Sunday on Larkin Street between Eddy and O'Farrell Streets was the site of a day-long Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival known as Tet.
The gritty western Tenderloin neighborhood has become the center of a thriving set of restaurants, sandwich shops, and stores catering to Vietnamese immigrants.
Last year I was taken to a remarkable lunch by David Lei at a Vietnamese restaurant on Larkin, and I noticed that he was ordering our meal in Chinese (Cantonese to be exact).
"Is this place Chinese or Vietnamese?" I asked, and he explained that most of the post-war Vietnamese refugees during the late 1970s and 1980s were ethnic Chinese, who had essentially filled the role of the mercantile class over the centuries in Vietnam and who bore the brunt of confiscation and "re-education camps" when communist North Vietnam won the war with the South.
The ethnic Chinese minority in Vietnam are called Hoa. According to an interesting and extensive article at Wikipedia, "The Hoa are descended from early settlers from the Guangdong province who arrived in Vietnam from the 18th to 20th centuries. The final group of mainland China migrants came during the 1940s. A large proportion of Hoa who are living outside of Vietnam speak Cantonese as their mother tongue, albeit in a Vietnamese accent."
In other words, the Boat People of the late 1970s and 1980s, whose survival rate was not much better than 50% on the high seas, were essentially the Jews of Vietnam. No wonder the survivors of that time are so unyielding in their hatred for the government of Vietnam to this day.
Most of them emigrated to urban centers around the world, and in the case of San Francisco, ended up in one of the roughest neighborhoods imaginable: The Tenderloin.
Last weekend at Yerba Buena Center, the local, very ambitious chamber orchestra Ensemble Parallele presented a pair of performances of Alban Berg's forbidding, mostly atonal German opera "Wozzeck" in a new, reduced orchestration by John Rea.
The piece starts off grim with the lowly soldier title character being abused by every other character in the opera, and then proceeds to get even grimmer as his mistress Marie cuckolds him, which leads to a murder/suicide. The final scene has their orphaned bastard child playing on a hobbyhorse while being teased by children that "your mother is dead." Let's just say that the opera is not exactly my cup of tea, and when I watched it at the San Francisco Opera the last time it was performed a decade ago, the experience actually made me sick.
I ended up being sick again, though it had nothing to do with the opera, and everything to do with a cold virus. I picked up a pair of tickets from the great p.r. publicist Karen Ames (above right), went outside to wait for the performance and realized during a coughing jag that there was no way I was going to make it through an intermissionless ninety minutes, so I gave the great tickets to my opera supernumerary friends Michael Harvey and Charlie Lichtman (below).
Charlie reported back:
"The combination of John Rea’s re-orchestration, Matthew Antaky’s set design and lights, Austin Forbord’s multimedia, and a cornucopia of talented singers and musicians presented the audience with a demented world as seen through the eyes of the schizophrenic protagonist. The simulcast faces of the Captain (Scene 1) and the Doctor (Scene 4) were reminiscent of the German expressionist films of the 1920’s, and the ever-so-slightly out of sync projections added another layer of creepy madness.
Outstanding performances were rendered by bass-baritone Bojan Knezevic in the title role, tenor John Duykers as the Captain, and bass Philip Skinner as the Doctor. I couldn’t take my eyes off of any of them, and Scene 7 (where the Captain runs into the Doctor, then Wozzeck) was a high point in the opera. Stage Director Brian Staufenbiel moved the characters through the 15 scenes (and the 14 ‘en vista’ scene changes) smartly and effectively. Nichole Paiement’s deft conducting of the reduced orchestra, plus the talent of each musician, afforded a full-orchestra sound throughout the performance. This production of Wozzeck was one of those rare instances where all the elements of theater came together, the sum of which was a superlative opera experience."
Ensemble Parallele produced a fabulously interesting production of Lou Harrison's opera, "Young Caesar" at the same theatre three years ago, and seems to be on something of a roll. I can't wait to see what they do next. Whatever it is, I hope it once again includes the great character tenor John Duykers (above), the originator of the role of Chairman Mao in John Adams' opera, "Nixon in China." Duykers is one of the Bay Area's serious performing treasures.
The reaction across the local blogosphere to the "Wozzeck" production was essentially ecstatic with Axel Feldheim and The Opera Tattler (above) handing out raves. My favorite account of the performance was by Patrick Vaz who confesess to being "more of a Lulu guy," before gushing over the performance. His writing makes you feel like you were there.
The pianist Sarah Cahill performed pieces from "A Sweeter Music" last Saturday evening at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a benefit for the American Friends Service Committee, which is the oddly clunky name for Quakers. She was joined by her daughter Miranda (above) who helped out during a rehearsal of the official world premiere of a Pauline Oliveiros piece for audience sing-a-long called "A New Indigo Peace."
I heard a preview of Ms. Oliveiros' protest peace song over a year ago at Mills College and loved it, encouraging Sarah to program it again. She took me up on the challenge and insisted I be in charge of the audience sing-a-long at the Conservatory benefit, which was a stretch because my singing voice only approximates pitch. Plus, after a week of wage slavery at the Census Bureau, I had come down with a horrible cold for the weekend. Thankfully, I was able to dragoon a trio of Quakers from the weekly federal building peace vigil to fill in for me.
Also helping with the audience sing-along was Miranda. As Sarah wrote, "Before the concert I talked with Miranda about the history of the American Friends Service Committee, as much as I know about it, and she said she felt the same about the senselessness of war and the possibilities of peace. And when it came time for Pauline Oliveros' sing-along, she decided she wanted to go stand in front of the audience and guide the singing with the Quakers."
The three brave souls were (left to right above) Stephen Matchett, Sandra Schwartz, and Markley Morris. It helped that Matchett could read the penciled out score and sing with near-perfect pitch.
Markley Morris wrote an account:"We came for rehearsal two hours before the show. When Sarah played it through, I was dazzled. The idea is simple: a three-part round based on the words “We want peace on earth” is embedded in brilliant swirls of piano music. There’s a certain rowdiness about it. The repeating words evoke the chanting at a demonstration.
I was sorry Mike was under the weather but thankful he was there to help us rehearse. I was given the simplest part of the round but clearly was out of my depths. I never did manage to sing it through correctly to say nothing of in tune!
When it came time to perform, Sarah and then Stephen skillfully explained the piece to the audience and we practiced a little. Then we sang. Somehow it all came together. “A New Indigo Peace” was glorious. I couldn’t really hear the audience but I could see that their mouths moving and the music flowed everywhere.
I think the sing-along was a pleasant and energizing break after some quite demanding music. Sarah likened it to the sing-alongs Pete Seeger’s been leading all these years.
I love “A New Indigo Peace,” and I hope it goes on to have a long life.
