May Is Here, Can Festivals Be Far Away?
Announcement of the 2011 Cabrillo Festival program last week was just the first shot in a big volley of releases about summer music events, which seem to be especially rich this year. Here are just a two prominent ones, beginning with the geographically farthest/virtually closest:
BBC PROMS
Attend it if you're in London, watch it on TV in England, listen to it on the computer everywhere: the BBC Proms is the biggest and best of music festivals. It runs between July 15 and Sept. 10, offering more than 70 concerts in the 140-year-old Royal Albert Hall and numerous events elsewhere.
When people had a smaller circumference and safety considerations were not of importance, as many as 9,000 people would squeeze in every night. Now the maximum permitted capacity is 5,544, including standing in the Gallery.
Unless you're a 9-to-5-er, concert starting times on the West Coast for most concerts is a convenient 11 or 11:30 a.m. — something far better than European and Asian live events in the middle of our night.
Soloists include pianists Martha Argerich, Alice Sara Ott, Yuja Wang, Marc-André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt, Stephen Hough, Lang Lang, Maria João Pires, and András Schiff; violinists Nigel Kennedy, Tasmin Little, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Gil Shaham, and Christian Tetzlaff; flautist Emmanuel Pahud; and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
The Proms — famous for its Last Night programs — starts like gangbusters: The opening concert on July 15 presents works by Brahms, Liszt, and Judith Weir, with the second half graced by the Janáček Glagolitic Mass. Jirí Belohlávek conducts.
The next day is a concert performance of Rossini's William Tell, with the orchestra and chorus of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano conducting.
Then, upping the ante even more, July 17 is Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 1 in D Minor, "The Gothic," with a dozen choruses, two full orchestras — a two-hour work that is believed to be the biggest and longest symphony actually being performed (not one of Ives' or Stockhausen's impossible ambitions). The symphony was completed in 1920, but not performed until 1961.
The rest of the Proms is wondrous, with such unique offerings as Weber's Der Freischütz in the French version, with recitatives by Berlioz. The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique is conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.
And, the Last Night? Goodness gracious: Peter Maxwell Davies, Bartók, Wagner, Liszt, Chopin, Grainger, Britten, Rodgers, Elgar ...
MUSIC@MENLO
Johannes Brahms is the focus of the ninth annual Music@Menlo chamber music festival in Atherton, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto, from July 22 to Aug. 13. Besides the concerts, the festival also administers many important educational and coaching programs, as well as institutes for young musicians.
Festival directors David Finckel and Wu Han organized the season into six programs. They range from the opening "Young Eagle" (works by Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann, leading up to early works by Brahms, including Scherzo in C Minor, F-A-E, and Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8); to the closing "Farewell" (String Quintet No. 2 in G Major; Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Major for Viola and Piano, Op. 120, No. 2; selections from Klavierstücke, Op. 118 and 119; Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115).
Of special interest is the program called "Veiled Symphonies," in reference to Schumann's reference to the piano’s "becoming an orchestra of lamenting and loudly jubilant voices" in Brahms' hands.
Leading up to Brahms' Opus 18 Sextet — the first work of its kind — the program includes the Trio Sonata from Bach's Musical Offering, Vivaldi’s variations on La follia, and Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio.
As usual, the list of festival participants is spectacular, including pianists Alessio Bax, Lucille Chung, Gilbert Kalish, Jon Kimura Parker, Juho Pohjonen, Menahem Pressler, and Wu Han; and violinists Yehonatan Berick, Jorja Fleezanis, Daniel Hope, Ani Kavafian, Yura Lee, Cho-Liang Lin, Elmar Oliveira, Philip Setzer, Arnaud Sussmann, and Ian Swensen.
Also: violists Yura Lee and Paul Neubauer; cellists David Finckel, Eric Kim, Laurence Lesser, and Paul Watkins; the Orion String Quartet; flutist Sooyun Kim; clarinetists Carey Bell and David Shifrin; and singers Erin Morley, Sasha Cooke, Paul Appleby, and Kelly Markgraf.
