John Adams, the internationally successful Bay Area composer, is currently having two weeks devoted to his music at the San Francisco Symphony, and last week started off with his feminist, Latina-tinged version of the "Messiah" called "El Niño."
The two-hour-plus piece had its U.S. premiere here in 2000, with Kent Nagano conducting beautifully. Willard White, Dawn Upshaw, and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson were the extraordinary soloists. (There is a Nonesuch recording made with this cast that's definitive, and I can't recommend it highly enough.) Also at the premiere was the multimedia work of Peter Sellars, the impresario, director, and co-librettist of the patchwork libretto. Unfortunately, that consisted of an art film on a large screen about Chicano teenagers on the beach near LAX for two hours that was extremely annoying and distracting. There were also a couple of dancers writhing around onstage, which was totally unnecessary because there was so much else going on among the soloists, chorus and orchestra. The music was so exquisite and exciting that I went a second time in 2000, but brought along a sleep mask so I could just listen to it without all the distractions.
For 2010's performances, there was no film, no dancers, and the simplest of staging which worked perfectly, except for bumping the composer/conductor over to the right of the stage with the cellos. Returning from the 2000 performances were the three countertenors who narrate the story and sing in unison as the angel Gabriel. After ten years singing these roles, Steven Rickards, Brian Cummings, and Daniel Bubeck (above, left to right) were so good they just about walked off with the entire performance.
Dawn Upshaw as a lower-class Mary (above left) also returned, sounding and acting as great as ever, and Michelle deYoung (above middle) and Jonathan Lemalu were outstanding as The Female Principal and Joseph/Herod respectively.
The only marked improvement over 2010 was in Kent Nagano's conducting in 2000 compared to composer John Adams (below left) conducting the music himself this time around. He has a very funny and wise description of the rehearsal process at his "Hell Mouth" blog (click here), where he likens the experience of conducting this massive musical piece to "Piloting the Aircraft Carrier." He writes:
"Thursday’s opening night of “El Niño” ends up going pretty well. I am annoyed at times by the little blemishes in the ensemble that I know are the result of the bizarre stage layout, and I chide myself for perhaps not keeping my hands high enough and sufficiently visible for some player who’s struggling to see."
Did any of this particularly matter? Not even remotely. This is some of the most powerful and accessible music this composer has written in his 40+ year career, and watching him steer the aircraft carrier was a privilege.
Both finales to part one and part two of the oratorio were exquisite on Saturday evening, and the final parable about the palm tree sung by the huge girls' chorus (above) couldn't have been better.
Also in 2000, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a superb performance of Adams' 1985 "Harmonielehre," another one of Adams' great, essential compositions. MTT is doing a reprise of that work this week along with some Cowell and Mozart.
I'm not going to say this twice. You need to go to this concert, and there are four chances, from Wednesday through Saturday evening. Click here to check out tickets, and the SF Symphony rush line for $20 tickets on the day of the performance is (415) 503-5577.
The 79-year-old Italian composer, artist, filmmaker, opera director, and all-around avant-garde polymath Sylvano Bussotti graced San Francisco with his presence last week, culminating in a Thursday evening dedicated to him at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
It started with a showing of his newly restored 1967 silent film "Rara" with the composer playing piano onstage from a hand-made score as the mood struck him, while watching his own movie that featured a vanished hippie artistic generation in Rome. The effect was mesmerizing and a genuinely once-in-a-lifetime experience.
On the rooftop waiting for the film's start, I asked various Thursday SFMOMA partygoers if they were fans of Sylvano Bussotti, and most of the young people had never heard of him. Finally, I talked to Wood Massi, a San Francisco City College Music Department Professor, and he said, "YES! I wrote a dissertation on modern graphic notation in music, and Bussotti is one of the greatest and most important experimentalists in notation in history." See below for an example.
In response to an email, Massi wrote to me after the concert:
"As you could probably tell, I was transfixed watching Sylvano Bussotti, one of the two or three greatest composers from Italy in the middle and late twentieth centuries and today, fingering both his hand-made score and the piano as he and we watched his 1960s film together."
"It is a graphic and homoerotic tour de force starring himself and lots of hunky Italian young men along with Cathy Berberian (below, with Bussotti in the 1960s), perhaps the most renowned Italian performer of avant garde music from that same era."
"It was also a treat to see in the film photos of my late friend John Cage (below left). Cage's score "Aria" which he wrote for Berberian is a modern classic, and the notation is as striking in its way as Bussotti's. Cage did work in the U.S. similar to Bussotti's -- graphic music notation, extended performance technique, enhanced performer choice, etc. -- and they both were gay, though Bussotti seems to have been more "out" about it."
"I once asked Cage in an interview if he was gay. He said he was "Merce-esque," a reference to his life partner the great choreographer Merce Cunningham (above right). Another time I asked them both before an audience at UC Berkeley about their personal lives at home in New York. The audience gasped and Cage simply answered that he did the cooking and Cunningham the dishes."
