Bordeaux Quartet to Northern California
If you have no idea what “symphonic quartet” and “scenography” are, all will be revealed when France’s Le Khloros Concert arrives in San Francisco and San Jose, to give two free concerts on its tour of New York, Munich, Beijing, Wuhan, Canton, Hong Kong, Vicenza, and Athens.
Le Khloros presents the Bordeaux Quartet in a program of premieres: Odile Perceau’s Quatour Garonne, described as “a symphonic quartet for strings,” and Partitas Romanes for violin and cello for string orchestra. The two works are dedicated, respectively, to Ioana Celibidache and Elisabeth Furtwängler, widows of two great conductors.
Before the performances, there will be a screening of Quatuor & Partitas: The Making of Création, directed by Aurine Crémieu, and using scenography by Alain Verniau. The definition of scenography is “The art or act of representing a body on a perspective plane; a representation as it appears to the eye,” and how it will be applied to music is yet to be seen and determined.
Northern California stops are at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 18, in San José’s California Theatre, and at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 19, in Herbst Theatre. Both concerts are sponsored by French Consul General Romain Serman.
Admission is free to all concerts on the worldwide tour, but reservations are required. In Northern California, reservations may be made on Eventbrite for San José, and San Francisco.
Founded in 2002 by Perceau, Le Khloros Concert is a flexible orchestral ensemble of professional musicians from France and abroad. Its activity is determined by the conductor and soloists. The first season took place at the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, under the patronage of the U.S. Ambassador. Le Khloros is currently preparing a production of Perceau’s first symphony, to be performed in 2014 at the Cour Carrée du Louvre in Paris.
Academic Centurions of the New Century
Photo by Kristen Loken
Doner’s instrument is a laptop. As New Century’s operations manager, Doner plays his spreadsheets and databases brilliantly to schedule the musicians for rehearsals, performances, and tours. The problem is not only Salerno-Sonnenberg’s busy solo schedule, and the orchestra members’ conflicting Freeway Philharmonic (see next item about KTEH) engagements, but all those faculty jobs, including:
- Kurt Rohde teaches at UC Davis
- Anna Presler is on the faculty of Sacramento State
- Dawn Harms is at Stanford
- Anthony Manzo teaches at the University of Maryland (now, there is a commute!)
- Anna Kruger teaches at Sacramento State
For more about the human side of New Century, check out Salerno-Sonnenberg’s Web site and thoughts. Her lively musical and stage presence is well matched by her colorful stream of thoughts and opinions. Even though she came to the U.S. four decades ago, still a preteen, her Italian heritage is written large in her large presence.
She writes of the Web:
I have come to love the internet for many reasons, but none more important to me than the fact that I can share personal information and an ongoing dialogue with my fans. It is so wonderful to know what they are thinking and feeling and I am truly grateful for this gift.