Honolulu and Philadelphia: Good News, Bad News
The recently bankrupt Honolulu Symphony is showing new signs of life as a committee of civic leaders and JoAnn Falletta, of the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony, have reached a three-year agreement with former musicians of the defunct orchestra.With the name of the new orchestra still in doubt, there is a contract, and plans are being developed for a 2011-2012 season.
But further to the East, news is startlingly bad: The Philadelphia Orchestra, founded in 1900 and one of the country's top symphonies, sought bankruptcy protection on Saturday. "We are at a crossroads," the orchestra's Web site says, "and we ask the citizens of Philadelphia to join with us as we fight for this cultural institution — an icon that has helped define this city’s greatness.”
Richard B. Worley, board chairman, described in court papers the orchestra’s inability to weather a series of obstacles that include declining revenues from ticket sales, a drop in donations, and an increase in both operational costs and pension obligations. "Eroding endowment income" and "burdensome contractual agreements" are the main items among factors leading to a projected $14.5 million deficit for the current fiscal year.
The orchestra, which claims to generate $200 million annually for the city, declared that its presence is "vital to Philadelphia’s reputation and crucial to Center City businesses and other cultural and educational institutions."
National Dance Week
Dancers' Group presents the 2011 Bay Area National Dance Week, April 22 through May 1, throughout the entire area. It'll kick off with an event at noon Friday at the Union Square Plaza in San Francisco.
Dance Week is bigger than ever, with some 600 free events, including One Dance, an all-inclusive flash mob of dancers and nondancers, schools, companies, and artists, all dancing in unison to the same piece of music.
Some other events: Beyond Blues, China Dance School & Theatre, MOVING BEYOND Productions & The Marsh, ODC School and Rhythm & Motion Dance Program, and Afro-Cuban Modern.
Bay Area events feature Argentine tango, classical Indian, jazz, hip-hop, ballet, traditional hula, fire dance, samba, modern, Chinese classical, belly dance, aerial dance, West African, contact improvisation, and more.
Makrokosma Bali
A performance highlight of the Asian Art Museum's Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance exhibit is Makrokosma Bali, in the museum, May 13-15, with Wayne Vitale and I Made Arnawa, directors and composers.
The work combines new music for gamelan orchestra with projected video and still imagery, ambient sounds, and lighting design in an integrated multimedia set. It will be performed by the 25 musicians of Sekaa Gong Taruna Mekar, the famed gamelan ensemble from Bali, and a team of U.S.-based visual, audio, and software artists.
Makrokosma Bali combines and contrasts the music, living culture, and ancient Hindu cosmology of Bali with conceptions of the universe — from macro (the cosmos) to micro (a human cell) — seen from a Western perspective, realized through contemporary video technologies. Still and moving video imagery will be cast via digital projectors onto multiple screens and surfaces — including the musicians and instruments themselves — around, above, and within the musical ensemble.
(Sort of) Free Great Concert Videos from Berlin
No need to wait for the upcoming royal wedding spectacle in London: Watch the royal court of Holland
parading to Berlin's Philharmonic Hall to attend a concert on the occasion of its royal visit to Germany. Also there: the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, led by Mariss Jansons and featuring violinist Janine Jansen. You can even hear the Dutch and German national anthems played by the orchestra.
Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall is offering free viewing of this concert through May 15. Free, to a point: No money is needed, but when you go to the site, you will be asked to register and then put up with a few annoying pitches to subscribe, after which the program by the grand old Concertgebouw consists of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Brahms' Symphony No. 4.
While on the site, check out the archives, including Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a program of Purcell and Mahler (Symphony No. 5), plus many more concerts.
Good luck: I registered, got the "free ticket," started the program — and got a visual block, while the music came through just fine. After all this, I will still have to watch the London wedding to see some royal pomp under better circumstances.
2011 Pulitzers
This year’s Pulitzer in Music was awarded on Monday to Zhou Long for Madame White Snake, premiered by Opera Boston on Feb. 26, 2010. Finalists were Archest, by Fred Lerdahl, and Comala, by Richardo Zohn-Muldoon.
