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Music News

By Janos Gereben — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:10:16 +0000

‘Tis the Season to Plan Seasons

So many organizations are making season announcements in late July and early August that Music News will have only a quick roundup here, consisting of links to information, and a few highlights. Classical Voice’s customary fall feature of “critics’ picks” is due later this month; otherwise, check Listening Ahead as the season approaches.

Music at Kohl Mansion

The 26th season at Kohl Mansion will present a few gems, on the order of the Paris Piano Trio on Nov. 2 (Fauré, Schumann, and Mendelssohn), and the La Catrina Quartet on Nov. 23 (Arias y Luna, Alvarez, Piazzolla, Moncayo, and Grieg). On Dec. 14 is the annual holiday fund-raiser “Musicians from the San Francisco Symphony” — Amy Hiraga and Sarn Oliver, violins; Peter Wyrick, cello; and Robin Sutherland, piano; as well as Geraldine Walther, principal violist of the Symphony for 29 years, and now a member of the Takács Quartet.

All concerts take place in historic Kohl Mansion in Burlingame, followed by Meet-the-Artists receptions in the Mansion’s dining rooms.

Geraldine Walther, with the Takács Quartet: Edward Dusinberre, András Fejér, and Károly Schranz

San Francisco Girls Chorus

The Girls’ 30th anniversary season consists of four home concerts (including commissioned premieres); guest performances with the San Francisco Opera, Symphony, and Philharmonia Baroque; a debut at New York’s Lincoln Center; and a tour to South America.

The Oct. 24-26 “Dreams and Visions” program includes music by Poulenc, Willcocks, Rachmaninov, and the premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ settings of two e.e. cummings poems.

San Francisco Girls Chorus

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

Left Coast is presenting 10 pairs of concerts in the coming season, at Mills Valley’s Throckmorton Theater and at the San Francisco War Memorial’s Green Room. The group’s opening concert, “Metamorphoses” on Nov. 6, is representative of its ambitious blending of recent works and the brand-new: two premieres, Wayne Peterson’s String Trio and Bill Beck’s Oboe Quartet, as well as Britten’s Six Metamorphoses After Ovid, Bloch’s Cello Suite No. 1, and Dohnányi’s Serenade in C Major for String Trio.

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

The Conservatory presents more than 400 public concerts during the 2008-2009 school year, many free of charge, others in the $15-$20 range. The Conservatory Orchestra opens the season on Sept. 6, with a tribute to composition faculty members Elinor Armer and Conrad Susa. On the program: Armer’s Call of the West and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, with Lois Brandwynne, piano; and Susa’s The Blue Hour and selections from Les Liaisons dangereuses, commissioned and performed by San Francisco Opera in 1994.

The Faculty Artist Series includes three concerts of chamber music by pianist Paul Hersh and friends (with Bonnie Hampton and dedicated respectively to Beethoven), Dvorák, and Schubert’s Music for Piano Four-Hands. William Wellborn and the Ives Quartet present the music of Amy Beach, Corey Jamason performs the Goldberg Variations on harpsichord, and trumpeter Mario Guarneri and the Jazz Faculty offer two concerts.

One of the Conservatory’s performance spaces

Photo by Robert Stronck

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

JCCSF’s Friend Center for the Arts will present a series of concerts, including one on Nov. 16 by Alberto Mizrahi, advertised as “the Jewish Pavarotti,” performing in nine languages (not at the same time).

On Jan. 15, there will be a Lar Lubovitch Dance Company concert, and in the spring, the Center will present another edition of the genre-bending annual Other Minds Festival of New Music.

Lar Lubovitch Dance due at the JCC

Photo by Gene Schiavone

Merola-Mozart-Malfitano-Marvelous

Something highly instructive — and delightful — took place in Cowell Theater last weekend. This was the same venue where six years ago the director Roy Rallo attempted to disgrace Mozart with a repulsive production of La finta giardiniera, all in the name of avoiding “static opera” (a constant Eurotrash justification). This time Catherine Malfitano exalted Mozart with a dynamic, vital Don Giovanni, which celebrated the work, and involved and empowered the young singers.

The choices are not between “shocking” and “static” — the real alternatives are talent or lack of it, ineptidue combined with self-promotion, the director thrusting himself in the foreground, composer and singers be damned. A few mild excesses in Malfitano’s Don Giovanni — seminude wrestling and hitting the floor too often — were not at the center of the production, but occurred incidentally, perhaps prompted in part by the young performers’ own enthusiasm.

Austin Kness (Giovanni) and Carlos Monzón (Leporello) in front; behind them: Joélle Harvey (Zerlina), Adam Cioffari (Masetto), Rena Harms (Elvira), David Lomeli (Ottavio), Amanda Majeski (Anna)

Photos by Kristin Loken

Rallo’s purpose was to exhibit “18-year-old Mozart and his librettist … exploring the nature of sadism, self hatred, murderous jealousy, and downright insanity” by making singers “crawl, roll around on the floor, be upside down, backward, take their clothes off, be blindfolded, tied up, and have all manner of indiscriminate sex while trying to sing Mozart’s vocally demanding music.”

Someone has been watching too many reruns of Amadeus. Also, note there is no reference to the young singers, made into helpless pawns in the director’s hands.

Contrast that with Malfitano’s approach, as expressed in an interview:

Rehearsals began with the young artists worrying about being correct. They are growing up in an era where there’s such a sense of homogenizing themselves.

I’m looking for someone who can sweep me away and show me they’re unique, have something special and gutsy. We need to be correct, but we need to get beyond correct. These kids are getting a lot of freedom and permission from me and our conductor Gary Wedow to really live and breathe in a much more human way. There’s a life underneath the first layer of words. My job is to help them understand the subtext and what they’re really saying underneath the words they choose to speak.

Joélle Harvey as Zerlina, Austin Kness as Don Giovanni

Once again, Merola has presented great new talent to the world. The cast featured a brilliant Donna Anna in Amanda Majeski’s intense, Dessayesque performance; with the tenor discovery of David Lomeli as Don Ottavio; Rena Harms’ vibrant Donna Elvira; Joélle Harvey’s Zerlina (with enough reserve in the voice for more dramatic roles); Carlos Monzón’s dynamic Leporello, and in the title role, Austin Kness’ already mature talent.

Wedow conducted with consistency and power. I don’t know how the orchestra can play at all, inches from the singers’ feet, sitting right next to the first row of the audience — but play they did, well and true, without once overwhelming the singers or the small hall.

Outside Cowell, seagulls raised a ruckus, which was clearly audible inside the theater, as if voicing nostalgia for Thomas Pasatieri’s opera performed here a couple of years ago, the one called The Seagull.

Don Giovanni, with Zerlina, Donna Elvira in the background

Bernstein Fête

The New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall have announced a massive, three-month series of programs in tribute to Leonard Bernstein. From September through December 13, Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds pays homage to the late composer with concerts featuring Michael Tilson Thomas, Marin Alsop, and Gustavo Dudamel. Yo-Yo Ma will play on opening night; an educational project will involve 500 public school students in compositions inspired by Bernstein’s Mass.

MTT and Leonard Bernstein, some time ago

Nicola Rescigno

Italian-American conductor Nicola Rescigno, 92, died Monday in a Viterbo hospital, while awaiting surgery for injuries suffered in a fall. He had cofounded both the Chicago Lyric Opera (1953) and the Dallas Opera (1957), and served as artistic director and principal conductor in Dallas for 33 years, until 1990.

In San Francisco, he conducted several productions between 1950 and 1986, making his last appearance leading a concert in the War Memorial Opera House by Montserrat Caballé. Rescigno was one of Maria Callas’ main collaborators.

Chen Yi’s Olympic Premiere

Chen Yi was sent to the countryside during China’s cultural revolution in the late ’60s to work as a farmer. “I had brought my violin along with me to practice my fingers, playing revolutionary songs,” she said, recalling those difficult years. Now Chen Yi — former composer-in-residence for San Francisco’s Chanticleer and Women’s Philharmonic — is making her contribution to the Beijing Olympics, albeit from a world away and with a twist.

On Thursday, when the 2008 Games open in the Chinese capital, Chen Yi’s Olympic Fire will have its premiere at London’s Proms Festival, in Royal Albert Hall. The work “looks forward to the London Olympics in 2012, evoking the image of fire, and representing the idea of a meeting of cultures.” The concert — in which Leonard Slatkin also conducts works by Rachmaninov and Vaughn Williams — can be heard on the Internet both live and for a week after the performance.

Chen Yi

Supertitles’ Silver Anniversary

Lotfi Mansouri, former general director of the San Francisco Opera, was responsible 25 years ago for the (then controversial) introduction of supertitles, simultaneous English translation of the libretto projected above the stage during performance of an opera sung in another language. Mansouri first introduced supertitles at the Canadian Opera Company that he headed before coming to San Francisco. The titles have helped make opera more accessible to audiences around the world. The anniversary was greeted in The New York Times as that of “his most lasting contribution to the field.”

Happy birthday Supertitles

Study: File-Sharing Is Here to Stay

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that a study suggests the music industry should embrace, rather than fight, file-sharing Web sites. The point in question is Radiohead’s last album release, downloaded by huge numbers of people illegally, even though the band allowed fans to pay little or nothing for it.