Goodbye KTEH, Hello New York Philharmonic
KTEH-TV, channel 54 (ch. 10 on Comcast), is now known as KQED Plus, and instead of the old identity and Web site, program information is now combined with KQED’s. Chances are we’ll gradually lose KTEH’s grand wall-to-wall BBC programming, but at least tomorrow evening there will be this, and we quote (with amplification):
- New York Philharmonic Opening Night with Deborah Voigt
8 p.m. — Live from Lincoln Center [#3603H]
Join Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic for the opening night of their 2011–2012 season. Celebrated soprano Deborah Voigt is on hand for an evening of music by Barber (Overture to The School for Scandal and Andromache’s Farewell), Wagner (Overture and “Dich teure Halle” from Tannhäuser), and Intermezzo, Dance, and Final Scene from Richard Strauss’ Salome. Duration 1:56:46 (STEREO TVG)
And then:
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10 p.m. — San Francisco Symphony at 100
This colorful documentary tells the story of how a handful of civic-minded music lovers helped rebuild and revitalize one of the most beloved cities in the world following the earthquake and fire of 1906 by creating an orchestra for all the people. Learn how this vision has become part of the fabric of San Francisco, and continues to expand the musical landscape everywhere. Narrated by author Amy Tan, a longtime friend and fan of the Symphony. Duration 58:12 (STEREO TVG)
And then:
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11 p.m. — Freeway Philharmonic
This program follows the dreams, disappointments, and successes of seven freelance classical musicians as they perform with regional orchestras across North California while struggling to acquire a permanent position with a major orchestra. It depicts their efforts to balance a love of music with a road warrior lifestyle that often requires traveling hundreds of miles a day to rehearse and perform. These individuals have an unrelenting desire to live their art, sometimes at the expense of their families, health, and well-being. This story shows the dedication, perseverance, and rigorous life of the musicians, as they grapple with their desire to succeed in a hard-driving career and come to terms with their limitations in their quest for artistic accomplishment. Duration 54:52 (STEREO TVG)
Our Centennial Players
A weekly series featuring musicians of the San Francisco Symphony, performing in concerts of the orchestra’scentennial seasonMargaret Tait, Cello
The cellist, who joined SFS in 1974, began studying the instrument at age 8, and made her recital debut by 14.She studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts and received a degree at University of Southern California. In Alabama, she played as section principal in the Birmingham Symphony.
Her studies continued at USC and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
She is a founding member of the renowned Aurora String Quartet.
Melissa Kleinbart, Violin
Occupying the Katharine Hanrahan Chair, Kleinbart, a Philadelphia native, served previously as associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and assistant concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Since her 1989 debut in New York, she made recital appearances in the U.S. and Canada, and has been broadcast on CBC radio.
At the famed Tanglewood Festival, Kleinbart served as concertmaster under Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.
Symphony Centennial Book Exhibit Opens
Calling your attention to Michael Strickland’s report on the San Francisco Main Library exhibit in connection with the publication of Larry Rothe’s Music for a City, Music for the World.Note also Strickland’s wisely chosen list of SFS highlights for the fall:
Mahler’s gargantuan 3rd Symphony is coming up this week (Sept. 21–25); the Symphony-commissioned Polaris by British composer Thomas Adès with “moving images” by his partner, Tal Rosner (Sept. 29–Oct. 1); the great young conductor Vasily Petrenko conducting Elgar’s First Symphony and joining with Joshua Bell in the Glazunov Violin Concerto (Oct. 5–9); James Conlon conducting Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14 (Oct. 14–16) and then jumping in as a substitute for Fabio Luisi with Verdi’s Requiem (Oct. 19–22); a Symphony commission of a new work from the amazing composer Sofia Gubaidulina (Nov. 17–20); and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Sibelius, as well as his own Violin Concerto, plus excerpts from Wagner’s Ring (Dec. 8–10).
Intersection's Lucky 777
San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts has been awarded a $777,000 ArtPlace Grant. It’s one of 34 local arts projects sharing $11.5 million from an unprecedented private–public collaboration known as ArtPlace, which unites 11 top foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and seven federal agencies.
Each project supported by ArtPlace has been selected for developing a new model of helping towns and cities thrive by strategically integrating artists and arts organizations into key local efforts.
In the two years since he became chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman has been trying to make the case that art is an effective linchpin to economic development. Now, in a broad effort to build on that thesis, he has helped to enlist an unusual consortium of foundations, corporations, and federal agencies that will use cultural enterprises to anchor and enliven 34 projects around the country, from a struggling city block in Detroit to a vacant school in East Harlem.
In San Francisco, the real estate developer Forest City — together with Intersection for the Arts, an alternative nonprofit art space — is redeveloping four downtown acres in the Yerba Buena, Tenderloin, and Market districts, converting properties such as the old San Francisco Chronicle building, parking lots, and vacant warehouses into film and digital-media businesses, artists’ workshops, and cultural event spaces.
“Art is a critical component of what makes cities thrive,” said Alexa Arena, the Forest City executive overseeing the effort. “This is about looking at the life of the project rather than just the physicality of it.”
