Artist Spotlights

An Interview With Wu Han: Music@Menlo Lands a Brand New Venue

Marianne Lipanovich - October 6, 2009

The founders of the summer music festival Music@Menlo are returning to the Peninsula this fall. Wu Han and David Finckel, along with Anthony McGill, are performing on Oct. 11 at the opening of the new Menlo-Atherton Performing Arts Center, on the campus of Menlo-Atherton High School. It’s a state-of-the-art building, and, says Wu Han, “I can’t wait to play there.”

An Interview With Thomas Hampson: Playing Your Game

Lisa Houston - September 29, 2009

This week Bay Area music lovers can look forward to two events featuring the music and scholarship of baritone Thomas Hampson. Tuesday evening, he will be joined at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music by curators from the Library of Congress to discuss their collaboration celebrating the history of American song.

An Interview With David Harrington: Forever Deepening Musical Relationships

Jeff Kaliss - September 28, 2009

In his fourth decade as a violinist and as both founder and artistic director of the award-winning Kronos Quartet, David Harrington still exudes the infectious excitement of a gifted student infatuated with experimental and global music from beyond the conservatory’s walls.

Christopher Honett Comes Home

Georgia Rowe - September 21, 2009

When Christopher Honett left the East Coast this summer to start his new job at the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the journey felt like a homecoming. That’s not just because Honett was born and raised in the Bay Area. Joining the venerable new music ensemble, he says, gives him the opportunity to do the kind of work he’s always wanted to do.

An Interview With Christine Brewer: Bringing Back Beloved Songs

Lisa Houston - September 21, 2009

Christine Brewer is coming to town. Her upcoming recital for Cal Performances on Sept. 27 will feature the music of Berg, Strauss, and Britten, along with some old chestnuts favored by big-voiced sopranos of the last century. She was happy to be back home in St. Louis for a couple of weeks, as I caught up with her to chat about her life as world-class dramatic soprano, mother and ...

A Lang Lang Primer

Jason Victor Serinus - September 8, 2009

As he prepares to open the San Francisco Symphony’s 2009-2010 season Wednesday with Prokofiev’s challenging Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26, in Davies Symphony Hall, 27-year-old Lang Lang seems to have embraced his superstar pianist reputation — and run with it.

Artist Spotlight

An Interview With Patricia Racette, Coming Home in Three Guises

Lisa Hirsch - September 6, 2009

Soprano Patricia Racette is in town for an important role debut: She’s singing all three soprano leads in Puccini's Il trittico at San Francisco Opera, a feat only a few have tried. She took time out from rehearsals to talk about her career, her plans, and her life with mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton, her partner of many years.

An Interview With Aaron Jay Kernis, Coming to Cabrillo

Brett Campbell - August 10, 2009

In the decade since he became the youngest composer to win a Pulitzer Prize, for his String Quartet No. 2 (“musica instrumentalis”) in 1998, Aaron Jay Kernis has become one of the leading composers of his generation. Not yet 50, he’s won most of classical music’s top honors and garnered commissions from America’s leading orchestras.

An Interview With Kirk Eichelberger

Lisa Houston - July 31, 2009

Raised in Sacramento, and an alumnus of both the Merola program at San Francisco Opera and the Resident Artist training program at Opera San José, bass Kirk Eichelberger now sings lead roles with opera companies throughout the U.S. He is currently in rehearsal to play Mephistopheles in Festival Opera’s production of Faust.