The San Francisco Symphony invited the press to the farthest reaches of the Excelsior District on Wednesday to cover one of the thousands of concerts that the Symphony's Education Department presents annually in every elementary school in San Francisco.
Wednesday's concert was in the library and little theatre of the E.R. Taylor Elementary School, which was a beautiful old facility.
The AIM (Adventures In Music) program started twenty years ago as music education in the schools was being cut drastically.
The program is the brainchild and continues to be nurtured by Ron Gallman and Sammi Madison, above.
Realizing it was impossible to teach every child in San Francisco how to play music, they instead decided to focus on creating programs that could be integrated with the rest of the curriculum, which could then be featured each year in grades one through five in every classroom.
It took about eight years for the program to advance from a small pilot into the massive effort it has become, and the symphony organization has picked up the tab for the entire affair, for which they were being effusively thanked by Anthony Smith (above), the new Deputy Superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District.
On account of their grueling schedule and morning rehearsals, the concerts are not actually given by San Francisco Symphony musicians, but by the best freelancers in the Bay Area, such as the San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestra trio of Donald Kennelly, Zach Spellman and Alicia Telford above, who perform close to 130 of these concerts a year as The Drei Brass.
Before they started their half-hour lecture/concert/demonstration, however, there was a talk from Principal Gini Gold to the first and second graders about being an "attentive audience."
"We are quiet and listen with our whole bodies. We don't put others down but celebrate them. We interact with the performers." I wish she would give the same lecture to some of the adult audiences at the San Francisco Symphony concerts.
Then The Drei Brass began by teaching the kids German, "One, Two, Three is Ein, Zwei, Drei, let's hear you say it," which the crowd was able to do effortlessly.
"We're The Drei Brass, and this is our fanfare," they explained before playing a lively refrain.
As part of the "physics" slant of this year's music program, the brass performers explained how their instruments worked, starting with the mouthpieces that didn't do much all by themselves.
You need vibration for sound waves to exist...
...and to demonstrate, all the kids had been provided with kazoos.
The Drei Brass then taught the audience to play their fanfare on the kazoos...
...and instructed them to do so whenever they heard the words, "THE DREI BRASS!"
They explained how the vibration goes through the mouthpiece and through a length of tubes which were different on each instrument...
...emerging out of the "bell," which Alicia muted to the softest of French Horn tones by way of demonstration.
The great contemporary science fiction writer, John Varley, has written a series of short stories set in the not-too-distant future where certain societal improvements are taken for granted, such as brain surgeons having the social respect of a good mechanic, and teachers of children having something like the social respect of a brain surgeon and Nobel Peace Prize winner combined.
His 1980 story "Beatnik Bayou" is set in a school where the teacher has been genetically engineered to look the same age as his fellow students, and to be a mentor and guru while acting as a peer.
There was a flavor of this in tuba player Zach Spellman's interactions with the kids, which was both over the top and completely uncondescending.
He was tapping into some inner first grader in a manner that I've rarely seen...
...and the effect on the kids was electric.
The concert ended with a pitch perfect rendition of a march from "The Nutcracker" on kazoos by the entire audience that came out of nowhere without rehearsal.
"Let's all thank The Drei Brass," principal Gini Dold said after the finale, and the three performers behind her bugged their eyes out which was a cue the kids picked up on immediately. The Drei Brass fanfare was played on kazoos for a final time and it was the principal who had unintentionally set everyone off. I don't think I've ever seen better musical education in my life.
New signage was being hung on the facade of the Opera House this week in anticipation of the "New Works Festival" that is being performed by the San Francisco Ballet from Tuesday, April the 22nd through Tuesday, May 6th.
The festival is in honor of the company's 75th anniversary, and I can't think of a more wonderful way to celebrate the occasion that commissioning new work from ten of the greatest choreographers in the world. They are a nice mix of the local, national and international as following: Julia Adam, Val Caniparoli, Jorma Elo, Margaret Jenkins, James Kudelka, Mark Morris, Yuri Posskhov, Paul Taylor, Stanton Welch and Christopher Wheeldon.
This is probably costing a small fortune so wealthy benefactors are probably being "developed" for huge sums, in exchange for which there will be yet another tent party in the parking lot between the Opera House and the Veterans Building. It should be a good time.
I invited my neighbors Elza van den Heever and her good friend Kelly Miller over for spaghetti on Monday night, and it was too much fun. Elza is the soprano who made her startling debut as Donna Anna in the San Francisco Opera's "Don Giovanni" last summer while she was one of the student Adler Fellows. She then went on to sing small parts in "Appomattox," "The Magic Flute," and "Macbeth" during the Opera's fall season before graduating into the wider world of an international opera career.
She recently starred in a new production of Puccini's "Il Trittico" in Frankfurt, playing Giorgetta in the first act "Il Tabarro," and it seems all went rather well. Here's a quote from a review in the London "Financial Times" (click here for the whole thing): "The final ace up the Frankfurt Opera's sleeve is its first-rate casting, an exemplary mix of house stalwarts and astonishing surprises. Into the latter category falls South African Elza van den Heever, giving her German debut as Giorgetta. It is a performance of remarkable emotional conviction and technical assurance, with a freshness and originality that lesser houses might only dream of finding."
Before going on to the Bordeaux Opera to sing Elettra in Mozart's "Idomeneo" this summer, Elza returned home to San Francisco for a month where she sang a recital at the Hotel Rex downtown to a packed house. For a review by the Opera Tattler, click here, and for one by Jason Serinus at the San Francisco Classical Voice, click here. Jason ends his account with "How could anyone not love this woman, nor want her to succeed?" and I can only echo the sentiment.
