Instead of Star Wars, we perversely went to two very good muckraking films this Christmas season, Spotlight and The Big Short, which were based on true stories about institutional corruption. Spotlight examines the 2002, deeply-researched series the Boston Globe newspaper published about pedophile priests in the Catholic Church and how they have been shielded over the decades not only by the Church itself, but by the legal establishment including judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and police, along with the press itself. The film is somber and beautifully written, and all the actors from Michael Keaton to Rachel McAdams to Mark Ruffalo turn in performances that are simultaneously underplayed and brilliant. When not totally infuriating, the film is also hopeful, demonstrating that information properly broadcast can effectively change things for the better.
No such hope is offered in the antic, cartoon-style The Big Short, which untangles the 2008 mortgage meltdown on Wall Street through the stories of four groups who bet against the deceptive chicanery that was the 2001-2008 housing bubble. Once again, the swindle was widespread, with federal government agencies not doing their jobs, Wall Street ratings agencies like Moody's becoming rubber stamps for worthless subprime mortgages, and an army of real estate agents and mortgage bankers dispensing with ethics altogether while riding the wave until it crashed and destroyed the savings and livelihoods of millions. Most depressing is that the financial industry's behavior continues unabated and unpunished, and we're heading for another cliff where the taxpayers will be required to bail out the banking criminals yet again.
The photos above were taken at a Muni bus stop at 18th and Castro yesterday, where a gentleman repeatedly ran into a store to buy scratch-off Lotto tickets and then used the movie ad kiosk as a backstop. The ironies are so numerous I don't know where to begin.
A sculpture trumpeting the 50th Super Bowl has gone up in Civic Center. It is at the long end of the sandy waste which used to be a lawn before Mayor Gavin Newsom had it torn out in 2008 for a bogus Victory Garden for Chez Panisse's Alice Waters.
Mayor Ed Lee's administration has been coming up with similarly misguided ideas in anticipation of Super Bowl 50 (the NFL ditched the Roman numerals this year) to be played February 7th at the new Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. Lee clumsily announced last August that the homeless "are going to have to leave San Francisco" for two weeks, and there was also a plan to tear down all the overhead Muni wires on Market Street leading to the Embarcadero so the proposed Super Bowl Entertainment Village would be more aesthetically pleasing. Thankfully, that multimillion dollar fiasco was averted when public outcry was strong and immediate.
The last time the Super Bowl was played in the Bay Area was Version XIX in 1985. It was held at Stanford Stadium because the NFL considered Candlestick Park too much of a shithole to host the high rollers. At least the game was good, with the San Francisco 49ers led by coach Bill Walsh and quarterback Joe Montana winning their second Super Bowl together over the Miami Dolphins of the Don Shula/Dan Marino era.
Currently, the 49ers have an idiot owner who recently fired an eccentric, winning coach who was doing amusing things with a charismatic backup quarterback, and the present team is woeful. They also moved out of town to a cursed stadium next to San Jose, which has not particularly endeared them to longstanding San Franciscans. Like Cassandra, I am feeling imminent disaster here, with the recent America's Cup mess as a template. If most of the weather forecasters are correct, February 7th should be smack in the middle of the El Niño storms which are expected to wallop us soon. This could be interesting.
We went nowhere for the holidays and it was wonderful. Forget Burning Man. When San Francisco really clears out is during the Christmas season, as people go on vacations or visit family. I have been working this month in Silicon Valley and using public transport, which involves, each way, two Muni bus rides, a Caltrain trip, and then a shuttle bus. It's a hellish commute, but this week it's been a dream, with Muni buses not jammed to the gills, train cars empty, and rush hour gridlock in SOMA miraculously absent.
We also had Christmas lunch at our version of Cheers, a pub with food called The Bell Tower on Polk Street. No family drama, no late airplanes, no broken down trains, no tornadoes or blizzards. It was heaven.
San Francisco boosters overuse the phrase "world-class," but the Bay Area's classical music scene deserves the description. This is true for most of its manifestations, high and low, from the San Francisco Opera to the Tenderloin storefront of the Center for New Music. So let's have a Top 10 List for 2015 (in sorta chronological order), even though I have cheated and put up multiple performances in one category because there was so much good music last year. (Pictured above at a March concert by Wild Rumpus at The Center for New Music, soprano Vanessa Langer vocalised and played digitally interactive metal sheets in Oakland composer David Coll's Position, Influence.)
1. New Music Gathering at the SF Conservatory of Music
Langer gave a bravura performance of the same David Coll composition in January at the first annual New Music Gathering. This was a long weekend organized by four Brooklyn friends (left to right above: Daniel Felsenfeld, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Lainie Fefferman, and Matt Marks) at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, combining East Coast and West Coast performers and composers in a remarkable cross-pollination that included performances by everyone from the ICE flautist Claire Chase to pianist Sarah Cahill playing Terry Riley with the composer in attendance. The Gathering seemed to be more about artists meeting each other rather than putting on a show for an audience, but the concerts were still extraordinary. A second edition of the Gathering is scheduled for the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in a couple of weeks, and if you are in the area, check it out.
2. American Bach Soloists
The early music ensemble headed by Music Director Jeffrey Thomas gave a number of wonderful performances around the Bay Area in 2015. My favorite was Handel's pastoral oratorio, Acis and Galatea, with soloists Kyle Stegall and Nola Richardson as the doomed young lovers. Both singers were originally discovered/nurtured at the ABS Festival Academy in the summer for young professionals, which was particularly rich this year in performances from the French Baroque.
3. Berio's "Sinfonia" at UC Davis
Every two years the Music Department at UC Davis puts on a New Music Festival, and this year's edition included a rare performance of Luciano Berio's 1968 Sinfonia for large orchestra and eight amplified singers that was mind-blowingly good. The soloists were recruited from San Francisco's Volti chorus and the piece was conducted by Christian Baldini, posing in front of his soloists at a reception after the concert.
4. San Francisco Symphony
There are so many concerts over the course of a season at the San Francisco Symphony, ranging from dull to thrilling and everywhere in between, that it is tricky deciding which to attend. One nearly fail-proof strategy is to go to any concert featuring the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, under director Ragnar Bohlin, who can sing anything from Bach to John Adams superbly. My two favorite performances from them this year were in the Brahms German Requiem conducted by Herbert Blomstedt and Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass conducted by Andras Schiff, above right.
Another good bet at the SF Symphony is any music by 20th century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. A series of guest conductors and soloists have performed with the orchestra over the last decade with breathtaking musicianship and skill, and the latest examples were Vasily Petrenko (above left) conducting the Technicolor Symphony #12, The Year 1917 in March and violinist Christian Tetzlaff (above right) playing the Violin Concerto #1 in October with conductor Susanna Mälkki.
5. Left Coast Chamber Ensemble
The musicians at Left Coast Chamber Ensemble seem to play whatever amuses them, mixing up 19th century chamber works with modernist world premieres. 2015 was an ambitious, successful year, with concerts in Mill Valley and San Francisco, including the world premiere in March of violist/composer Kurt Rohde's first opera, Death With Interruptions, and a visit from composer Kaija Saariaho. (Pictured above are Daniel Cilli and Nikki Einfeld as Death, and cellist Leighton Fong with Saariaho before he played her Papillons.)
6. Soundbox
The San Francisco Symphony's new winter and spring nightclub in a large rehearsal space at the back of Davies Hall has been a serendipitous success, where everything works when it could have so easily gone wrong. The mixture of symphony players with great local musicians like pianist Sarah Cahill and composer Nathaniel Stookey (above left) and guest artists like Meow Meow (above right) has been invigorating for all. The programming of short pieces from the entire spectrum of classical music history has been inventive and adventurous. The Meyer sound system is a perfect fit for the acoustically dead space. The projections by Adam Larsen are consistently absorbing and unobtrusive, a tricky balancing act. Best of all, the audiences tend to be one of the quietest, most concentrated groups I've experienced at SF Symphony concerts. Plus, everyone gets to talk to each other during the frequent intermissions from their adjoining black divans while sipping cocktails. What's not to like? Congratulations to everyone involved, and a special shout-out to Symphony PR goddesses Louisa Spier and Amelisa Kusar who were part of the planning.
7. The Trojans at the San Francisco Opera
The grandest of French Grand Operas was finally given its full due at the San Francisco Opera in June. The casting, headed by Bryan Hymel and Susan Graham, was luxurious, and every role exquisitely sung. Donald Runnicles conducting the Opera Orchestra was some of the best Berlioz ever heard, and the chorus was outstanding in demanding stretches of music. The five hour Trojans felt shorter than many operas half that length, and it was exciting to realize how stageworthy this gargantuan piece can be. I stood in the balcony for four performances, joined by many of the hardcore music lovers of the Bay Area, including Charlise Tiee and Terence Shek above. This was one of the top ten productions I have experienced in five decades of attending the San Francisco Opera. Kudos to everyone involved. Now, will some enterprising musical group please program Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ next Christmas instead of another Messiah? I have still never heard the delicate Berlioz oratorio live.
8. West Edge Opera
The spunky, produced-on-a-shoestring, East Bay opera company newly branded as West Edge Opera produced an insanely ambitious season of three concert operas in the spring and three staged operas in a summer festival at various locations in Oakland that included a punk rock club and an abandoned train station. The result was an astonishing success. The concert operas, rare works by famous composers, had their highs and lows in terms of casting and chamber orchestra reduction, but hearing Rossini's Zelmira, Donizetti's Poliuto, and Verdi's I Due Foscari at low prices in odd venues (Rossmoor's new social hall and Berkeley's Freight & Salvage) was a treat.
I didn't see the universally lauded production of Berg's Lulu with the breakout performance by Emma Lynn McNairy because I was too busy playing half a dozen supernumerary characters in Laura Kaminsky's recent transgender opera, As One. This was given a sensitive, committed performance by Dan Kempson and Brenda Patterson as two sides of the same person, with exquisite musical accompaniment by the Friction String Quartet. I did make it to Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria staged in a large Burning Man warehouse space in West Oakland, and it was a delight in every way. It was led by conductor Gilbert Martinez and a beautiful original instruments orchestra, with witty staging by company director Mark Streshinsky of a uniformly strong cast.
9. More Monteverdi with Gardner and Stewart
In April, the venerable British early music pioneer John Eliot Gardner brought his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists to Davies Hall for an intermissionless, semi-staged concert of Monteverdi's first proto-opera, L'Orfeo, and it was enchanting in every way. In September at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, Berkeley-based Warren Stewart and his early music group Magnificat performed an all-Monteverdi madrigals concert that was just about perfect. Pictured above right are Christine Brandes and Jennifer Paulino.
10. Savitri and River of Light at Festival Opera
Festival Opera, which used to perform in Walnut Creek's downtown music center, has imploded like many other small opera companies, but there is a group trying to keep the organization alive. In November, they presented a double bill at the Asian Cultural Center in downtown Oakland of Gustav Holst's Hindu religious mythical one-act, Savitri, in a double bill with River of Light, Oakland composer Jack Perla's recent one-act opera about cultural alienation/assimilation after emigration to the U.S. The music in both operas was wondrous, and the performances by a small female chorus, Western and Indian instrumentalists, and a handful of vocal soloists was superb. Pictured above are Daniel Cilli and Maya Kherani as the mixed-race couple trying to figure it out in Oakland.
