San Francisco Classical Voice

EUGENE - Composer Tan Dun told SFCV that San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles is looking at his just-completed new opera, Tea, and the possibility of the US premiere to be given in the War Memorial. If SFO decides to do so, it better step on the gas. Tan is really cooking: six opera companies worldwide asked for the possibility of co-producing the work with Tokyo's Suntory Hall, but Tan agreed to accept only the Dutch National Opera. Unusual as it may be for a composer to pick among commissions, instead of being at the mercy of those organizations, Tan feels completely comfortable with his position as the Mr. Fashionable.

He was asked about Tea. "There will be only percussion in the orchestra for the first act," Tan said, "all women, wearing no clothes." The second act orchestration is for various paper instruments, the third for ceramics only. The women's chorus will be in a tea bath. I didn't bother to ask what they'll wear.

Between Friday's US premiere of Water Passion After St. Matthew at the Oregon Bach Festival and a Sunday concert of three orchestral works, Tan paused long enough for an interview about the opera he just finished.

Tea will premiere in Tokyo's Suntory Hall in October, continue to the co-producing Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam next January, to Shanghai, and then - if Tan's track record remains intact - all over the place.

The work, four years in the making, uses Tan's own libretto, about the "invention or discovery of tea." It will be, he said with a twinkle in his eye, "sensual, erotic, spiritual." The protagonist is a Japanese prince, travelling to China in the 8th century to find the Book of Tea. He will be involved in a love story, but — as far as I understand — not with the percussionists. Who will direct — Robert Wilson? No, said Tan, "the next generation."

Among the many other works the much-commissioned Tan is involved with: an opera for Placido Domingo and the Met, to premiere in 2005, and to be presented also at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Won't Domingo be too old by then to sing the title role? He'll be only as old then, Tan replied, as Pavarotti is now. I dropped the topic.

Tan hasn't decided on the subject yet, but there are two strong possibilities: the story of Jewish refugees in Shanghai in the '40s or an opera about dreams and reality, featuring Freud and Lao Tzu. Fully dressed, most likely.

And One About Madame Mao

Bright Sheng, another Chinese-American composer of note, is working on an opera about Jiang Qing, the late wife of Mao Zedong, leader of the Gang of Five. Sheng, who is a professor of music at the University of Michigan, with a MacArthur Foundation genius award, plans to finish the work for opening next summer.

St. François II Has Stick Fever

Bass-baritone Eric Owens is due at the SF Opera this fall, in his company debut, to sing Lodovico in Otello. He will also be cover for Willard White in the title role of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise. Owens is at the Oregon Bach Festival to sing in a seasonally untimely presentation of Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

Alone among the soloists, Owens shows up bright and early every day for the master class of 42 conductors from around the world. The program is part of the Discovery series, which presents the six-part oratorio in the afternoons to the public under the baton of the young conductors. Owens is training as a conductor, emulating, no doubt, Placido Domingo to work in a dual capacity. During the Discovery concerts, Owens both conducts (others) and sings the bass solos, switching from the podium to the side of the stage. Not bad for somebody who spent 12 years in Philadelphia... playing the oboe.

Soprano Alert: Elizabeth Keusch

Making her West Coast debut Friday in the US premiere of Water Passion was a striking 29-year-old soprano from the Midwest, with a European career, now living in Boston. Her name is Elizabeth Keusch and she has a unique gift in addition to technique to burn and superior musical ability.

What's unique about Keusch is that, lacking a better tag, she is a high coloratura with a normal chest voice. In Water Passion, almost all of her music is in the high C to E range, and she sings every note dead on, without a hint of effort or shrillness. She sings the extreme high notes the way a very, very good soprano handles music in a comfortable range. The best thing about Keusch is that she produces Yma-Sumac stuff as if it were real music — nothing showy or weird, just excellent singing, a beautiful sound. How high can she go? She won't tell because "I don't want to give composers ideas."

Three years ago, she joined Tan and Osvaldo Golijov in preparation for their works in Helmuth Rilling's Stuttgart Passion 2000 project, Water Passion and La Pasion Segun San Marcos," respectively. She also sang in other works by Tan, including 2000 Today: A World Symphony for the Milennium.

Since moving to Boston, she's been working a lot: Mahler's Eighth with Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic, Mahler's Fourth with Alan Yamamoto and the Colorado Music Festival. She hasn't appeared with the "big orchestras" yet, but that's just a matter of time and waking up some lazy scouts for New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.

Keusch participated in the world-premiere opera productions this past season of Paul-Heinz Dittrich's Zerbrochene Bilder, at the Musikakademie Rheinsberg and Helmut Lachenmann's Das Madchen mit den Schwefelholzern in Stuttgart and Paris. She will perform Grigori Frid's Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank at the Holocaust Museum in DC.

John Brombaugh Is Alive and Working on No. 62

Surely one of the great organ-makers alive, John Brombaugh attended last week's the Oregon Bach Festival concert featuring one of the 61 major instruments he has created. The man who is responsible for the relatively small organ in Berkeley's St. John's Presbyterian Church, along with installations all over the world, is especially proud of the organ in Eugene's Central Lutheran Church, played on this occasion by Kristian Olesen, director of music at Denmark's national cathedral.

Central Lutheran's Brombaugh Organ employs mechanical key and stop action; built in 1976, it was the first organ in 300 years to use a historic pipe alloy of mostly lead, which gives it what Brombaugh calls a "very vocale" sound. The organ has three manuals, 38 stops (60 ranks) and more than 2,800 pipes. How many more? Brombaugh doesn't remember, busy as he is, building another organ.