In honor of Colin Kaepernick and his tattoos and coach Jim Harbaugh and his 49ers football team, City Hall has been lit red and gold for the NFL playoffs. Gold is a very tricky color for projection and as you can see, the dome looks more green than gold, but it's still an impressive lighting job.
There are other classical music concerts this month outside of the San Francisco Symphony that are of unusual interest. Old First Church Concerts at Van Ness and Sacramento is featuring the Santa Rosa String Quartet this Friday the 11th at 8PM in music from 1799 (Boccherini, Beethoven and Haydn). Friday the 25th will feature ZOFO, the two-pianist/one piano combo of Keisuke Nakagoshi above and Eva-Maria Zimmermann, in music they have commissioned.
I recently complained about a lack of Benjamin Britten programming (above) for his 100th birthday around San Francisco this year, but San Francisco Performances is doing its part with four Saturday 10AM concerts at the Herbst Theatre with Robert Greenberg lecturing and the Alexander String Quartet playing. The series is called The String Quartet at a Time of War: Benjamin Britten and His Contemporaries, with Britten's string quartets paired with ones by Haas, Bartok, Walton and Shostakovich. The various program titles are taken from Winston Churchill's history of World War Two, which is rather odd since Britten was a lifelong pacifist and a conscientious objector during that conflict.
The New Century Chamber Orchestra, led by violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, is going on tour again across the country and is having a bon voyage concert this Sunday at Herbst Theatre at 4PM. You can also attend an Open Rehearsal at 10AM on Friday of the same program of Mendelssohn, Villa-Lobos, Bolcom and Richard Strauss with coffee and doughnuts (photo above is of an earlier NCCO open rehearsal.)
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music on Oak Street starts their calendar of almost nightly concerts, with a highlight recital on Saturday the 19th by alumnus soprano Marnie Breckinridge above. She will be singing the works of contemporary Bay Area composers: Jake Heggie, Henry Mollicone, David Conte, David Garner, Jack Perla, Kurt Erickson, Conrad Susa and Gordon Getty. Everybody will probably be there, so you should be there too.
In a Santa Cruz forest way back in the 1970s, I was once the guest of an elderly ceramicist who puttered around naked from house to kiln to art studio, while he listened to mostly contemporary chamber music being broadcast from a turntable through a series of speakers spread across an acre of property. "Do you really listen to this stuff for pleasure?" I asked, because most of the music sounded so astringent and dissonant to my young, autodidact self who was just discovering Verdi and Mozart. "Oh yes, very much so," he replied. "As I've gotten older, my tastes have become more adventurous. A lot of the music I loved as a young man sounds stale now. Wait and see, it will probably happen to you too."
The above anecdote is a roundabout way of explaining that the San Francisco Symphony offers something for everyone, from beginner to sophisticate, in the second half of its 2012-13 season, and I have tried to offer a guide for both. Sitting at a symphonic concert means seriously concentrating on music, rather than just having it as background for work or drink or socializing. That means the same piece can be a revelation for newer ears and intensely boring for those who have heard it too many times. The elderly ceramicist turned out to be right.
Following are a few San Francisco Symphony concert suggestions for a relative beginner over the next six months:
1. Soprano Renee Fleming (above center, backstage at Lucrezia Borgia at the SF Opera) is singing a bunch of French songs this week, with Tilson Thomas conducting Debussy's La Mer. January 10-12.
2. Charles Dutoit conducting Ravel, Lalo, and Elgar's Enigma Variations. January 31-February 1.
3. Michael Tilson Thomas conducting, Yuja Wang on piano playing Beethoven (Piano Concerto #4) and Brahms (the First Symphony). March 6-8.
4. Herbert Blomstedt, getting even better as he becomes more ancient, conducting two weeks of Wagner (Tristan selections), Beethoven (Symphony #3 and the Violin Concerto) and Nielsen (Symphony #5). April 11-20.
5. Beethoven Project: Tilson Thomas leads a mini-festival of early Beethoven works. May 2-11.
6. Marek Janowski conducts Brahms (Double Concerto) and Schumann (Symphony #4) May 15-18.
7. David Roberts conducting and Mark-Andre Hamelin on piano, playing Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue) and Ravel (Left Hand Piano Concerto and La Valse), with a dollop of Elliott Carter to start things off (don't be afraid). May 22-25.
8.
Juraj Valcuha conducting and Gautier Capucon on cello playing Dvorak (Cello Concerto and Symphony #9). June 1.
9. Bernstein's West Side Story in concert, which strikes me as a dubious proposition, since all my favorite live versions over the years have been high school student productions, where youthful energy was half the excitement. June 29-July 2.
And now, for concerts this jaded old character is excited about, let's start with the semi-staged, multi-media, Michael Tilson Thomas mashup of music written by three composers for Peer Gynt, Ibsen's five-hour poetry play from 1876. This will include selections from the original incidental music written by fellow Norwegian Edward Grieg in the first half of the program, followed by excerpts from a 1980s Peer Gynt ballet by Alfred Schnittke, and a world premiere by British composer Robin Holloway. The entire event could turn out to be a disaster, but at least it will be an ambitious one. The Symphony Chorus will be singing alongside a pair of actors and soprano soloist Joélle Harvey (seen above at Fort Mason when she was singing Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Merola Opera program). January 17-19.
I have sworn off dreary Requiems for a while, but there's plenty of other bright liturgical music, including the beautiful, rarely heard pieces being conducted in early February by Charles Dutoit (above right). He pairs Poulenc's light-footed 1950 Stabat Mater for chorus and soprano with Berlioz's massive Te Deum for multiple choruses, orchestra, organ, and soloists (Erin Wall and Paul Grove). February 6-10.
