Between the global pent-up desire to return to “normal,” the carnage in Ukraine, the palpable danger of a spreading war, and the threat of new pandemic surges from COVID variants, planning for music performances has seldom been more difficult.
But overcoming obstacles, planning, and hoping is what SF Bay Area organizations do for the summer (June 21 – Sept. 22), and here are a few highlights, ending in August, before the fall season begins ... if all goes well.
Beginning on June 4, San Francisco Opera’s summer season is the finale of its 99th season as the company is getting ready to celebrate its centennial. As usual, with the combined forces of hundreds of artists and support personnel required for opera, this will be the summer’s biggest event, 16 performances attracting an audience of as many as 50,000 in the 3,146-seat War Memorial Opera House.
The production schedule — Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber, and a Verdi concert led by Music Director Eun Sun Kim — runs through July 3. Bertrand de Billy conducts Don Giovanni, starring Etienne Dupuis, Luca Pisaroni, Adela Zaharia, and Carmen Giannattasio. Darrell Ang conducts Dream of the Red Chamber, directed by Stan Lai with Tim Yip’s production design.
Merola Opera Program’s 65th season includes public events, July 9 through Aug. 20, in addition to its main function of coaching young artists. (The pandemic cancelled the program’s ambitious 2020 season and abbreviated it last year.)
Making its home in the SF Conservatory of Music’s Concert Hall, the Merola season begins with “A Celebration of American Song” on July 9, curated by Craig Terry; the Merolini will go on with the Schwabacher Summer Concert on July 14; staged performances of Mozart’s The Magic Flute on Aug. 4 and 6; and the Merola Grand Finale in the War Memorial Opera House on Aug. 20.
San Francisco Opera’s Schwabacher Recital Series, featuring Merolini, runs through July 28, when Baritone Sidney Outlaw (Merola 2010) and pianist and Merola/Adler faculty member Warren Jones perform works from their recent collaboration Lament, an album that pays homage to 20th-century American song.
San Francisco Symphony will announce its summer season program only in mid-April, but the 2021–2022 season still has concerts within the period, including a program led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen on June 23–25, with SF Symphony premieres of Steven Stucky’s Radical Light and John Adams’s Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? in addition to Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5.
The longest-running summer music series in California, the Carmel Bach Festival, will have its 85th season, July 14–30, in the Sunset Theater and the Carmel Mission Basilica and other venues, along with pre-concert talks, the Family Concert, Tower Music, chamber music, the Young Artists’ Showcase, and more.
Several mainstage concerts are led by guest conductors Dinis Sousa, Grete Pedersen, and Nicholas McGegan, each a candidate for the position of artistic director, a position vacated in 2021. (The festival had two directors with lengthy tenures in the past, Sándor Salgo 1957–1991 and Bruno Weil 1991 – 2010.)
Among the soloists for the season: soprano Clara Rottsolk, mezzo-soprano Meg Bragle, tenor Thomas Cooley, and bass-baritone Dashon Burton. Highlights of the season include Brahms’s German Requiem on July 14 and 16; Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, and Bach’s Easter Oratorio.
Classical Tahoe 2022 begins on July 14 with the “Brubeck Jazz Summit," featuring Chris Brubeck, trombone, Dan Brubeck, drums, and the All-Star Faculty and Summit Stars Students.
On July 22, the Classical Tahoe Orchestra is conducted by Jonathan Darlington in a program of the Beethoven First Symphony, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, with Tessa Lark soloist, and the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s Lake Tahoe Symphonic Reflections, celebrating the life and honoring the memory of Joel Revzen, Classical Tahoe’s founding artistic director.
Soloists at other concerts include mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, harpsichordist Dongsok Shin, and pianist Aldo López-Gavilán. The Tahoe season ends on Aug. 18, with a concert presented by baritone Lucas Meachem and pianist Irina Meachem.
Festival Napa Valley runs July 15–24, music and dance served up along with Napa’s best-known attractions: scenery, wine, and food.
Headliners include Trisha Yearwood, Joshua Bell, Larisa Martínez, the Brubeck Brothers Quartet, Tessa Lark, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City (July 16), a “Tchaikovsky to Rolling Stones” dance gala (July 21), and a performance of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, conducted by Gemma New and directed by Jean-Romain Vesperini, with sopranos Andriana Chuchman and Mikayla Sager, tenor Mario Chang, and singers from the Manetti-Shrem Summer Vocal Conservatory (July 22).
American Bach Soloists’ Summer Bach Festival, beginning July 23, takes place mostly in Herbst Theatre, featuring both classics and little-known works by Bach, Mozart, Handel, Georg Friedrich Telemann, Vivaldi, Pietro Locatelli, and Mendelssohn. Artistic Director Jeffrey Thomas leads all concerts.
Soloists include Mary Wilson, soprano; Aldo Abreu, recorder; Sandra Miller, flute; Kenneth Slowik, viola da gamba; Corey Jamason, harpsichord; Tatiana Chulochnikova, Tomà Iliev, YuEun Gemma Kim, and Jacob Ashworth, violins; Gretchen Claassen and Kenneth Slowik, violoncello; Chris Ashman, trumpet and steel pan drums; Kjell Nordeson, percussion.
One exemplary Bach Festival concert is on July 29:
Handel: Concerto Grosso in G Major
Rameau: Suite from Dardanus
Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 Violins in A Minor
Bach: Missa in A Major
with
Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin
Tekla Cunningham, violin
Maya Kherani, soprano
Sarah Coit, mezzo-soprano
Matthew Hill, tenor
Mischa Bouvier, bass-baritone
The cast for Handel’s Belshazzar, on July 30 includes Maya Kherani as Nitocris, Sarah Coit as Daniel, Eric Jurenas as Cyrus, Matthew Hill as Belshazzar, and Mischa Bouvier as Gobryas.
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music celebrates its 60th season, July 24 – Aug. 7, returning to in-person concerts in Santa Cruz for the first time since 2019. Led by Cristian Măcelaru, who is also music director of Orchestre National de France and WDR Sinfonieorchester, Cabrillo continues to be the country’s oldest festival presenting new music.
As it always does, Cabrillo presents world-premiere commissions, this time the orchestral version of Jake Heggie’s INTONATIONS: Songs from the Violins of Hope, with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and violinist Benjamin Beilman, the culmination of an expansive Bay Area collaboration commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz; and works commemorating women’s suffrage in America and exploring the recent impact of drought and wildfires in the Western United States. As Măcelaru says, the festival is about “music of our time, for our time.”
This year’s nine composers in residence are Stacy Garrop, John Harbison, Jake Heggie, Scott Ordway, Paola Prestini, Kevin Puts, Iván Enrique Rodríguez, Andrea Reinkemeyer, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Works by composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Jessie Montgomery, and Christopher Rouse will also be featured.
Guest artists include Roomful of Teeth (vocal band); Lara Downes (piano); Katherine Needleman (oboe); Mark DeChiazza (filmmaker); Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano); Benjamin Beilman (violin); and Thaïs Chernyavski (youth violin).
“This season is a long-awaited return to the stage,” says Cabrillo Festival Executive Director Ellen Primack. “The past two years have strengthened our sense of purpose, and connection to our community and to our mission. It will be an epic homecoming and a 60th anniversary celebration to remember.”
