Previews
Each week, SFCV looks behind the scenes to give you a sneak peak of what's coming up on stages around the Bay Area...so you can learn about concerts before they happen.
Volti’s motto is “Singing without a net,” and the San Francisco-based vocal ensemble led by Music Director Robert Geary does indeed stay on the forefront of contemporary choral music.
Currently in its 30th anniversary season, the group returns in May with a far-reaching program featuring premieres by Donald Crockett and Robert Paterson, along with contemporary choral works by Kirke Mechem, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Sungji Hong.
Of particular interest is Crockett’s Daglarym/My Mountains. Composed on commission from Volti, with texts by Katherine Vincent, the set of five movements is inspired by the folk music traditions of Tuva. Geary praises the beauties of the score, calling it “evocative of sweeping landscapes and a pastoral and meditative existence.”
Paterson’s On the Day the World Ends (another Volti commission) is a cycle of three pieces incorporating poetry by Czeslaw Miosz, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Mary Elizabeth Frye. Also included are Mechem’s Three Madrigals, a setting of texts by the composer’s father, poet and author Kirke F. Mechem, and Kernis’ Ecstatic Meditations, which incorporates writings by 13th-century mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg. Hong’s Emendemus in melius completes the program.
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Well-known Bay Area cellist Bonnie Hampton’s relationship with the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra goes back to the time when she was a principal with the orchestra, and played a concerto with them. And, in fact, the group was founded 74 years ago at the suggestion of her mother, Clarabelle Bell.
For the group’s spring concert, their honored alumna returns to play Ernest Bloch’s powerful “Rhapsody on Hebraic Themes” Schelomo with them. David Ramadanoff, who has helmed the orchestra for the past 20 years, also conducts Jim Beckel’s Musica Mobilis and a suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. The concert is preceded by a silent auction at 6:30 p.m.
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The San Francisco Symphony and the Symphony Chorus contribute to the year’s Handel festivities with performances of three of the composer’s Coronation Anthems for King George II, and the Dettingen Te Deum. Both the anthems and the Te Deum (which commemorates a British military victory) are celebratory in the grand sense.
The Te Deum, especially, is festooned with a riot of instrumental color and moods that swing wildly from the bristling, martial opening, to the gentler chorus that follows and the more introspective “When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man.” Rarely has a royal family been so well-served by its official composer.
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The last of the season’s San Francisco Performances-sponsored “Salons at the Rex” features the Cypress Quartet’s cellist, Jennifer Kloetzel, accompanied by Lara Downes on piano. The Salons are a wonderful, interactive musical experience.
They are short concerts, in an intimate setting ideal for chamber music. The atmosphere is informal and musicians may talk about the selections they perform, and sometimes about themselves as well.
Both Kloetzel and Downes share wide-ranging musical interests, so there may be some delightful surprises in store for the lucky audience.
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Chief among the attractions of the forthcoming concert, which will be held in the glorious acoustic of the Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco, is the U.S. premiere of contemporary Lithuanian composer Vytautas Miškinis’ 10-movement Magnificat for men’s chorus and organ. Born in 1954, Miškinis is artistic director of the Azuoliukas Boys’ and Men Choir, professor of choral conducting at the Lithuanian Academy of Music, and president of the Lithuanian Choral Union. Although recordings of his music are hard to come by, we are assured by long-time chorus member LaMont Ridgell that his Magnificat is “very melodic.” When the GGMC sang Miškinis’ Te Lucis at the Association of Gay and Lesbian Choruses Convention last summer, they received a standing ovation. While composers Hugo Wolf and Felix Mendelssohn are household names to the initiated, few know either Wolf’s Six Spiritual Songs on poems by Joseph von Eichendorff or Mendelssohn’s four movement sacred cantata for men’s chorus, Es Werde Licht. A diligent search on iTunes reveal 30-second clips of the Wolf, performed in SATB form, which are as warm and lovely as can be. In this performance, rearranged for male voices, Jerome Lenk will play the basilica’s Allen organ.
Jennings has also chosen even more obscure repertoire for the concert, including Dixit Dominus Domino Meo by Lajos Bárdos and two works that take full advantage of Mission Dolores’ antiphonal, “surround sound” capacity, Salve Regina by Renaissance composer Andreas Hakenberger, and Amen by living composer Dan Forrest. Rounding out the program is the “hauntingly beautiful” Milost Mira (A Mercy of Peace) by Soviet composer Nikolai Golovanov.
The 50-member all-male GGMC, originally known as the Dick Kramer Gay Men’s Chorale when gay chorus pioneer Kramer founded it in 1982, attempts to reflect the ethnic and social diversity of San Francisco. Jennings has promoted such a high degree of musical proficiency among its members that the GGMC frequently tackles challenging repertoire that other community choruses tend to avoid. This is a great opportunity to discover wonderful music rarely performed in this country.