Because I planned the evening stupidly, I wasn't able to stay for the concert after the film that began at 9:15. My stomach was growling, there was nowhere to sit, and cranky is not the right mood to be listening to new music.
Richard Friedman, the KALW radio host, was at the event, and even though he agreed that he probably would have enjoyed "Rara" more if was a gay male, he stayed for the whole concert and found it completely worthwhile. His report:
"Actually, you should have stayed, although I will admit I had the same urge to leave when you did. Eventually (around 9.45) most people had left. The last pieces were (to me at least) very exciting. Especially the three two-piano pieces with Chris Jones and Ann Yi. I just hope that they record those pieces sometime soon. Video would be even better because their performance was very well choreographed!"
Professor Massi also reports:
"I did stay for the complete concert, and it was also an intense process, more arduous than the film screening. There were a variety of pieces and the concert went on until about 11:00, though the audience became less and less problematic as it thinned greatly by the end. Bussotti's music is largely atonal and without periodic rhythm and can sometimes seem too much like the same thing over and over. More than the stalwart rhythm and harmony used in traditional and popular Western music, Bussotti uses a kaleidoscope of texture, timbre, dynamics, and contrast to create form. It takes some getting used to, but the surrealism and the purity of the music can put the listener in a sort of trance -- if it doesn't drive you from the room."
"My favorite piece was "Geographie Francaise" from 1962. Bussotti performed in this piece, speaking from a script in beautiful French with a total command of the pace and tone of the language and the music. His memoriam piece for Berberian carried a similar feeling. The ensemble piece, "Autotono", for nine players offered up a large and fascinating variety of sound, while the closing piece "Tableaux vivants avant la Passion selon Sade" from 1964 interpreted one of Bussotti's graphic masterpieces with two pianists crawling all over each other and their pianos to provide an almost orchestral range of sounds."
"Bussotti seemed pleased to be performing and to be recognized by the audience for the world-class artist that he is. It was deeply gratifying to me [Massi is pictured above] to be able to whisper a quiet "grazie" to the maestro as he left the performance space, a thank you for his inspiring bravery in art, image, and sexuality."
Also due gratitude is composer Luciano Chessa (above left), who has known Bussotti for decades, and who was largely responsible for the film restoration of "Rara." Chessa also curated the event, working with the adventurous musicians of sfSoundGroup, who all deserve congratulations.
Santarchy has taken over San Francisco this afternoon, as I discovered on Market Street near Octavia...
...where Christmas-themed revelers were walking en masse, in pajamas...
...in Stars Wars Santa outfits and Rastafarian Santa wigs...
...in snow(wo)man costumes...
...driving pedaled vehicles up the boulevard.
The thousands of revelers seem to be predominantly hetero young people enjoying a public drunk with fellow Santas. They are congregating in the Polk Gulch, Castro, Lower and Upper Haight, North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, the Marina and all along upper Market Street (for a schedule, click here).
And may they follow the words of the Santarchy website: "Don’t be an asshole. No vandalism, violence, theft or other criminal behavior…got it? Santa is about spreading joy, not about needing bail. Santa’s Little Douchebag Contingent is not welcome at our reindeer games. Santas look out for each other and naughty–of the NOT nice variety–is not tolerated."
The Adler Fellows are a group of anywhere from eight to a dozen young people who spend two years in an apprentice program with the San Francisco Opera. They sing small roles on the main stage, act as covers for the principals, and learn repertory, languages, movement, and professional survival techniques.
Some go on and prosper in the greater world and others don't, but the program itself has something of a family air to it. At Wednesday's Herbst Theatre gala concert, the professional clan was out in force, from General Director Gockley, to former Adler Fellows Heidi Melton and Elza van den Heever, to the Opera Tattler (above and below), to Eric Owens (below), the bass-baritone currently in "Aida" who just swiped "Das Rheingold" away from everyone in the Met's new Ring cycle, according to Alex Ross.
The concert overall was one of the best versions ever of this annual event, and being able to listen to the San Francisco Opera Orchestra on a small stage was a complete treat. Some of the vocal standouts were first-year mezzo Maya Lahayni, second-year Leah Crocetto with her huge soprano and perfect diction, and first-year Brian Jagde with his new tenor voice that he's just geting used to.
My favorite musical moment of the evening was a Handel duet from "Rodelinda" between Susannah Biller (above) and countertenor Ryan Belongie. The way they listened to each other and played off of each other's voices was rare and beautiful.
Graduating tenor David Lomeli is ready to take on the world's stages right here and right now. Backstage friends over the last couple of years have complained of disappointment when the principal tenor would show up for rehearsals. "David sounded so much better we almost wished for an indisposition." Lomeli sang a long "William Tell" duet with Crocetto where he sounded a lot better than Chris Merritt in the same part, and then he finished the evening with a "Nessun Dorma" that just nailed the showcase aria.
Best of luck to everyone in their futures. (All onstage photos by Cory Weaver.)
