Every week, our writers take an in‐depth look at an artist, program or topic of interest to us. Spend some time with this week's classical music feature, or scroll through the extensive SFCV archive for insights in many music topics.
Opera throughout its first three centuries has depended on private underwriting, aristocratic and otherwise. Where before has the composer himself been the patron? And why not?
Opera throughout its first three centuries has depended on private underwriting, aristocratic and otherwise. Where before has the composer himself been the patron? And why not?
When he decided to commission a modern Mass from a quintet of contemporary composers, Joseph Jennings, director of the men's chorus Chanticleer, faced some of life's biggest questions. Jennings wanted the new Mass, ultimately titled And on Earth, Peace, to represent different views of faith and people's experiences with faith. "Many people who don't go to church have faith," he says. "I wanted us to work outside of the traditional denominational religious box."
Composer-performer Meredith Monk is a bit like a master chef who makes a career of combining seemingly outlandish ingredients, like veal and tuna, and coming up with a superb dish like vitello tonnato. Monk has been coming up with similarly inventive ideas in music, dance, acting, film, and staging since the 1960s. Outlandish combinations? Consider Monk's 1969 cantata Juice, an imposing composition for 85 solo voices, 85 Jew's harps, and two violins.
In the last few decades, classical record bins have been increasingly filled with remastered "historical recordings" of long-past performances. Listen to some of them, particularly acoustic recordings from before 1925, and you will hear performances startlingly unlike any you would hear today: erratic tempo variations, notes played off the beat, significant slowing between sections, piano chords rolled instead of played together, strings played without vibrato but with the swooping glides known as portamento, and so on.
There's an art to making an art song. Just ask Jake Heggie or Ricky Ian Gordon. Having each scored notable successes as opera composers, they'll share the bill on April 29, when Cal Performances presents "Theater in Song" at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Fabled mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and other guest singers will join them. Heggie and Gordon will preface the concert with a free talk, "The Composer's Way," at 7 p.m.
Long before he became a world-class conductor, San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas was a devotee of the music of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. Hearing him changed Thomas' views on modern classicism. "The level of energy, the precision, the sense of time, the angularity all gave the young conductor insight into the music he was performing," according to notes for The MTT Files, a joint production of the San Francisco Symphony and American Public Media.
Seinfeld fans fondly remember "Festivus," the holiday made up by George's father to get around the Christmas/Hanukkah dichotomy. In the world of music festivals, too, there is a difference between the real thing and festivals in name only.
A real summer music festival has a special place of its own — think Salzburg, Aspen, Tanglewood — and it isn't just the extension of a regular season. Only the real thing will be covered here, but, of course, you can enjoy the music either way.
It's common for people approaching middle age to suddenly pursue youth — a sports car, a new job, an affair, a face-lift. In 2003, when the world's most adventurous music ensemble, the Kronos Quartet, neared its 30th birthday, it, too, sought a dose of youthful energy, but in a much more constructive way.
Well, what do you know? Here's a cheery, feel-good story from the White House that was born in Berkeley. It's about a bunch of East Bay teenage musicians who stood tall and brought them to their feet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue last Jan. 22. They were 17 of the 85 kids from the Young Musicians Program at UC Berkeley — one of 12 arts education programs chosen from 250 nominees across the nation — to receive the 2006 Coming Up Taller Award from the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