“Rights-holders should be aware that these nontraditional venues are stubbornly entrenched, incredibly popular, and will never go away,” said Eric Garland, coauthor of the study, which concluded there was strong brand loyalty to controversial “torrent” and peer-to-peer services. Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band’s own Web site and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. Garland urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. “It’s time to stop swimming against the tide of what people want,” he said.

Music News

By Janos Gereben — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:40:16 +0000

Orchestra Association Turns 40

The country’s largest organization of state orchestras, the 400-plus member Association of California Symphony Orchestras, is holding its 40th annual conference Aug. 7-9 in Walnut Creek. It is hosted by Barry Jekowsky’s California Symphony, in the first instance of the conference taking place in the Bay Area outside San Francisco. The theme is “Mining California’s Musical Landscape.”

“The California Symphony is proud to host this banner conference honoring four decades of service by ASCO, which has quietly played a critical role in California’s prominence in the classical world. Without this organization and its many resources, there’s no doubt that many regional and community orchestras would be missing from our cultural landscape today,” says CSO Executive Director Stacey Street, who is also chairing this year’s event.

Stacey Street

A guest speaker at the conference will be Marie Damrell Gallo, one of the state’s most generous supporters of the arts, who was already honored as California’s 2008 “Woman of the Year.” An accomplished pianist herself, the former teacher in San Francisco’s Alamo Elementary School relinquished a concert career “in order to raise eight children.” She has spearheaded the movement to develop a performing arts center in downtown Modesto, which culminated in the construction of the Gallo Center for the Arts, now in its inaugural season. She is the president of the Center.

Marie Damrell Gallo

“My speech at the conference,” Gallo told Classical Voice, “is about ‘Turning Gifts Into Treasures,’ meaning that our support for orchestras helps produce the treasures they give us, but the gifts also come from all the musicians and people working behind the scenes at the orchestras.”

Other speakers at the conference include former San Francisco Symphony Executive Director Peter Pastreich, arts management consultant Jan Masaoka, and Nathaniel Stookey, who in 1987, at age 17, was the youngest composer ever commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony.

Conference participants are being offered three live performances by East Bay companies: a Musicale of chamber works written by California Symphony Young American Composers in Residence Mason Bates, Pierre Jalbert, and Chris Theofanidis; opening night of Festival Opera’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and the California Shakespeare Theater production of Uncle Vanya. Bates, Jalbert, and Theofanidis will also be featured on the panel “Conversations With the New Music Makers,” to be moderated by Jekowsky.

Nathaniel Stookey

Young Musicians Keep Up ‘Perfect Record’

As the summer intensive period for the 2008 Young Musicians Program ends, piano and voice coach Jim Meredith reports that for the 19th consecutive year, all of the graduating class will go on to college, mostly prestigious ones, and many with full scholarships — see list below. On the program faculty: famed singers Frederica von Stade and Oliva Stapp.

Graduates and other gifted youngsters, between ages 10 and 18, are giving a series of free performances in Hertz Hall this week:

July 30 (7:30 p.m.) — chorus, symphonic winds, and orchestra; Aug. 1 (7:30 p.m.) and Aug. 3 (3 p.m.) — small ensembles, instrumental and vocal, individual artists, opera and musical theater groups, and a jazz program.

Donna Wing Chung, Ivana He, Kimberly Garrette

Graduating YMP members and their destinations (* denotes full scholarship):

Johnathan Arnett - California Institute for the Arts
Donna Wing Chung* - Brown University
TiaMoya Ford* - Williams College
Kimberly Garrette - San Francisco State University
Kamal Ghammache-Mansour - Berklee College of Music
Ivana He - UC Santa Cruz
Courtney Knott* - Berklee College of Music
Christina Mwaka - California Institute for the Arts
Elliott Nguyen - UC Santa Cruz
Anna Poon - UC Santa Barbara
Zachary Slater - Los Angeles City College
Milton To* - UC Berkeley
Meng Ruo Yang* - Harvard University

From the program:

YMP Chorus
Symphonic Wind Ensemble
String Ensemble
Con Brio Quartet, a wild Piazzolla tango a la Prokofiev
Opera Theater, finale to The Marriage of Figaro
Opera Musical Theater, a grand medley from Les Misérables
Kendra Dodd, mezzo-soprano, “Dido’s Lament”
Nicole Raynor, lyric coloratura, “Caro nome”
Sydney Ragland, tenor, “She Never Told Her Love” and “El Vito”
Additional vocal and instrumental solos, duos, and trios.

YMF Director Daisy Newman

Guitar Summit

Some of the world’s best-known and newly emerging guitarists are converging in San Francisco for the Guitar Foundation of America’s convention and competition (international and youth categories), Aug. 5-10, held at the S.F. Conservatory of Music and Herbst Theatre.

Polish guitarist Marcyn Dylla, winner of last year’s competition

Participating artists in the evening concerts include Zoran Dukic, Hopkinson Smith, Shin-Ichi Fukuda, and Pavel Steidl. In the afternoons: Jose Antonio Escobar, Marcin Dylla, Boris Gaquere, Renato Martins, Thibault Cauvin, Raphaella Smits, Michael Nicolella, Gyan Riley, Pablo Marquez, Aleiksey Vianna and Ensemble São Paulo, Duo Melis, and Xue Fei Yang

Xue Fei Yang, one of China’s best-known classical and pop guitarist

Conservatory Board Appointments

Lisa S. Miller has been appointed chair of the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has served on the Board for five years, recently took a key role as chair of the Inaugural Gala for the new Conservatory at Civic Center, and served as the founding chair of the Conservatory Society in 2003.

Lisa Miller

Also newly named to the Board’s Executive Committee: Timothy Foo, executive vice-chair; and Carol Pucci Doll, secretary. Other new trustees include Christian P. Erdman, Chair of the Frank H. and Eva B. Buck Foundation; Peter Pastreich, former executive director of the San Francisco Symphony; and longtime civic volunteer and philanthropist Joan Traitel.

‘Unsung Heroes of the Art World’

That’s what Kate Eilertsen, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ acting director of visual arts, called the exhibition team — those responsible for setting up the newly opened Bay Area Now 5.

The Team: Jen Hing, Valerie Imus, Justin Limoges, Justin Wyckoff

This multimedia show of 40 artists, mostly local ones, runs through Nov. 16, and it includes numerous musical performances. It is YBCA’s fifth triennial exhibition of Bay Area art, exploring regional responses to globalization. See the Yerba Buena Web site for events during the show.

At the exhibit: Eco y Narcisco II, by Ana Teresa Fernandez

Photo by John Wilson White

Bayreuth Online

At long last, the Bayreuth Festival’s Web site is redesigned and improved, reports Terri Stuart, whose monitoring of the festival’s Web casts (see calendar here) has resulted in an unqualified endorsement of Radio Bartók over German Web casts, which she has found “frequently buffered, with many dropouts.”

Another avid Internet-listener, Kori Lockhart, agrees with the choice of Radio Bartók (complaining solely about the Hungarian-only commentary), and says the Bayreuth links stopped working on Operacast — “this might be nice to know before we embark on the Ring.” The first cycle started on Monday, Walküre due July 29, Siegfried on July 31, and Götterdämmerung on Aug. 2.

And, on Sunday, Bayreuth had its first live videocast over the Internet, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg “thus made accessible to the first 10,000 people prepared to part with the not inconsiderable sum of 49 euros” ($77).

After reading Rupert Christiansen’s account in Monday’s http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/07/28/btopera128.xml Telegraph, you might reconsider spending the money so early in the days of “live opera on your computer.”

Things began badly — first my log-in failed, then the screen froze, then I pressed the wrong button and had to start over, with the result that it was only about halfway though Act One that I could relax.

The sound was clean, but a little on the tinny side, and I couldn’t manipulate the picture to expand beyond a five-inch by four-inch rectangle. Did I enjoy it? The interval backstage coverage was fun of a rather Teutonic nature (subtitles would be a help), but — quite apart from my dim view of Katharina Wagner’s wilfully perverse staging — I won’t feel impelled to repeat the experiment.

Someone more Windows-competent than I am might succeed in conjuring up a better transmission, but I can’t see any crucial advantage that streaming scores over a top DVD recording, which comes out cheaper, more durable, and more flexible.

From the new Bayreuth Meistersinger

Photo by Jochen Quast

An Adler Wedding

They met, appropriately enough, performing in a production of The Marriage of Figaro. Now, Adler Fellow Andrew Bidlack, 28, and soprano Melissa A. Raz, 30, are married. The event was chronicled in The New York Times.

Bidlack made his debut with the San Francisco company in May as both the Lamplighter and the Drunkard in Rachel Portman’s Little Prince in Berkeley, and he appeared in the War Memorial as Arturo in last month’s productions of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as Odoardo in Handel’s Ariodante.

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Bidlack

Preparing for The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Amy Tan’s complex, fascinating novel is about to become an opera, under the original name of The Bonesetter’s Daughter. The San Francisco Opera will present the world premiere on Sept. 13 at the War Memorial Opera House.

