Like London, Vienna, and Venice in the Old World in times gone by, the San Francisco Bay Area is a treasure trove of creative music talent, as well as a favored destination for artists from elsewhere. Here’s some of what will be worth going outside classical conventions to get to, during the first half of 2011.
Huun-Huur-Tu (Tuvan Throat Singers)
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“Real music has no borders,” the manager of this group of throat singers from Tuva in Central Asia once reminded me. “They cannot prove it, but the members of Huun-Huur-Tu think that when all Tuvans were nomads, all the music was like this: very close to horse rhythms, which change all the time.” The rhythms are only one of the enchanting elements in the vocal technique called xoomei, which applies extra tension to the vocal cords, vibrates the vestibular folds, narrows sections of the airway, and manipulates the upper throat, tongue, and lips to provide resonant cavities for sustained tones and harmonics at both ends of the upper and lower ends of the vocal register. The result, accompanied by indigenous instruments, thrillingly conveys songs about love — for places, freedom, music, women, friends, and, of course, horses.
The Great American Music Hall presents Huun-Huur-Tu, Jan. 13, 8 p.m., Great American Music Hall, S.F., $26.
Arhoolie Records’ 50th Anniversary
One of the longest-lasting and most fastidious record labels devoted to American-roots music is based just across the Bay in El Cerrito, and it will be celebrating Arhoolie’s mission and its founder, 79-year-old Chris Strachwitz, with a three-day showcase of performers, in nearby Berkeley. Famous celebrants will include Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, and Country Joe McDonald, alongside the Savoy Family Band, a Cajun dynasty (who’ll return for their own gig on Feb. 8), Tex-Mex conjunto scion Santiago Jimenez Jr., and Berkeley’s own Old Timey stalwarts Suzy & Eric Thompson, among many others.
Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse presents Arhoolie Records’ 50th Anniversary Celebration, Feb. 3-5, 8 p.m., Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, $75.50-$85.50
Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas
Back in his native Scotland, Alasdair Fraser studied physics and classical violin before he decided to turn his attention to the strathspeys and other traditional melodies on which he’d been raised. Scottish folk music, he notes, had long been repressed by the ruling English, and more recently it had to play second fiddle (if you will) to the somewhat similar but wilder and widely accepted folk music of Ireland. Emigrating to California, Fraser has done much to raise awareness about his own country’s musical legacy. His collaborations with the young cellist Natalie Haas have helped illuminate the carrying over of elements between Scottish folk and classical music, dating back to the 18th century.
Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse presents Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, Feb. 11, 8 p.m., Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, Berkeley, $24.50-$26.50.
Hugh Masekela
He fell in love with jazz trumpet when still a teen, but Hugh Masekela had to forsake his native South Africa to access a musical education and opportunities not available to him and other blacks under apartheid in the 1950s. After attending the Guildhall School in London, he came to the U.S. to study at the Manhattan School of Music, and he later orchestrated for Harry Belafonte, who’d already engaged Miriam Makeba, Masekela’s first wife. In the late ’60s, unable to return to South Africa, the trumpeter, cornetist, and flugelhornist worked a township tune, Grazin’ in the Grass, into a bright, catchy international hit, launching a career that included tours and residencies in other parts of Africa, before his return to a Mandela-led South Africa in the ’90s. Masekela, who composed for the stage and film versions of the hit show Sarafina!, was a featured performer at the concert inaugurating last year’s World Cup.
SFJAZZ presents Hugh Masekela, March 4, 8 p.m., Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, S.F., $25-$60.
Randy Newman
Like several other stellar composers of film music (Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, and Andre Previn), Randy Newman studied with classical composer Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco. But an audible major influence on his own compositional and pianistic styles, as well as his singing, was Louisiana, home of his mother, Adele, while he turned for career guidance to his Uncle Alfred, head of music for 20th Century Fox. The younger Newman proved himself to be a witty songsmith and a canny arranger, with a string of quirky pop hits that preceded his idiosyncratic contributions to animated and live action movies, which continue. The lucky few who have caught him in concert have come to realize that he’s also an affecting and sometimes hilarious entertainer, not to be missed.
SFJAZZ presents Randy Newman, April 22, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, S.F., $25-$85.
Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar
Health problems resulted in the postponement of this concert from its original date last fall, but indications are that Ravi Shankar, a 90-year-old living master of the sitar, and his 29-year-old daughter and star pupil, Anoushka Shankar, are ready to resume their roles in sustaining Western exposure to North Indian classical music, which the elder Shankar helped export to the U.S. six decades ago. Since then, Raviji (his honorific name) has influenced rock, jazz, and Western classical musics, while Anoushka has done several contemporary cross-genre collaborations. In concert, exchanging and soloing, father and daughter appear both virtuosically linked and delightfully different, to those new to as well as those familiar with the centuries-old scales and structure of ragas. Even in a spacious venue like Davies Symphony Hall, the excitement will be irresistible.
SFJAZZ presents Ravi Shankar, May 19, 7:30 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, S.F., $35-$95.
A Night in Treme
In case you haven’t picked it up from the fictional drama series bearing its name on HBO, Treme (pronounced “Tre-MAY”) is one of the oldest and most down-home neighborhoods in New Orleans. The TV show accurately reflects the struggle of Treme against poverty and decrepitude, aggravated by Hurricane Katrina, as well as the fantastic variety of traditional and contemporary musics that fill homes, clubs, and restaurants and spill out onto the streets. Those sounds come to Davies Symphony Hall with the horns and percussion of the Rebirth Brass Band, which has seasoned the so-called “second line” marching tradition with rock, funk, and hip-hop ingredients. Rejoining the Band is its irrepressible former trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, whose good-natured, good-time approach to recording and performing sparks memories of Louis Armstrong. Sharing the stage will be veteran clarinetist Dr. Michael White, trombonist Big Sam Williams, and saxophonist and Mardi Gras “Indian chief” Donald Harrison Jr., among others. Those with close-in seats or binoculars will recognize many faces from the HBO series.
SFJAZZ presents A Night in Treme, June 10, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, S.F., $20-$65.
Ana Moura
That Prince reportedly showed up backstage during her appearance with SFJAZZ last year suggests the appeal of Ana Moura, a young Portuguese singer, and of fado, the song form that her country had embraced for a couple of hundred years, with much older harmonic roots in the Middle East. Although her smoky, sensual voice rather resembles that of the late Amália Rodrigues, the last century’s most renowned fadista, Moura draws on sources outside fado, and she was invited on stage during the Rolling Stones’ 2007 stopover in Lisbon, to duet with Mick Jagger on No Expectations. In her own element, accompanied by guitars and mandolins, she lovingly conveys fado’s heady mix of sorrow and joy: a Moorish equivalent of the blues.
SFJAZZ presents Ana Moura, June 25, 8p.m., Herbst Theatre, $25-$65.