Soon after, conductor Pablo Heras-Casado (above right) conducts a recent Magnus Lindberg work called EXPO, the extraordinary British/Australian pianist Stephen Hough (above left) plays Liszt's Second Piano Concerto, and the concert winds up with a wild, favorite Prokofiev symphony, the Fifth. February 14-17.
Though Davies Hall is usually too large a barn for successful Mozart and Handel performances, there are exceptions, especially when the great Symphony Chorus is involved. In April, Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie (above right, with chorus looming over him) will be conducting Mozart's Symphony #39 and a rare motet by the same composer, Ave Verum Corpus. The second half features Handel's paean to the power of music, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, with soloists Lydia Teuscher and Nicholas Phan. April 5-6.
In June, conductor Kirill Karabits above is conducting Honegger's Pacific 231, Britten's Double Concerto with Symphony principals Alexander Barantschik and Jonathan Vinocour (above left) as soloists, and the crowd-pleasing Sibelius Second Symphony. I will be going for the Britten, who is being shamefully ignored on his 100th birthday anniversary around San Francisco this year. Please, local arts programmers, I have a few requests, such as hearing Britten's marvelous Spring Symphony live at Davies Hall. And while we're at it, the SF Ballet and choreographer Mark Morris need to take on the full-length Prince of the Pagodas, while the SF Opera would be a perfect setting for Britten's Queen Elizabeth opera, Gloriana. And Opera Parallele, it's time to find a small San Francisco church venue, where you can perform the Church Parables and Noye's Fludde and Saint Nicholas, with a combination of students and professionals. June 6-9.
In late June, Tilson Thomas will lead a changing set of all-Stravinsky concerts. The most interesting look to be the ones featuring the Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble, joining the orchestra for Renard, Les Noces, and Russian folk songs, followed by The Rite of Spring. June 21-22.
See you at the concert hall.
11. Charlotte and George Schultz's Carriage Entrance
Cool: In May, the married pair of power brokers Charlotte and George Schultz above left arrived in a fairy-tale carriage at the horseshoe entrance to the Opera House, which had been renamed for them. At a ceremony, they were feted by Mayor Ed Lee, former Mayor Willie Brown, Jr. and Stephen Bechtel, Jr.
Cruel: It is rare to see so much ancient evil gathered together in public.
12. Asian Heritage Street Celebration
Cool: Also in May, the relatively new Asian Heritage Street Festival set up again on lower Larkin Street in Little Saigon. It was a riot of different ethnicities, music, food and entertainment.
Cruel: The politically dubious Fang family, which publishes Asian Week, are the main sponsors of the event.
13. Gay Pride Festival Goes Straight
Cool: Thirty-plus years after the first Gay Pride protest marches, the event has become a week-long, corporate-sponsored mega-event. It seems to draw less gay people each year and more heterosexual young people who are looking for free entertainment and communal boozing. You might call this social progress, of a sort.
Cruel: What could possibly go wrong with young suburbanites of every ethnicity drinking too much alcohol in public together in the big, bad city? The event is starting to have a Halloween in the Castro vibe.
14. The New SFPUC Building Opens
Cool: The colossally expensive, green-certified headquarters for the SF Public Utilities Commission finally opened after decades of planning and construction at Golden Gate and Polk. It's the first instantly beloved new government building in years, partly because Ned Kahn's Firefly sculpture above is so striking.
Cruel: This is the house that Hetch Hetchy built.
15. Federal Persecution of Local Marijuana Dispensaries
Cool: In August, a group of mourners marched from the Haight to the Federal Building on Golden Gate to protest the continuing, incessant harassment of medical marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area. U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag was deemed worthy of her own special effigy.
Cruel: The continuing federal drug war against marijuana is wasteful and obscene.
16. Dreamforce Tent City and SF Symphony Gala Opening
Cool: On Wednesday evening, September 19th, Civic Center was the place to be. The huge downtown Salesforce convention had assembled a tent city across from City Hall for a party in Civic Center Plaza, including a large stage for a performance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall across the street was hosting the society opening gala with parties in the lobby, in a tent, and on the street.
Cruel: The troubling trend of San Francisco Rec and Park renting out public space to private groups for days and weeks at a time upped the ante with this Salesforce event.
17. The Folsom Street Fair
Cool: There was warm, late September weather for the annual worldwide celebration of sexual kink in the streets.
Cruel: Like many street fairs, the event is a case study in claustrophobia.
18. The Mountain Dew Tour
Cool: This extreme sports competition dedicated to professional skateboarders and BMX bicyclists moved into Civic Center in October for a week of construction followed by a week of exciting events that were mostly free and open to the public.
Cruel: The footprint on public grounds was large and controversial. The lawns still hadn't grown back by late December.
19. SF Giants Win the World Series
Cool: Buster Posey is God. San Franciscans waited over sixty years for their first World Series win, and now the team has done it twice in three years.
Cruel: The second World Series win brought out an element of public hooliganism that was absent in 2010.
20. The November Election
Cool: Mitt Romney and an assortment of cuckoo Republicans were defeated nationwide, and the sound heard throughout the land was a huge electoral sigh of relief.
Cruel: California Proposition 34 lost and a whole host of dumb, expensive San Francisco propositions won.
21. The Outlawing of Public Nudity
Cool: Nudists have taken their struggle to hang out in public to the streets of San Francisco.
Cruel: The nude dudes walking and sitting in the Castro District over the last year have so annoyed Supervisor Weiner and some of his constituents that legislation has been passed to outlaw public nudity in all of San Francisco. Savonarola lives.
