tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-113803452024-03-17T12:16:43.856-07:00Civic CenterSan Francisco as seen through the Civic Center neighborhood: its politics, arts and people.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.comBlogger2816125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-46945982932866857472024-03-17T10:48:00.000-07:002024-03-17T10:48:42.952-07:00A Midsummer NIght's Dream at the SF Ballet<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQSzvUDNqaPU7i5F0l7LKpUwLGol08g88p8eVxgawXSRH_I6rBhnJ8ZQxrbwsiqYcC1g5BxRxPI14NPwYWZdUYIKmKGcF3iwwkGVO6TTdwaeyez6C1fV12RcooYb0cKKlCGL5pX40gO16-ofb8XEK4t84PTwxJxkWpI9StGOzDkX0TJfe_gdC/s1600/24031219.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQSzvUDNqaPU7i5F0l7LKpUwLGol08g88p8eVxgawXSRH_I6rBhnJ8ZQxrbwsiqYcC1g5BxRxPI14NPwYWZdUYIKmKGcF3iwwkGVO6TTdwaeyez6C1fV12RcooYb0cKKlCGL5pX40gO16-ofb8XEK4t84PTwxJxkWpI9StGOzDkX0TJfe_gdC/s1600/24031219.jpg"/></a></div>
The San Francisco Ballet is currently presenting George Balanchine's 1962 dance version of Shakespeare's <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i> in a lavish production borrowed from the Paris Opera Ballet. It was designed by Christian Lacroix using a reported one million Swarovski crystals, and my mind kept jumping to "It's Lacroix sweetie, Lacroix!" from the British comedy <i>Absolutely Fabulous</i>. Using a mixture of Mendelssohn's incidental music to the play along with additional pieces by the composer, Balanchine crafted a clever condensation of the entire theatrical work into an hour-long story ballet. Pictured above in production photos by Lindsay Thomas are Esteban Hernández as Oberon, King of the Fairies and Sasha de Sola as Titania, Queen of the Fairies just as war is breaking out between them and their followers over who gets to have a new pretty boy in their retinue.
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Two years before Balanchine, the English composer Benjamin Britten wrote an operatic version of <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i> that is one of my all-time favorite operas. Like Balanchine, Britten and his collaborator Peter Pears jettisoned the first act of the play and plunged us directly into the forest for a night of misalliances, confusion, and magic gone awry in Fairyland. The chorus in the opera is written for boy sopranos and in the ballet there is a large contingent of fairies danced by young girls. They were skillfully enchanting at the ballet's opening night last Tuesday, and sported the most colorful Lacroix costumes of the evening.
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The queer subtext in Shakespeare's play is present throughout the Britten opera, but not so much in the Balanchine adaptation, though Oberon and Titania never do dance together. Titania instead has a long duet with her "Cavalier," danced superbly by Aaron Robison, while Oberon spends most of his time with the young trickster Puck, in an athletically amusing performance by Cavan Conley.
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The confusing who's-in-love-with-who quartet of Helena, Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius was more clearly delineated than usual as Puck keeps putting love potions into the wrong pair of eyeballs. (Pictured above are Elizabeth Mateer as Helena and Steven Morse as Demetrius.)
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The heart of the play is the sweetly grotesque pairing of Titania and the low tradesman Bottom, whose head has been turned into a donkey. Alexis Francisco Valdes as Bottom was completely darling as a half-donkey being taught how to dance by Titania, Queen of the Fairies.
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Near the end of the first act, Nikisha Fogo made a welcome appearance as Hipollyta, Queen of the Amazons, leaping through the air as if she could conquer the world.
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In the second act, the ballet dispensed with the story altogether and reverted back to what I think of as Balanchine architectural abstraction.
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Though I missed the Pyramus and Thisbe lampoon of tragic theater turned into comedy by amateur actors, Balanchine abstraction is always welcome. The act was highlighted by Isaac Hernández and Frances in a long Divertissement, with some of my favorite dancing of the evening.
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The ballet has four more performances this week. <a href="https://www.sfballet.org/productions/a-midsummer-nights-dream/">Click here to check out the details</a>.
Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-56680133424355525852024-03-12T11:59:00.000-07:002024-03-12T11:59:01.691-07:00Zanele Muholi Retrospective at SFMOMA<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglXwz4vySfW5yAnCZA47715E13COQrdLxuA0HQgqekBKNGXJAEcFhUv9zFRnstJb2JCdXu7oBpI9JxmEASt1nBlUFb8hnGo4PNbdf4pemkzK8uiRF61aaSUxi6u0D8JzSkyp1rYcsEhksLR6UfZTPd3PYAUgn6aCFBCHts60i5prLcAdSWBJlp/s1600/24021311.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglXwz4vySfW5yAnCZA47715E13COQrdLxuA0HQgqekBKNGXJAEcFhUv9zFRnstJb2JCdXu7oBpI9JxmEASt1nBlUFb8hnGo4PNbdf4pemkzK8uiRF61aaSUxi6u0D8JzSkyp1rYcsEhksLR6UfZTPd3PYAUgn6aCFBCHts60i5prLcAdSWBJlp/s1600/24021311.jpg"/></a></div>
On the third floor at SFMOMA, a retrospective of South African activist artist Zanele Muholi recently opened.
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Muholi began their 30-year career with photos of black lesbians in various photo series that range from trauma victims...
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...to tender lovers.
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Muholi has also created documentaries about the black transgender world in South Africa, and a few are included in the exhibit.
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Muholi's latest work is a riff on Cindy Sherman, with dozens of theatrical self-portraits of the artist in photos, sculpture and paintings.
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The exhibit is fascinating and will be at SFMOMA through the summer.
Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-57215119825965730292024-03-08T14:53:00.000-08:002024-03-08T14:53:30.515-08:00Stephen Hough and the Castalian Quartet<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBRt3pcgcgIU6zS5CvLM_W-gU2wSBJih9V-tOHN7OE2D2u_hr5O87J2ihD_zL53x7cY4r6Q70mMqLUejbiJ5ly-unim6t335qAkoc992C35tQykoD4unAcpku1LPG-ss4HGrjobMfx7hgxCo0djD7BbE4IaztRVd5WRW4zquxNLoCZt_k3_IWY/s1600/24030511.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBRt3pcgcgIU6zS5CvLM_W-gU2wSBJih9V-tOHN7OE2D2u_hr5O87J2ihD_zL53x7cY4r6Q70mMqLUejbiJ5ly-unim6t335qAkoc992C35tQykoD4unAcpku1LPG-ss4HGrjobMfx7hgxCo0djD7BbE4IaztRVd5WRW4zquxNLoCZt_k3_IWY/s1600/24030511.jpg"/></a></div>
The invaluable <a href="https://sfperformances.org/" target="_blank">San Francisco Performances</a> presented British pianist/composer/writer/polymath Stephen Hough with the London-based Castalian Quartet on Tuesday at Herbst Theater. It was a weirdly disappointing concert. <i>(Pictured are Hough and cellist Steffan Morris.)</i>
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Originally scheduled for separate concerts last November, Hough and the London-based string quartet both had to cancel and they somehow decided to join forces for a short tour of California and New York. The program was similar to the last time I saw Hough when he joined the Takács Quartet in Berkeley (<a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2022/02/stephen-hough-and-takacs-quartet.html">click here</a>). Two years ago, the performance started with a Haydn string quartet, followed by the world premiere of Hough's own <i>String Quartet #1</i>, and finished with Dvorak's <i>Piano Quintet No. 2</i>. Tuesday's performance started with a Haydn string quartet (<i>F Minor, Opus 20, No. 5</i>), followed by Hough's <i>String Quartet #1</i> again, and finished with Brahms's <i>Piano Quintet in F Minor, Opus 34</i>.
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The big problem in Tuesday's performance was that the first violinist was having intonation problems all evening, and the occasional sour notes were impossible to hide in Haydn's transparent music. It was nice to experience Hough's string quartet again, and the neo-Poulenc set of six French souvenirs holds up well on a second hearing.
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Hough joined the quartet for the Brahms piano quintet, and his impeccable musicianship seemed on a different wavelength than the quartet who opted for aggressiveness rather than a pretty sound. By the final movement, Hough seemed to give up and just join the fray, pounding his poor instrument in a way I've never seen from him before.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-19805996856187851982024-03-04T16:12:00.000-08:002024-03-09T22:56:19.768-08:00Synesthesia, Scents and Singing at the SF Symphony<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5Qnj8IZwy8oVyIenjylVtjGnC7NHyvWXswBB0VaSk3d-VVt9Q7fneDkzgrv3obX9_Xef2_QjCTABIYFmzDHbKrF7M9yvb104aXYY3nId8AmAUV6y4Wjy9fM09CsfMhEx_Ay3DDzpIR_n3hPY9RqqiePsk5tApPLCyDNIH-YNAwdpIQ3lNSWl/s1600/24030260.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5Qnj8IZwy8oVyIenjylVtjGnC7NHyvWXswBB0VaSk3d-VVt9Q7fneDkzgrv3obX9_Xef2_QjCTABIYFmzDHbKrF7M9yvb104aXYY3nId8AmAUV6y4Wjy9fM09CsfMhEx_Ay3DDzpIR_n3hPY9RqqiePsk5tApPLCyDNIH-YNAwdpIQ3lNSWl/s1600/24030260.jpg"/></a></div>
The San Francisco Symphony just hosted a wildly theatrical weekend with Scriabin's 1911 <i>Prometheus, The Poem of Fire</i>. The performance included a "color organ" that shifted hues according to directions from the synesthesic composer and "scent cannons" to bathe the hall in three different scents upon musical cues.
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The "scent cannons" were an invention by the luxury goods company Cartier which used the occasion for a huge branding exercise.
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Reactions from friends in Davies Hall ranged from puzzled ("the scents were, well, underwhelming") to dismissive ("It feels like a William Castle gimmick from the 1960s") to delighted ("When the scent cannons shot their smoke rings across the hall I squealed like a little kid"). I agreed with all of them.
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The twenty-minute musical piece itself was fun, a throw everything but the kitchen sink orchestral extravaganza, with a piano concerto wedged into it along with a huge chorus singing for about 90 seconds in the final minutes.
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Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted and Jean-Yves Thibaudet was the forceful, fabulous piano soloist whose shiny outfit made him look a bit like Barry Manilow.
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As an overwhelming, cosmic experience like Scriaban envisioned, it fell short, but the attempt was delightful. Pictured above are Luke Kritzeck, lighting designer; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Mathilde Laurent, Cartier perfumer; and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, pianist.
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After intermission, with slightly foggy scented air hanging over the stage, Salonen led the orchestra in Bela Bartok's 1911 one-act opera, <i>Duke Bluebeard's Castle</i>. This is another maximalist work for a huge orchestra that is fronted by the singers playing the serial killer Duke Bluebeard and his latest wife/victim, Judith. She insists on seeing all the locked doors in her new husband's gloomy castle until she's entombed with three previous brides in Door Number Seven.