Madame White Snake was the first opera commissioned by the Opera Boston and the first one from the composer. The prize is "really something heavyweight to me. ... I feel I have been recognized," Zhou said from his home in Kansas City. "I have been working very hard to blend the East and the West for years."
For Opera Boston, the Pulitzer "helps endorse our mission to promote and present the unusual instead of the traditional and standard," said Gil Rose , the company’s artistic director. "It’s a real endorsement of what we’re trying to do."
Opera Boston is an eight-year-old company specializing in innovative repertoire and rarely heard works. Some of its recent productions were operas by Thomas Adès, John Harbison, Elena Ruehr, Daniel Pinkham, John Adams, and Robert Ward.
Stanford Season
Merce Cunningham Dance Company makes its final Bay Area appearance as part of a campus residency on Stanford Lively Arts' 2011-2012 season, Oct. 19 through May 6, as announced on Monday.
Vocal ensembles Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices and Lionheart appear in programs featuring premieres by Stanford alum David Lang and Ingram Marshall. Other premieres include works by Osvaldo Golijov, Sally Beamish, and Stanford composer Jonathan Berger, in the first part of a two-year phase of commissions for Bing Concert Hall, opening 2013.
Violinist Gil Shaham, harpsichordist Richard Egarr, the Juilliard String Quartet, Colin Currie, and the Kronos Quartet with the Alim Qasimov Ensemble are among visiting artists.
Jazz and world music programs explore island cultures with pianist Chucho Valdés, Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles, and Hawaiian slack key guitarist Keola Beamer with singer Raiatea Helm.
"I’m especially excited about the many flavorful collaborations that anchor our season," said Stanford Lively Arts’ Artistic and Executive Director Jenny Bilfield. "We want to enable artists to do their best work here — to take risks — and to engage our campus partners and audience in this dynamic process. Expect to see and hear bold arts making, from intimate solo programs to multidimensional performances."
Merola Class of 2011
Twenty singers, four apprentice coaches, and one apprentice stage director will participate in the 54th season of the San Francisco Merola Opera Program from June 13 through Aug. 20.In a testament to the importance of the program, the San Francisco Opera's upcoming Ring cycles will feature six Merolini in these performances: Melissa Citro (’01), Mark Delavan (’85), Daveda Karanas (’07), Heidi Melton (’06), Ronnita Miller (’05), Renée Tatum (’08), and Tamara Wapinski (‘07).
More than 800 artists vied for the 25 positions in the 2011 summer program. Selected through an extensive audition and application process, this season's artists come from various U.S. states, and five other countries: Canada, China, Mexico, South Korea, and Venezuela. These are the selected artists:
- Sopranos Marina Boudart Harris, Whittier, California; Suzanne Rigden, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada; Xi Wang, Zhengzhou, China; Elizabeth Zharoff, Wenatchee, Washington
- Mezzo-sopranos Laura Krumm, Iowa City, Iowa; Deborah Nansteel, Havelock, North Carolina; Renée Rapier, Marion, Iowa
- Tenors Daniel Curran, Blackfoot, Idaho; Heath Huberg, Milford, Iowa; Cooper Nolan, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Scott Quinn, Marshall, Texas
- Baritones Mark Diamond, Augusta, Georgia; Guodong Feng, Yangjiang, Guangdong, China; Joo Won Kang, Seoul, South Korea; Suchan Kim, Busan, South Korea; John Maynard, Orinda, California; Jonathan Michie, Rochester, New York
- Bass-Baritones Peixin Chen, Hu Lun Bei Er, Inner Mongolia, China; Philippe Sly, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
- Bass Adam Lau, San Francisco, California.
- Apprentice coaches Timothy Cheung, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Robert Mollicone, East Greenwich, Rhode Island; Ana María Otamendi, Caracas, Venezuela; Clinton Smith, Lake Jackson, Texas
- Apprentice stage director Ragnar Conde, Mexico City, Mexico