Alfresco, Free Opera

No need to wait until September and the annual "Opera in the Park." If you like your Verdi outdoors, the Recording Industries Music Performance Trust Fund is sponsoring a free San Francisco Opera concert, called "Opera in the Gardens," at 2 p.m., on Sunday, May 25, at Yerba Buena Gardens. Led by SF Opera Chorus director Ian Robertson, the concert will feature Adler Fellowship singers in arias and ensembles from operas by Rossini, Berlioz, Puccini and Verdi.

`Voices of Spring'

In his other capacity, Ian Robertson (see above), as director of the San Francisco Boys Chorus, will conduct the organization's annual spring concert, entitled "Voci della Primavera." On the very grownup program for the very young singers, on June 15, in Grace Cathedral: Vivaldi's Magnificat and music from the Italian Renaissance — Palestrina, Victoria and di Lasso. The program will be repeated during the chorus' European tour this summer, in Rome's St. Peter, at the Beaume Festival, in Notre Dame, Chartres Cathedral and St. Margaret's Westminster in London. See www.sfbc.org.

San Jose Arts Grants Cut Deeper

In North California's largest city, arts organizations keep getting bad news. Last week, a key committee of the San Jose Arts Commission advised the San Jose City Council that grants to 52 groups for next year will drop 24% below last year's, to a total of $2.54 million. Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley, which is struggling for its own survival as well as supporting an orchestra that acts as successor to the late, bankrupt San Jose Symphony, will be hit hardest. It will receive $175,045, down $165,540 from last year. What's remarkable is that there is an ongoing Art Commission in San Jose at all. Similar bodies have folded around the country.

Orchestras in Crisis

Georgia's Savannah Symphony and the Florida Philharmonic have joined the long list of US orchestras in deep trouble, the former filing for bankruptcy ($1.3 million in the hole), the later telling its audience that it may soon go out of business. The orchestra, which serves several cities in South Florida, trimmed salaries and benefits of its 81 musicians by $3.2 million over the next two years, but it's still saddled with an accumulated deficit of nearly $3 million.

The McCarthy-Copland Duets

Records of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's closed hearings into alleged communist activities, sealed for 50 years, were released on Monday. Among the prominent figures of the time confronted by McCarthy was Aaron Copland. The excuse for putting Copland through the ordeal was his Fulbright scholarship, allowing McCarthy to include him in his probe into government-sponsored overseas libraries and cultural affairs. In testimony before a closed session, Copland testified on May 26, 1953.

To the direct question if he has ever been a Communist, Copland responded: "No, I have not been a Communist in the past and I am not now a Communist." McCarthy then asked Copland if he has ever been a "Communist sympathizer." The composer responded that he doesn't know what is meant by that, but "from my impression of it I have never thought of myself as a Communist sympathizer." McCarthy then grilled Copland if he was asked to join the Communist Party, if he would remember if he was asked, assuring Copland that "If you feel you can't answer these questions concerning your Communist affiliations, Communist connections, if you need more time, we will give you more time."

The Senator then characterized Copland's Fulbright as "a job with the government," urging him to provide a list of (Communist) "front organizations" he might know about. Copland responded that the award was "not primarily a financial relationship . . . I think that I was chosen because I had a unique position in American symphonic and serious music and I had a reputation as a lecturer on that subject."

Culture Shock for San Francisco Composer

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble director Kurt Rohde, is on a brief visit back home from his Berlin Prize residence in the German capital. Here for the Monday premiere of his new work, Under the Influence, Rohde mused about the difference between Berlin and San Francisco: "There, they take me much too seriously. `A composer of modern music' in Germany is somebody to whom they pay attention, quite, quite differently from the American attitude. I keep telling them to lighten up, but it doesn't seem to take." Rohde will complete his residence next month, and he will have plenty of opportunity to be ignored again, back in the USA.

MTT Moonlights Possible Sky

Of his many global-roaming activities before he became music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, the only ongoing obligation Michael Tilson Thomas still carries on is consistently is heading the New World Symphony. The training orchestra he established in Miami 15 years ago emphasizes contemporary and Latin American music. Last month, MTT and the New World Symphony gave the premiere of Meredith Monk's first orchestral work, Possible Sky. The piece is in Monk's style in crossing musical genres originating around the world, with echoes of Copland, Gershwin and Ellington. Look for it in Davies Hall soon.

Meanwhile MTT and his San Francisco band are on a 15-concert, 10-city European tour, from Dublin to Paris, participating in the 31st Vienna Festival. There, they join the Czech Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw, and opera productions ranging from La Calisto, Cavalli's Renaissance work to Helmut Lachenmann's 20th-century Little Match-Seller.

Matthew Pierce: Insect Music in Motion

The San Francisco Ballet is winding up the season in style, with a program (No. 8) of three world premieres. Besides Alexei Ratmansky's hilarious Le Carnaval des Animaux and Stanton Welch's Tu Tu (to the Ravel Concerto in G Major, with Roy Bogas as the soloist ), the best of a good lot is Julia Adam's original, fascinating Imaginal Disc. The reference and the images of the work have to do with the bag of cells enabling the caterpillar to morph into a butterfly. There hasn't been anything so grand in insect-biology ballet since Jerome Robbins' The Cage, and this one ends happily.

The music is by Adam's old collaborator, the New York composer Matthew Pierce, who is, conveniently, the brother of Benjamin Pierce, Adam's fellow dancer in San Francisco, and the brilliant designer for her ballets. The three have also produced Adam's breakthrough work here, Night, and the Joffrey's Crossing.

Pierce is a rare ballet composer: he serves the choreographer, doesn't call attention to himself, and yet his vital, powerful, "very American" music could well stand on its own. Pulsing without falling into the minimalist trap, evoking (but not imitating) Copland, Pierce's music is layered, complex, and yet instantly accessible. Although wisely staying away from being literal, Pierce has imaginative ways of "illustrating" what happens on the stage.