Kaneez Munjee is a singer, writer, and editor. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University, and specializes in late 17th- and early 18th-century French music.
The San Francisco Choral Society offered Bay Area audiences a rare treat Saturday at Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco: the West Coast premiere of Seven Songs for Planet Earth, by Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas. This work sets poems by Wendell Berry alongside a prayer by St.
This year’s holiday concerts by the San Francisco Early Music Society brought a number of unusual sounds to Bay Area audiences. Sunday’s concert at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco presented the instruments and voices of Ciaramella, an ensemble dedicated to music of the 15th century, in a program called “A Piper’s Noel” that raised joyous sounds from bagpipes, shawms, recorders, sackbuts, slide trumpets, percussion, and voices.
Virtuosity and passion were in abundance at the 20th-anniversary concerts of Musica Pacifica this weekend, under the auspices of the San Francisco Early Music Society. And in a birthday present to both themselves and their audiences, the members of Musica Pacifica were joined by soprano Dominique Labelle in a program titled “Rittrati Dell’Amore,” which featured Labelle in Italian, French, and German cantatas on the subject of love.
Chanticleer began its 33rd season this week with “Out of This World,” a program built around music referencing the stars, the planets, and the heavens. The men’s chorus drew principally on music of the Renaissance, Romantic, and modern eras, and delivered a performance that was varied in content, well-nuanced, and crowd-pleasing.
At first glance, the ironic assessment attributed to the emperor Napoleon III that Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle is neither little, solemn, nor even really a Mass, seems hardly worth a second thought. Its flippancy invites derision, but the comment astutely highlights some of the most interesting elements of this late-Rossini work: its scope, its affect, and its purpose.
The glorious sounds of choral music for the Christmas season come in many forms, and the California Bach Society’s “Advent in Dresden 1620” concerts, presented Dec. 4-6 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley, promise musical splendor in an old and lush tradition.
To close a season embracing music mostly of the modern era, Chanticleer returned to its founding ideals on Sunday night at San Francisco’s Mission Dolores, with an entirely Renaissance program, sung a cappella.
The San Francisco Bach Choir began its 73rd season last weekend with a concert titled “Before Bach: A Family Portrait,” paying homage to Johann Sebastian’s musical predecessors. As the program notes explained, Sebastian himself was interested in his genealogy, and in 1735 drew up a family tree dating back to the 1500s, which is the most reliable document we have today on the entire Bach family.
The Cantabile Chorale has a new sound. Some aspects of this hold great promise, while other aspects suggest areas that could do with some ironing out. Friday night's concert at St. Gregory Nyssa in San Francisco, titled "Bach, Beatles, and Beyond," demonstrated this ably.
The San Francisco Choral Society offered Bay Area audiences a rare treat Saturday at Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco: the West Coast premiere of Seven Songs for Planet Earth, by Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas. This work sets poems by Wendell Berry alongside a prayer by St.
This year’s holiday concerts by the San Francisco Early Music Society brought a number of unusual sounds to Bay Area audiences. Sunday’s concert at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco presented the instruments and voices of Ciaramella, an ensemble dedicated to music of the 15th century, in a program called “A Piper’s Noel” that raised joyous sounds from bagpipes, shawms, recorders, sackbuts, slide trumpets, percussion, and voices.
Virtuosity and passion were in abundance at the 20th-anniversary concerts of Musica Pacifica this weekend, under the auspices of the San Francisco Early Music Society. And in a birthday present to both themselves and their audiences, the members of Musica Pacifica were joined by soprano Dominique Labelle in a program titled “Rittrati Dell’Amore,” which featured Labelle in Italian, French, and German cantatas on the subject of love.
Chanticleer began its 33rd season this week with “Out of This World,” a program built around music referencing the stars, the planets, and the heavens. The men’s chorus drew principally on music of the Renaissance, Romantic, and modern eras, and delivered a performance that was varied in content, well-nuanced, and crowd-pleasing.
At first glance, the ironic assessment attributed to the emperor Napoleon III that Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle is neither little, solemn, nor even really a Mass, seems hardly worth a second thought. Its flippancy invites derision, but the comment astutely highlights some of the most interesting elements of this late-Rossini work: its scope, its affect, and its purpose.
To close a season embracing music mostly of the modern era, Chanticleer returned to its founding ideals on Sunday night at San Francisco’s Mission Dolores, with an entirely Renaissance program, sung a cappella.
