried to get more Tomorrow La Scala! information from the London Times Website, I ran into the new policy, requiring a fee of 40 pounds to use the site. A specter is haunting the Web, the specter of cash on the barrel instead of collecting eyeballs for some future reward, and almost certainly, the demise of free services. It was fun while it lasted.

Neo-British.Opera.COM

COM in this case is the College of Marin, wherein Paul Smith is continuing his brave struggle to present contemporary opera with and (mostly) for students. Smith's next venture is a "British Opera Festival" (excuse the grandiose handle, pay attention to the novelties), which includes American premieres of Judith Weir's Missa del Cid and Roxanna Panufnik's The Music Programme on June 21, 23 and 27.

I can't do the math on this, but Smith is also planning a program called Sinful Operas to present US premieres of NINE mini-operas based on the SEVEN Deadly Sins. Performances on June 22, 26, 28 are free to the public.

Then, for a June 29 finale, COM presents a British Opera Marathon — 11 operas in three hours, including works by Weir, Holloway, Panufnik, Dove, Oliver, others. The place is the school's Fine Arts Theater in Kentfield. For information, see www.COM-opera.com.

Yes, Virginia, There is Music With Football

Beyond the shores of the US of A, there is a world pretty much ignoring all other news in a gloriously single-minded preoccupation with the upcoming 2002 FIFA World Cup, held in Japan and Korea, the first football summit played in Asia. Another first will be that of an official concert, in the 50,000-seat Tokyo Stadium, on June 27-28.

Just as alien as soccer may be to most Classical Voice readers, that concert will feature similarly unknown artists, such as the B'z, Kodo, Chemistry, Mai Kuraki, T-Square and the like. Fortunately, Aerosmith provides some name recognition, and if you wait until a month or so into the the event (which features dozens of world-class matches), the Three Tenors will show up too. It was a World Cup concert that put them on the popular map and they will finish their increasingly disappointing appearances with this one, in Yokohama Arena, on June 27.

Each of the three — Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras — are avid fans, so chances are there was something besides the box-office take that attracted them one mo' time. (Not that the money is anything to sneeze at: tickets go for as much as $2,000.)

Trading an Oboe for a Flute

During the San Francisco Symphony's Russian Festival in June, the orchestra will have a "musician exchange program" with the Russian National Orchestra. Michael Tilson Thomas is sending the Moscow-born SFS associate principal oboist Evgeny Izotov to perform with Russian orchestra beginning in the fall, in exchange for RNO associate principal flutist Maxim Rubtsov sitting in with the San Francisco orchestra during the June 13-30 festival. (For programs, see www.sfsymphony.org.)

The trade, the first of its kind, is part of the Cultural Allies program, involving American and Russian musicians, arts professionals, conservatory students, and audiences. It is developed by the Russian Arts Foundation in partnership with the Russian National Orchestra, the program made possible through the support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, a US-based grant-making organization.

Chanticleer's 'American Journey'

Chanticleer's upcoming, 25th, season consists of four programs celebrating Our American Journey, including collaboration with a French ensemble, Skip Sempé's Capriccio Stravagante.

The 12-man a cappella choral ensemble, led by music director Joseph Jennings, will perform in San Francisco, Berkeley, Petaluma, Carmel, Santa Clara and San Jose. For information, see www.chanticleer.org/.

California Symphony Season

Barry Jekowsky's California Symphony (www.californiasymphony.org) is getting ready for its 16th season, a five-program, 10-concert series in Walnut Creek, featuring Karen Gomyo, Nicolle Foland, and the local orchestral debut of Stanislav Ioudenitch, Gold medal winner of last year's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

(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.)

©2002 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved