Michael Tilson Thomas' annual three-week "Festival" with the San Francisco Symphony is devoted to two Viennese composers, Franz Schubert and Alban Berg, who span the forming of the Austrian Empire, the subsequent Austro-Hungarian Empire and the total dissolution of Austria and Vienna as a world power.
In an entertaining interview (click here) with the mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, who sang Berg's "Seven Early Songs," Cedric asked her:
You sang Schubert here with MTT, and now you're doing Berg, as part of the Schubert and Berg Journey. Do you see the connection?
Michelle: It's hard to say. Obviously, MTT has some connection in mind, which is why he's doing it. I personally don't know what it is. I'm anxious to hear it and talk to him about it.
I believe the reason is that Tilson Thomas probably just loves the music of both composers, and Schubert is meant to balance out the harsh dissonances of Berg. The only problem is that I don't much care for the way Tilson Thomas conducts Schubert who has never been a favorite composer anyway. Though it would have been a harder sell, I wish he had just gone all the way and given a Second Viennese School Festival with Schoenberg and Webern in all their dissonant scariness.
Michelle DeYoung, looking like an Amazon and exuding energy to the rafters, was a thrilling, exquisite soloist. Though I'm not a big lieder fan, she had everyone convinced that what she was singing was of the utmost importance.
At intermission, I stumbled across The Blogger Table with the Opera Tattler in modified dirndl drag (click here), The Ambassador (click here), and Axel Feldheim (click here), all of whom have written about last night's concert using their Robert Louis Stevenson secret society pseudonyms.
The second half of the concert consisted of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony and Berg's "Three Pieces for Orchestra" (Monster Orchestra above!), and we all basically agreed. The Schubert wasn't a success but the Berg was awesome.
A special Board of Supervisors meeting was held at noon today to discuss whether or not to reject the Metropolitan Transit Authority's upcoming budget which relies on 25% fare hikes to its customers along with reduced service.
The new Board of Supervisors president David Chiu was the first to bring up the idea of rejection because the Mayor's Office has been using the MTA as its personal cash cow, authorizing work orders for everything from salaries for Newsom's "environmental" aides to $80 million in compensation towards the San Francisco Police Department for vague, undefined, nonexistent security.
The board was split pretty evenly between those who don't give a damn about their constituents who ride Muni and those who do, so I asked Hope Johnson (above) what was going to happen. "It all comes down to Sophie Maxwell. She's the swing vote. Everything else is just posturing."
As usual, Hope was absolutely correct. Supervisor Avalos, who had marched over to Nathaniel Ford's offices a couple of weeks ago demanding a more transit-friendly budget, started off with a grandstanding speech about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" which didn't make a lot of allegorical sense.
Then it was time for Nathaniel Ford, the $350,000+ Executive Director of the MTA to tell us what had changed in the budget since last week's Board of Supervisors meeting, which turned out to be virtually nothing.
His mendacious presentation, delivered in fluent bureaucratese, was followed by a presentation from MTA Board Chairman Tom Nolan, who is originally from the Peninsula where the car is king. (For some background on how we got here, click here for an article in Streetsblog by Bryan Goebel and click here for an article by Marc Norton on how the $2 fare has been planned for years.)
After speeches by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Eric Mar and David Campos on why the MTA budget was a disaster, Sophie Maxwell stood up and complimented her "colleagues on feeling so passionate about this subject." However, she had obviously been "persuaded" somehow before the meeting to vote with the old power structure, and she then proceeded to stab her colleagues and all of her constituents in the back.
Supervisor Chris Daly, sitting next to Maxwell, had kept his mouth shut throughout the entire meeting but his colleague's speech obviously stretched whatever patience he was displaying so he slipped around the back of the chamber and went to joke quietly with the press section.
As bad as Maxwell's speech was, the vote and speech from Board President David Chiu was worse. Since his initial challenge of the MTA budget, Mr. Chiu has been weaseling his votes this way and that in one committee or another, and today was no different. He started by proclaiming that he was the only one who didn't have a car and who dependended on Muni for transportation, and that the Board had managed $30 million in concessions during this MTA budget controversy which was a new record. In truth, he has been playing both sides against the middle, and who got shafted were the citizens of San Francisco (click here for Greg Dewar's rant on this point at N Judah Chronicles).
Whenever I go to City Hall to buy my 25% more expensive Fast Pass every month, I'll be sure to remember Mr. Chiu and Ms. Maxwell along with Supervisors Bevan Dufty, Sean Elsbernd, Carmen Chu, and Michaela Alioto-Pier who was smiling and giggling in her wheelchair during most of the meeting.
Above all, I will be thinking of our phony baloney environmental Mayor Newsom and his retinue of chauffeurs and guards.
The third in the "Davies After Hours" series of post-symphony parties at Davies Hall took place Friday night, and I pretended that the entire affair was being put on specifically to celebrate my birthday.
Louisa Spier and all the people in the San Francisco Symphony P.R. department played along, even presenting a cool birthday present and card.
This was an embarrassingly welcome gesture since I had spent the day clinically depressed, wondering why the world didn't stop in its tracks to worship me, a pathology probably brought on by a fifth year birthday party which was so spectacular that everything since has been a profound disappointment.
As Beth Spotswood wrote, "I have a bunch of friends who aren't wild about their birthdays. I don't get it. You know me. I love my birthday. It's like Christmas and I'm Jesus." Beth is proactive about being worshiped on her special day, however, while I lean towards major self-pity.
The party itself, billed as "Mercury Lounge," was a wonderful success with some of the most interesting music I've heard in Davies Hall.
It was a mixture of Benjamin Schwartz, the soon to depart leader of the Youth Orchestra...
...conducting live music by Luciano Berio ("Call"), John Luther Adams ("The Light Within"), and Steve Reich ("Eight Lines")...
...and composer Mason Bates playing DJ between musical sets.
Though I'm not a big fan of techno music, the ambient sound was perfect for a party, and the live performances were superb.
The secret to enjoying these parties, I was told and it was true, is to go somewhere else for the first thirty minutes and then join the party on the upper terrace when the crowd thins out and you can hang out with beautiful hipsters in comfort.
