The Falun Gong Show Returns

One of the markers of the New Year around the neighborhood is the annual return of the Shen Yun spectacular at the San Francisco Opera House.

Direct from engagements in Fresno and San Jose, the touring show is literally parked at the San Francisco Opera from January 1st to 7th.

Elderly volunteers act as security guards for the Shen Yun vehicles along Franklin Street, and when I took these photos this afternoon, they rushed to give me an advertising flyer.

Ten years ago Sid Chen and I reviewed this show when it was new and being billed as a Chinese New Years Spectacular. We had no idea going in that it was a mixture of spangled kitsch and Falun Gong anti-Peoples Republic of China propaganda. I assume most people currently attending the show similarly have no idea what of what they are going to see, which is a strange bit of bait and switch marketing.

For the delirious review from a decade ago (Sid can be very funny), click here.

A Dozen Favorite Musical Events in 2017

It was another extraordinary year in the Bay Area music world, and here are a dozen favorites in chronological order:

1. The Return of James Gaffigan

Gaffigan was the Associate Conductor of the SF Symphony from 2006 to 2009, which was when I became a big fan. Since then, he has forged an interesting career in Europe, becoming the Chief Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. He returned to the SF Symphony in February with a grab-bag program of Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Mozart and R. Strauss that demonstrated not only how good his musical instincts are in different kinds of music, but how much he has grown. In December he returned to lead the SF Opera orchestra in the Adler Showcase and was a virtuosic, sympathetic accompanist to the young singers in music ranging from Bellini to Wagner. My New Year's wish is that the SF Symphony and/or SF Opera would seriously audition him for the role of Music Director because he has musical greatness and versatility written all over him.

2. John Adams 70th Birthday Lollapalooza

The Berkeley resident who is also a world-famous composer used to offer world premieres of his symphonic and operatic works in the Bay Area on a regular basis, but seemed to recently abandon us for Los Angeles and London. (Well, who can blame him?) On the occasion of his 70th birthday, however, we were flooded by one late masterwork after another, starting with his hosting of a superb SoundBox concert featuring his own music and that of younger composers he admires in February. This was followed by the SF Symphony's local premiere of his three-hour Christian Passion oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary, followed the next week by the local premiere of his hour-long feminist take for violin and orchestra Scheherezade 2.0. To top it all off, the world premiere of a new opera about the California Gold Rush, Girls of the Golden West, debuted at the SF Opera in November, a work that pissed a lot of people off which should be encouraging for a one-time 70-year-old firebrand. I loved the piece, even though the opera is as dark and disturbing as it was intended to be.

3. The Source

Another brilliant American composer, Ted Hearne, has written a rock-inflected, multimedia, collage-style opera, The Source, about Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks. Presented at the new SF Opera Lab on the top floor of the SF Veterans Building, it was the best use of that space I have yet seen.

4. SoundBox

The San Francisco Symphony's monthly winter/spring nightclub experiment, SoundBox, went from strength to strength in its third season. One of its best editions was in March when Associate Conductor Christian Reif curated Rebel featuring the music of Weimar Germany, Shostakovich, and contemporary Americans. There were a number of highlights but it was baritone Davóne Tines who eventually stole the show, as he did once again singing a major role in Adams' Girls of the Golden West later in the year. Additional good news is a fourth season of SoundBox opened in December, which was not always a certainty.

5. The Temple of Glory

In May, Cal Performances presented a collaboration between San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, singers from France's Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, and dancers from the New York Baroque Dance Company in a performance of The Temple of Glory, a forgotten (for 270 years) operatic collaboration between Rameau and Voltaire. The performance was a triumph and fun besides.

6. Other Minds Music Lou Harrison Centennial Concert

In June, the Other Minds Music Festival presented a Lou Harrison centennial concert at Mission Dolores Basilica where the recently deceased (2003) West Coast composer had studied Gregorian chant as a teenager in the 1930s. The concert was filled with old friends, collaborators, and musicians who had premiered some of the extraordinary music in the first place. Ancient, brilliant Bay Area Bohemia was well represented in the pews, and the evening felt historic, capping off with a rapturously beautiful performance of the 30-minute, Esperanto La Koro Sutro for large chorus and gamelan orchestra.