Amy Tan

Photo by John Foley

Between now and the premiere, numerous events will be held in preparation, including:

SFO Guild South Peninsula Guild Chapter, Sunday, Aug. 3, 4 p.m., Green Gables Estate, Woodside. The speaker is SFO Music Administrator Kip Cranna. Ticket prices, cleverly, are pegged to characters in the story: Ruth Young level, $50; LuLing level, $100; and Precious Auntie level, $150. For more information and tickets, call (650) 207-8518, or see the Web site.
SFO Guild East Bay Chapter, on Sunday, Aug. 24, 12:30 p.m., Sequoyah Country Club, 4550 Heafey Road, Oakland. The discussion will be led by Cranna and Bonesetter composer Stewart Wallace. Adler Fellow Katharine Tier will sing excerpts from the opera; she is the understudy to mezzo Zheng Cao, who sings the dual role of Ruth and LuLing. For information or reservations, contact Silvia Lin at (925) 838-9255 or e-mail to LLLLL@juno.com, tickets can also be ordered on-line.
Zheng Cao

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Norman Dello Joio

Composer Norman Dello Joio, 95, died last week in East Hampton, N.Y. He was a prolific composer in many genres, including chorus, orchestra, solo voice, chamber groups, piano, and television scores. He wrote three operas about Joan of Arc: The Triumph of Joan, which he withdrew after a student performance in 1950 at Sarah Lawrence College; and The Trial at Rouen, for television, which was later revised for the New York City Opera, as The Triumph of St. Joan.

His Blood Moon was among Kurt Herbert Adler’s many commissioned world premieres for San Francisco Opera.

Dello Joio won awards throughout his career, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Meditations on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra, and an Emmy in 1965 for a TV series, The Louvre, on NBC.

Dello Joio’s first marriage was to Grayce Baumgold, who later became director of San Francisco’s Old First Church Concerts. In 1974 he married Barbara Bolton, who survives him, along with his sons, Justin Dello Joio, a composer, and Norman Dello Joio, a champion equestrian jumper; his daughter, Victoria Dello Joio, a martial arts master teacher; two stepchildren, Ned Costello and Kathleen Bar-Tur; and three grandchildren.

Norman Dello Joio

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‘Music for Everyone’ at Holy Names

Robert Commanday writes:

A master project in the teaching of music was celebrated in a big way last Thursday. It was at Holy Names University in the Oakland hills, where the Kodály Center for Music Education was been operating for exactly 40 years. Under the title “Music for Everyone,” a three-day symposium gathered current and past faculty from many countries, student teachers, other music professionals, and admirers. Thursday night honored the Holy Names sponsorship of this institution, beginning with Sister Mary Alice Hein, the director who founded the program in 1969 and was inspired by an encounter at Stanford with the great Hungarian composer, Zoltan Kodály. Striving for universal musical literacy was his lifelong mission. This, the principal Kodály Center in America, was its first.

The gala event, chaired by the Kodály Center director, Anne Lasky, was graced by eloquent addresses: by Sister Rosemarie Nassif, president of Holy Names University; Gilbert de Greeve and Jerry Jaccard, president and vice president, respectively, of the International Kodály Society. De Greeve, a distinguished Belgian pianist, spoke of finding your “spiritual center through the language of music,” that “music makes the mind more sensitive to everything else,” and he stressed “the right of every person to be taught the elements of music” — as a subject, “music is not an option but basic.” Jaccard, associate professor of music at Brigham Young University, and a graduate of the Kodály Center at Holy Names, spoke along these lines in a most convincing fashion. Finally, the Hungarian government through a representative of its Consul General in Los Angeles, presented an award to Sister Mary Alice Hein.

A concert by Chanticleer set off the evening perfectly. Singing a full program — from Josquin to Mahler and Samuel Barber, and including folk song arrangements and other secular pieces — the dozen men, sang as one and beautifully, were never better.

The weekend’s activities concluded the Kodály Centers 2008 Summer Institute for teachers. For more information about the Center and short movies about Kodály’s approach and vision, go here.

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Flicka to Retire

Frederica von Stade has chosen 2010 to say farewell to her singing career, Classical Voice has learned. The year 2010 also marks the 40th anniversary of her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. The IMG Management Agency is sending invitations to music organizations to notify the agency “of their interest.” San Francisco Opera, Symphony, and S.F. Performances are certain to be bidding for a chance to hear her for the last time.

Frederica von Stade

The mezzo, a longtime resident of San Francisco and Alameda, has starred in the top opera houses and recital halls around the world for the past four decades. She made her San Francisco Spring Opera debut in 1971 as Sextus in La Clemenza di Tito and sang on the main stage in the following year, as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro. She has lent her name to and performed without fee for literally hundreds of music-education causes.

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Music News

By Janos Gereben — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:20:31 +0000

UPDATE: July 24, 2008

Flicka to Retire

Frederica von Stade has chosen 2010 to say farewell to her singing career, Classical Voice has learned. The year 2010 also marks the 40th anniversary of her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. The IMG Management Agency is sending invitations to music organizations to notify the agency “of their interest.” San Francisco Opera, Symphony, and S.F. Performances are certain to be bidding for a chance to hear her for the last time.

Frederica von Stade

The mezzo, a longtime resident of San Francisco and Alameda, has starred in the top opera houses and recital halls around the world for the past four decades. She made her San Francisco Spring Opera debut in 1971 as Sextus in La Clemenza di Tito and sang on the main stage in the following year, as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro. She has lent her name to and performed without fee for literally hundreds of music-education causes.

Ah, Promenades!

The longest, richest, most varied, and exciting of all summer music festivals, London’s two-month-long BBC Proms, has begun and runs through Sept. 13. Going to the Royal Albert Hall is not necessarily the best way to experience these exceptional concerts, especially if you are on the main floor, standing upright and sardinelike (however blissful that may appear to some who are sturdy of feet and free of claustrophobia). TV and radio in England make the festival accessible there on a daily basis, and via Internet broadcasts you can hear them everywhere. There are 76 concerts in Albert Hall and eight weekly chamber music recitals at Cadogan Hall.

Royal Albert Hall

When you first log on to the main Web site, expect — even with a high-speed connection — to wait a few moments while the contents load up. Another approach to the listing may be faster and better. Every Prom is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and then remains available on the BBC iPlayer for seven days. Hear and watch highlights of last year’s Proms here.

Jean-Guihen Queyras

Just a few examples:

July 22, 7 p.m. (London time), Roger Norrington conducts the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR), in the Haydn Cello Concerto No.1, with Jean-Guihen Queyras; Elgar’s Symphony No. 1, 10 p.m.; Missa Malheur me bat by Obrecht and Josquin Des Prez with Peter Phillips conducting the Tallis Scholars.
July 23, 7 p.m., Jiri Belohlavek conducts the BBC Symphony in Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, and the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with Lars Vogt.

Danielle De Niese as Poppea

Photo by Alastair Muir

July 31, 7 p.m., Monteverdi, The Coronation of Poppea (in a new Glyndebourne production), conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm, featuring Danielle De Niese in the title role, Alice Coote as Nero, Tamara Mumford as Octavia, and Marie Arnet as Drusilla.
Aug. 6, 7:30 p.m., George Benjamin conducts the BBC Symphony in his Ringed by the Flat Horizon; the orchestral version of Messiaen’s L’Ascension; Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto (with Carolin Widmann), and Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante défunte and Boléro.

Carolyn Widmann

Aug. 8 (opening day at the Beijing Olympics), 7 p.m., the premiere of former Chanticleer and Women’s Philharmonic composer-in-residence Chen Yi’s Olympic Fire (a BBC commission), Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’, and Symphony No. 6. with Leonard Slatkin conducting the Royal Philharmonic.

Chen Yi

Honors to Way, King

ODC/San Francisco founder-director Brenda Way has been honored with an American Academy in Rome Residency, and was also named a senior advisor to the winners of the Rome Prize. (Another San Franciscan, Kurt Rohde, received the Rome and Prize earlier this year.)

Brenda Way

Founded in 1894 and chartered by an Act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is one of the leading American centers overseas for independent study and advanced research in the fine arts and the humanities.

Residents are eminent artists and scholars who are working in up to 18 disciplines, and who are invited by the Director to stay at the Academy for periods ranging from two to four months. Selected by invitation only, Residents in the Arts are asked to offer at least one Academy event, such as a concert, an exhibition or studio visit, a lecture or reading, or any other appropriate event.

ODC in flight

Photo by RJ Muna

Calling the invitation a “great honor,” Way went on to say:

I look forward to spending several months with the distinguished artists, thinkers, and scholars in residence at Janiculum Hill, not to mention the pleasure of absorbing the beauty and stimulation of Rome itself, its ancient art and architecture, the energy of contemporary Roman life, and the artistic activity at the Academy while I reflect on my personal artistic trajectory. Also, eating Italian!