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It's a dour tale, redeemed by a magnificent musical score. Baritone Gerald Finley felt a bit miscast as Bluebeard with a voice too light and pretty for the role. Breezy Leigh (center) started the work off with a spoken prologue. Mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung has made the role of Judith her own over the last couple of decades, recording it twice, including one with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. She looked and sounded great although there was a bit too much smiling for a character who sees blood embellishing all her husband's secret treasures.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-76088919633748112032024-02-27T15:18:00.000-08:002024-02-28T16:03:22.598-08:00Taylor Mac's Bark of Millions at Cal Performances<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIN_cznw0JvXMru64vp1NsHV7oeZa2fLXx1y-_4IgCZN78A7DTMt3FU1FMXgi1-nSruyZR3YNfgpkYtLZJ2msPFsmjwTrVCUITHgLB5XoxOXdgmWmNS93ha1Na_ZMWmQAdTjWybIMwnMQP8KLZ4cUfxwi0-nR-Hdq00hbVhuTVI62LziwQQ7I/s1600/24022399.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="929" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIN_cznw0JvXMru64vp1NsHV7oeZa2fLXx1y-_4IgCZN78A7DTMt3FU1FMXgi1-nSruyZR3YNfgpkYtLZJ2msPFsmjwTrVCUITHgLB5XoxOXdgmWmNS93ha1Na_ZMWmQAdTjWybIMwnMQP8KLZ4cUfxwi0-nR-Hdq00hbVhuTVI62LziwQQ7I/s1600/24022399.jpg"/></a></div>
<i>Bark of Millions</i>, a four-and-a-half hour, intermissionless, queer rock opera with lyrics by Taylor Mac and music by Matt Ray moved into UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall last weekend for three marathon performances, and it was a pleasurable privilege to experience the extravagant work.
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I only stayed for three hours at Friday's opening night because of worry about missing the last BART train back to San Francisco, and sensory exhaustion from the succession of new music and abstract, often incomprehensible lyrics.
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With the assistance of Louisa Spier, Cal Performance's PR person extraordinare, I returned for the whole shebang on Sunday afternoon, and was completely won over. It helped that Friday's visit had lodged quite a few of Matt Ray's catchy tunes in my brain and the audience was more awake and involved in the show on Sunday.
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<a href="https://taylormac.org/" target="_blank">Taylor Mac</a> (center, standing) is a California boy who went to New York to be an actor, and after 30 years is an overnight, internationally successful "theatrical artist." And a very busy one too. After this weekend, Mac will be starring as Orlando in a new play by Sarah Ruhl at the Signature Theater in New York in April, and wrote the book for a new musical version of <i>Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil</i> which is premiering at Chicago's Goodman Theater this summer. Global fame came with the 2016 marathon: <i>A 24-Decade History of Popular Music</i>, which unspooled continuously for 24 straight hours, decade by decade. HBO/Max just started showing a documentary about the show which has expanded Taylor Mac's fan base exponentially.
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Theatrical productions backstage tend to become extended families, with varying degrees of functionality and dysfunctionality that mirror the biological ones. Throw in sleep deprivation, a shared endurance experience, and moments of transcendent joy, and they can easily become cultlike. In the program notes, Taylor Mac writes, "Here's something that terrifies me about the work (and also makes me laugh): there's an unintentional cult-like...motif? It's something that happens when you get a bunch of queers on a stage and have them harmonize. They seem like a cult."
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This show is partly a byproduct of the pandemic, as Taylor Mac would send lyrics inspired by a historical queer person or mythical god/dess to musical composing partner Matt Ray until they had completed 55 separate songs, one for every year since the Stonewall riots in 1969. The lyrics are not hagiography ("some are real assholes," Taylor notes) but a jumping off place for thoughtful, sometimes abstract songs. (Pictured above are Taylor Mac, Wes Olivier, and El Beh singing <i>Sylvia Rivera</i>.)
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For me, the most astonishing surprise of the show was the depth and greatness of the omniverous, eclectic mix of music composed by <a href="https://www.mattray.nyc/about/" target="_blank">Matt Ray</a>, who is pictured above singing <i>Felix Yusupov</i>. The score is comparable to Galt MacDermot's <i>Hair</i>, with its mixture of hard rock, Broadway, soul, gospel, ballads, jazz and more. Both Ray and MacDermot were educated and performed in jazz ensembles, and their skillful playfulness with many kinds of musical styles is a form of genius. The problem with <i>Hair</i> was always its threadbare book but <i>Bark of Millions</i> dodges that problem by not having a book at all.
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Led by Matt Ray on piano, the band assembled for <i>Bark of Millions</i> is a knockout, and they gamely joined in the physical shenanigans of the singers and dancers for a few numbers. They are so good they deserve to be singled out: Bernice “Boom Boom” Brooks, drums; Viva DeConcini, guitars; Ari Folman-Cohen, bass; Greg Glassman, trumpet; Jessica Ivry, cello; Dana Lyn, violin; Joel Mateo Ramos, percussion; and Lisa “Paz” Parrott, woodwinds.
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The extraordinary ensemble of about a dozen singers and dancers made for a stunning chorus, sometimes accompanying their fellow players as background singers and other times taking the lead as a group. Individually, they were all given their solo moments to shine in the sun, like Stephen Quinn above singing about <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=jack+bee+garland&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS942US942&oq=Jack+Bee+G&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyBwgBEC4YgAQyBggCEEUYQDIGCAMQRRg5Mg8IBBAuGAoYrwEYxwEYgAQyDwgFEC4YChivARjHARiABDIJCAYQABgKGIAEMgkIBxAAGAoYgASoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" target="_blank">San Francisco's 19th century trans-man, Jack Bee Garland.</a>
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The costume designer Machine Dazzle started off as a young queer refugee from darkest Idaho escaping to New York where he designed outrageous outfits for himself and fellow club kids. This led to designing outfits for theater where he has becoming something of a legend for his maximalist costumes for Taylor Mac over the last couple of decades. He even gets to join this show onstage for the entire duration, where he seemed to be having a blast. (Pictured above is the amusing <i>Herman Melville</i> where the <i>Moby Dick</i> author is spurned in love by Nathaniel Hawthorne.)
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The elaborate costumes and wigs started to come off in the last hour of the show, with about half the cast nearly naked by the end. The <i>Oscar Wilde</i> number was an orgiastic finale complete with audience standing ovations for each individual performer. However, it wasn't quite over. In what felt like a bit of post-coital tenderness, Taylor Mac and Matt Ray led the ensemble in a quiet song called <i>You & Me</i> in an explicit gesture towards inclusion in this queer theatrical cult. If you can catch a live performance somewhere in the world in the next couple of years, do it. (Pictured are Taylor Mac and Steffanie Christi’an performing the really lovely song, <i>The Ladies of Llangollen</i>.)Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-37110181150857766362024-02-18T10:22:00.000-08:002024-02-18T12:12:09.968-08:00British Icons at the SF Ballet<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CdvPeKIlamICyTieSYuL-tdWxpYKO0zSqhAS4xJU9Jrwgw9WJdShCjmtodmjMVCzYu3whA5adz6PQzPZ1F8c8MJu028NgSy9vCyTEuu0zjBvhxBj_6CQoxR5wMNAk8CAxxuyoykG4yLuYaw8E_PgPBR9jIDqCDmEfbkNFo0XQUOijfhiHgpq/s1600/24021640.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CdvPeKIlamICyTieSYuL-tdWxpYKO0zSqhAS4xJU9Jrwgw9WJdShCjmtodmjMVCzYu3whA5adz6PQzPZ1F8c8MJu028NgSy9vCyTEuu0zjBvhxBj_6CQoxR5wMNAk8CAxxuyoykG4yLuYaw8E_PgPBR9jIDqCDmEfbkNFo0XQUOijfhiHgpq/s1600/24021640.jpg"/></a></div>
Everything was beautiful at the San Francisco Ballet last week when they presented their second program of the season, <i>British Icons</i>.
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They were presenting two ballets from the early 1960s by a pair of British choreographers, Sir Kenneth MacMillan and Sir Frederick Ashton, whose work has been more known through reputation than actually seen in San Francisco. The gentleman above was attending the show for the second night in a row because he was so enamored of the hour-long Mahler song cycle, <i>Das Lied von der Erde</i>, which forms the score for MacMillan's <i>Song of the Earth</i>.
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The woman above had seen the ballet 40 years ago performed by the Royal Ballet and had flown to San Francisco from Southern California just to revisit it.
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The song cycle is one of Mahler's last works, with a tenor and an alto singing alternate movements depicting drunken revelry and pastoral joys before leaving the world through death in the long, final <i>Abschied</i> movement . The texts were loosely based on Chinese poetry translated by German writers, with the music and the choreography occasionally gesturing toward the Eastern pentatonic scale. The hour-long score is almost unrelievedly dark, and Mahler supposedly confessed to conductor Bruno Walter, when hesitating about putting the piece before the public, "Won't people go home and shoot themselves?" <i>(All production photos are by Lindsey Rallo.)</i>
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Although most of the ballet was abstract, there was a slender narrative involving a male protagonist being gently stalked by Death and taken away from his female counterpart. <i>(Pictured above are Isaac Hernández, Wei Wang, and Wona Park from opening night. We saw the final performance where Joseph Walsh and Esteban Hernández assumed the two male leads.)</i>
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The dancing and the choreography were consistently fascinating but the real thrill for me was hearing the music played so well by the SF Ballet Orchestra under conductor Martin West, and the two wonderful young singers, Gabrielle Beteag and Moisés Salazar, whose voices easily soared over the huge orchestra. Beteag (above) in particular was extraordinary, filling the huge opera house with creamy, impassioned sound.
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The second ballet, <i>Marguerite and Armand</i>, was created by Ashton for the pairing of Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn at the Royal Ballet, <a href="margot%20fonteyn%20and%20rudolf%20nureyev%20youtube%20marguerite%20and%20armand" target="_blank">and from this short YouTube clip,</a> it's easy to see why it was a sensation. Coming after <i>Song of the Earth</i>, however, this condensed version of the Camille story that's the basis of the opera <i>La Traviata</i> felt a bit silly and trivial. It probably should have opened the evening rather than ended it.
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The music was fun, though, an orchestration of Franz Liszt's 1853 piano sonata in b-minor, played with verve by Britton Day (above).
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The new Artistic Director of the company, Tamara Rojo, appeared onstage at the final curtain call, microphone in hand. We were wondering if she was going to say something about the recently revealed $60 million anonymous donation by a longtime patron of the ballet who was thrilled by the new energy and direction that Rojo is bringing to the company. Instead, she was there to announce the elevation of a Soloist to Principal Dancer, something I have never seen done onstage before.
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The announcement seemed to come as a total surprise for Jasmine Jimison, who had just danced the role of Marguerite with partner Isaac Hernández as Armand. <i>(Both are pictured above with conductor Martin West.)</i> It was a lovely moment for the ballerina and the audience besides.
Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-26632073844954932142024-02-14T15:18:00.000-08:002024-02-14T15:18:09.731-08:00Wolfgang Tillmans Retrospective at SFMOMA<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGXJIIURYeJ5MM0yzH0cK6QuPeytscqObpKV3ZHb69caa6VM0N31nAbl_WvnRmbgf2vrWa1WPgT-TRZtLYerf8g0W5BnI8BajTA-IwNjXFmMtZ3ib0BrqqQEYN1mmcrhRTH9yEvKcTgYTEVfDjC5rJxuQZIMaV1DVyheJsElBdLFfakdHmbwWe/s1600/24021310.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="372" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGXJIIURYeJ5MM0yzH0cK6QuPeytscqObpKV3ZHb69caa6VM0N31nAbl_WvnRmbgf2vrWa1WPgT-TRZtLYerf8g0W5BnI8BajTA-IwNjXFmMtZ3ib0BrqqQEYN1mmcrhRTH9yEvKcTgYTEVfDjC5rJxuQZIMaV1DVyheJsElBdLFfakdHmbwWe/s1600/24021310.jpg"/></a></div>
The 54-year-old German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans has a retrospective exhibit that was created for MOMA in New York City, moved on for a visit to Toronto, and is now residing on the entire 7th floor of SFMOMA for another three weeks.
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Tillmans famously installs his own exhibits with a small team, changing it for each space. He has long made it a practice to eccentrically jumble the large and the small, the framed and the pinned, the singular and the photocopy all together. His quoted mantra is: "If one thing matters, everything matters."
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I have been through the exhibit three times over the last couple of months, and still don't quite know what to make of it.
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Take the two photos from San Francisco above, for instance. There is a huge color photo of the cable car stop at Van Ness Avenue and California Street, looking up towards Nob Hill, a desultory take on a tourist institution.
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Next to it is a small candid of two naked hairy male backs at the Hole in the Wall, a gay bar at 8th and Folsom Streets.
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One of the last published pieces by Peter Schjeldahl, the late, great art critic for the <i>Village Voice</i> (1990-1998) and <i>The New Yorker</i> magazine (1998-2022) was about this exhibition when it opened in New York. Though not enthused by everything, he declares at the onset: “To look without fear,” the immense, flabbergastingly installed retrospective of the German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, at the Museum of Modern Art, persuades me that the man is a genius." (<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/the-polymorphous-genius-of-wolfgang-tillmans">Click here for a link.</a>)
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With each visit, what I have come to most enjoy are certain individual photographs, some of them candids and some of them deliberately staged.
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There is a sweetness to many of them, even when shrouded with a Germanic dourness.
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There is also a slide show presentation, <i>Architect's Book</i>, in a darkened room where 450 photographs of buildings, or parts of them, are shown in odd juxtapositions with each other, one after the other. Most fine architectural photography aspires to the pristine, but these photos are almost the opposite of that aesthetic, with air conditioners, people, rotting walls, and odd bits of marginalia intruding on architectural perfection. It's fascinating, though it turned off my photographer friend Donald who said, "As I have painfully found out, artists shouldn't curate their own work." To which I replied, "If you're proclaimed a genius, they let you do it."
Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-17007650488799579362024-01-31T15:33:00.000-08:002024-01-31T15:33:29.636-08:00Khalistan Referendum in San Francisco<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLDtm5aOtdPXSXiBEa27hi6bfkluAMnkvlSCyMi99z8SjqtrHkgfxWLVWO5Tc8sC8N17ofK6t1AxG-tn0vrGGPeg-xXawsb0xw64fJIzhleSPwrAFth1hp4VD47Ms9iJkQLj0MdVTJ0NfeYtUKO26JDcv1SVStkvS90FZFQq3FGDoUCwr4E79w/s1600/24012855.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLDtm5aOtdPXSXiBEa27hi6bfkluAMnkvlSCyMi99z8SjqtrHkgfxWLVWO5Tc8sC8N17ofK6t1AxG-tn0vrGGPeg-xXawsb0xw64fJIzhleSPwrAFth1hp4VD47Ms9iJkQLj0MdVTJ0NfeYtUKO26JDcv1SVStkvS90FZFQq3FGDoUCwr4E79w/s1600/24012855.jpg"/></a></div>
San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza was filled with thousands of Sikhs from all over the West Coast on Sunday.
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They were standing in line for hours to participate in a non-binding referendum vote on the creation of a new Sikh country in the northern Indian state of Punjab.
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These referendums have been taking place over the last two years among the approximately 25 million Sikhs around the world.
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_movement">The Wikipedia page on the Khalistan movement</a> is thorough in its accounting of the all the clashes between Muslim, Hindu, and Sikhs in the middle over the millenia, and it notes that diaspora Sikhs tend to be more enthusiastic about the idea of a new country than those who actually live in Punjab.
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I'm not sure creating a new theocratic country is the answer, but what do I know?
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For more extensive coverage, George Kelly at the <i>San Francisco Standard</i> was also at Civic Center on Sunday. <a href="https://sfstandard.com/2024/01/28/sikhs-converge-on-san-francisco-to-vote-for-an-independent-state/" target="_blank">Click here for his pics and text.</a>Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-63764803043350149232024-01-29T15:06:00.000-08:002024-02-08T22:05:34.099-08:00Mere Mortals at the SF Ballet<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYglYX1gHpJykR9oi_1DeP4X686Jpotf3Ps2mwxFshlhQItggHhSSvqz2Ppc_dmVLLIQ032iyMZpIcy861Evjr_b9RPKPbOV6KSxd5CIENazn1xIxRrmy3FpAj2fRaM5ctHRUyFR62xZkqqVhsmQmoHNuAC60JvbmsHjdHZOV8awVOEkq-Xeim/s1600/24012621.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYglYX1gHpJykR9oi_1DeP4X686Jpotf3Ps2mwxFshlhQItggHhSSvqz2Ppc_dmVLLIQ032iyMZpIcy861Evjr_b9RPKPbOV6KSxd5CIENazn1xIxRrmy3FpAj2fRaM5ctHRUyFR62xZkqqVhsmQmoHNuAC60JvbmsHjdHZOV8awVOEkq-Xeim/s1600/24012621.jpg"/></a></div>
<a href="https://www.sfballet.org/productions/mere-mortals/" target="_blank">The San Francisco Ballet</a> began its 2024 season with a bang on Friday night, presenting <i>Mere Mortals</i>, a 75-minute world premiere. There are three more performances this week, Tuesday through Thursday, and you might want to catch one.
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The new Artistic Director Tamara Rojo put together a young, international group of collaborators to create a riff on the Pandora myth and Artificial Intelligence. The <a href="https://www.aszurebarton.com/about" target="_blank">choreographer Aszure Barton</a> is Canadian-American, the composer <a href="https://floatingpoints.co.uk/" target="_blank">Floating Points (aka Sam Shepherd)</a> is British, the <a href="https://hamillindustries.com/" target="_blank">AI visual designers Pablo Barquin and Anna Diaz</a> (Hamill Industries) are Spanish, and <a href="https://artist-group.net/people/michelle-jank" target="_blank">costume designer Michelle Jank</a> is Australian.
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Not only was the auditorium specially lit for the occasion, but so was the lobby where entering crowds would stop and stare at a special effects spectacle...
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...that looked like mist or smoke and progressed through an animated loop that eventually spelled out MERE MORTALS.
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The crowd was lively, and I believe that is choreographer Aszure Barton looking straight into the camera with a "Who are you?" look.
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The typical warnings about loud noise and strobe lights were to be taken seriously for once.
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The score by Floating Points, who was playing a Buchla synthesizer along with the full orchestra, was reminiscent of Mason Bates' Electronic Dance Music meets traditional orchestra, and much of it was hard-driving percussive beats for the huge ensemble. The choreography mostly consisted of solos for Wei Wang as Hope, Isaac Hernandez as Prometheus, Jennifer Stahl as Pandora, and Parker Garrison as Epimetheus. The 38-member ensemble were given long stretches of synchronized motoric movement that were thrilling. The ballet also featured a long pas de deux between Pandora and Epimetheus that had the duo stretching their bodies in and out of each other in seemingly impossible ways. <i>(Pictured above is Jennifer Stahl as Pandora arising out of the ensemble, photo by Lindsey Rallo.)</i>
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The AI-added background projections were fun, but feel like they are going to soon look dated, rather like how computer screen savers from the 1980s and 1990s now harken back to a specific moment in time. The black on black costumes for most of the ballet brought back memories of Pamela Rosenberg's tenure at the San Francisco Opera where every other production seemed to have somebody striding across the stage in a black trenchcoat. But the ballet as a whole was a brave, interesting success, and if you want to read a serious rave, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/sf-ballet-mere-mortals-review-18631663.php" target="_blank">click here for Rachel Howard</a> at the <i>SF Chronicle</i>.
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The audience gave it a rapturous reception.
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Wei Wang was great, as usual, playing the symbolic character of Hope, who bookends the beginning and end of the ballet.
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Jennifer Stahl was also characteristically brilliant and so was Parker Garrison as Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus.
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After the performance, the company hosted a dance party in the lobby.
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It looked like fun.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-49375166089455788762024-01-26T10:16:00.000-08:002024-01-26T10:16:16.276-08:00Wealthy Women's Frocks at the deYoung Museum<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheJaxMV1rjQ-IwB08CbP5F4PVzpL4TqU2N4qxaSphCO0smDez1xBahTE_QJqdeZBT5HEcD1klPA8URTcTrJTCgAyJqB23Wrvs50Xp2jagA_vxeHkr7NTWGpAUlMa2e_WVy4w4PVxKlDa2R1FR5VRz705bxVntxxmUly-3tzOTi1XIbQqtTOoxc/s1600/24011924.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheJaxMV1rjQ-IwB08CbP5F4PVzpL4TqU2N4qxaSphCO0smDez1xBahTE_QJqdeZBT5HEcD1klPA8URTcTrJTCgAyJqB23Wrvs50Xp2jagA_vxeHkr7NTWGpAUlMa2e_WVy4w4PVxKlDa2R1FR5VRz705bxVntxxmUly-3tzOTi1XIbQqtTOoxc/s1600/24011924.jpg"/></a></div>
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco occasionally program fashion exhibits that have ranged from the spectacular (<a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2022/04/guo-pei-fashion-exhibit-at-legion.html" target="_blank"><i>Guo Pei</i> at the Legion</a>) to the embarrassing (<i><a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2007/07/there-is-heavily-promoted-new-exhibit.html" target="_blank">Nan Kempner: American Chic</a></i> at the deYoung). <i>Fashioning San Francisco</i> is the latest entry, a look at haute couture outfits worn by Bay Area society women over the last century which have been donated or lent to the museum, and it's surprisingly delightful.
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The exhibit is in the strangely configured, zigzag space on the museum's top level, which has been softened with floor to ceiling drapery. The opening pieces are from early in the 20th century when French designers were <i>de rigeur</i> for an American society woman at a fancy function. Pictured is the 1924 <i>Evening Dress</i> by Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946), worn by Barbara Donohoe Jostes (1898-1993), an Atherton matron.
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The clothes from this period are a reminder that Americans tended to be shorter and thinner 100 years ago. Pictured are two pieces by Jean Patou (1887-1936): the <i>Afternoon Dress</i> worn by Imogen Abbott Mendoza (1894-1949) and the 1932 <i>Evening Dress</i> worn by Barbara Donohoe Jostes (1898-1993).
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This small section of gowns takes one back to the Jazz Age faster than anythng short of the actual music of the time. Pictured is the 1927 <i>Evening Ensemble: Dress and Slip</i> by Louise Boulanger (1878-1950), worn by Ethel Harriman Russell.
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They are also just plain gorgeous. Pictured is the 1916 <i>Evening Dress</i> by Callot Soeurs (four 19th century sisters who opened their own fashion house), worn by Ethel W. Sperry Crocker (1861-1934), the grande dame of San Francisco society in her time.
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The bulk of the exhibit focuses on more contemporary ensembles, and the display throughout is well-designed and witty.
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Half the fun of attending the show is watching the attendees discussing their favorites with friends along with a dollop of gossip about their previous owners.
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<a href="https://www.christinesuppes.com/" target="_blank">Christine Suppes</a> is a 70-year-old Palo Alto writer who has been collecting fashion like others collect paintings, and this exhibit is filled with many of her treasures, which she has donated to the museum. Pictured is the 1994 <i>Evening Dress</i> by John Galliano (b. 1960), worn by Christine Suppes.
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The Japanese designer Junya Watanabe (b. 1961) from Comme des Garçons is featured with two pieces: the 2015 <i>Jacket</i>, worn by Norah Stone (1938-2019) and the 2008 <i>Coat</i> worn by Georgette "Dodie" Rosekrans (1919-2010).<br />
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Society doyenne Rosenkrans, according to an amusing obituary in <i>Harpers Bazaar</i> (<a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-week/a641/dodie-rosekrans-style-0211/" target="_blank">click here</a>), was something of a madcap. The article begins: "It's hard to get noticed at the restaurant Le Voltaire in Paris. But for the late San Francisco doyenne Dodie Rosekrans, it was as simple as child's play and just as fun. One instance among many: an evening in the late 1990s when she swept in on the arm of her devoted husband, John, wearing an explosion of feathers that nearly swallowed up her tiny five-foot frame. It was a couture creation aptly dubbed the Firebird by its designer, Jean Paul Gaultier. "People were climbing on banquettes to get a better look," says friend and decorator Hutton Wilkinson. "Of course, I have no idea how she ate, since the feathers stuck out eight inches past her fingers." The obituary ends with: "What Rosekrans will be remembered for most is her sense of adventure. There was little she refused to do, except wear vintage, even from her own sensational archive. "If an old lady shows up in old clothes," she once said, "she just looks old."
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Another name that might be familiar is Joan Quigley, a Pacific Heights Junior League socialite who became infamous when it was publicly revealed that she was Nancy Reagan's astrologer guiding all White House scheduling after an assassination attempt on the president. After she was unceremoniously dumped and demeaned by Nancy, she wrote a book called <i>What Does Joan Say?</i>. It's a real possibility that the right-wing Republican astrologer may have singlehandedly brought about the end of the Cold War when she read Gorbachev's astrological chart and advised Nancy that her husband should stop calling Russia "the evil empire" and instead start talking to the smart, empathetic Russian leader. Pictured is the 1977 <i>Evening Ensemble: Blouse and Skirt</i> by Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008), worn by Joan Quigley (1927-2014)
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One of the more glamorous San Francisco socialites over the decades has been Denise Hale. In a 2022 article titled <i>The Last Empress</i>, David Downton writes: "The only woman I fear in America is Denise Hale,” said Andy Warhol. He had a point. San Francisco’s reigning social empress is known for her “deadly Serbian memory” and whiplash opinions. “With me it’s simple; I do or I don’t like you,” she says. If she does, doors spring open, connections are made, and mountains moved. If not, you might want to try Milwaukee." Pictured is the 1991<i> Evening Ensemble: Top, Skirt and Stole</i> by Gianfranco Ferre (1944-2007), worn by Denise Hale for her 20th wedding anniversary, a custom design and gift from the designer.
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The first internationally famous Russian supermodel Tatiana Sorokko (b. 1971) lives in the Bay Area and is represented by the 2007 <i>Ensemble: Infanta Gown and Cape</i> by Ralph Rucci (b. 1957), worn to the 2007 San Francisco Symphony Opening Night. She has been quoted thus: "Style is inborn. Fashion you can learn. Fashion is all around. It is fleeting. It goes by. Style is your core and soul. You have it or you don't. You can educate yourself as much as you want, but I don't think you can truly possess it if you didn't have it from the beginning." As somebody who was not born with that particular gene, I agree completely.
Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-53233434060617712552024-01-20T13:55:00.000-08:002024-01-20T14:06:40.920-08:00The 2024 Annual Forced Birth March<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge5wFfdqBZJhjuli7aYjBN6mFInHkhDAEmKdBIC3hBFnVgPN2gyoZxPUpY8T_5HLRBEzBt_CGvjyyVE4EXc20m_3sZn1D4NWI2ZLLdyalYpBB_l_OLAG9_tGu04pIY-J3H7iGygHxHijJATNgthp3F2fb8xvwpazzeb3zCdpyj3wB6pw5fc-p8/s1600/24012087.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge5wFfdqBZJhjuli7aYjBN6mFInHkhDAEmKdBIC3hBFnVgPN2gyoZxPUpY8T_5HLRBEzBt_CGvjyyVE4EXc20m_3sZn1D4NWI2ZLLdyalYpBB_l_OLAG9_tGu04pIY-J3H7iGygHxHijJATNgthp3F2fb8xvwpazzeb3zCdpyj3wB6pw5fc-p8/s1600/24012087.jpg"/></a></div>
Charter buses filled with forced birth zealots from all over California made their annual trek to San Francisco's Civic Center neighborhood this morning.
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The rally was scheduled for 12:30 in Civic Center Plaza followed by a march down Market Street at 1:30.
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A small counterprotest of reproductive rights activists was forming on the other side of Larkin Street in front of the Asian Art Museum and the Main Branch of the SF Public Library.
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Their signage was homemade rather than commercially printed, but as usual there were a few people who missed the plot. The gentleman on the right was holding a sign reading "We need queer revolution not trans exclusion" which seemed to belong elsewhere.
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It is always good to see this ragtag marching band at a protest, though, no matter what the cause.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-20881328012004583342024-01-16T11:42:00.000-08:002024-01-16T11:42:07.838-08:00Vampyr at the Castro Theater<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhta0NlGu3fchs65j6-C2EoGen1CVIz4wecg9Rz2L_vfRkP9asuLVJLsIylsZea8suyiN9WzgtUK36LupdRmxs-XtM_fMoD5Jf-d7xORngBAVWPSgJKTrEp9F8qETeOcxG4sqXe8Z0tgJ8sMxnKZYfDwLuKtytvJtUIkbeZF_fSCRO3hi2WYdMu/s1600/24011210.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="429" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhta0NlGu3fchs65j6-C2EoGen1CVIz4wecg9Rz2L_vfRkP9asuLVJLsIylsZea8suyiN9WzgtUK36LupdRmxs-XtM_fMoD5Jf-d7xORngBAVWPSgJKTrEp9F8qETeOcxG4sqXe8Z0tgJ8sMxnKZYfDwLuKtytvJtUIkbeZF_fSCRO3hi2WYdMu/s1600/24011210.jpg"/></a></div>
The last picture show of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theater was Carl Th. Dreyer's 1932 <i>Vampyr</i> last Friday.
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It was astonishing that a a rarely seen, 75-minute, black-and-white art film at $30 a ticket sold out the entire theater. A line to enter went around the block.
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The SF Silent Film Festival has become a beloved institution over the last 28 years, with a growing, devoted audience. The good news is that the festival will continue at the Palace of Fine Arts in April (<a href="https://silentfilm.org/" target="_blank">click here</a>), which is a pain in the ass to get to via public transportation, but it's been a good theater for films since its San Francisco Film Festival days.
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The Castro Theater will close down for over a year on February 5th to be turned into one of Another Planet Entertainment's (APE) music halls, with lots of bars and a flat floor for the standing room only crowds. There are promises of a portable raked seating arrangement being installed for film events, but APE's track record of keeping promises is not good. Pledged improvements to Bill Graham Auditorium in Civic Center, for example, have never materialized.
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The Silent Film Festival features live musicians from all over the world accompanying the films, and they are a major component of the festival's success. For<i> Vampyr</i>, there was an entire orchestra from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music led by Timothy Brock, who has helped to restore the Wolfgang Zeller score.
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The movie was accurately described in the scholarly handout as "a waking dream." The nightmare takes place at an obscure lakeside inn and a nearby country estate with a young hero encountering the occult everywhere he turned.
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The destruction of the Castro as an old-fashioned movie theater strikes me as extremely short-sighted. Multiplexes may be dying because everyone can buy a monster flat screen at Costco and set up a home theater, but seeing a movie on a large screen with a large audience is only going to become more popular. Just look at the San Francisco Symphony events where the orchestra accompanies recent blockbuster movies like <i>Casino Royale</i> or <i>Lord of the Rings</i>. They usually sell out Davies Hall, with high ticket prices besides.
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Stacy Wisnia, the executive director of the SF Silent Film Festival, promised from the stage that the festival would return to the Castro Theater after APE's renovation, but who knows what will happen?
Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-40366527656731976422024-01-11T16:03:00.000-08:002024-01-12T09:09:13.714-08:00The Phoenix Symphony<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY858JMjib858tT2_stIt58MbB_pCMF8JR6zsmHHik1AROeMZJgkr6fWAuQ7xeN7sjVmb7GLSMCCjICe24_3GtQFWbQZqonYf8i4WWgWGAQo73exmJEvEw01OhWDdfMK9974XRHUzCdFSlD2ME3c1AAiYQksPt7hZ1njG6kExMG2mq5vIl8_GT/s1600/24010763.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY858JMjib858tT2_stIt58MbB_pCMF8JR6zsmHHik1AROeMZJgkr6fWAuQ7xeN7sjVmb7GLSMCCjICe24_3GtQFWbQZqonYf8i4WWgWGAQo73exmJEvEw01OhWDdfMK9974XRHUzCdFSlD2ME3c1AAiYQksPt7hZ1njG6kExMG2mq5vIl8_GT/s1600/24010763.jpg"/></a></div>
Visiting my friend Doug in Phoenix last week, I took him to the city's downtown Symphony Hall for his first concert there in 30 years.
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The Phoenix Symphony was founded in 1947, performing at the Phoenix Union High School for the first 25 years of its existence. Symphony Hall was built in 1972 and the ensemble became full-time in 1983.
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Symphony Hall is also home for the Arizona Ballet, where the Phoenix Symphony is the accompanying orchestra, and Arizona Opera, where it is not. Both the Phoenix Symphony and Arizona Ballet seasons stretch from fall to spring, with interesting looking pops concerts scattered throughout.
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We were greeted outdoors by Senior Director of Community Engagement & Education, Valerie Bontrager. She was a total delight as she explained the absurd new security protocol, complete with metal detectors, that the Convention Center authority has begun to require for entry. She was passing out clear plastic purses to patrons as a way to consolidate their pocket belongings.
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The theater lobby was late-60's fancy, and the seven-year-old groovy carpeting meant to evoke desert colors would not have looked out of place in an upscale casino.
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The mostly wooden theater is lovely and comfortable and seemed to have decent acoustics.
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The Sunday matinee crowd was delightful, and the enthusiastic woman sitting next to us had been attending Phoenix Symphony concerts since their days at Phoenix Union High School over 50 years ago.
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The orchestra was conducted by Music Director Tito Muñoz, who is leaving this season after being at the helm for 10 years. The afternoon's concert began with Wagner's 1883 <i>Siegfried Idyll</i>, a meandering piece of music that was played well. What was most impressive was the quiet and attentive audience.
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This was followed by a violin concerto by composer David Ludwig (above with Muñoz) that he had composed in 2015 for his own nuptials to violinist Bella Hristova. Ludwig comes from classical music royalty with pianist Rudolf Serkin his grandfather and violinist Irene Busch his mother. He's currently Dean and Music Director at Julliard, and if this violin concerto is any indication, he's also a good composer.
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The three-movement work began with a crash of the cosmos that calmed down and became more lyrical. The slow second movement was exquisitely beautiful with snatches of music from Bella Hristova's Russian composer father, Yuri Chichkov. The lively final movement is based on a Bulgarian dance, the Krivo Horo or "Crooked Dance." and it was lots of fun. Hristova was fabulous playing her own wedding concerto. <i>(Pictured above are Concertmaster Bonson Mo, Bella Hristova, and Tito Muñoz.)</i>
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At intermission, I was ferried through multiple levels of the theater by Valerie, whose enthusiasm for the company was infectious.
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The concert ended with Tchaikovsky's <i>Symphony No. 6 "Pathetique"</i>. The first two movements were a little slack, but the wild march in the third movement was thrilling and the sad, plaintive adagio fourth movement made its emotional mark.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-62507687374323079782023-12-31T12:04:00.000-08:002023-12-31T22:10:00.186-08:0012 Wonderful Musical Performances 2023<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghBqVefVRjtBcE4Flq-2L8P-YLfWgfnuPgDxuuBBYKFHLdblkmW1ys8gNng0zpUfCmy94p9rHfLJPDB_t4Vz_hXWvEzog4XMBPfOUpuQQgLIBximJKk6x5b4ldmpugNI6jxhVKRm01XpQAAdcdAbI3SEoQz-KcU0XHmyQ_zk6mFBA94xhjWijR/s1600/23021128.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghBqVefVRjtBcE4Flq-2L8P-YLfWgfnuPgDxuuBBYKFHLdblkmW1ys8gNng0zpUfCmy94p9rHfLJPDB_t4Vz_hXWvEzog4XMBPfOUpuQQgLIBximJKk6x5b4ldmpugNI6jxhVKRm01XpQAAdcdAbI3SEoQz-KcU0XHmyQ_zk6mFBA94xhjWijR/s1600/23021128.jpg"/></a></div>
This best-of list is incomplete because there were plenty of musical events I didn't attend, so here is a chronological account of a dozen favorite things in 2023. In February, the 95-year-old conductor Herbert Blomstedt returned to the San Francisco Symphony for his annual visit to the orchestra where he was once Music Director. The program was a newly discovered 1823 symphony by Jan Václav Voříšek and Dvorak's Symphony #8 in performances of surpassing beauty. Pictured above is assistant concertmaster Wyatt Underhill assisting Blomstedt to the podium. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/02/blomstedt-conducts-dvorak-at-sf-symphony.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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Also in February, Cal Performances brought back the Mark Morris Dance Group to perform <i>The Look of Love</i> at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. It was a compilation of Burt Bacharach songs with live performances by Ethan Iverson on piano, Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Simon Willson on bass, Vinnie Sperrazza on drums, and Marcy Harriell on vocals. The performance was so captivating that it changed my mind about Bacharach's music, which I had previously disdained. Now I can't get it out of my head. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/04/sf-ballets-cinderella.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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April featured a memorial concert at Herbst Theater for composer Ingram Marshall who split his career between his native New England and California before his death at age 70 in 2022. Friends and collaborators gave him a moving send-off with performances of music he had written for them. From left to right are Timo Andres, Libby Van Cleve, Ben Verdery, John Adams, and Sarah Cahill. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/04/ingram-marshall-memorial-concert.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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The San Francisco Ballet Orchestra under conductor Martin West, is one of the city's unsung treasures and they were superb all season. Particularly demanding and brilliantly performed was Prokofiev's full-length ballet score for the 1945 <i>Cinderella</i> in a sumptuously creative production by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/04/sf-ballets-cinderella.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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In May, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented a screening of the 1929 G.W. Pabst/Louise Brooks masterpiece, <i>Pandora's Box</i> at Oakland's Paramount Theater. The legendary Club Foot Orchestra, augmented with a few SF Conservatory instrumentalists, performed their jazzy, brilliant original score to accompany the film. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/05/pandoras-box-at-paramount.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i> </a>
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In its summer season, the San Francisco Opera mounted Richard Strauss's weird, gargantuan fairy tale opera, the 1919 <i>Die Frau Ohne Schatten</i>. An old David Hockney production from London was bathed in sonic splendor from a stellar cast and a huge orchestra led by former Music Director Donald Runnicles. I didn't write about it at the time, but Lisa Hirsch did. <a href="https://irontongue.blogspot.com/2023/06/die-frau-ohne-schatten-at-san-francisco.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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At the same time across Grove Street, the San Francisco Symphony presented Kaija Saariaho's 2006 opera, <i>Adriana Mater</i> just days after the Finnish conductor passed away at age 70. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, director Peter Sellars, and lighting designer James Ingalls created the 2008 U.S. premiere production in Santa Fe, and reunited for one of the first revivals of this dramatically dark, musically splendrous opera. Pictured are the four principal singers: Nicholas Phan, Axelle Fanyo, Fleur Barron, and Christopher Purves. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/06/adriana-mater-at-sf-symphony.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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In July at the Masonic Temple fronting Oakland's Lake Merritt, West Edge Opera presented a 2010 "mariachi opera," <i>Cruzar la Cara de la Luna</i>. The music was composed by José "Pepe" Martínez, a popular Mexican composer who was dubbed "the Mozart of Mariachi." The work was unexpectedly moving and the production by a mostly local Latino cast, mariachi band, and artistic team was superb. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-mozart-of-mariachi-at-west-edge.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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In October, SF Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a major, infrequently performed John Adams "symphony," <i>Naive and Sentimental Music</i>. Salonen had conducted the world premiere in 1988 with the LA Philharmonic and it was a treat to hear a live revival. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/10/naive-and-sentimental-music-at-sf.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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The following week Salonen presented the world premiere of a piano concerto by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg written for pianist Emanuel Ax. In fact, Hillborg's second piano concerto has the subtitle, <i>The MAX Concerto</i>. It was fabulous, and so was a rock-and-roll rendition by the orchestra of Beethoven's <i>Second Symphony</i>.
<a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-emanuel-ax-piano-concerto-at-sf.html"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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The San Francisco Opera had a consistently excellent season all year, highlighted by three new operas that the company had co-commissioned. The first two were <i>El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego</i> by composer Gabriela Lena Frank and librettist Nilo Cruz followed by <i>The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs</i> by composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell. Both were successful on their own terms and were widely enjoyed, but the opera I fell in love with was <i>Omar</i> by composer/librettist Rhiannon Giddens and composer Michael Abels. Its story of an African Muslim scholar who spent most of his life as an American slave was an unusual mixture of history and religious ritual, highlighted by a definitive performance in the title role by Jamez McCorkle. All three operas, by the way, were enhanced by extraordinarily beautiful and creative physical productions. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/11/omar-at-sf-opera.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>
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The SF Opera season ended with a genuinely funny, charming production of Donizetti's 1834 comedy, <i>The Elixir of Love</i>. Pene Pati gave a perfect performance that combined physical comedy chops with a glorious, seamless tenor as the naive, lovesick hero, and debuting conductor Ramon Tebar had the chorus and orchestra in fine form. <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/11/pene-pati-and-elixir-of-love.html" target="_blank"><i>(Click here for the review.)</i></a>Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-44095171343848575022023-12-16T16:15:00.000-08:002023-12-16T16:23:37.659-08:00Trixxie Carr Channels Cyndi Lauper at The Oasis<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI9RG2Jc3E_Ko52VITXkFYGNm-0FSPhZwpqXoxgD-hw3uaBfFaZXSdpBVPD4EpnxjWGiz3ASGuz-dskWFBMp5mveFsVQyVqTu8iEoL9qTIjH50KJ-zs4iyB17YUkw_oUib5xXCEhnMra5DwIYjvYYfYN85SbT9aKDVI5hZP94Q48EUDgasdyLk/s1600/23120272.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI9RG2Jc3E_Ko52VITXkFYGNm-0FSPhZwpqXoxgD-hw3uaBfFaZXSdpBVPD4EpnxjWGiz3ASGuz-dskWFBMp5mveFsVQyVqTu8iEoL9qTIjH50KJ-zs4iyB17YUkw_oUib5xXCEhnMra5DwIYjvYYfYN85SbT9aKDVI5hZP94Q48EUDgasdyLk/s1600/23120272.jpg"/></a></div>
A few weeks ago Austin and I went to a drag show honoring Cyndi Lauper at the Oasis nightclub on 11th and Folsom.
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The tickets were a last-minute gift from a pair of friends who couldn't make it, and the seats were for the deluxe front row runway, where the performers would bend down or crawl on their knees to receive cash tips from the patrons.
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The organizer and main diva of the evening was Trixxie Carr who has been worshiping the singer since her 1983 debut album, <i>She's So Unusual</i>.
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Joining her were for a few numbers were friends Queera Nightly...
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...and Miss Raina, who usually appears in drag king events...
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...and the fabulous, steely-eyed Mary Vice.
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During one song, Trixxie brought up revolting imagery from Cyndi's shameful public moment, her appearance on <i>Celebrity Apprentice</i>.
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I never did quite figure out Trixxie's cis gender, but it did not matter, and her colleagues spanned the gender globe.
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For the finale, Trixxie sang two numbers with her own pretty, on-pitch voice, accompanied by Diogo Zavadzki on guitar, and they were a lovely duo.
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Though I've probably seen one too many drag shows over the decades, having been a gay guy who liked to go out, this was still a heartening show, and the Oasis is a cool nightclub that is very much its own magical place. <a href="https://www.sfoasis.com/events" target="_blank">Check out their calendar here</a>.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-6406788768628854112023-12-10T09:44:00.000-08:002023-12-10T09:47:51.996-08:00Let's Glow SF 2023<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip3QCcwpNW1qpYGFpu-bTCDqOJ73MLeK2o4T_Nx-I4v8OTALNQSvEWhqniQMF9JGUFTwSbUyqGmSFDoaIcXEJRaE8PUn_2iw0J6eSw_xu02JAhCLDou9rf2Xbr3Ax0kMIa7A0BDAgMRdpOC2FcausUdi7RtEN-mSfOz00TtGD9DyGYCHga3Bkh/s1600/23120999.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1025" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip3QCcwpNW1qpYGFpu-bTCDqOJ73MLeK2o4T_Nx-I4v8OTALNQSvEWhqniQMF9JGUFTwSbUyqGmSFDoaIcXEJRaE8PUn_2iw0J6eSw_xu02JAhCLDou9rf2Xbr3Ax0kMIa7A0BDAgMRdpOC2FcausUdi7RtEN-mSfOz00TtGD9DyGYCHga3Bkh/s1600/23120999.jpg"/></a></div>
There are extraordinary projections on iconic buildings in downtown San Francisco this December, including the Ferry Building, from 5 to 8 PM.
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On Saturday evening, the crowds were minimal and you could snag a free lawn chair on the Ferry Building Plaza...
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for a looping presentation accompanied by a musical score.
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Further west on Market Street at Bush on what was once the Crown Zellerbach Building...
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...there are abstract projections in a show called <i>Hyperion Monolith</i> by Adam LaBay from Precision Lasers.
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The side of the Hobart Building at the intersection of Market and Montgomery is also being used as a canvas.
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The free evening shows have been running since December 1st and the evening of Sunday, December 10th, is your final chance to encounter the event, which has a few additional Financial District locations.