7. Vijay Iyer and Friends at Ojai North

Cal Performances presents an abbreviated version of the Ojai Festival in June following its Southern California fortnight. This year the jazz pianist/composer Vijay Iyer was the curator/music director, and one of his programs was an improvisatory jam session with three East Indian musicians, saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, tabla master Zakir Hussain, and Carnatic vocalist Aruna Sairam. They were all brilliant, but Aruna Sairam was transcendent. I have no idea how and where she took us with her voice, and have never experienced anything quite like it.

8. The Chastity Tree at West Edge Opera

West Edge Opera continued with its wandering ways, having been forced out of its abandoned Oakland train station by city authorities, and moving to another abandoned West Oakland factory for this summer's season. (They are moving to yet another factory space with real bathroom facilities rather than porta-potties next year.) This summer's season was not as spectacularly successful as the last couple (which statistically was close to impossible), but there was a standout production of a Mozart-era rarity L'arbore di Diana (translated as The Chastity Tree) by Vicente Martín y Soler. The music was gorgeous fun, the libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte a sex-positive delight, and the young, frisky, beautifully voiced cast made it all work.

9. The Visitors at SFMOMA

The hour-long, nine-screen multimedia work The Visitors was created by Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson in 2012 shortly after divorcing his wife. He sings repetitive snatches of her poetry while sitting with a guitar in a bathtub in a decaying Astor mansion on the Hudson River, surrounded by friends in separate rooms joining him live. The effect is rather like an immersive, interactive opera where you can walk inside the performance, and I would love to see somebody use the technique for a more traditional opera. The fact that it is all one take, complete with burps and occasional flies on the tub, gives it an immediacy that is oddly absent in most "Live From..." broadcasts. You have one more day (New Year's) to see this at SFMOMA, so get to it.

10. La Circe with Ars Minerva

Celine Ricci's fledgling Ars Minerva troupe presented their third annual early Venetian opera, La Circe, a 1665 opera by Pietro Andrea Ziani. The story finds Circe in a not very good mood just after Ulysses has abandoned her, and there's hell to pay for every other character around her. What was most gratifying about the production was the amazing quality of the young local singers who can sing this kind of Renaissance music as if they were born to it. They included Kyle Stegall, Jasmine Johnson, Aurélie Veruni, Jonathan Smucker, Igor Vieira, Ryan Belongie, Kindra Scharich, along with artistic director Céline Ricci as the tormented sorceress herself.

11. Elektra at San Francisco Opera

To be effective and not just sound like three sopranos screaming over noise for two hours, Richard Strauss's 1909 opera Elektra needs a superb conductor and a world-class, powerhouse cast that can sing confidently over a 100-piece orchestra. SF Opera's September production had both, headed by soprano Christine Goerke in the title role, which propelled local True Opera Lovers into an informal competition on who could attend the most performances.

12. Krzysztof Urbański at the San Francisco Symphony

One of the weirdest evenings I have ever spent at Davies Hall was in October when the young Polish conductor Krzysztof Urbański conducted Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima while being heckled by a patron sitting in the Loge. This was followed by the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto accompanied by an Amber Alert which made the audience's muted cellphones join in an ambient electronic background buzz. After intermission, the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony was accompanied by stunned silence because the performance was so good.

Christmas Oasis

If you drive from Palm Springs north along Ramon Road across the Coachella Valley...

...you will eventually reach the Thousand Palms Oasis Preserve.

The magical spot has an underground spring surrounded by ancient California Fan Palms...

...with beautifully maintained bridges and hiking trails...

...winding their way through the trees.

A mile long trail along the San Andreas Fault is bordered by signage warning about scary animals like rattlesnakes and mountain lions which did not phase Critter Dude Chris Campbell above.

At the end of the trail is the McCallum Oasis, which has a huge pond...

...surrounded by more spectacular California Fan Palms.

If you are ever visiting the Coachella Valley, the place is worth a visit and entrance to the Preserve and its hiking trails is free.

