It’s Saturday night on Thanksgiving weekend. You’ve survived the family gathering, you’ve battled the crowds out shopping and come out alive, and you’ve realized you just might be getting a bit tired of leftover turkey sandwiches in front of the TV. You need a reward. Fortunately, there’s a musical adventure waiting for you that not only will have you enjoying a musical cornucopia, but will let you do some good, as well.
To have this adventure, visit Herbst Theatre on Nov. 27 and join San Francisco pianist, composer, and conductor Stephen Prutsman for “Bach and Forth,” a look at what the works from the composer whom Prutsman considers “the greatest Western composer of all time” have in common with both subsequent Western classical works and music from around the world.
The journey will span the centuries and the globe. Prutsman intersperses Bach’s works with compositions from Rameau, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, and Schoenberg, and then branches out to explore Indian ragas, central Asian folk songs, African hymns, Latin American vallenatos, gospel, jazz, and rock. Yes, you can even hear Prutsman interpret music from the progressive rock group Yes.
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Stephen Prutsman - Bach: English Suite No. 6, Gigue
The concert benefits the 2011 Azure Program, a San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department four-week summer camp program at Glen Canyon, designed for children with autism. All proceeds will go directly to the program, as concert costs are completely underwritten. Says Prutsman, “This is a cause very near and dear to my heart. I have a 9-year-old son with autism. Children like A.J. have very limited options for summer fun and recreation. Our children deserve a chance to explore the great outdoors, socialize, and thrive, just like the thousands of children who have so greatly benefited from the Recreation and Parks summer camps over the years.”
Prutsman has performed as both a classical and a jazz pianist, moving effortlessly between traditional classical music and the world music stage. His mantra, he says, is that “everything is relational.” As he’s put together this concert, he’s found a parallel between how classical music has traditionally been related to other musical forms with how autistic individuals fit into the larger society.
Too often, he’s found, conservative programming considers “good” music to be Western art music created between the mid-1600s and the 1920s by “old dead guys,” or even in some cultures used to justify superiority over “the masses.” In these cases, he says, real or great music is differentiated from “not-real” or not-so-great music, based on the place and time it was composed rather than the music itself. “Bach and Forth” approaches each individual work on its own merits and explores what it has in common with Bach and connecting the two worlds.
In the same way, Prutsman has found that while parents want to help their children develop a relationship with and integrate into the outside world, they also need to embrace the autistic world as a unique culture offering wonderful things, including some exceptionally bright children. The challenge is also that of connecting the two worlds.
This won’t be the first performance for this concert, and Prutsman reports that the response has been positive. “It’s fun! I hoped to have people begin to appreciate the music of different languages and find the common elements between Bach’s compositions and world music. What I’ve found is that people begin to hear Bach differently.” Here’s your chance to also hear Bach differently while supporting a great cause.