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Check out this <a href="https://downtownsf.org/things-to-do/lets-glow-sf" target="_blank">Let's Glow SF 2023 website for maps and more info</a>. The artistry involved exceeded all expectations.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-59677792785704661542023-12-07T10:11:00.000-08:002023-12-07T14:32:41.375-08:00The Adlers Concert 2023<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg78lyzgbM1Js5Y-qdf-BgEZpi5aSacMYiqQsXleCWjwXC6qt1VvVpjLeL4pIY4XoebxXLCjUg2ddUDpt2L0FV7IOOl82vO_M34uBY8dgROEG7hiefFT_AZ4XIuVy2jMKYpcVvaJIHjY9DLy-_UDq76IoqGebwo6OGPPHzrjQyGh-w_nAADShe/s1600/23120332.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="343" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg78lyzgbM1Js5Y-qdf-BgEZpi5aSacMYiqQsXleCWjwXC6qt1VvVpjLeL4pIY4XoebxXLCjUg2ddUDpt2L0FV7IOOl82vO_M34uBY8dgROEG7hiefFT_AZ4XIuVy2jMKYpcVvaJIHjY9DLy-_UDq76IoqGebwo6OGPPHzrjQyGh-w_nAADShe/s1600/23120332.jpg"/></a></div>
The annual Adlers Concert took place last Saturday in Herbst Theater with nine apprentice singers from the San Francisco Opera, singing arias and operatic scenes together, backed by the full SF Opera orchestra. (For an interesting history of the evolution of the company's young artist training programs, <a href="https://www.sfcv.org/articles/review/sf-opera-adler-fellows-shine-2023-showcase#" target="_blank">click here for a post by Janos Gereben at SFCV</a>.) In the Adler program, less than a dozen young singers who are embarking on operatic careers are given training in stagecraft, languages, and musicianship for two years, while being given smaller roles onstage and covering for principals during the SF Opera season. I tend to find these concerts sort of heartbreaking because the odds of making a full-time living as an opera singer are small, and becoming an international star even rarer. But it does happen. <i>(All photos, except one, by Kristen Loken.)</i>
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So this is not a review so much as a listing of a few of my favorite things, starting with soprano Mikayla Sager as Leonora in <i>Il Trovatore</i>, singing the difficult aria <i>Tace la notte placida</i> in splendid fashion, with mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz supporting her as Inez.
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Appearing throughout the evening in many of the scenas, Jongwon Han displayed a deep, luscious baritone that easily stretched into bass territory during his solo turn in Massenet's operatic version of Don Quixote, singing the aria <i>Riez, allez</i> as Sancho Panza defending his crazy master.
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Tenor Edward Graves was a highlight during all his appearances including as the Duke in a quartet from Verdi's <i>Rigoletto</i> with mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz nearly stealing the show as the duplicitous Magdalena.
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Printz also sang a riveting aria, <i>I was a woman</i>, from david lang's <i>prisoner of the state</i>, a contemporary, streamlined riff on Beethoven's <i>Fidelio</i>. Printz has been onstage frequently in the Bay Area in everything from cabaret to opera to singing while performing as an aerial trapeze artist. The non-binary performer knows how to command a stage, and it showed.
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I became a fan of tenor Moisés Salazar this summer when he performed in <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-mozart-of-mariachi-at-west-edge.html" target="_blank">West Edge Opera's production of <i>Cruzar la Cara de la Luna</i></a>, which was preceded by a mariachi concert hosted by Salazar himself. He has a huge, bright tenor that sounds ready for the big time, as he demonstrated with a rendition of <i>Nessun dorma</i> from Puccini's <i>Turandot</i>. Salazar is leaving the Adler program after one year, presumably to continue his professional career, and I wish him all the luck in the world.
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Finally, one of the delights of the evening was the Spanish conductor <a href="https://www.ramon-tebar.com/" target="_blank">Ramón Tebar</a>, who is conducting the current production of Donizetti's <i>The Elixir of Love</i> at the SF Opera. The orchestra, which is usually hidden in the pit, were a joy to watch and hear onstage, and Tebar's sensitivity to his young singers was palpable.<i> (The above photo is by Michael Strickland.)</i>Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-76257967669483885742023-12-04T14:09:00.000-08:002023-12-04T14:09:29.130-08:00Botticelli at the Legion of Honor<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitpHUyFA_oc0R7tN_R0IG_CXMh5S53MscLDV6d6fsvHodvw3iNB-d0X0Phvqdv-1TnGrAgvc_zmLWlpkrf8fhWvLD-AFvjfh_VMyxbGflG96_LRCb135f55t1odXtMAso4YvZVlrNEBnIiMHR5TcZ4Ec3KzeDWYJBN4ob6GUBi88HzpTQlEjvt/s1600/23112950.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitpHUyFA_oc0R7tN_R0IG_CXMh5S53MscLDV6d6fsvHodvw3iNB-d0X0Phvqdv-1TnGrAgvc_zmLWlpkrf8fhWvLD-AFvjfh_VMyxbGflG96_LRCb135f55t1odXtMAso4YvZVlrNEBnIiMHR5TcZ4Ec3KzeDWYJBN4ob6GUBi88HzpTQlEjvt/s1600/23112950.jpg"/></a></div>
For those of us who can't make it to Florence for Christmas this year, there is a lovely Botticelli exhibit at the Legion of Honor for the next two months.
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The show is called <i>Botticelli Drawings</i>, and its concept is to take a closer look at the preparatory drawings for some of Boticelli's famous paintings. (Pictured is <i>Head of a Woman in Near Profile Looking Down to the Left</i>, 1470)
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I'm not very interested in art scholarship and was afraid the show would be a lot of text and rough drawings, but the happy surprise is that there are over a dozen remarkable paintings, including a few that have never traveled out of Italy before. (Pictured is T<i>he Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist</i>, 1470
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And what paintings, including one depicting the Angel Gabriel shooting holy rays at the Virgin Mary. (Pictured is <i>The Annunciation</i>,1485-1493)
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Also delightful is that there are no dying or dead Jesus paintings in the bunch. His only appearances are as a holy child. (Pictured is <i>Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Six Singing Angels</i>, 1490)
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It seems that the Italian Renaissance painter's posthumous reputation was fairly non-existent until the 19th century, when the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood championed his work over the prevailing orthodoxy that Raphael was the model of artistic perfection. (Pictured is <i>Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Six Singing Angels,</i> detail, 1490)
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The paintings are large and you are allowed to get surprisingly close to them. Botticelli's final painting is included, subtitled<i> Mystic Nativity</i>, and it's mystic indeed. (Pictured is <i>The Nativity of Christ (Mystic Nativity)</i>, top half detail, 1501).
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The exhibit will be at the Legion through February 11, and it's highly recommended. (Pictured is <i>The Nativity of Christ (Mystic Nativity)</i>, bottom half detail, 1501). Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-31210549401059777152023-11-28T13:07:00.000-08:002023-11-28T14:14:29.379-08:00Pene Pati and The Elixir of Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFMP9QyUovoZtxG8ULV3O3jr9pKOD01pwHkhrK2_IVhl9SD97Q1p72libZ-bvK6qD7BTISe029cofx5Urid_VdTQBDgnI7u2wfl_ffydSP0J0kyWWS760-zX3i8PRjDsOT1gF6C4AmQ4hjp6RIT2rg6zHsm_ZIJ6qFZeHAaisl0R47wfhiT_yn/s1600/23112574.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="296" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFMP9QyUovoZtxG8ULV3O3jr9pKOD01pwHkhrK2_IVhl9SD97Q1p72libZ-bvK6qD7BTISe029cofx5Urid_VdTQBDgnI7u2wfl_ffydSP0J0kyWWS760-zX3i8PRjDsOT1gF6C4AmQ4hjp6RIT2rg6zHsm_ZIJ6qFZeHAaisl0R47wfhiT_yn/s1600/23112574.jpg"/></a></div>
San Francisco Opera's final show of the fall season is a sunny, genuinely funny production of <i>The Elixir of Love (L'Elisir d'Amore)</i>, Donizetti's 1834 village comedy that my friend James Parr likens to a successful Hallmark Channel rom-com. The production is from Opera North in the UK, and is brilliantly directed by Daniel Slater collaborating with choreographer Tim Claydon. The original 19th century Italian farm village has been updated to a hotel in a 1950s Italian coastal village, which mostly works just fine, since the characters are so archetypal that they could fit into just about any setting or time. <i>(All photos by Cory Weaver and Kristen Loken.)</i>
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The excitement of the production is tenor Pene Pati as Nemorino, the country bumpkin with a heart full of love. Pati is an ethnic Samoan from New Zealand who came to San Francisco Opera's Merola and Adler programs for young singers in 2013. The few times I heard him over the years he had a huge, beautiful voice that didn't seem to be quite under control. Since those student years, he has been carving out a career in Europe while learning the operatic repertory and the finishing school has evidently paid off. His current vocal control and gorgeous, effortless sounding tenor is a pure sensual pleasure to experience live, and there is an easy freedom to his singing that is remarkable.
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Plus he's funny, a wonderful physical comedian who connects directly with the audience while staying in character. The love potion elixir of the title is actually just Bordeaux wine, so the opera is filled with a lot of drunk humor, which Pati dispatches with the grace of a silent film comedian. His attempt at looking suave while stretched out on a stairway before his beloved, only to clumsily bounce down the stairs, was perfection. Pati debuted in this role at the Paris Opera, and it feels tailor-made for him. As he notes in a program interview, "Before even the music, what appealed to me was that character of being fun, being vulnerable, being innocent. The attributes of Nemorino are so me!"
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The chorus is a major presence in the opera, and each chorister has been assigned individual characters. They also have a lot of simple Broadway-style choreography from Claydon to perform, and they look like they are enjoying themselves immensely while sounding musically superb. In the minor part of Giannetta, Arianna Rodriguez suddenly has a lot to sing in the final scene, including the telling of a secret to the entire crowd while swearing them to secrecy. Rodriguez was so effervescent that she threatened to run away with the show, but instead ran off with a sailor.
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Slávka Zámečníková plays Adina, the beautiful, higher-class woman who is the object of Nemorino's sighs and longings. She looked smashing in the 1950s costumes and sang in a pure, almost icy soprano that made her character often seem cruel rather than an even mixture of haughty and kind. She is an engaging actress, though, who made the Hallmark Channel happy ending work.
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Baritone David Bizic felt miscast as Belcore, the blowhard military stud who is convinced that he is god's gift to women. It can be a charming, funny role for a sexy young baritone but in this production Bizil never felt like any serious competition for Adina's favors.