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traditional Mother’s Day whitewater rafting trip, or the traditional Mother’s Day Spam-sandwich-dinner-cooked-by-your-5-year-old. For those who would celebrate the holiday by taking mom to a concert there is an option courtesy of Chamber Music San Francisco. As part of its newly expanded activities, CMSF has asked prominent Bay Area early music musicians to present a program of Bach and Vivaldi. These heavy hitters (Judith Linsenberg and Kit Higginson on recorders; Kati Kyme, Cynthia Freivogel, Cynthia Roberts, David Daniel Bowes, Tanya Tomkins, Farley Pearce, strings; and Katherine Heater, harpsichord) may not be household names, but they’re all top-rank professionals playing on period instruments. And since most of them are members of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the American Bach Soloists, they play together a fair bit.
There’s a reason Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are among his best-loved pieces — they’re great entertainment as well as great music. All of these players have the early music knowledge to make the Brandenburgs dance (Nos. 4 and 5 are on the program). And Linsenberg has been putting virtuosic zing into Vivaldi’s Concerto in C Minor (RV 441) for some time. You can hear her on Fire 
Beneath My Fingers and a number of other CDs released by Musica Pacifica, the group she cofounded.
Kyme was an original member of both PBO and ABS, and has performed in orchestras worldwide, including the premiere performance of Shaker Loops at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, back in 1979. She’s also a member of the New Esterházy Quartet, which has just released another recording in its series of Haydn string quartets, The Fabulous Fifties.
Tomkins is as renowned a soloist as an orchestra member, and her performance of the Bach Cello Suites was a highlight of this past season. She’s also one of the more physically expressive players you’ll see, so she’s great to watch as well as hear.
The Frances Gould Theatre at the San Francisco Legion of Honor is the perfect place to go see a concert. You’re up close and the sound is better than in most of the auditoriums where you typically get to hear these players. And the musicians are exciting to watch, too, as anyone was has attended a Philharmonia Baroque or ABS concert can aver. So no matter how you’ve planned to fete Mom, a little live music can only make it better.
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From May 14 through May 19, the New Century Chamber Orchestra will perform its final program of the season, titled "Shadows and Light." The conductorless string orchestra, led by one of the world’s most preeminent violinists, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, will be performing in Berkeley, Palo Alto, Marin, and San Francisco. I caught up with her to chat about the program and the orchestra as well as find out more about what makes her tick.
The pleasures and horrors of night follow upon one another when the New Century Chamber Orchestra opens its program with Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and follows it immediately with music from Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho.
If you die and go to heaven, you could next do worse than listen later in the program to the passionate violinist/conductor Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg play a world premiere by the melodic Brazilian composer Clarice Assad. Also featured is music by Alexander Borodin and Johann Strauss Jr.
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“Made in the U.S.A.” is the title of Mission Chamber Orchestra’s concert of American music of a decidedly romantic and audience-friendly bent, much of it by living composers. The program features premieres of works by Allen Cohen and Nancy Bloomer Deussen, a marimba concerto by Kevin Puts (with Lisa Pegher as soloist), and an Homage to George Gershwin by Sondra Clark.
Deussen and Clark are both mid-Peninsula residents, and Puts has also been heard much locally. Two deceased composers are also on the program: the Spanish immigrant Carlos Surinach, and the Boston classicist Arthur Foote. Emily Ray conducts.
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Volti’s motto is “Singing without a net,” and the San Francisco–based vocal ensemble, led by Music Director Robert Geary, does indeed stay on the forefront of contemporary choral music. Currently in its 30th-anniversary season, the group returns in May with a far-reaching program featuring world premieres by Donald Crockett and Robert Paterson, along with contemporary choral works by Kirke Mechem, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Sungji Hong. Of particular interest is Crockett’s Daglarym/My Mountains. Composed on commission from Volti, with texts by Katherine Vincent, the set of five movements is inspired by the folk music traditions of Tuva. Geary praises the beauties of the score, calling it “evocative of sweeping landscapes and a pastoral and meditative existence.”
Paterson’s On the Day the World Ends (another Volti commission) is a cycle of three pieces incorporating poetry by Czeslaw Milosz, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Mary Elizabeth Frye. Also included are Mechem’s Three Madrigals, a setting of texts by the composer’s father, the poet and author Kirke F. Mechem, and Kernis’ Ecstatic Meditations, which incorporates writings by a 13th-century mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg. Hong’s Emendemus in melius completes the program. Performances are at 8 p.m. on May 15 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley and May 16 at St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco; and at 4 p.m. on May 17 at All Saints’ Church, Palo Alto.
This weekend, meanwhile, audiences can hear a program celebrating the culmination of Volti’s acclaimed high school outreach program. On May 2 at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church, the ensemble’s Choral Institute Concert will bring together the combined choirs of the Acalanes High School Chamber Singers, the Head-Royce School Colla Voce, and Piedmont Choirs Ecco with the Jubilate Orchestra in a performance of J.S. Bach’s Jesu, Meine Freude. Geary conducts. Each choir will also perform separately, in repertoire ranging from Claudio Monteverdi to Imogen Heap. The music starts at 8 p.m.
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