The Debut of Trio Foss

Matthew Wolka, the new Director of Old First Concerts, greeted a very small crowd on Sunday afternoon, March 4th with the observation that a recent concert during the Super Bowl attracted about 300 people, "but the Academy Awards seem to be a bigger draw for our demographic than football." Of course, the same old man accompanied by his service dog with a noisemaking collar, who attended the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 performance earlier in the weekend, was again seated in the front row. It seems the new normal for chamber music concerts in San Francisco is quiet music intermingled with occasional tinkling bells.

The concert featured the debut of a new group, the Trio Foss, with Icelandic violinist Hrabba Atladottir, cellist Nina Flyer, and pianist Joseph Irrera who were excitingly good playing together. Although they began with Beethoven's early Piano Trio in B-flat major, we were attending for the 1939 Bergerettes by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů and Dmitri Shostakovich's 1944 Piano Trio No. 2. Every piece I have ever heard by Martinů over the years has been extraordinary, simultaneously accessible, complex and tuneful, and these five dance movements were a good example. Why his music is so rarely heard is a mystery. Shostakovich's World War II piano trio was a great discovery, an astonishing work of genius which I had never heard before last week.

The core of the newly formed Foss Trio seemed to be cellist Nina Flyer who has had a wide-ranging global career, as principal cellist of the Jerusalem Symphony, the Iceland Symphony, the Bergen (Norway) Symphony, acting principal in the San Diego Symphony, and principal of the Women's Philharmonic. While teaching at the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music, she formed the New Pacific Trio which morphed into Trio 180, a group I heard perform a couple of times.

Her current trio (Hrabba Altadottir, Joseph Irrera, and Nina Flyer above) is an extraordinary musical combo, and it's difficult to imagine hearing a better live performance of the Martinů and Shostakovich works, even accompanied by the occasional tinkling from a damned dog collar.

California Culture 6: SFMusic Day

This is the final installment of the the Cali Kultur series detailing events that happened over the span of five days. This brings me to the conclusion that there are very few places in the world right now offering the breadth of homegrown cultural activities that are happening in the Bay Area, particularly in the musical realm. It's a golden moment for audiences, performers, and composers that is arriving at some kind of critical mass. On the same Sunday as the Arts in Nature Festival, the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music presented their day-long, free roster of performing groups at the San Francisco Conservatory in three separate concert halls. I caught the last 90 minutes of the ambitious three-ring circus, starting with a pleasant performance by Trio 180 above (Ann Miller on violin, Nina Flyer on viola, Sonia Leong on piano) playing a Dvorak piece.



Then we ran upstairs to hear Nonsemble 6 (Amy Foote, vocalist; Annie Phillips, bass clarinet; Crystal Pascucci, cello; Kevin Rogers, violin; Sasha Launer, flute; Andy Meyerson, vibraphone) play a Frederic Rzewski piece but they swapped it out for a world premiere by Brent Miller, one of the two founders of the Center for New Music. Together with Adam Fong, Miller has created one of the most important nodes in this golden age, subletting space on Taylor Street in the heart of the Tenderloin to arts organizations such as SF Friends of Chamber Music. In other words, a network is being created in front of our eyes.



The Miller piece was an improvisatory work for everyone but vocalist Amy Foote who conducted the timing for the next musical cell to commence, anchored by a clarion announcement on the vibraphone. In a wonderful coup de theatre, Foote sang for the last five minutes of the 20-minute piece, sounding vaguely, pleasingly like a Middle Eastern soloist which fit with the accompanying music. In fact, it would have been wonderful to hear this music being performed during the dancing girl scenes of Son of the Sheik at the Castro Theater the day before.



The consistently brilliant violinist Kevin Rogers above played like a man possessed and it was quite a performance topped only by his appearance in a concert hall down a flight of stairs in a new shirt ten minutes later.



He was appearing as a member of the Friction Quartet with Taija Warvelow on viola, Otis Harriel on violin, and Doug Machis on cello.



They kept their chatting to a minimum because they were performing the 28-minute John Adams String Quartet in a 30-minute window.



The piece was composed by Adams for the St. Lawrence String Quartet in 2008 after he heard them performing John's Book of Alleged Dances, a brilliantly amusing set of tunes for string quartet and an electronic click track that features a paean to the N Judah Muni train.



I heard the St. Lawrence String Quartet perform the String Quartet in 2010 at Davies Symphony Hall and found it impenetrable. Maybe because the Friction Quartet was playing in a small concert hall where the music belongs, but this was a superior performance in every way imaginable. The Friction Quartet is seriously great, and if they stick together, are on their way to an interesting professional career.

Old First Concerts Sounds Like Fun!

On Sunday afternoon, November 20th, an annual fundraiser for Old First Concerts called "SOUNDS Like Fun!" was held at Old First Church on Van Ness and Sacramento with the jazz pianist Mike Greensill above acting as a lively, witty emcee. At one point he also pulled out a ukelele and sang, in an unexpectedly beautiful rendition, "I'm Through With Love."



Over a dozen musicians who regularly perform at Old First Church were asked to come up with something silly and fun, although about half of them played more serious offerings, including the opening Trio 180 with Ann Miller, violin, Sonia Leong, piano, and Nina Flyher, cello (above). They started the concert off with a pair of Trios on Irish Themes by the Swiss Frank Martin, whose music is always surprisingly enchanting, and followed it with "La Muerte del Angel" from Piazzolla.



The silliness came with Ann Miller above playing "Souvenir d'Amerique," an over-the-top Henri Vieuxtemps set of violin variations on "Yankee Doodle Dandy."



The Conservatory of Music's first guitar major graduate, Lawrence Ferrara, above, played minuets by Rameau and songs by Lennon-McCartney...



...and was followed by composer Elinor Armer (above left, with Caitlin Keen, viola, and Wendy Hillhouse, mezzo-soprano, on the right) performing Armer's "Eine Kleine Snailmusick," which was very funny.



After an intermission of wine and rich chocolates, there was a performance of the PDQ Bach Sonata Piccola with a rubberfaced Esther Landau above and a deadpan Sarah Cahill below, in an amusing parody of every Baroque concerto for a silly instrument that you have ever heard.



Cahill also paired up with cellist Victoria Ehrlich below for a too short excerpt from a Lou Harrison Suite for Cello and Piano. Sarah will be performing Harrison's piano concerto with the Berkeley Symphony on December 8th, so be there or be square.



Victoria echoed many of the other performers, who had all been asked by Greensill what the Old First Concerts meant to them. The consensus seemed to be, "Unless you're world-famous and have Management, there are sites to perform all over the Bay Area but not in San Francisco other than Old First Church. The place is irreplaceable."



The wonderful and ubiquitous Keisuke Nakagoshi, above right, played a Terry Riley four-handed piano piece, one of a set that Sarah Cahill recently commissioned, called "Cinco de Mayo" with Eva-Maria Zimmermann.



They were followed by violinist Victor Romasevich above, a San Francisco Symphony member who played some deliciously schmaltzy pieces by Tchaikovsky with his dear old mum, Lena Lubotsky, on piano.



The concert ended with a pair of songs by cabaret star Wesla Whitfield above, who is married to emcee Greensill. She sang "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf" and then a plaintive version of "It's Not Easy Being Green," which was fairly amusing.

For a schedule of Old First Concerts, which has been presenting music since 1969, click here. They are a low-cost, local treasure often taken for granted when they should not be. Some of the greatest performers and composers from the Bay Area and beyond use the venue as an incubator, its acoustics and intimacy are perfect for a wide range of music, and the ticket prices are under $20.