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The role that is written to be a scene-stealer by librettist Felice Romani is Dulcamara, a traveling con man who is selling phony remedies for every ailment under the sun, including being unloved. Renato Girolami was just fine, but the true scene-stealer was his assistant, the 13-year-old supernumerary Aidan Politza. His easy grace onstage, whether handling complicated props or dancing with Dulcamara, was endlessly amusing. Bravo. And bravo to debuting conductor Ramon Tebar leading the SF Opera Orchestra who made one of Donizetti's best scores sparkle all afternoon. <a href="https://www.sfopera.com/operas/the-elixir-of-love/" target="_blank">There are two more performances with Pati singing, on Tuesday, December 5 and Saturday, December 9, and you should really try to catch one if you can.</a>Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-15677774299779297162023-11-21T09:54:00.000-08:002023-11-21T20:08:56.024-08:00The California Festival at the SF Symphony<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOEoCTW_KBCWatHTkdn1ac9fraSJ8CBt3VzeXtmSWmjZWr9295eshRkNRmQduVJXBp7YfiE_alZsvPG4c1brfsjUbPhzle4TcFCgbk7jL-1GGTMGgqXIbA9epWx5HlFhdC_pobkO82APE38H_wSrX2u5vYBROjwkDeUc_M7j2GiseXtAJV38rB/s1600/23110538.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="494" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOEoCTW_KBCWatHTkdn1ac9fraSJ8CBt3VzeXtmSWmjZWr9295eshRkNRmQduVJXBp7YfiE_alZsvPG4c1brfsjUbPhzle4TcFCgbk7jL-1GGTMGgqXIbA9epWx5HlFhdC_pobkO82APE38H_wSrX2u5vYBROjwkDeUc_M7j2GiseXtAJV38rB/s1600/23110538.jpg"/></a></div>
Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Music Director of the SF Symphony, doesn't usually talk to the audience before conducting, but during a Sunday matinee concert a couple of weeks ago, he gave a long, funny introduction to his own composition, the 2021 <i>kinema</i>. Salonen described how he was homebound in Finland during the Covid pandemic looking out at the Baltic Sea, feeling despondent, watching too many news channels on TV, and unable to work on anything. Eventually, he was contacted by a filmmaker acquaintance who asked him to write a score for a Finnish romantic film called <i>Odotus</i>, "which seemed like a good task to get my mind working again. The only problem was that about 40% of the movie was sex scenes for which my musical training had not quite prepared me."
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Salonen refashioned the soundtrack into five movements for clarinet and a large contingent of strings, adding new music to what he had already composed. The soloist here was the SF Symphony's principal clarinet player, Carey Bell, and the moody 30-minute piece was surprisingly easy and beautiful to hear, especially considering Salonen's usual complexity when he composes for a large orchestra.
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Carey Bell gave a virtuosic, seamless performance, though he seemed ill at ease whenever he was not actually playing his instrument, fiddling with the holes outside and cleaning out the interior between movements. At one point, he actually looked like he was going to hyperventilate, but the crisis was averted and he was greeted with a standing ovation when he finished the demanding assignment.
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This concert was part of the first California Festival showcasing new classical music performed by 100 different ensembles throughout the state. The 28-year-old, Bay Area composer Jens Ibsen was commissioned for a work by the SF Symphony as part of its "Emerging Black Composers Project." In a long introduction, he talked about his love of "prog rock," and how he wanted to incorporate its sound and rhythms into a full orchestra. "I've often written music where I've had the orchestra sound like electronic music, but this time I wanted to integrate the real thing, so this is basically a concerto for electric guitar and orchestra." Composed this year, <i>Drowned in Light</i> is a fun, noisy ride that morphs into a serene, delicate twilight sound in the second movement.
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The electric guitar soloist was hidden in the back of the orchestra below the percussion, which was too bad because Travis Andrews of <a href="https://www.thelivingearthshow.com/" target="_blank">the avant-garde The Living Earth Show duo</a>, was fabulous and it would have been fun to watch him perform up close.
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The final work was Stravinsky's 1942 <i>Symphony in Three Movements</i>, a short, hard-driving piece written during World War Two. Though I am loving Salonen as the new SF Symphony Music Director, his predecessor Michael Tilson Thomas made a better case for this gnarly symphony four years ago in 2019 (<a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2019/10/weird-ass-stravinsky-at-sf-symphony.html" target="_blank">click here</a>).
Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-57587089403172274722023-11-13T22:16:00.000-08:002023-11-14T16:41:13.823-08:00Omar at SF Opera<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxhKheyFl7baiwFLx1T046aUtzlNAWxzg5UKjNlwmxJMvBiWAEJD5le4z61hLsZXUdrEnXWDIQFLKZ1QQIAQH4Qsx5DtLZKoz6TR_RTDV1XwdlsJZt5QOiFWunxoTIvBxNPk0kNrjspRkFLIimdNMU3VeUYvZaWWmGJgx33gVeag5mmBen-gVZ/s1600/23110354.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxhKheyFl7baiwFLx1T046aUtzlNAWxzg5UKjNlwmxJMvBiWAEJD5le4z61hLsZXUdrEnXWDIQFLKZ1QQIAQH4Qsx5DtLZKoz6TR_RTDV1XwdlsJZt5QOiFWunxoTIvBxNPk0kNrjspRkFLIimdNMU3VeUYvZaWWmGJgx33gVeag5mmBen-gVZ/s1600/23110354.jpg"/></a></div>
The San Francisco Opera is having an historic season. Among the eight operas they are performing this fall and next summer, three are new, written within the last five years and co-comissioned by the company. <i>Omar</i>, the second opera of this trilogy, opened last week and it's a stunning show about the physical and spiritual journey of Omar Ibn Said, a West African Muslim scholar at the beginning of the 19th century who is kidnapped into American slavery for the next 60 years. <i>(production photos by Cory Weaver) </i>
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The composer and librettist is <a href="https://rhiannongiddens.com/omar">Rhiannon Giddens</a>, a 46-year-old polymath musician from North Carolina. She collaborated in its orchestration with the 61-year-old Michael Abels who has been writing classical concert music for decades but only recently became well-known for his soundtracks for Jordan Peele's arty horror films. Besides being a successful pop singer, Giddens is a noted archaeologist of American folk music and its immigrant roots, convincingly evangelizing for the inclusion of Africa as a major source.
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<i>Omar</i> contains a monster gumbo of different musical styles, from operatic to gospel to folk, but they work together smoothly and the music stays consistently engaging for three hours. Plus, it is such a welcome change to have black artists exploring black roots music for a classical music audience rather than white artists plundering the same mine for most of the 20th century.
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The opera was commissioned for the Spoleto Festival 2020 in South Carolina but the pandemic upended everything so its premiere was at Spoleto Festival 2022. Afterwards, the opera traveled to the LA Opera where the production was super-sized, brilliantly. Another polymath artist, <a href="https://www.kalyban.com/" target="_blank">Christopher Myers</a>, was the production designer and his work is masterful, some of the most striking designs I've seen on a stage. That goes for the rest of the production team too: Set Designer Amy Rubin, Costume Designers April M. Hickman and Micheline Russell-Brown, Lighting Designer Pablo Santiago, and Projection Designer Joshua Higgason.
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I tend to avoid stories concerning the Holocaust and American slavery because they seem too massively horrible to be considered as entertainment. The first act of <i>Omar</i>, with its brilliantly staged Middle Passage sequence, should be rough on the conscience of any white American, particularly since this history is still being officially repressed here 200 years later. The second act is cheerier, however, with square dancing, a "good" plantation master, and lots of theology centering around The Word.
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The cast is strong throughout, anchored by the young tenor Jamez McCorkle as Omar. He has been singing the role around the country since its debut in Spoleto, and he projects a spiritual stolidity throughout all his trials that feels genuinely powerful.
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Taylor Raven was resplendent as Omar's mother Fatima, who is killed in the first scene but appears through the rest of the opera as a fabulous ghost...
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...while soprano Brittany Renee brought some sunshine as fellow slave Julie who helps Omar survive.
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The four roles for evil and good white characters were divided between two singers, tenor Barry Banks as the Slave Auctioneer/Liberal Friend and baritone Daniel Okulitch as the Evil Master/Good Master. They both did great jobs as characters who the audience couldn't help but despise, and appear in the penultimate scene where the "good master" is insisting that his new educated house slave, Omar, become a Christian and leave his "false god."
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What nobody but Omar seems to realize is that Islam recognizes Moses and Jesus as true prophets, but that Mohammed had received the latest word from God. The opera begins with a long prayer to Allah that bookends a long finale where The Word of the Bible, Psalm 23, is transformed and superseded by a prayer from The Word of the Koran. The chorus meanwhile has spread itself throughout the auditorium, surrounding the audience in sound. The ensuing musical transcendence was real and well earned. Also, though there are many explicitly Christian scenes throughout the history of Western Opera, and a few Jewish ones, I have never heard Islam used positively this way in an opera house before. On the third, Saturday night performance, the house seemed to be sold out and the audience was liberally sprinkled with what looked like much of the Bay Area Muslim community. The word has gotten out. Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-57235988247758383722023-11-08T14:34:00.003-08:002023-11-08T14:34:15.059-08:00What Matters at SFMOMA<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFQ-CsvrxS0ghLFSP2vR1J5fUswRhQE04ordDGXiaJYi7qBb377YpdyBEOIg0TL99SuH7rVGEkOCsC4gk2FUX1ula7sVYcugjCImjkQzI1j0mH9gM_U3FU1izoGbupzTlMW211m68j4NTrdoxv7ZwvV4rZ18MRhSFNYHNtPrctwMJpHkSpujeS/s1600/23110196.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFQ-CsvrxS0ghLFSP2vR1J5fUswRhQE04ordDGXiaJYi7qBb377YpdyBEOIg0TL99SuH7rVGEkOCsC4gk2FUX1ula7sVYcugjCImjkQzI1j0mH9gM_U3FU1izoGbupzTlMW211m68j4NTrdoxv7ZwvV4rZ18MRhSFNYHNtPrctwMJpHkSpujeS/s1600/23110196.jpg"/></a></div>
Two wildly successful Japanese artists are currently having exhibitions at different San Francisco museums this fall: <a href="https://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2023/10/murakami-monsterized-at-asian.html" target="_blank">Takashi Murakami at the Asian</a> and Yayoi Kusama at SFMOMA.
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We walked quickly through SFMOMA's Third Street lobby because there is a large screen installed over the coat check room showing Wu Tsang's 2022 video art piece <i>Of Whales</i>. From what I have seen of the looping, two-hour, digitally animated video over the last few months, it somehow manages to make whales boring which I had not thought possible. The real problem is an endlessly irritating musical soundtrack, credited to Asma Maroof and Daniel Pineda, which sounds like a combo of Kenny G, electronic bloops, and banal film music.
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When I asked employees if the new, recurring soundtrack for their work lives was annoying, the responses have ranged from diplomatic smiles to eyes rolling right out of their heads. There must have been staff pushback because there is now a small note on the SFMOMA website which states: "The volume of this work is lowered during non-peak hours. To experience it at normal volume, please visit between 1–4 p.m. Friday through Tuesday, or on Thursdays from 1–7 p.m." The installation is scheduled to remain in the lobby through December 2025, by which time a few front-line employees may have gone mad.
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Upstairs on the fourth floor, there is a new curatorial concept called <i>What Matters: A Proposition in Eight Rooms</i>, which <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/what-matters-a-proposition-in-eight-rooms/">the website blurb</a> describes as "thought-provoking contemporary works from the museum’s collection that offer individual artistic responses to questions about life and art. These works propose engagements with both physicality and the ephemeral, addressing tangible matter of artistic media as well as urgent subject matters. Presented across eight rooms, <i>What Matters</i> addresses materials, conditions of space and architecture, and, most importantly, social relations."
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It doesn't get more vague and artspeak than that, and the installations didn't spark much interest on their own, with the exception of <i>...three kings weep...</i>, an eight-minute Jamaican video from 2018 by Ebony G. Patterson. Three men cry and get dressed in a backwards running, hypnotic film.
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On the sixth floor, there is a huge Yayoi Kusama sculpture, <i>Aspiring to Pumpkin's Love, the Love in my Heart</i>, created this year.