The foundations involved are the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the James Irvine Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Robina Foundation, as well as an anonymous donor.
Mill Valley Film Festival: Khansahib and Much More
Marin’s late, beloved Ali Akbar Khan is the subject of a splendid documentary, to be screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival. It will be shown at 8 p.m., Oct. 9, at San Rafael’s Smith Rafael Film Center, and 9:15 p.m., Oct. 12, in Mill Valley’s Sequoia Theater.Far more than just a collection of concert scenes, Joshua Dylan Mellars’ Play Like a Lion: The Legacy of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan traces the history of masters of the sarod; shows Khansahib’s training of his son, Alam, protagonist of the film; and paints his association with such diverse musical stars as Yehudi Menuhin, Carlos Santana, Mickey Hart, and the Grateful Dead (“Jerry Garcia was deeply influenced by him”), tabla masters Swapan Chaudhuri and Ustad Zakir Hussain, and bansuri flute master G.S. Sachdev.Although his father, Acharya Baba Allauddin Khan, who lived to age 110, and Khansahib himself were regarded as gurus of high station, both had bold and forceful personalities. The documentary recalls when the young Khansahib told the Maharaja of Jodhpur, whose court employed him, not to drink while he was playing. The maharaja apologized and the concert resumed.
Alam’s narrative deals with the matter of the music’s spirituality. The grandfather was Moslem, but also honoring Hindu gods. When Alam asked his father what their religion was, Khansahib replied: “Music is our religion.”
Other Music Films at MVFF
The 34th Mill Valley Film Festival also features these musical films (with more information to come soon):- Silence of Love (Philippe Clausel, France, 2011, 105 min.), an Italian musicologist in Strasbourg is trying to deal with family and cultural problems of contemporary Europe
- Country Music (Alberto Fuguet, Chile/U.S., 2011, 105 min.): a Chilean slacker’s adventures in Nashville, “Music City USA”
- Hi De Ho Show (John Goddard, U.S.): Goddard will “veejay” an evening of the early decades of jazz, from trad to bebop, from Dixieland to swing
Classical Music on the Air to Get Louder
>“Radio Waves,” the San Francisco Chronicle column by Ben Fong-Torres reports that “any day now” KDFC’s weak signal at 90.3 FM will be improved significantly. The transmitter upgrade at a Marin site will make on-the-air (rather than online) reception better not only in that county, but also in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland — perhaps close to the station’s previous signal at 102.1 FM.Meanwhile, Fong-Torres writes, eight months after the sale of involving those frequencies, and after KDFC replaced college station KUSF, the deal is still awaiting Federal Communications Commission approval.
Left Coast's 'Two Sets of Keys'
Photo by Ben Janken
The program, “Two Sets of Keys,” begins with Aaron Copland’s Three Moods, performed by Eric Zivian, and then turns to an exploration of French repertory through several centuries.
From the 18th century come François Couperin’s Rondeau: le Tic-toc-choc, ou les Maillotins (with Katherine Heater, harpsichord), and Jean-Baptiste Barrière’s Sonata No. 6 in C Minor (with Tanya Tomkins, Baroque cello, solo; Joanna Neuschatz, Baroque cello, continuo; and Heater).
Henri Dutilleux, 95, is represented by Les Citations — Diptych for Oboe, Percussion, Harpsichord, and Double Bass (Andrea Plesnarski, Loren Mach, Heater, Michel Taddei); and Sonata for Oboe and Piano (Plesnarski, Zivian).
The unusual and generous program is rounded out by Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Minor (Anna Presler, Zivian).
Gotesman New ODC Executive Director
“Our two-building campus houses one of the West Coast’s most active centers for dance,” said ODC Board President Bart Deamer. “Victor is the ideal candidate to strengthen our foundation and lead us into the next decade.”
ODC Founder and Artistic Director Brenda Way said Gotesman’s “extensive experience running cultural organizations from Los Angeles to New York City and his enthusiastic appetite for the future are exactly the right combination to lead us onward.”
More next week.