Alonzo King, working with dancer Meredith Webster

Another local dance notable, Lines Ballet’s Alonzo King, has received the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award. The prize carries a $25,000 unrestricted cash gift. Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Executive Director Ella Baff presented the award to King at the festival’s open gala in Becket, Mass. She said King and his company remain “under-recognized in America, and especially on the East Coast, where you have to be smack in the middle of New York to be noticed. This is to give Alonzo a boost because he’s very deserving. He’s moving ballet in a very 21st-century direction.”

The company is performing this week at the festival.

“People may find my work curious and not fully understand it at first, because it’s not something they’re accustomed to, but when they look at my work deeply, they realize this isn’t any different at all,” King said in response to the award.

Laurel Keen and Brett Conway of Lines Ballet

Photo by Marty Sohl

Prelude to a Hit

Music@Menlo’s International Program and the free concert Prelude concerts that the program’s student musicians perform are an especially important and attractive component of the festival. (For an excellent roundup of all the festival’s educational programs, see Bob Moon’s recent article.)

Attending the season’s first Prelude performance on Saturday at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, I was so carried away by the excellence of the young artists performance that co-artistic director Wu Han’s whispered comment between movements came as both a surprise and an important reminder. “This is the first time they perform together,” she said. “Imagine how they will sound by the end of the festival.”

Corelli performance at the Prelude Saturday night

Performing Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in D Major, Op. 6, No. 4; and Handel’s Concerto Grosso in A Major, Op. 6, No. 11, HWV 329; four violinists (Isaac Allen, Areta Zhulla, Bram Goldstein, Grace Park), two violists (Youming Chen and Angela Choong), three cellists (Dmitri Atapine, Sunny Yang, and Yuan Zhang), and harpsichordists Qing Jiang (in the Corelli) and Liza Stepanova (in the Handel) have already become a true, impressive ensemble.

Qing Jiang, harpsichord

As described in this review of the evening concert that followed the Prelude, there was a precedent-setting appearance of the young musicians in that concert when the Corelli Concerto from the afternoon was repeated, replacing a Bach Cantata, whose soprano soloist came down with laryngitis.

The evening performance was — to use a musicological term — hot, but in the afternoon, it was the smooth ensemble performance that was most impressive. First violinist Allen (in the Corelli) and Park (in the Handel) provided exceptional leadership, and the group rallied around them beautifully. Allen is an impressively mature and commanding artist, Park is stunning in her passionate performance; the sound emanated from her entire body, a big sound from a small, slender source.

Even if you don’t, or can’t, attend the evening concerts, keep an eye on these 6 p.m. events, which are free and promising. A free pass is required, to be requested at the Will Call table, starting one hour prior to the start of the performance. Seating is by general admission.

Prelude performances:

Wednesday, July 23, St. Mark’s

Ludwig Van Beethoven: Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16 (Liza Stepanova, piano; Areta Zhulla, violin; Youming Chen, viola; and Dmitri Atapine, cello)
Franz Schubert: String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810, Death and the Maiden (Hausmann Quartet: Isaac Allen, Bram Goldstein, violins; Angela Choong, viola; Yuan Zhang, cello)

Hausmann Quartet

Friday, July 25, Martin Family Hall

Franz Joseph Haydn: Piano Trio in C Major, Hob. XV:27 (Qing Jiang, piano; Grace Park, violin; and Sunny Yang, cello)
Ludwig Van Beethoven: Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16 (Liza Stepanova, piano; Areta Zhulla, violin; Youming Chen, viola; and Dmitri Atapine, cello)

Tuesday, July 29, Martin Family Hall

Johannes Brahms: Piano Trio in C Major, Op. 87 (Liza Stepanova, piano; Grace Park, violin; and Dmitri Atapine, cello); Piano Quartet no. 3 in C Minor, Op. 60 (Qing Jiang, piano; Areta Zhulla, violin; Youming Chen, viola; and Sunny Yang, cello)

Thursday, July 31, St. Mark’s Cathedral

Robert Schumann: String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41, No. 1 (Hausmann Quartet)
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 60 (Qing Jiang, piano; Areta Zhulla, violin; Youming Chen, viola; and Sunny Yang, cello)

Supernumeraries Count, Too

“Extras” or “spear carriers” may not get much respect in life, but in opera houses, they are the life of the party. You can’t put up most grand operas without them, and to be a “super” is a whole lot of fun — rubbing shoulders with some great singers, being part of the show. As the San Francisco Opera prepares for its 2008-2009 season, the call is going out for volunteer supers of all ages, although those under 18 need a work permit. Auditions will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on July 22. Call the Opera at (415) 565-3200, leave name and phone number, so that you may be placed on the list.

Besides all the glamor, there is hard work in being a super, and many
rules to learn.

Also for the fall Opera season, auditions will be held at the War Memorial Opera House, Oct. 22 – Nov. 15, for the boy treble role of Feodor (or Fyodor) in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. No super he, Feodor is the Czar’s son (sung in some productions by a — young and small — mezzo), and he has a song about a parrot all to himself. Unlike the volunteer supers, this is a paid (AGMA) job. To set up an audition, e-mail Paul Hansen at phansen@sfopera.com for a copy of the audition music and the schedule.

Super-time in the San Francisco production of Macbeth

Merolini to Sing for You

They come from Korea, Russia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, and from cost to coast in the U.S. to sing in San Francisco, to train for a career in opera — and to provide low-cost performances for opera fans here otherwise starved between seasons. (Think of culinary-academy fare for music fans.)

They are the Merolini, the 51st class of young singers, selected from among many hundreds of applicants, proud members of the San Francisco Opera Merola Program, ready to follow in the footsteps of Anna Netrebko, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, and many other divas and divos.

Anna Netrebko

Gaetano Merola was the founding father of the San Francisco Opera and became the first general manager in 1923. Kurt Herbert Adler (1905-1988) took over the job when Merola died in 1953 and ran the company for the next three decades, putting The City on the map of the opera world, placing San Francisco second in the nation after New York’s Metropolitan. In 1957, Adler created a training program for young singers, and named it for his predecessor.

Since then, the global village of opera has been enhanced by hundreds of these San Francisco-trained singers, many of whom get their first big breaks from local reviews. And now, 23 singers and five apprentice coaches are training, rehearsing, and performing for 10 weeks, and then appear at the Grand Finale concert at the Opera House on Aug. 16.

With a free Yerba Buena Gardens appearance (attracting thousands), and a Herbst Theatre concert (revealing a sensational soprano from Michigan, Leah Crocetto) already behind them, the Merolini performed at Fort Mason in Benjamin Britten’s comic opera Albert Herring last weekend.

Next up: Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Mozart’s doomed antihero is sung by baritone Austin Kness (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), soprano Rena Harms (Santa Fe, New Mexico) is Donna Elvira, soprano Amanda Majeski (Gurnee, Illinois) is Donna Anna, and soprano Joélle Harvey (Richburg, New York) is Zerlina. Mexican bass-baritone Carlos Monzón (Guadalajara) sings Leporello and his countryman tenor David LomelÌ (Monterrey, Mexico) is Don Ottavio. Gary Wedow conducts and famed soprano Catherine Malfitano is the stage director.

Catherine Malfitano

A Mansouri Anniversary

Former San Francisco Opera General Manager Lotfi Mansouri’s innovation of supertitles in opera houses is now a quarter century old, and is celebrated in a New York Times article, entitled “So That’s What the Fat Lady Sang.”

Lotfi Mansouri

Short Season for Berkeley Opera

According to unconfirmed reports, Berkeley Opera’s 2009 season will consist of only two operas — Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman and Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe — and a fund-raising gala. See the company’s audition notice.

A Music Movie for Our Time

The new film version of Mamma Mia, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, has an important message: No matter how vapid the ABBA music, regardless of the insipid story and script by Catherine Johnson, when you crank up the volume to the max and have a lot of people jump up and down against spectacular (if irrelevant) scenery, most of the audience will get what they came for. And that would be: a sappy, meaningless story, something on the order of Gidget Goes to Greece, but perhaps inferior to the Sandra Dee standard.

Poor, dear Meryl Streep is Donna, the happily vacuous, latent hippy, who slept with three men 20 years ago, and now doesn’t know — or seem to care — who the father is of the daughter about to get married.

The girl, played by the resolutely cheerful Amanda Seyfried, is getting married (to somebody utterly uninteresting), and she invites her three potential fathers in troop in troop — of all people — Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgård. They are hidden from Donna, discovered, and then thrown out by her. Why? It’s not really clear, but then nothing else is, and none of it matters.

Everybody sings, dances, and emotes, and soon enough there is a happy ending. A good time is being had by some, but what do they take away from Mamma Mia? Possibly some dolce far niente, and I’d say that in Greek, but that won’t do much good. The German is turteln, (whispering sweet nothings); the Hollywoodese is “big-budget, big-hype money-maker.” Take on the first weekend: $27 million. Mamma mia!

Amanda Seyfried

New General Manager for S.F. Ballet

Returning to the San Francisco Ballet after eight years of involvement with some of the top dance companies in the country, Napa-born Debra Bernard is the company’s new general manager, succeeding Lesley Koenig (who has become assistant manager of the Metropolitan Opera).

Bernard worked in San Francisco in a variety of artistic and production positions from 1988 through 2000, then left for the East Coast, where eventually she became company manager of the New York City Ballet.