Enlightened Nepotism at SoundBox

The SF Symphony's wondrous nightclub experiment, SoundBox, was chiefly financed by an anonymous donor for three years to build new audiences, and it was uncertain whether the monthly winter and spring series would continue for a fourth year. Last weekend it returned, with a bang. The Bad News: The ticket price for general admission has gone up $10 to $45 and donation sponsorship opportunities for $200 to $1,000 will get you in the door before anyone else. The Good News: After a hiccup in its final show last season, SoundBox is back and brilliant as ever. This month's curator was the soon to retire Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the theme of the wildly eclectic program was "Connections," which in this context meant family connections. At the start of the evening, SF Symphony Principal flute player Timothy Day's 28-year-old pianist son, Britton, joined MTT for a fun, high-spirited performance of Poulenc's 1918 Sonata for Piano Four Hands.

Britton was then joined by his father for Faure's 1898 Morceau de concours and Ibert's Spanish-inflected Entr’acte in a pair of charming performances.

Finishing the first, French section of the evening was the cellist Oliver Herbert, son of longtime principal timpanist David Herbert who decamped to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2013. Oliver played a solo excerpt from Dutilleux's 1976 Trios Strophes sur le nom de SACHER, which was interesting enough it would have been good to hear the entire piece. This was followed by Debussy's marvelous, bouncy 1917 Cello Sonata in D Minor. Herbert was wonderful, though MTT sounded a little rusty accompanying him on the keyboard.

The second section of the concert was devoted to a five-movement suite of music by Kazakhstan doubra virtuoso and composer Karshyga Akhmedyarova (1946-2006). His daughter, Raushan Akhmedyarova (above), has been playing violin for the SF Symphony since 1991 and recently commmissioned a string quartet based on her father's music.

This weekend was the world premiere of an expanded chamber orchestra version of the suite, led by conductor Christian Reif who is a delightful presence at SoundBox, conducting one moment, accompanying on piano the next, and occasionally playing genial emcee. The doubra is a two-stringed variation on a zither that should be extremely limited, but in the hands of Karshyga Akhmedyarova, it's an extraordinarily versatile instrument. Click here for an example on YouTube and another example in a bizarre Kazakhstan auditorium can be found here.

The composer responsible for Sketches from Kazakhstan, Sam Post of Washington, D.C. (above), did a nice job expanding and coloring the music for orchestra.

The third part of the concert continued with familial powerhouses, starting with SF Symphony violinist Chunming Mo playing a pair of duets with her daughter Alina Kobialka. They started with Shostakovich's 1955 Präeludium from Five Pieces for 2 Violins and Piano with Christian Reif on piano. The performance was so good that once again I wished they were playing the whole piece.

Instead, they continued with an exciting, passionate traversal of Ligeti's 1950 Ballad and Dance. "That's going to be a hard act to follow," cellist Peter Wyrick (below, center) commented as he introduced the Wyrick Family Chamber Quintet.

Wyrick turned out to be a funny, charming speaker as he introduced his wife, SF Symphony violinist Amy Hiraga, his daughter Mayumi (with her back to the camera) on violin, "honorary family member" Nancy Ellis on viola, and "Herbert Oliver is stepping in on cello for our other daughter, who is, well, somewhere, who knows where?" he related in a "Father Knows Best" impression. The makeshift quintet then gave an exquisite performance of the Scherzo from Schubert's hour-long String Quintet in C major.

SF Symphony Principal Bassoon stepped to a small stage in the middle of the audience and gave a solo performance of a transcription of J.S. Bach's Prelude from Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor, and everyone stopped breathing while waiting for the bassonist to take a breath himself.

For the finale, Stephen was joined by his son Greg who studied violin in his youth but veered into an electric guitar during his teens. Subsequently, he helped form the heavy death metal band Arkaik which has produced four albums (click here for a sample). The duo with Greg on guitar and Stephen on amplified bassoon with a track behind them didn't quite work because it was too quiet compared to the original. I wish they had managed to round up the whole band for a live number with Stephen Paulson improvising away on amplified bassoon. In any case, heavy death metal felt like a perfect way to end the opening of this fourth year of experimentation. As usual, the projections by Adam Larsen and lighting by Luke Kritzeck were an integral part of the evening's success. Looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.