Jeff Dunn

Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. in geologic education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member of the National Association of Composers, USA, a former president of Composers, Inc., and has served on the Board of New Music Bay Area. 

Articles By This Author

gubaidulina_sofia_wide.jpg
Review

Turnabout’s Unfair Play

Jeff Dunn - February 17, 2009

Two works on last Wednesday’s San Francisco Symphony program; two different conductors with the same name. Kurt Masur 1 nicely portrayed the manifold strengths of Sofia Gubaidulina’s composition The Light of the End, which he premiered with the Boston Symphony in 2003. Then Kurt Masur 2 came out after intermission and cruelly exposed all the flaws of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No.

CMASH_wide.jpg
Review

CMASH Shows Promise

Jeff Dunn - January 27, 2009

You know a new group is serious about what it does when its concert program includes a mission statement, a vision statement, and five "beliefs." The "new-music repertory group" and acronym called CMASH (Chamber Music Art-Song Hybrid, pronounced "smash") hit the boards of the San Francisco Conservatory's recital hall Saturday with five song cycles and an Ave Maria by six composers, including Jake Heggie, the late John Thow, and four CMASH composers.

groverscorners2_wide.jpg
Review

Pictures at a Concert

Jeff Dunn - January 13, 2009
Images filled my head, thanks to the provocative content and sterling performances that characterized Friday's San Francisco Symphony concert. It began with Aaron Copland's extract of music for the 1940 film Our Town, based on Thornton Wilder's famous play about the timeless verities of small-town life in "Grover's Corners" (actually, Peterborough), New Hampshire.

No Double Whammy

Jeff Dunn - December 16, 2008
Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power. — Marcel Marceau, 1987
A composer may write fabulous music, but a weak libretto can kill it as an opera. — Jake Heggie, 2008
Every composer dreams of writing fabulous music to the perfect, dramatic libretto.

Labor of Love

Jeff Dunn - December 9, 2008
Many times people have asked me, shaking their heads: “How can anyone like that [dissonant, earsplitting, academic, boring, pointless, random — pick your adjective] modern music?” But the fact is, incredible as it may seem to some traditional classical music fans, many people do, as evidenced by the crowd filling the risers to near capacity in the Yerba Center for the Arts Forum Monday evening. Th
Nikolaj Znaider
Review

Dr. Brahms, Meet Mr. Nielsen

Jeff Dunn - December 5, 2008

The San Francisco Symphony program was simple and twain: just two works from the same Late Romantic era, divided by an intermission — works as different as Jekyll and Hyde.

nesmith.danielle_wide.jpg
Review

Maestro of Disguise

Jeff Dunn - November 25, 2008
Halloween has long gone, but Berkeley Symphony music director candidate Paul Haas arrived wearing a disguise Thursday night at Zellerbach Auditorium: that of a competent, careful, and traditional wandsman with barely enough energy befitting his relative youth (37).
bell.joshua2_wide.jpg
Review

Challenge Fest

Jeff Dunn - October 28, 2008
On Thursday, guest conductor Fabio Luisi brought a program to the San Francisco Symphony season that challenged performers and listeners alike. First he conducted Richard Strauss' multifaceted tone poem Don Juan, demanding a tempo in the faster portions as high as this month's Investor Panic index. Could the orchestra hold on?
ax.emmanuel2_wide.jpg
Review

Adventures in Programming

Jeff Dunn - October 14, 2008

If an often-played masterpiece is a warhorse, what is its opposite? I had just written about the benefits of unusual programming in the pastures of Arizona when, lo and behold, not one but three peacehorses galloped into the San Francisco Symphony’s Davies Hall, two of them bridled by überpianist Emanuel Ax, and a third paraded magnificently by guest conductor Peter Oundjian.

Mission: Unusual

Jeff Dunn - September 23, 2008
Is it like this for you? You go to the market. A Whitney Houston clone is on the Muzak — again. You want to scream. Do you feel the same way when you go to the symphony and discover Brahms' Second, Dvořák's "New World," or Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto on the program? If so, there's hope for you — if you move to north Phoenix.