“Debra is a friend as well as a former colleague, and I look forward to working closely with her in the near future. Her in-depth knowledge of the Company is a great asset, and I have full confidence in her abilities,” said San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson.

Bernard’s early training included a full scholarship to the school at Dance Theatre of Harlem. Upon graduation from UC Davis, Bernard pursued a professional dance career. From 1984 to 1988, Bernard was assistant technical administrator for the San Francisco Opera, assisting in managing technical department budgets, and acting as company liaison for more than 250 union stagehands and production personnel.

From 1988 to 1991, Bernard served as San Francisco Ballet’s associate to the general manager for production, where her responsibilities included managing all financial, technical, and design elements for all new works. For eight years, until 2000, Bernard was the personal assistant to the artistic director and later, artistic administrator for the Company, managing part of the department operations and serving as the point person for the artistic director in all internal and external communication.

As company manager for New York City Ballet, Bernard was responsible for all tour logistics for more than 200 artists. Bernard also participated in labor contract negotiations and, as human resources manager, oversaw payroll and benefits administration for up to 400 union and nonunion employees each season.

Music News

By Janos Gereben — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:55:12 +0000

Ginstling to Cleveland Orchestra

San Francisco Symphony Communications Director Gary Ginstling is leaving the job on Aug. 22, to become general manager of the Cleveland Orchestra, reporting to Executive Director Gary Hanson. Ginstling will be responsible for day-to-day management, including labor relations and scheduling. He succeeds Jonathan Martin, who has become executive director of the Charlotte Symphony in North Carolina. (Just one more item in this game of musical chairs: The Charlotte Symphony is looking for a new music director, and San Francisco Symphony Associate Conductor James Gaffigan is one of the candidates.)

Ginstling has been director of communications and external affairs for the San Francisco Symphony for the past two years; he was executive director of the Berkeley Symphony from 2003 through 2006, and has spent a dozen years in the state altogether.

“After my time here,” Ginstling told Classical Voice, “I have come to realize that California is a really tough place to leave. I make this decision with mixed emotions, as the San Francisco Symphony is an inspiring place to work, and it has been a true privilege to work with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, Executive Director Brent Assink, and the entire board and staff. However, my wife Marta and I are excited about the prospect of moving closer to our families and introducing our children to the concept of four seasons. I am also delighted to be taking on a new role with one of America’s great orchestras.”

Just last month, the Cleveland Orchestra made a number of major announcements about its long-range plans, including the extension of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst’s contract to 2018; the return of opera to Severance Hall; ballet to the Blossom Music Center, in collaboration with Miami City Ballet; and creating a centennial commissions project. (San Francisco’s centennial occurs sooner, in 2011, but yes, we have no [commission] bananas.)

Just three years ago, the Cleveland was in a tough spot, with a $7.4 million accumulated deficit — the biggest in its history — on an operating budget of $36 million. Today, the situation has improved: The budget is $41.2 million, and the deficit was retired largely through drawing on the endowment. (San Francisco Symphony’s operating budget is about $60 million, and only a relatively small deficit is expected, in spite of the general economic meltdown.)

A recent anonymous $5 million donation to the Cleveland endowment has helped the orchestra to renew its commitment to the school district, bringing all fifth graders to Severance Hall.

In September 2010, Franz Welser-Möst will become general music director of the Vienna State Opera with an initial five-year term. His Vienna appointment follows a 13-year tenure at the Zürich Opera where he has been general music director concurrent with his role as music director in Cleveland. Franz Welser-Möst will step down from his position in Zürich at the conclusion of the current season.

Gary Ginstling (with Michelle Robertson)

Midsummer Abduction

Midsummer Mozart Festival presents a semistaged version of The Abduction from the Seraglio at the California Theater in San Jose, Aug. 1 and 3. George Cleve’s 34-year-old festival normally produces chamber-music and small-orchestra concerts, but at the instigation of David Packard, there will be opera this season as well — although only in San Jose.

The production — conducted by Cleve and directed by Barbara Heroux — features sopranos Christina Major and Khori Dastoor, tenors Isaac Hurtado and Matthew O’Neill, bass-baritone Jeremy Galyon, and William Neely in the speaking role of Pasha Selim.

Jeremy Galyon

Kahane to Leave Colorado

Jeffrey Kahane, 50, who left the Santa Rosa Symphony in 2005 to become music director of the Colorado Symphony (succeeding Marin Alsop there), has served one three-year term, but will keep the post for only two more years, instead of taking a three-year (or longer) extension. A major reason for his decision was a case of extreme hypertension last year, which forced him to cancel three months of concerts.

“There’s going to be sadness, and there’s certainly a lot of sadness on my end,” Kahane said. “It’s not a decision I’m going to go out and celebrate, but I feel good, because I know it’s right for me and I know it’s going to be right for the orchestra.”

Per his wishes, Kahane’s contract was extended through the 2009-2010 season, during which he has pledged to “give his all.”

Jeffrey Kahane (with violinist Lindsay Deutsch)

Festival Opera’s Britten

Festival Opera’s Aug. 9-17 A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten features countertenor William Sauerland as Oberon, soprano Ani Maldjian as Tytania, bass Kirk Eichelberger as Bottom, baritone Igor Vieira as Theseus, mezzo-soprano Lauren Groff as Hippolyta, tenor Jorge Garza as Lysander, baritone Nikolas Nackley as Demetrius, mezzo-soprano Jessica Mariko Deardorff as Hermia, and soprano Stacey Cornell as Helena.

(On July 17, Festival Opera announced that former two-time San Francisco Opera Merola Program participant Ani Maldjian would replace Marnie Breckenridge in the role of Tytania. Marnie Breckenridge was given permission by Festival Opera to bow out so that she could accept an invitation by the Glyndebourne Opera Festival to cover the lead role in the premiere of Peter Eotvos’ Love and Other Demons, August 10-30.)

Michael Morgan is music director, Peter Crompton is the set designer, and Susanna Douthit the costume designer.

Ani Maldjian and Kirk Eichelberger

New Cellists to New Century

Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg has selected Michelle Djokic as a new cellist for the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and appointed cellist Susan Babini to a one-year position. Djokic, of Palo Alto, was the assistant principal cellist for the San Francisco Symphony from 2005 to 2007, and is a member of the San Francisco Cello Quartet. She is the founding artistic director of Concordia Chamber Players, based in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and has performed at the Aspen, Banff, and Newport Music Festivals, among others.

Djokic’s many prizes in competitions include the Prince Bernard Award for Excellence in the 1989 Scheveningen International Cello Competition, the People’s Prize in the 1980 Pablo Casals International Cello Competition in Budapest, Hungary; first prize in the Chicago Civic Orchestra Competition; and she also captured first prize in the young artists competitions of the New Jersey Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Juilliard School Concerto Competition, and the Aspen Festival Concerto Competition. The orchestra’s call for cellists to audition for a tenure-track position and a temporary one-year post drew 83 resumes, the largest expression of interest in any NCCO audition.

Michelle Djokic

Ritual of the Virtues

Hildegard von Bingen

San Francisco Renaissance Voices will perform Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum (Ritual of the Virtues) in Old First Church on Aug. 9. This rarely performed 12th-century work is to be presented in a “fusion concert,” incorporating instrumental music and dance of India. Tod Jolly is music director, participants include Deepak Ram (bansuri) and Diana Rowan (Celtic harp).

Deepak Ram

Other performances of this production are scheduled for:

August 2, 7:30 p.m., Seventh Avenue Presbyterian, San Francisco
August 10, 7:30 p.m., Alameda Presbyterian, Alameda
August 16, 7:30 p.m., All Saints Episcopal, Palo Alto
August 17, 4 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian, Berkeley

Gifts of the Medici

Festival del Sole sensation Measha Brueggergosman will appear in the Aspen Festival’s season-finale production of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder on Aug. 17, and this gargantuan work will be shown on Medici.TV’s web casts this summer.

The cast:

David Zinman, conductor
Jon Villars, tenor
Measha Brueggergosman, soprano
Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano
Anthony Dean Griffey, tenor
Gustav Andreassen, bass
Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus
Duain Wolfe, chorus director
United States Army Chorus

Measha Brueggergosman

Besides Aspen, Medici.TV will feature web casts from the entire Verbier Festival in Aix-en-Provence, through July (Yuja Wang performs a rich, varied program on July 29), and numerous Berlin Philharmonic tour performances.

Currently, Medici.TV is showing the new Peter Sellars production of Mozart’s unfinished 1780 opera Zaïde, which was the opening production of the 2008 Aix-en-Provence Festival. Among the principals: recent Adler Fellow tenor Sean Panikkar.

Sean Panikkar

Medici.TV is produced by Medici Arts, which, in conjunction with two production companies (EuroArts in Leipzig and Idéale Audience in Paris), specializes in the independent production and distribution of audiovisual programs in performing arts and documentaries. It currently represents a catalogue of 1,500 hours of television programming, with 30 new films produced each year. These two companies have already issued over 250 DVDs — including the acclaimed Classic Archive series — with plans to issue 60 new titles every year. The catalog of audio recordings includes the BBC Legends CD series (220 titles already available) and Royal Opera House Heritage series from London’s Covent Garden.

