Stripped Down Bach with ABS

The American Bach Soloists completed their season last week with performances of three early church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. The composer wrote more than 200 of these short (20-30 minute) pieces for small orchestra, a few soloists, and chorus, and they can be performed with any number of musicians. For instance, there are close to a dozen renditions on YouTube of the first piece on the program, the 1707 Christ lag in Todesbanden (Cantata 4), and they all sound very different depending on the size of the chorus, whether the instruments are period or modern, and the age and gender of the soprano soloists in music that was originally written for boy sopranos.

ABS Artistic Director and conductor Jeffrey Thomas went with a pared down ensemble consisting of less than a dozen instrumentalists supporting four soloists for both individual arias and as the chorus besides. Personally, I missed the pleasing mixture of soloists, chorus, and instrumental interludes, but seemed to be in the minority on that account because I heard a number of audience members exclaiming how wonderful it was to hear the choral vocal lines being so transparent.

It helped that the four soloists for the program were all very good, including baritone David McFerrin (top left) and tenor Steven Soph (top right).

The real stars, though, were soprano Elijah McCormack (top left) and countertenor Kyle Sanchez Tingzon (top right), whose voices had a plaintive beauty that was remarkable.

The transgender Elijah McCormack was especially notable, with a small, pure but resonant voice that sounded something like a cross between a boy soprano and an adult female soprano. For early music, which was written when women were forbidden from performing in public, McCormack's voice is just about perfect. My only complaint is that there were no solo arias for him in the three cantatas because we all wanted to hear more.

The second cantata on the program was the 1708 Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (Cantata 106), which treated the usual small subjects of God and Death. (Pictured is violinist Toma Iliev getting a breath of fresh air at intermission.)

After the break, there was a performance of the Brandenberg Concerto #6, which sounded a bit anemic with the small forces.

However, the concert ended triumphantly with the 1714 Himmelskonig, sei willkomen (Cantata 182), depicting Jesus on his donkey entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, a very happy affair.

Saying Thanks to a Federal Worker

This January I visited the Social Security Administration offices at San Francisco's strange looking federal building on 7th and Mission.

There was misinformation on file about previous "credible" health insurance when I applied for a Medicare Part D prescription plan with Cigna, so in order to straighten things out, I waited with dozens of others for two hours to seek assistance from an SSA employee. Unfortunately, the situation was beyond the agent's capabilities so she set up an appointment with a specialist who could help. However, the first available date was three months later, April 7th, and this was before the Elon Musk DOGE slasher show had even begun.

After signing an online attestation form, the issue was mysteriously resolved with Cigna in late March. So even though there was no need to keep the appointment with Social Security, I went through the abusive, heavyhanded security gauntlet anyway.

The reason was to thank the beleaguered federal employees whose jobs are currently in peril and who are having to pick up the slack at a decimated organization.

Only people with appointments were being allowed to enter, so the large waiting room was emptier than usual.

When I was called to Window 8, the gentleman behind the bulletproof glass with wary, weary eyes asked for my birthdate. I explained that the issue had been resolved and I just wanted to thank him and his colleagues for continuing to help others in this time of chaos. The look on his face quickly went from confused to flabbergasted to smiling as I handed him a thank you card for the office. This might be a good time for you to also say thanks to a federal worker if you get a chance.

A Kickass Performance of John Adams's Chamber Symphony

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music offers free concerts for the public almost every day of the week and you can get tickets by making reservations at their website (click here). On Saturday evening, I was drawn to an orchestral concert led by student conductors because one of the pieces was the wild, rarely performed 1992 Chamber Symphony of local composer John Adams. Along the way, I ran into Chenier Ng, one of the most dedicated music lovers in the world.

The concert began with Haydn's Symphony No. 59, nicknamed "The Fire Symphony," in a surprisingly vivid performance conducted by Donald Lee III, who brought passion, interesting dynamics, and a liveliness that is often absent when San Francisco's professional ensembles play the composer's music.

According to the program notes, Lee is a multi-hyphenate musician: pianist, conductor, and vocal accompanist. If he can conduct Haydn this well, he can probably do anything.

This was followed by Adams's Chamber Symphony conducted by Chih-Yao Chang from Taiwan in an astonishingly accomplished, kickass performance. There is a well-known anecdote Adams tells about the genesis of this work. He was studying the score of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony at home while his 7-year-old son Sam was watching TV cartoons with their manic musical soundtracks, and the two merged in his mind like a surrealist Looney Tunes animation. He also notes that "Despite all the good humor, my Chamber Symphony turned out to be shockingly difficult to play." No kidding.

Young musicians are often quite brilliant with contemporary music that confounds their elders and this performance was a good example, a more exact and exciting version than I heard 10 years ago at the SF Symphony. Concertmaster Aleksy Aretsky (above) was superb in both the Haydn and this outing, and Diego Rodriguez (above, back left) miraculously made my least favorite instrument, the piccolo, sound varied and gorgeous. This was especially important because at times the three-movement symphony sounds like a concerto for piccolo and chamber orchestra.

Conductor Chih-Yao Chang kept all the competing musical threads and cross-cutting time signatures clear, even when the score sounds like it's about to be a car wreck. He's got a bright future. I didn't stay for the second half of the concert, which was Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Piano Concerto #1 because no matter how good the performance, it would have sounded like weak tea after the Chamber Symphony.