The new SFJAZZ Center has stepped into the breach for a few classical music organizations who have been exiled from the Veterans Building's Herbst Theatre while it undergoes earthquake retrofitting over the next three years. Though amplified music sounds superb at the Center, acoustic performances have been a problem since the Miner Auditorium is so dry, with hardly any reverberation. The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra above has been playing around with "discreet" amplification at their SFJAZZ performances, but the results have been uneven to say the least.
Last Friday the original instruments ensemble performed Vivaldi's only surviving oratorio, the rousing and bloodthirsty Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernes barbarie, where Judith leads the Venetians in their fight against the Ottomans attacking Corfu. The soloists were all fine (above left to right Vivica Genaux, Diana Moore, conductor Nicholas McGegan, Cecile van de Sant, and Dominique Labelle), but there were disconcerting moments of weird amplification when a singer would turn their head and the sound would actually get louder accompanied by a metallic underglow that reminded me of the taste of diet sodas.
The real stars of the show were the chorus above and the dueling theorbos below played by David Taylor and Daniel Zuluaga.
My favorite moment of the evening was Judith's aria Veni, veni mi sequere fide where van Sant was accompanied not only by the two theorbos but by an instrument called a chalumeau, an early prototype of the clarinet that looked to be about half the size of a flute. It was amazing how rich the sound was from the tiny, obscure instrument and the playing by Eric Hoeprich was exquisite.
The next morning at the same location San Francisco Performances offered the finale of its four-concert Mozart series with the Alexander String Quartet and guest pianist Sarah Cahill playing the composer's two piano quartets, along with historical and musical commentary by Robert Greenberg (second from the right above), "music historian-in-residence." Greenberg's music appreciation meets Catskills standup schtick is not at all my cup of tea, but I may be in the minority. The hall was almost filled on a Saturday morning at 10AM, and the crowd was immensely appreciative.
The reason for attending was to hear Sarah Cahill playing classical repertory rather than her usual world premieres and new music. I was nervous for her because Mozart's music is deceptively tricky and I've heard plenty of great musicians who don't have a clue how to bring it to life. The worry was misplaced, however, because she proved to be a wonderful Mozartian, animating the music from the inside, and her quality of listening and sharing with her fellow players made for stirring, beautiful performances. Second violinist Frederick Lifsitz was the top dog string player for the Piano Quartet in G Minor while first violinist Zakarias Grafilo took over after intermission for the Piano Quartet in E-flat Major.
Though a little dry, the sound was warm and resonant throughout the morning's performances and there wasn't a hint of amplification. I asked SF Performances president Ruth Felt how that came about. "It has something to do with the stage baffle being either in or out, I don't remember which one it is, but it seems to make all the difference for performers trying to listen to each other."
Michael Nava's new novel, The City of Palaces, has just been published by the University of Wisconsin Press, and a launch party was held last Sunday at The Stable on Folsom and 17th.
Rather like a baby christening, there were people from a wide variety of Nava's various worlds, including the legal profession, such as professor Susan Rutberg in the first photo and Eddie Ahn, the public interest lawyer/cartoonist above.
There were fellow writers such as poet Lewis Ellingham above left with Nava...
...and Armando Rendon, editor of the Latino online literary magazine Somos en escrito, with his wife...
...and broadcaster Scott Schafer from KQED.
There were friends from the political world, such as (above left to right) Matt Gonzalez, Rebeccca Prozan, and friends Shay Gilmore and Christine McGravan.
Nava has long provided mentoring to young minority lawyers, including Stanford alum Fermin Mendoza above middle who livened the party with his sweet band of buddies.
There was a reading from the first chapter of the book by Nava, which was introduced by writer Kevin Killian above.
Nava not only imagined, researched and wrote this remarkable novel, but he now begins the arduous process of helping it find its readers. Check it out and pass it on.
The 86-year-old conductor Herbert Blomstedt (above right)) is a marvel. Whether it's his vegetarianism or his Seventh Day Adventism, he's looking not much different than he did during his tenure as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1985-1995. Orchestra conductor is one of those rare jobs where some people only strengthen in their artistry during their seventies and eighties, and Blomstedt is one of them. When he was in his 40s, he felt like a premature old man but as an actual elderly person, he feels and sounds like he's come completely into his own.
The San Francisco Symphony just returned from their European Glamour Tour and are sounding like a sensitive, well-oiled machine. At this afternoon's matinee, they played Danish composer Carl Nielsen's 1928 Clarinet Concerto, which my friend Larry Hunnicutt, walking up the Davies Hall aisle, characterized as "that psycho concerto, I tried to play it once when I was in college, but it was too crazy, not to mention impossibly difficult." SF Symphony Clarinet Principal Carey Bell was the soloist and he played the piece impeccably but a bit too tentatively at the beginning before he grooved into the role of soloist in the second half.
The real surprise was Schubert's Symphony in C Major, The Great, which almost put me into a coma when I heard Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the piece back in 2009 with most of the same musicians in the same hall. The symphony is long, almost an hour, repetitive, and Germanically plodding, but in this afternoon's performance under Blomstedt the symphony sounded like one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. The whole audience felt it, and I recommend any of the next three performances this weekend highly (click here).
The San Francisco Girls Chorus celebrated their 35th anniversary last Saturday with a gala dinner at Temple Emanu-El on Arguello Street followed by a performance of Benjamin Britten's one-act opera for children and adults, Noye's Fludde.
Thank the Goddess, Noah was sung not by Russell Crowe but by bass-baritone Noah Chappell above while his gossipy, drunken wife was sung by Sylvie Jensen. They were both spectacularly good performers who made the vernacular 15th century English of the original English "Miracle Play" easily comprehensible. The conducting by Music Director Valerie Sainte-Agathe of a chamber orchestra consisting of San Francisco Conservatory players was also top notch, and brought out the astringent beauty of the score. The various divisions of the Girls Chorus were also musically stunning as some contingents flanked the audience, others swarmed the altar representing the animals in the ark, and a separate group played Sons, Wives, and Gossips.
There were some major miscalculations, though, that kept the performance from hitting its emotional mark. Britten very deliberately wrote the opera as a community music education pageant, with parts written in the orchestra and in the chorus for both professionals and amateurs, adults and children of varying levels of musical sophistication. Even the audience is included, with three of the opera's choruses requiring their participation. The one time I heard this piece live, we were coached for fifteen minutes before the performance by the conductor, and the results were thrilling, with professional voices from the altar blending with the in-and-out-of-tune congregation. On Saturday, we were handed printed lyrics for the choruses without music, but there was no audience preparation so in the big numbers there was mostly a resounding silence in the synagogue because people didn't know the tunes.
The main theatrical coup of Noye's Fludde is usually the children's chorus costumed in cute animal outfits marching up the center aisle to the ark while singing a rhythmically catchy version of Kyrie Eleison and playing toy instruments. In this staging, uniformed girls entered the front altar from the sides, while holding up cutouts of various animals rather than instruments, which felt like a lost opportunity. It was as if the Triumphal March in Verdi's Aida was staged with robed supernumeraries running onto the stage, then standing and waving their loot around for ten minutes.
Still, thanks to the SF Girls Chorus for performing the piece, which should be a staple of every youth music organization in the world. Special props should also go out to the horn players on Saturday, though I wish a few had been stationed in the balcony for the stirring, lovely finale. As for the singsong, rhyme-time delivery over a microphone that A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff offered as the Voice of God, the less said the better.