Rouse Concerto Premiere at Cabrillo

Christopher Rouse’s Concerto for Orchestra receives its premiere on Aug. 1 at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s opening night. Performance of the Festival-commissioned work honors the composer’s 60th birthday. Music Director Marin Alsop conducts the program, which also includes the U.S. premiere of Stephen McNeff’s Sinfonia, the premiere of Eric Lindsay’s Darkness Made Visible, and David W. Sanford’s Scherzo Grosso, with cellist Matt Haimovitz as soloist.

Christopher Rouse

High Court Defends Scornful Reviews

Britain’s Independent reported on Tuesday that composer Keith Burstein’s unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit against the Associated Newspapers for a critical review of his opera, which resulted in bankruptcy. The unsuccessful libel action cost Burstein approximately $130,000. His claim was that Veronica Lee’s review of Burstein’s Manifest Destiny, performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005, made readers think that he is a terrorist sympathizer.

The review said the opera’s “idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers is a grievous insult,” and the highest Appeal Court prevented the case from going before a jury, a ruling “widely interpreted as a landmark decision in respect of the right of journalists to write scornful reviews.”

Keith Burstein

A musicologist friend from London comments:

He is a nutcase. He advocates something called ‘new tonalism’ and goes around disrupting Harrison Birtwistle concerts. I’m all for keeping tonalism going but his version just sounds devoid of any interest or tension.

Successful suits in cases like this are not out of the question. In fact, Burstein won one over News International before. It has to do with the The London Times claiming that the composer “organized bands of hecklers to go about wrecking performances of modern atonal music, particularly anything by Sir Harrison Birtwistle.” Burstein sued for libel, successfully pointing out that he had “never interrupted any concert or performance of any sort. It would have been inconceivable to interrupt anybody’s performance.” The hecklers’ demonstration had taken place following the performance of Gawain during the audience applause, and hence constituted legitimate comment/response rather than an interruption or “wrecking.”

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Kirkby’s Proper Doctorate in Music

Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, much beloved in Europe, but known in these parts only for a Philharmonia Baroque appearance five years ago, and a Cal Performances recital with her husband, Anthony Rooley, last month received an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Oxford University, and was greeted by the following speech:

Ecquid facere nequeunt qui litteris humanioribus Oxoniae bene studuerunt? Abhinc tres annos virum honestavimus qui eis studiis perfectis ad physicam se contulit praemiumque Nobelianum nactus est; et hodie feminam ad gradum doctoris extollimus quae non omnino in musicam prius incubuit quam scripta Graeca et Latina satis perscrutata erat. Illa aetate Eduardus Fraenkel, vir doctissimus et formidolosus, discipulos docuit vel terruit; quem ea dicitur ut Orpheus lyra bestias ita lepore domare potuisse.

… and much, much more.

Emma Kirby

Photo by Eric Richmond

Oxford, it seems, is the last refuge of Latin — especially since its discarding from the Catholic Mass, alas — and so the above melodious speech, rather than this prosaic, loosely translated version:

Is there anything that those who have read Greats at Oxford cannot do? Three years ago we honored a man, who after completing this degree turned to physics and won a Nobel Prize for it, and today we confer a doctorate on a lady who did not devote her whole time to music until she too had made this thorough study of Greek and Latin texts. In those days the vastly learned and formidable Eduard Fraenkel was teaching (or terrorizing) his pupils, but she is said to have subdued him by her charm as Orpheus subdued the beasts with his lyre.

New Merolini, New Hope, New Love

(From a late edition of last week’s Music News)

They just keeping coming, young singers of extraordinary promise. But there was something different Tuesday night at Herbst Theater, where the 51st Merola Class’s first indoor, unamplified concert took place (following a Sunday outdoor event at Yerba Buena, attended by thousands).

The difference came in the person of Leah Crocetto, an omni-soprano from Michigan, trained at both the Moody Bible Institute and the Sarasota Opera Apprentice Program. In 30 years of exciting discoveries, listening to each group of Merolini for the first time, I have never experienced a singer springing as complete and awesome from terra incognita as Crocetto.

Leah Crocetto

What is an “omni-soprano”? It’s someone who shifts from dramatic to lyric fach, from tragic to comic performance seamlessly, amazingly. Crocetto’s first role on Tuesday night — in a program of four extended operatic excerpts, accompanied by an orchestra under the baton of Dean Williamson — was Manon from the Massenet opera, in the Saint-Sulpice scene.
Her note-perfect, solid, well-rounded performance peaked in thrilling notes that were powerful, not loud. At one point, I heard the broad, irresistibly penetrating voice of Birgit Nilsson … but more beautiful.

And then a look at the program, and something approaching incredulity: Crocetto’s next appearance was to be as Norina in a Don Pasquale scene! Norina? Not the heaviest of Verdi heroines, maybe Brünnhilde, perhaps Fidelio? Surely a dramatic soprano of such heft is misled into Donizetti’s lyric, comic role.

Instead of disappointing, Crocetto’s Norina blew everyone away, with wicked humor, sensational performance of the heroine’s many voices, and — in confrontation — to Ben Wager’s outstanding Pasquale: Just one sustained note from Crocetto, and a foot away from Wager, the poor man was, well, blown away for real. As the make-believe country girl from the convent, Crocetto’s “Sofronia” was hysterically funny, without overacting. The trick was in the voice — when “Sofronia” pretends to realize that she is being courted by a man, her first “Come? Un uomo!” came with the prescribed “con terrore” up high, but when she repeated “Un Uomo?!” her voice dropped about three octaves, booming out as if channeling Boris Godunov haunted by a ghost, and several audience members slid off their chairs, helpless with laughter.

The entire Don Pasquale Act 2 scene was a triumph. Wager — although an improbably young and handsome Pasquale — sang well, but acted just a bit too fussy. René Barbera’s Ernesto was impressive, his aria ending on a blown high note, cleary due to nerves (the voice is there) … and that’s exactly what the Merola Program is there for. David Perhall’s Malatesta was smooth and strong, a comprimario role sung and performed to a T.

YoungJoo An

The evening began on a high note, as YoungJoo An sang a velvet-smooth Prologue to Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci. The Korean baritone’s warm, medium-sized, beautiful voice came across with radiant musicality, the singer focusing on the music, rather than “showing off” the voice.

Inexplicably, An’s second appearance, as Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata, was disappointing with its blandness. The scene from the end of Act 2 also featured Nathaniel Peake as Alfredo. Too bad the excerpt began after Violetta’s departure — Crocetto would have been delightful in the role. Peake’s big chance came in the Manon scene, as des Grieux.
Nervous, melodramatic acting, on order of The Drunkard, and audible effort reaching high notes counteracted the gift of a fine voice the tenor possesses.

The rest of the large Merola group can be heard July 18 and 20 (Albert Herring), Aug. 1 and 3 (Don Giovanni), and then it’s time for all at the Aug. 16 Grand Finale in the Opera House.

Music News

By Janos Gereben — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:10:03 +0000

New Merolini, New Hope, New Love

Leah Crocetto

YoungJoo An

The rest of the large Merola group can be heard July 18 and 20 (Albert Herring), Aug. 1 and 3 (Don Giovanni), and then it’s time for all at the Aug. 16 Grand Finale in the Opera House.

Creative Taxing of Creative Artists

This is not about federal or state income taxes. No, the news — at least to me — is that cities are charging licensing or registration fees for freelance artists. What fees, which cities, what kind of artists, the meaning of “resident” — all that is a story in progress, and like Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes, I know nothing! Your contributions to the discussion are invited, your corrections anticipated, and your ire feared. Considering that the majority of Bay Area musicians are freelancers, rather than employees, this could be of interest.

Broaching the subject, a music critic friend of modest income (a tautology) e-mailed:

The City of San Diego, in its desperation to find money anywhere it can, has descended on freelance writers telling them they need to buy business licenses, and is fining everyone retroactively for every year of freelancing.

Aghast, I put out a global e-mail alert, and received the following instantly from across the Bay:

Oakland has a business tax. Any Oakland resident who earns any money in Oakland — that is, while a resident in Oakland and including money earned elsewhere from one’s Oakland address — is liable for a business tax, with a minimum $60 per annum. I pay it for money earned outside Oakland, believe it or not. This is equivalent to a license, of course. There has been enormous resistance to this via a chain of letters that come and spin around from artists of all kinds, and from others of course, but to no avail. Oakland must have the income to pay the salaries, benefits, pensions, and severance pay of its numerous Edgerlys. God bless America.

What, I wondered, would be the rules in Los Angeles? There is a “city business tax” there there, and it’s rather overwhelming:

Every person engaged in any trade, occupation, vocation, profession, or other means of livelihood in the City of Los Angeles must obtain a Tax Registration Certificate (TRC).

But what if you have the good fortune to get a short gig in L.A. and then return to rural Sonoma? Behold:

You are considered to be engaged in business in the city of Los Angeles when you physically perform work within the City of Los Angeles seven or more days per year.