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Yayoi Kusama is 94 years old, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama">according to Hanna Schouwink of David Zwirner Gallery, Kusama is "officially the world's most successful living artist".</a> I had never heard of Kusama before but her Wikipedia entry is astonishing. She left Tokyo in 1957 for New York City and was in the middle of every avant-garde art movement there for the next 15 years. Warhol and Oldenburg outright stole a few of her sculptural innovations, and upon her return to Tokyo in 1972, she was despondent and suicidal. Kusama then entered a mental institution for "art therapy," where she has been living and working for the last 50 years.
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SFMOMA is exhibiting two of her <i>Infinity Rooms</i>, and the set-up for visiting them is a bit strange and rushed, with museum staff dividing the reserved ticket queue into groups of six to eight people.
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You are then led into a small, cube-shaped room that is a conglomeration of mirrors and polka dots that do seem to stretch into infinity.
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After two minutes in the first room, employees open the doors from the outside, and your group will be ushered into a second room with cooler colors and soft sculptures.
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The museum might consider going full Disney and have their people movers wear polka dot uniforms during their shifts.
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With only two minutes allowed in each room, the experience does not exactly make for contemplation of the infinite, but it's perfect for Instagram.
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Down the hall on the sixth floor, Ragnar Kjartansson's nine-screen video masterpiece, <i>The Visitors</i>, continues to play on a loop in a room of its own. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2021/the-visitors-ragnar-kjartansson-oral-history/" target="_blank"><i>The Washington Post</i> recently published a fabulous behind-the-scenes article</a> about the making of the work with interviews of all the participants. They're calling it the ultimate zeitgeist artwork, on a par with Manet's <i>Olympia</i> or Picasso's <i>Guernica</i>. "The way Kjartansson’s immersive exhibit echoes and distills our gradual, vaccine-assisted transition from prolonged isolation to summertime resumption of social life is uncanny."Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-65601385804482696292023-10-30T14:04:00.001-07:002023-10-30T14:04:35.736-07:00Murakami: Monsterized at the Asian<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlhhWCuR7K7Vb0s9iwjVAfqZ_8LR4n7ern4rByoR-v7IlEjYvQ9g1sSdGLSRG1GzFyGdDnQCUf_9aZ2Y3IL5xIJhE6KitUqRCU4AdQRODqlFIVgMzPIO9UkRu0XC3kXz7ltNYPxhX6_KkW9uRr7ragN6VEXNRnhWXEBKnP5WdGigR48vNI5gLW/s1600/23100945.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlhhWCuR7K7Vb0s9iwjVAfqZ_8LR4n7ern4rByoR-v7IlEjYvQ9g1sSdGLSRG1GzFyGdDnQCUf_9aZ2Y3IL5xIJhE6KitUqRCU4AdQRODqlFIVgMzPIO9UkRu0XC3kXz7ltNYPxhX6_KkW9uRr7ragN6VEXNRnhWXEBKnP5WdGigR48vNI5gLW/s1600/23100945.jpg"/></a></div>
There is a <a href="https://exhibitions.asianart.org/exhibitions/takashi-murakami-monsterized/?_gl=1*1f5pvrm*_ga*MzI0NDI2NjU5LjE2OTY3OTYxNDE.*_ga_ELLF5DBPKS*MTY5ODY5NDI4My4yLjAuMTY5ODY5NDMzMi4xMS4wLjA.&_ga=2.114301959.1030360634.1698694283-324426659.1696796141">smashing new exhibit at the Asian Art Museum</a> by the contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami called <i>Unfamiliar People: Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego</i>.
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I had never heard of the artist before this exhibition, which just demonstrates how off-trend I am, because the 62-year-old Murakami has become a global sensation in the the last few decades. (Pictured above is the 2019 <i>Bacon: Scream,</i> a riff on a famous Francis Bacon portrait of his lover George Dyer.)
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He wanted to become an animator but at art school he gravitated towards traditional Japanese art, earning a PhD before rebelling against the insular field. (Pictured above is <i>727</i> which is a 1996 pop takeoff on a famous 12th century Japanese painting, <i>Illustrated Legends of Mt. Shigi</i>.)
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In 1994 he spent a year in New York City and learned a lot about the commercial art world which he put to good use on his return to Tokyo, eventually branching out into the worlds of fashion (Louis Vuitton and Issey Miyake), movies (the 2013 <i>Jellyfish Eyes</i>), music videos (with Pharell, Kanye West, Billie Eilish, and a <a href="https://vimeo.com/50971061" target="_blank">Kirsten Dunst cover of <i>Turning Japanese</a></i>), and every other conceivable global branding opportunity.
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Murakami has an entire army of young artists and assistants in his three production factories in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and New York, which allows him to create work like the 82-foot-long painting <i>Judgement Day</i> for this exhibit.
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The size is astonishing...
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...as is the detailing...
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...and the occasional nod to erotica.
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Like much Japanese pop art, the sensibility is a strange mixture of cute and weirdly disturbing...
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...and after three years of a global pandemic, with much of the world going mad with fear and conspiracy theories...
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...Murakami is presenting this exhibit as his response. (Pictured is the 2023 <i>Unfamiliar People: Snow Crystals</i>.)
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The show is a kick and well worth seeing.(<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9FCZf_S4NQ">Click here for a charming YouTube video made by the museum with Murakami wearing a series of goofy monster hats while explaining stuff.</a>)Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-38849475908619219852023-10-16T12:34:00.004-07:002023-10-16T13:51:45.693-07:00The Emanuel Ax Piano Concerto at SF Symphony<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIJQxvfm-aXeJTIJjTaOxbU_f9e6tPs7yP2Bh-qXfB7TiUnqMkNXrx28YAM86Jg-f775XrMvfeeMO8LidGl-r0JyZSbcIaiAftp4WfMie6qECjHVULqYbSWytvb3y4ORu9Mjaca9AfD3dhVdPNlv2UB-stOcNQUKOJ774jYD37kU_VU2jqsnqZ/s1600/23101320.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIJQxvfm-aXeJTIJjTaOxbU_f9e6tPs7yP2Bh-qXfB7TiUnqMkNXrx28YAM86Jg-f775XrMvfeeMO8LidGl-r0JyZSbcIaiAftp4WfMie6qECjHVULqYbSWytvb3y4ORu9Mjaca9AfD3dhVdPNlv2UB-stOcNQUKOJ774jYD37kU_VU2jqsnqZ/s1600/23101320.jpg"/></a></div>
Esa Pekka-Salonen has now been the San Francisco Music Director for about three years, and the happiest surprise for me has been his conducting of traditional warhorses, like the 1873 <i>Variations on a Theme of Haydn</i> by Johannes Brahms, which was the opener for last weekend's subscription concerts. The reading was traditional but clean, as if decades of interpretive accretions had been scrubbed away. <i>(Photo by Brandon Patoc.)</i>
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Salonen is also an expert conductor of contemporary music, and the concert continued with a world premiere commission to Swedish composer Anders Hillborg for a piano concerto written for the 74-year-old pianist Emanuel Ax.
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It's the second piano concerto composed by Hillborg, and it is subtitled <i>The MAX Concerto</i>, in honor of "Manny Ax."
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The concerto is a little over 20 minutes, an uninterrupted, episodic journey through nine different kinds of music, all of which I found delightful. Though half of my friends at the concert were not impressed, <a href="https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/classical/sf-symphony-review-hillborg-ax-18405143" target="_blank">Joshua Kosman at the <i>SF Chronicle</i></a> seems to have agreed with me, and wrote a nice appreciation of the piece.
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After intermission, Salonen conducted a rock-and-roll performance of Beethoven's <i>Symphony No. 2</i> from 1802. This is an overplayed work that can be deadly dull, but Salonen led the orchestra at a wildly vigorous pace, and it worked well. The tunes are still causing earworms, which is a high compliment. <i>(Photo by Brandon Patoc.)</i>Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11380345.post-64436748633094823542023-10-11T13:11:00.004-07:002023-10-12T19:49:02.458-07:00Naive and Sentimental Music at the SF Symphony<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjopBZ3uoAoGGO8sjtLCYKyYYf3Yf2m5jCh6bSOAt-SQAXAm1P4yPuhu9UM-VBaGxNgtjroWH9oaFHSZiDbCIh7TR2Wb7GtlBuj5n72J1naK7sqh37rl7aAUluc41Kr_mUks0ZAX8m5_9FsK6p78xjqNrGw0FB8gQc3idqcB54_5M9gMHCM1gZ_/s1600/23100605.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjopBZ3uoAoGGO8sjtLCYKyYYf3Yf2m5jCh6bSOAt-SQAXAm1P4yPuhu9UM-VBaGxNgtjroWH9oaFHSZiDbCIh7TR2Wb7GtlBuj5n72J1naK7sqh37rl7aAUluc41Kr_mUks0ZAX8m5_9FsK6p78xjqNrGw0FB8gQc3idqcB54_5M9gMHCM1gZ_/s1600/23100605.jpg"/></a></div>
The San Francisco Symphony presented a bracing evening of modern music last weekend, starting with <i>Convergence</i>, a commissioned violin concerto from Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, featuring Finnish soloist Pekka Kuusisto, and conducted by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Nordin tried to explain his piece to the audience beforehand, mentioning that he wasn't really a classical composer and that he used technology for most of his work, but a teacher had told him his strength was "in his deficiencies." He also demonstrated how his computer setup could create sounds by having the conductor wave his hand towards a monitor or by the violinist sawing away on his instrument.
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There was also a an accompanying abstract video by Thomas Antoine Pénanguer that started by riffing on the psychedelic sequence from <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i> which eventually morphed into what looked a bit like the Las Vegas Dancing Fountains at the Bellagio. In my brain, I even started hearing Andrea Bocelli's voice singing <i>Time to Say Goodbye</i>. <i>(Production photos by Stefan Cohen.)</i>
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Pekka Kuusisto, who debuted with the SF Symphony two years ago playing Bryce Dessner's violin concerto, is an entertaining virtuoso who looks like a nerd gone wild. When the digital interactive sections arrived in this concerto, it felt like a waste of resources since there was a great violinist and a full orchestra on hand. Most of the electronic music seemed to be a doubling of Kuusisto's frenetic fiddling in the outer two movements and what sounded like Windham Hill wind chimes in the middle movement.
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Opinion was divided afterwards, with about half of my friends and acquaintances very much enjoying the piece and another half thinking of it as ridiculous. Still, it was good to hear a new work, and much of it was plain fun.
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It was also a good warmup for John Adams' massive 1998 orchestral work, <i>Naive and Sentimental Music</i>. I have been a fan of composer John Adams since the 1980s and was puzzled when this recording arrived and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. The problem, I finally realized, was that the soft to loud dynamics are so extreme that it's about impossible to make out, especially on a crappy sound system.
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Esa-Pekka Salonen gave the premiere of the piece when he was Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and it was thrilling to hear him revive it 25 years later.
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The 50-minute concerto for orchestra requires a huge orchestra, with music that veers from simple to outrageously complex. There were moments in the outer movements where it looked like each percussion player and every orchestra section were all playing different time signatures at once. This looks like seriously difficult music to perform, but the listening pleasure is worth it.
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The soft, slow middle movement featured guitarist Justin Smith who was hidden in the middle of the orchestra, which led to thoughts of "what the heck is that instrument, and where is it coming from?"
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The performance was marvelous and reminded me again why I love this orchestra and its new Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen.Civic Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12362422142667230626noreply@blogger.com1