And yet, it is in seven-days-make-you-resident L.A. that there is relief for the artistically inflicted:

Creative Artist Exemption: No tax is required to be paid by a person for gross receipts attributable to “Creative Activities” earned when that person is engaged in business as a “Creative Artist,” unless the total taxable and nontaxable gross receipts from within and without the City exceed $300,000 annually. Creative Activities shall mean activities performed by Creative Artists primarily for entertainment and/or aesthetic purposes, including assistants or professional trainees performing those same Creative Activities.

“Creative” and $300,000? Are we talking about Enron here? But what if you are involved in “Entertainment” or “Multimedia,” rather than “Creative Activities”? (The distinction will come as a surprise — and insult — to many.) If so, and if you are in the right “redevelopment area,” the ceiling drops dramatically:

For every person engaged in an entertainment or multimedia business, which business is located in either the Hollywood Redevelopment Area or the North Hollywood Redevelopment Area, the total tax due at each such business shall not exceed $25,000 plus 10 percent of the amount in excess of $25,000.

Well, how are things in Gloccamora … or in your city? Send an e-mail to editor@sfcv.org, with the subject line: “Taxing the Creative.”

Swenson Honored for the ‘First 25 Years’

After the summer’s final San Francisco Opera performance on Sunday afternoon, General Director David Gockley presented Ruth Ann Swenson with the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor. Gockley pointed out that the event came 25 years to the month after Swenson’s professional debut in the War Memorial, where as an Adler Fellow she sang the role of Despina in Cosi fan tutte. The irrepressible singer responded: “I am looking forward to my next 25 years.”

Having just performed the long and difficult role of Ginevra in Ariodante to a fare-thee-well, the singer — who has just overcome breast cancer and chemotherapy — was in her usual lively, spirited mood, cracking jokes, and making the best of a delightfully restrained, two-minute speech. She concluded acknowledgments to those — such as James Schwabacher and former General Directors Terence McEwen and Lotfi Mansouri — who have “nurtured and supported me,” and the “San Francisco public who has from the beginning till today given me appreciation, love, and support … there really is no place like home.”

Swenson, receiving the Opera Medal

Photo by Steve Fisch

Young Americans Conquer European Audiences

Coming from the New World, young musicians played Dvořák’s similarly named Symphony No. 9 in Berlin last week, and on the Fourth of July, the Berlin Morgenpost review exclaimed:

In Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra really showed off its strengths. Benjamin Shwartz conducted from memory, dancing elegantly among the musicians. Time after time he searched for the heavenly length in Dvořák’s music and found moments of meditative strength. Full of pride and passion, the musicians threw themselves into the hymnlike finale. The Americans offered three encores, Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, Tchaikovsky’s Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, and a crowd pleasing surprise, a snappy Indian raga for voice.

Before departure

That last, mysterious-sounding item about the “raga for voice” is further explained in French horn player Kalyn Jang’s tour diary: “… an energetic Mela Prati, a fun piece in which we imitate the sound of Indian drums with short, explosive syllables: Bop! Shoo! Boo! Doo! Da!” (Rick Kvistad, (Bay Area) percussionist, arranged the mela prati.)

Some of the SFSYO

Follow the Youth Orchestra’s progress in their blog. The youngsters appear next on Thursday in Prague’s Smetana Hall, under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy to the Czech Republic. They will perform the Adams Lollapalooza, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op.26 (with Julian Rachlin as soloist), and scenes from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet.

After arrival (in Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall)

Levine’s Illness Forces Withdrawal from Tanglewood

James Levine, who celebrated his 65th birthday on June 23, announced on Tuesday that he will have to withdraw from the Tanglewood season because of urgent surgery. The Boston Symphony (and Metropolitan Opera) music director will have a kidney removed, “as a curative measure, with no other treatment necessary and with every expectation for a complete recovery.” The anticipated recuperation period is six weeks, “leaving ample time to prepare and conduct the season openings of the BSO and the Metropolitan Opera in September,” said the announcement from Lenox, MA.

James Levine

“It is extremely frustrating that I need to have this surgery now,” said Levine. “My projects at Tanglewood have been planned so carefully and coordinated in such detail by the Festival administration. I especially regret not being here with Elliott Carter for his 100th birthday celebration, which I was looking forward to more than I can say. And I’m very disappointed at having to miss concerts with my colleagues in the BSO, as well as my work with the young musicians of the Tanglewood Music Center.”

Mark Volpe, BSO Managing Director, expressed the sentiments of everyone at the Festival: “All of us at Tanglewood are very disappointed that James Levine will not be with us for his remaining concerts this summer. However, we are primarily concerned for Jim’s health and well-being, and that everything be done to ensure a complete recovery so that he returns as soon as possible to his musical life with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera.”

ODC ‘Summer Sampler’

Brenda Way’s ODC San Francisco is giving a summer sampler of wine and dance, at the ODC Dance Commons on Aug. 5 and 6, beginning at 6 p.m. on both days. The event serves as fund-raiser and interest-sustainer during the period that’s usually dance-lite locally (even as the company is touring the U.S. and Europe).

Shenanigans, with Anne Zivolich and Brandon Freeman

Photos by RJ Muna

Winetasting and conversations with choreographers Way and KT Nelson precede an hourlong program of selections from the ODC repertory, including:

Way’s 2008 Unintended Consequences: A Meditation, to music by Laurie Anderson
Nelson’s 2005 Shenanigans, to music by Milhaud
Way’s 2001 24 Exposures, to music of Appalachian recordings by Mark O’Connor, Yo-Yo Ma, and Edgar Meyers

ODC’s Shenanigans

Zimmermann’s ‘Very Big’ Soldaten at N.Y. Festival

Martin Bernheimer reports from the Licoln Center Festival in the Tuesday Financial Times:

It is big. Very, very big.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann began to write Die Soldaten in 1957. The first version turned out to be so complex, so sprawling, so forbidding and foreboding in idiom and scope that no company would produce it. In 1965 Cologne introduced a somewhat simplified revision. The opera, still preposterously gargantuan, was hailed as the most significant advance in deepest, darkest expressionism since Berg’s Wozzeck and Lulu. The language was atonal, the technique serial, the impact staggering.

From Die Soldaten

A few companies have attempted Die Soldaten in the interim, but most settled for compromises. Zimmermann, after all, had envisioned a socio-critical Gesamtkunstwerk that demanded massive resources in music, theater, and technology. His hyperlofty goal: a fusion of “architecture, sculpture, painting, musical theater, spoken theater, ballet, film, microphone, television, tape and sound techniques, electronic music, concrete music, circus, the musical … forming the phenomenon of pluralistic opera.”

Read the full report from The Park Avenue Armory, see also coverage in The New York Times, and watch a preview.

Claudio Otelli and Kathryn Harries in the New York production

Photo by Matthias and Clärchen Baus

Another Opening Night for Paremski

At age 21, Natasha Paremski has already set a trend in rescuing festival opening nights. Having stepped in as the last-minute soloist replacement at the Caramoor and Vail Valley festivals last year (just four days apart), the pianist is now substituting for André Watts at the July 12 opening night gala of Napa’s Festival del Sole.

Watts has reported a “minor injury to his arm,” and Paremski is taking over as the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. Born in Moscow, later a resident of Fremont, Paremski attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and graduated from the Mannes College of Music, where she studied with Pavlina Dokovska.

Paremski made acclaimed debuts as a prodigy in Cupertino and San Jose, won the Gilmore Young Artist Award, made her local recital debut with San Francisco Performances, and later appeared with orchestras elsewhere in the country, as well as Europe. Next year, she will make several debuts in Asia.

To be led by San Francisco Symphony Associate Conductor James Gaffigan, the July 12 concert at Yountville’s Lincoln Theater will also feature Ravel’s Shéhérazade (with soprano Measha Brueggergosman), the Prelude to Mussorgsky’s Khovanchina, and Bizet’s L’Arlesienne, Suite No. 2.

Natasha Paremski

Photo by Leslie van Stelten

Stern Grove’s Arboreal Threat

It’s probably unprecedented that a music festival must deal with killer trees, but such is the situation at San Francisco’s venerable Stern Grove Festival.

The Grove’s beautiful forest setting (featured prominently on the festival Web site) became the cause of a fatal accident three months ago when a tree branch snapped off and killed a woman. It was regarded as a freak accident, but now the city’s Park Department is warning that some 100 trees in the grove are similarly aged and therefore hazardous.

Although San Francisco (struggling with a diminished budget) has only three crews dealing with the city’s 100,000 trees, one crew is now assigned to the Grove to take care of the situation. Meanwhile, although the performance space and the central meadow for the audience look safe enough, problem areas are likely to be in the reserved-parking area, and on the various paths approaching the festival site.

Note by Note, Step by Step

Movies about music and dance at the upcoming San Francisco Jewish International Film Festival from July 24 to Aug. 11, cover a wide range of topics. Screenings are scheduled July 24-31 at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, Aug. 2-3 and 9-10 at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, Aug. 2-9 at the Roda Theater (Berkeley Repertory Theater) in Berkeley, Aug. 2-7 at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto, and Aug. 9-11 at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

Here are some examples of the Note by Note, Step by Step series:

Out of Focus is a portrait of the Batsheva Dance Company’s Ohad Naharin; the company is a frequent visitor to San Francisco Performances.

Bathseva Dance Company in Out of Focus

Anvil! is Sacha Gervasi’s documentary about “nice Jewish boys Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and Robb Reiner in Toronto, who at 14 made a pact to rock forever, and went on to become the ‘demigods of Canadian metal’.”
Black Over White is Tomer Heymann’s film about Israeli pop/world-beat band Idan Raichel Project, on their concert tour to Ethiopia.

Israeli-Ethiopian-Yemenite band of Black Over White

Georgia My Love is about two Georgian immigrants in Israel, working together in a bridal salon: Maya, a singer, pursues her love for traditional Georgian songs and Manana, a dancer, practices her moves with fellow Georgians as they prepare for a performance.

Maya and Manana in Georgia My Love

Tulip Time is the Northern California premiere of a film by Italian directors Marco De Stefanis and Tonino Bionotti about Trio Lescano, a musical group of Dutch Jewish sisters who were enormously popular in the 1930s and 1940s in Italy. The daughters of Hungarian circus artist Alexander and Dutch operetta singer Eva Leschan, Sandra, Giuditta, and Caterinetta grew up in Holland, performed around Europe until running into trouble in fascist Italy at the beginning of World War II.
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Darwin and Music Journalism

Consider two sets of data, one from today, the other from the 1850s; comparing them seems to point at a steep devolution, not the development that Darwin had posited in the case of natural selection. When it comes to music journalism, apparently, evolution is not the operative word.

Last weekend, Martin Bernheimer published an essay in The Financial Times, titled “Critics in a Hostile World,” about the hard times for journalism in America. He wrote:

Newspapers are shrinking at best, folding at worst. Fewer than ten cities still support more than a single daily. Writers face buyouts, layoffs or firing. The papers that survive are making do with fewer employees, fewer pages, fewer articles and, not least, fewer opinion-pieces. Critics are looking more and more like dodos.

Compare this restrained and valid jeremiad with the existence in San Francisco alone of 132 newspapers in the 1850s — offering more dedicated classical-music reporting than exists in the entire country today. Consider also the contrast between 132 papers in this small post-Gold Rush city and the “fewer than 10″ cities with more than one newspaper.

True, that was before the Internet, and yet is this really evolution, survival of the fittest, or just devolution from an era of wanting to write (and read) versus today’s sole determinant of the bottom line, which dictates layoffs when profit dips below 20 percent?

Bernheimer writes:

Of the thousand journalism jobs reportedly lost during the past year, 121 belonged to specialists covering music and dance, also film, books, and television. The music critic at The Kansas City Star was told to walk after eight years of heavy duty. The critic at The Miami Herald was granted eight weeks’ severance pay (never mind that massive arts center across the street). The Los Angeles Times no longer employs a dance critic. The Village Voice in New York and the Los Angeles Weekly, have ceased coverage of “classical” music. The Seattle Times no longer employs a music critic. Even the relatively secure New York Times has found two of its venerable critics — one in music, one in dance — expendable. Time and Newsweek gave up earnest arts-coverage long ago.

There are some bleak takes on the situation:

I think the deeper and sadder point, underlying Martin Bernheimer’s comments on the loss of so many classical music, dance and theater critics, is that newspapers and magazines no longer value those arts. Why should they? Only a small minority of the public enjoys them, which automatically make those arts (ugh!) “elitist.” Classical artists generally don’t act out their dementias in public. And even if they did, they are such “unhousehold” names, they wouldn’t sell a single paper.

So, sad as it is that newspapers and magazines have cut down on serious art coverage and criticism, my guess is that going forward, their readers won’t notice the loss.

And yet, not all is lost, as the evidence shows right here in River City. Music organizations in the Bay Area, receiving less and less coverage in the print press, have come to rely on Web coverage, prominently by The San Francisco Classical Voice for the past decade. This is especially important for organizations without the advertising budget of the S.F. Symphony or S.F. Opera. Responding to the Bernheimer column about music journalism, Pocket Opera’s Donald Pippin (a veteran of fostering young operatic talent and new audiences) said:

There was a turning point in 1992 or 1993 in the history of Pocket Opera when many arts writers for newspapers were laid off. Pocket used to be reviewed by numerous papers, including the The San Francisco Chronicle. Then, the layoffs and no more reviews (except in SFCV). Reviewers are the lifeblood for small companies. They get the word out. Without them, the companies do not survive.

What makes a professional (as in, paid) nonprofit Web site possible is contributions from foundations and individuals: See Friends of SFCV.

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On Board: Who Are They?

Symphony boards are an essential, but often unsung part of the collective effort that keeps an orchestra going. As the Santa Rosa Symphony is announcing a new board president and five new board members, we take a quick look at who are the people making their valuable time and services available to the Symphony.
- The new board president is Charles J. Abbe, former president and COO of JDS Uniphase. He had been a senior executive at Raychem Corporation in Menlo Park, after a lengthy career at management consultants McKinsey & Company. In addition to serving on several public and private corporate boards, Abbe is also a board member of the Community Foundation Sonoma County. He and his wife Karen live in Healdsburg.
- SRS Board Vice President Eric Rossin and his wife Beth Weisburn moved to Sonoma County in 1995. They and their two children live in Sebastopol. Rossin was a co-founder of Alantro Communications, and served as president from its inception in 1997 until it was acquired by Texas Instruments in 2000. Currently, Rossin is advising technology startup companies.
- SRS Board Treasurer Art Matney worked for Merrill Lynch for 35 years, and held posts in several cities in the Northeast before moving, with his wife Lynda, to Santa Rosa in 1998. He was manager of the Santa Rosa Merrill Lynch office until he retired in 2002, and continues to serve on boards and committees of various civic and cultural institutions.
- SRS Board Secretary Peggy Elliott is a partner in the law firm of Anderson, Zeigler, Disharoon, Gallagher, and Gray in Santa Rosa. Since 1993, she has served as adjunct faculty for SSU Attorney Assistant Program and the Estate Planning and Gift Taxation faculty at Empire College School of Law.
- Newly appointed Santa Rosa Symphony board member James Hinton is a graduate of Stanford, a former Air Force officer, and a 1964 graduate of Boalt School of Law at UC Berkeley. He began his law practice in Santa Rosa in 1964 with the firm of Spridgen, Moskowitz, Barrett & Achor; in 1988 he established his own law partnership, now known as Hinton, Cochran, Borba, and Beckwith. After more than 33 years in civil litigation, Hinton retired from law practice in 1997. After retiring, he served the City of Santa Rosa for six years on the board of the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, has been an active member of Santa Rosa West Rotary Club.
- Robert J. Melder, originally from western Pennsylvania, developed his affection for classical music while listening to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and chamber music groups in the city. While completing his professional training and postgraduate research work at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, he met and married his wife Diane, an organist and musicologist. Dr. Melder assumed a faculty position at the Harvard Medical School and worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital for several years, teaching and conducting research in oncology, vascular biology and biomedical engineering. He subsequently joined Medtronic in 2004 as Director of Preclinical Development for the cardiovascular division.
- Irene Sohm is the 2008-2009 president of the Symphony League, a position she previously held during the 1999-2000 season. She has been a member of the Symphony’s Music Education committee since 1994 and served as chair for one year. Sohm is married to David Sohm, president of Contactual in San Carlos, and has two married daughters. She is retired now but was an elementary school music teacher for six years, and an interior designer for 15 years. Her family moved to Santa Rosa in 1992 and she joined the Symphony League and became a season subscriber that year. She sings with the Santa Rosa Symphonic Chorus, and is also a dancer.
- Jane Weller is a fourth generation Californian. She has lived in the Bay Area since childhood and began attending performances of the San Francisco Symphony when she was 8 years old. She and her husband Nelson, who is a retired investment professional, have been subscribers and supporters of the San Francisco Symphony and the Santa Rosa Symphony for many years. Weller graduated from Cal, following a family tradition started by her grandfather. A lifelong music lover and gardener, she and Nelson live in Healdsburg where they tend a vineyard on their country property.
- Roy Zajac, orchestra representative on the Board, has been the Santa Rosa Symphony’s principal clarinetist since 1998 and has served on the artistic review committee. He frequently coaches woodwinds in the youth orchestras. During the course of his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Zajac studied in Vienna with Peter Schmidle, the principal clarinetist of the Vienna Philharmonic. After completing his undergraduate degree, Zajac was selected to play with the Filharmoni del Bajio orchestra in Guanajuato, Mexico. He returned to the U.S. and earned a Master’s Degree in Music Performance at the University of Minnesota. Zajac lives in Santa Rosa, and teaches privately and at Sonoma State University. He is also a potter and has donated his pottery for auction at the Symphony’s annual fund-raising gala.
A complete list of board members is available at the Santa Rosa Symphony Web site.

Roy Zajac (clarinet), with Jerome Kuderna (piano), and Elaine Kreston (cello)

Photo by Guy Poole

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Another Opening Night for Paremski

Stern Grove’s Arboreal Threat

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Darwin and Music Journalism

On Board: Who Are They?